TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fiction
13

In Training | Grace Reed

17

Plaspirations | Chris Turek

31

Summer in Spillion | Grace Reed

39

City of Roses | Alex Dankers

Poetry

Copyright 2014 by LandEscapes, Washington State University

Department of English. All rights reserved. Reproduction without
permission, whether in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited.
LandEscapes accepts original student submissions in fiction,
nonfiction, poetry, art, digital multimedia, and music. All works are
assumed to be original and unpublished. The journal staff is compromised of students.

59

Arboreal Anecdotes | Shandra Clark

63

He Wished For Switzerland | Bailey Badger

64

Ivory Tower | Brittany Kealy

66

Mirror Mirror | D Corson

68

Much of This, Without You | Jack Stilwell

73

Snow Globe | Cappy Spruance

75

Watching a Video on the Weather Channels

Website, Subtitled, A Deadly Japanese
Tornado | Jair Brooks

76

Weekday Blues | D Corson

79

Dissociative Bridge | Jack Stilwell

Art

Digital & Music

123

83

Untitled #12 - Biomes | Jonathan S Matteson

84

Untitled | Cameron Overturf

85

Untitled | Nathan Howard

86

Abandoned Cabin | Erin Richardson

Past LandEscapes

87

Sumpter Porch | Hannah Lambert

Cover Art

88

Untitled | Alexa Turner

Letter From the Editor

89

Untitled | Nathan Howard

57

Interview | Scott Olsen

90

Held Breath | Erin Richardson

81

Interview | Kathleen Flenniken

91

Strength | Michelle Webster

121

Interview | Rebecca Brown

92

Untitled | Christina Rodriguez

125

Contributors

93

Wave | Cameron Overturf

133

Editors and Staff

95

Bittersweet Harmony | Ashleigh Pollard

139

Submission Information

Nonfiction
97

Ten Days in Havana | Christine Rushton

103

The Woman I Kissed | Matt Benoit

107

My Good Friend, Fa. | Jesse Purvis

Is College Worth It? | Calvin Elam

About Us

PastLandEscapes
FOUNDING STAFF OF LANDESCAPES
Keith Ancker
Boyd W. Benson
Eva Bernfeld
Jennifer Carmody
Catherine Cline
Todd Cullison
Amy Day
Chantel Hobbs

Christina Howard
Brandon McGovern
Sara Okert
Shana Pennington
Rick Rogahn
Jeanne Rodriguez
John Stilson
Elle Thompson

FOUNDING ADVISOR
Peter Chilson

NOTE FROM THE FOUNDING EDITOR IN CHIEF

Upon entering this grand, illustrious and ever so exalted
project with absolutely no idea of what we were doing, and
thereafter having pursued the guidance of various friends and
faculty members and of our own charge, after considerable
deliberation we determined at once to fake it.
Well, after nearly a year in the process, we did it, ambling
over. Though the staff was short in number, they worked their
tails off and came up with something good. A creative outlet
for WSU students, a high-cultured flyswatter, a mag, a rag, late
for dinner - call it anything you want. LandEscapes belongs to
WSU. A gift.
- Boyd W. Benson

LandEscapes 2013

Cover Art

Letter From The Editor

Kelsey Johnson

I wanted the cover to represent what LandEscapes and our

staff stand for fresh ideas and appreciation of the classics.
With the illustrations of Frank Lloyd Wright as my inspiration,
I translated objects that represent literature (books, pencils and
typewriter buttons) into a geometric work of art.
My hope is you find that this journal will make you want to
settle down and get cozy with it as you take in the wonderful
writing and artwork inside.

This year has been a whirlwind of deadlines, interviews,

mishaps, miscommunications, presentations, and a heinous
amount of awkwardness on my part, but I wouldnt have had it
any other way.
Thank you to everyone involved with LandEscapes for sticking with me on my flagship journey through editor-in-chiefhood. Without each and every one of you I would not have been
able to get through it.
Thank you to my editors for your keen eyes and quick discernment, for your unwavering confidence in all thinks lyrical
and meaningful, for arguing endlessly and passionately about
your champion pieces, for finding the pieces that ring with both
truth and creativity, and for tirelessly weathering through the
storm with me.
A huge thank you to my advisor, Peter Chilson for his knowhow and reliability (Im sending you a literary salute), and to
Debbie Lee and Linda Russo for their brilliance, quirk, and
work with the Visiting Writers Series. As well as Jean at University Publishing for bringing this beauteous work of art from
digital to print, and to WSU Libraries for hosting our digital
site.
And finally, I would like to thank you, dear reader, for picking
up this journal, youre a glorious human, I can tell.
Sincerely,
Ana Schmidt
LandEscapes Editor-in-Chief 2013-2014

In Training

Grace Reed

FICTION

12 |

His mouth was raspberry blue with Jolly Rancher, yawning artificial
citrus and tartness. He stuck out his tongue, stretching it as far as he
could, but his nose blocked his view. Oh well it was enough to have
seen the blueness in his mothers bathroom mirror, his lips ringed
with it as if his little sister made him up with marker. He smiled and
trudged on along the side of the road. The rocks left in his backpack
from yesterdays walk bumped against his spine in time with the
crunch of the sun-dried weeds underfoot.
The dandelions in the ditch nodded at him as he marched, brushing their wispy seeds against his combat boots and camo pants. His
mother bought them for him at the Post Exchange last November,
child-sized fatigues vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag that stuck to all
the others on the Halloween costume discount shelf. He peeled the
package off its stack and held it out to her, sure that she would buy it;
she bought them lots of new stuff when Dad went to basic training
last summer, and again when Dad left, this time for longer. He didnt
know why, or why the costume made her eyes go shiny with tears.
When they got home she said she would sew their last name on it,
right over his heart.
His backpack, unlike the fatigues, was not made for someone of

Reed | 13

FICTION
his stature. He resembled a hermit crab whose new shell was still
too large and ungainly, his eight-year-old limbs appearing comically
short compared to the backpacks enormity. But he liked that its size
made it appear empty, helping him keep his routine a secret. The
zipper pulls jumped and twitched with each step. Yesterdays rocks
clacked gently against each other inside as he strode toward the crescent of greenbelt along the edge of the neighborhood.
At the forests widest part, there lay a small stone-filled crater that
everyone called The Quarry. When school was in session he heard
the older kids talk about it casually, but he couldnt picture just lounging around on the humps of rock. To him, young as he was, it was
still The Quarry, its importance amplified by the note of panic in his
mothers voice when she warned him of rockslides and wild cougars.
But that didnt stop him from going there on his own.
His mother didnt ask where he went on his summer afternoons
alone. His friends mothers always
wanted to know where they passed
their lazy, sunny days. He someBut he liked that
times thought about this difference.
its size made it apHis friends fathers came home evpear empty, helpery night and expected to see their
ing him keep his
sons there, too.
routine a secret.
He didnt think about that difference so much.
When he was almost to The
Quarry, he picked up his pace so yesterdays rocks banged against his
tailbone and his boots clomped like gloved fists knocking on a front
door. The second his feet began to slither down the near slope, he
counted in his head. Gravel skittered under his soles, but he kept his
balance, sprinted across the basin, and threw himself into the upward
climb.
In the winter months it had taken him entire minutes, even when
The Quarry wasnt slippery with snow and frost. Yesterday hed near-

14 | Reed

ly twisted an ankle and only made it in twelve seconds. He made it

up the other side just as he finished the tenth count, beaming. It was
a private victory for now. But he knelt, still breathless and smiling,
and began emptying his backpack of the four stones it carried. One
for him, one for his sister, one for his mother, one for Dad.
He could just picture Dads grin when he saw how strong hed
gotten. He could just feel the little stumble Dad would pretend to
do when he picked him up and boomed, Somebodys grown! Dad
was coming home soon. His mother said so when she put down the
phone and wiped tears away before they could salt her trembling
smile.
With four new, slightly heavier rocks stowed lovingly in his backpack, he set off for home.

Reed | 15

FICTION

Plaspirations

Chris Turek

Miranda Georgette Jacobs was not fond of her given name, she
thought as if it would be more fitting for a porn star, or an 18th century aristocrat. She did not frequent cocktail parties, she was more
the type to attend PTA meetings or work related luncheons at gaudy
chain restaurants like Chilis or TGI Fridays. Doing family laundry
on a Sunday afternoon was not out of the ordinary for Miranda, clad
in sweatpants, her husbands old college football jersey, and her hair
tied back in a ponytail, she stomped her way down the stairs of her
home. An overloaded laundry basket digging into her pelvis, Miranda made her way to a modest fluorescently lit alcove that housed the
washer and dryer. When she made her way there she dropped the
laundry on the floor, it landing upside down with a sickening thud as
if she had dumped a body over a cliff. The basket sat atop the pile of
clothes like a big plastic crown, mocking her. On top of the washing
machine Miranda had noticed a few of her childrens toys, they just
seemed to sit there, and she found it eerie the way they were posed.
One of the toys was that lame little man that came in the Barbie play
sets, and he was reclined on the washing machine. She wondered
what disturbing toy she had bought her son that contained a tiny
straight jacket, and decided to rethink her parenting style by checking

Turek | 17

FICTION
out his choices at the toy store a little more thoroughly before taking
it up to the register. The other toy was a small, egg shaped creature,
crudely painted to resemble a man, though more specifically a doctor.
He had large lifeless eyes painted in a manner that made them look
crossed, a tiny painted lab coat with a red cross on the breast pocket,
head mirror, and stethoscope. Before she straightened up the unruly
laundry pile Miranda grabbed the two toys off the washing machine
to take them upstairs when she dropped the doctor on the floor and
he began to roll around, finally settling back into his stationary seated
position. She hated those toys, Weeble Wobbles, as a kid, because she
couldnt knock them down. Even as a child it bothered her that a simple weighted piece of plastic could get the best of her. She thought of
punting under the washer and moving on but considering the heartbreak it would cause her young daughter she decided to stubbornly
bend over and pick it up. When she did so she gasped and recoiled as
Miranda could have sworn one of its eyes closed and opened again in
a winking motion (or toy-like parody of one). Logic and rationality
immediately overwhelmed her and she merely dismissed the wink as
a speck of grime on the lens of her glasses. She returned to her daughters room with the two toys in hand and placed them carefully on her
daughters dainty pink night stand. She then exited the room to finish
the laundry.

Well Kenneth the weeble-doctor droned, in light of our
little interruption from the big-god, we will continue this evaluation
here. Does that upset you at all?
Ken began to tense up and struggle against his bindings, No, not
really. Im sure youll come to the same conclusion regardless of the
venue.
Looking perplexed, the weeble-doctor retorted Ah, and what conclusion might that be?
Ken looked the doctor straight in the eyes (or tried his best to do so
considering the doctor was slightly cross-eyed) and whispered that
Im a murderer

18 | Turek

Six months ago life was unsatisfactory for Ken. Some may go so
far as to say mediocre. Crawling out of bed as carefully as possible
to not wake his wife, and looking in the bathroom mirror (a blurry
reflective sticker) and being not only disappointed, but almost hostile
at the grinning visage that stared back at him. His face was a perpetual grin. He had noticed the big-gods faces, how they moved and
changed when they felt different things and he wanted that. But his
face, and all of the other dolls faces
were doomed to look exactly how
But he was not
they were molded and painted,
content with this and he was hard-pressed to undernightmare, bestand why on earth they would be
cause it was not
content with this when something
like the nightmares greater and better always loomed.
the big-gods suf- He took a moment to gaze out the
fered from.
bedroom window and noticed in
the great childs room a calmness
and serenity, that special time of day when the light switch dimmer
was low on its tracks and it mocked a real life sunrise. Ken cherished
this silence, as any time Barbie didnt flap her plastic gums was a time
for rejoicing. The rejoicing was cut short though when Ken began
to remember just what it was that woke him so early this morning, a
nightmare where he himself was taken by the big-gods, the ones with
funny teeth and clothes with skulls and guitars on them, to the garage. The garagea dreadful place for any toyhe had woken up just
before the big-gods had lit the fuse to the hefty bottle rocket they had
bound him to, in rubber bands nonetheless. But he was not content
with this nightmare, because it was not like the nightmares the biggods suffered from. He knew that when they slept and dreamed bad
dreams that they would wake up warm and drenched in their own
juices. He had seen it! He snuck out on occasion to watch the biggods, and to emulate them.
Over to the toilet Ken shuffled, it like the rest of Barbies furniture,

Turek | 19

FICTION
was pink. He loosened the tiny cloth belt around his waist and slid
his pants to the floor. Completely nude, but with his pants bunched
up around his inarticulate ankles, he placed his perpetually karate
chopping hands on his polymer pelvis. Ken hovered over the toilet
for quite some time. He hadnt known what he expected to happen,
but when he would listen to the big-gods from outside the bathroom
door he would hear certain noises and smell certain smells. Frustration would wash over Ken when he couldnt replicate these noises
and smells at the toilet, no matter how hard or how long he tried He
was not like the big-gods, but he had to try! Their lives seemed so
much richer and fulfilling than his, and anything would be better
than being trapped here with his wife.
Ken had seen the big-gods without their clothes, the ones who
were like him. He had seen what their bodies were like and how they
moved, and perhaps most importantly for him he had seen what
was in between their legs. Above all, Ken wanted one of these! In his
observations this seemed to be the most important part of their body,
a fleshy beacon of power. More often than not Ken would stretch the
elastic of his pants and stare at his plastic crotch. The lack of such an
important feature troubled him. The big-gods used them for so many
different things, but what Ken envied the most was the pleasure and
overwhelming sense of masculinity that accompanied it.
Ken moved from the toilet to the shower. After disrobing and
standing in the cubicle for a few minutes, he exited feeling no different from before. Ken understood the concept of hygiene, as on his
most unfortunate days he would be dragged nude to the bathtub to
serve as a vessel of amusement for the big-gods during their cleanings. It was nigh unbearable, but it doubled as a way for he himself
to become clean. Neither Ken nor the big-god he knew as Miranda
understood just why the childrens hands were always so sticky. After
his shower Ken began to groom himself. He borrowed Barbies
oversized pink hairbrush (this gesture would be accompanied with
much degradation and chastising if she found out about this) and be-

20 | Turek

gan running it through his hair. Helmet was more like it. Barbies hair
was long and lustrous, her superficial little friends constantly complementing her on it. His of course was just part of his head-mold,
synthetic, and painted cocoa brown like a rubbery toupee. He hated
it, but he understood that it was a part of him.
Ken crept back into the marital bedroom. There was a closet and
a dresser, but neither of which really opened or had any substantial
space to store his one or two outfits let alone his wifes massive wardrobe. In the immediate vicinity Ken could see a ball-gown draped
over a chair and one of Barbies wetsuits from the underwater scuba
adventure play set. Kens wardrobe was humble compared to the grandiose selection of his wifes, and he considered himself lucky when he
was able to find a matching pair of shoes. Today he decided he would
wear his blue pants. He slid on a pair of rubbery white sneakers and
a pink shirt which had little snaps to fasten from his would-be pubic
area to his collarbone. The piece de resistance was a yellow cravat
which he originally came with. It was his most proud possession, as it
reminded him of life before Barbie, life inside the box. Ken spent the
rest of the morning reminiscing back to a day not long after he and
Barbie were just married.
I cant believe shes making us get the pink one Ken silently
fumed as he fidgeted uncomfortably in the tiny chair in front of the
smug car dealer, a portly Teddy Bear with one button eye missing.
Barbie on the other hand was ecstatic with their new purchase.
Does it come with any added features? Barbie asked with a bubbly enthusiasm that Ken knew was far from genuine, she got what she
wanted so often that Ken couldnt help but wonder if she could even
muster any actual excitement any more. She more than made up for it
with her overwhelmingly energetic demeanor.
Well it is a convertible the Teddy-dealer replied while shuffling
papers, not to mention youve got a top of the line sticker dashboard interface and a stick shift. Barbie squealed. Ken on the other
hand gently rested his face in his hands and asked, Does it come in

Turek | 21

FICTION
any other colors?
Barbies head whipped toward Ken at near Mach speed, Ken
DONT! I hate it when you make a scene. Ken tried his very best at a
calm rebuttal, but
But NOTHING Kenneth! he hated when she called him that, and
thats what he began to be known as throughout the toy community,
Were getting the pink one. There was a certain twinkle in Barbies
eyes, she began to breathe erratically and her hands began to shake.
The Teddy Bear just sat there dumbfounded. After a long and
painful silence, Ken admitted defeat and told the dealer that pink was
more than acceptable. Later that day he would find himself in the
bathroom again, staring woefully at the smooth plastic bump that
made up his pubic area.
To supplement meaning into his day to day life Ken toiled, performing menial tasks around and outside the house, whatever his
anatomical limitations would allow. Some tasks were like hobbies, or
simply to pass the time. Others were direct orders from Barbie herself. Regardless, when he was doing these chores, he could get away
from his wife, and that was what was most important.
When she wasnt out shopping Barbie would often sit and watch
her favorite television programs, or lounge by the pool. This was the
very same pool that Ken had often fantasized drowning Barbie in
had the pool actually consisted of real water, instead it was a grimy
blue sticker in their backyard flanked by two chaise lounges and an
umbrella. Had Ken actually tried to grasp the back of Barbies had
and hold it under, he would not take pleasure in ensuing splashing,
gurgling, and the sweet relief that would accompany her death. He
would, instead, be simply pounding Barbies face into the hard plastic
and grimy sticker of their pool repeatedly, despite her protests. You
cannot drown if there is nothing to drown in.
The days that Ken loathed the most was when Barbie would have
her friends over for get-togethers. They were fond of soap operas,
cocktail and Tupperware parties, everything that a living breathing

22 | Turek

woman in Kens mind would enjoy, but the fact that Barbie and her
friends did not understand that they werent living, breathing women
never ever sat well with Ken.
There was Teresa, who looked uncannily like Barbie though a
shade darker and with black hair took joy in belittling Ken almost as
much as Barbie did, Stacie, an unapologetic kleptomaniac, and finally
Midgepoor Midge. She was the oldest doll in the house, and to
say she had seen better days was to put it kindly. Midges misadventures began when the frightening big-gods that Ken dreamed about
tried cramming another smaller dolls shoes on her pointy little feet,
resulting in a terrible foot deformity that left Midge unable to walk.
For the rest of her life she would have to be pushed around in a tiny
wheelchair. Clumps of her hair were missing and half of her face
was melted due to an unfortunate mishap having to do with some of
the other big-gods and a blowtorch in the garage. The squeaking of
Midges wheelchair served as somewhat of an alarm system, alerting
him that he would have to serve the women with feigned enthusiasm.
Feigned enthusiasm, however, was Kens specialty, as he had been
painted with a grin after all.
He found himself tending the rose bushes in front of the house
during his wifes social callings, and this was his favorite activity while
the women chatted. The only thing separating them and Ken being a
thin plastic wall. In between jamming a plastic sandwich against her
lips, Teresa gossiped with Barbie. You know whos really sexy? That
G.I. JoeId like to get him out of his fatigues! The women cackled
around the table, all accept for Midge who stared straight ahead. Barbie, Teresa, and Stacie all looked at her expectantly for a few seconds.
HAW HAW HAW HAW HAAAAWWWW! she bellowed at
a volume she was unable to control due to her facial deformity. The
women carried on while Ken continued to mime pruning and fertilizing his beloved garden.
Ken tried to clear his mind and focus solely on the roses, but Barbies shrill voice kept creeping in: Yeah, Joe. Hes sooooo dreamy

Turek | 23

FICTION
nothing like that loser Im stuck with. Despite Kens incessant hatred
of his wife, he thought that if he had a mouth like the big-gods, it
would frown. Regardless of how badly Barbie treated him, he had
vowed to love, honor and obey, or at least thats what it said on the
box of the wedding play set. More and more this seemed to happen,
the women would cackle at Kens expense and he would pretend not
to take it to heart.
The next day as Ken was taking out the garbage, Barbie sped into
the driveway in their (her) pink convertible, a huge package taped to
the back of the car.
Ken dropped the plastic bags into the trashcan, whats that? he
asked as Barbie climbed out of the car, her pink sequined mini skirt
glistening from the 60-watt bulbs
that hung from the celing fixture.
Ken would roll his
Oh its a satellite dish. Barbie
said nonchalantly, I figured Id pick eyes if he could.
one up so that the gals and I could
watch more soaps.
Ken placed the lid on their trashcan, How much did it cost?
Nevermind how much it COST. It was 3 chocolate coins and a
bobby pin. Nothing we cant afford! Barbie snapped, Just put it on
the roof, you useless man!
Honey Kens grin turned sly. You know I cant, I dont have
opposable thumbs. Theres no way I can fasten it up there and neither
can you.
This was it, Ken had won the argument. Victories had to be savored, as Ken was not graced by them often. A wave of sweet satisfaction washed over him as Barbie, looking confounded, stomped her
high heeled foot.
Fine then! Ill just get Joe to do it. Not only does he have opposable thumbs, he has a Kung Fu grip.
If Ken had capillaries, this would be the point in time where the
color drained from his face. He was at a complete loss for words, and

24 | Turek

Barbie stormed into the house, leaving the huge box taped to the car.
A few hours later a green and tan camouflaged Humvee roared up
to the dream house. The sheer size of this mammoth vehicle dwarfed
Ken and Barbies stupid little convertible. A tall, solid man with a
chiseled jaw and a beret climbed out of the vehicle and looked stoically into the horizon.
Private Joseph R. Figureton reporting for duty! The soldier gave a
stiff salute, a gesture that Ken felt was a little insulting due to the fact
that his own hands were stuck that way.
Joe. Ken replied. Can I help you?
I was notified by Barbie that youre in need of construction of a
satellite array. Please point me in the direction of your commanding
officer.
Ken would roll his eyes if he could.
In the living room
G.I. Joe entered the house, and fraternized with Barbie briefly, then
took a foldable utility ladder from the back of his Humvee and scaled
the house. Hours elapsed, and it was dusk. Opposable thumbs or not,
it didnt take this long for anyone to install a satellite dish. Ken slowly
began to ascend the ladder to the roof of his home, he did so slowly
and carefully as he was not fond of heights. Rung by rung, step by
step, he climbed. When he got close to the top he loosened his cravat
a little and peered over the roof. The satellite dish was installed but
Joe was nowhere to be found. This was strange because his Humvee
was still parked in front of their house. Did he fall? Did that fool meet
his demise at the hands of Ken and Barbies Deluxe Dreamhouse? If
that were the case Ken would have considered it his greatest victory.
He probably went in to use the bathroom Ken mused, and
began to climb down the ladder. Just as Ken made it about halfway down he came face to face with his own bedroom window. His
question of Joes whereabouts had been answered. G.I. Joe stood like
a predator, behind Barbie, cupping her bulbous and perky plastic
breasts as he kissed her neck. Ken was paralyzed with a veritable

Turek | 25

FICTION
cocktail of hatred, confusion, and jealousy, coursing through him.
He could not move, nor could he speak. Barbie turned around and
giggled. Joe, stop it! But he didnt. Joe wore a utility belt complete
with a combat knife, a two-way radio, a tiny replica of a Beretta M9
handgun, and a few grenades. Barbie had begun to undo this belt
when Joe forcefully pushed her onto her and Kens marital bed. Ken
watched in horror as Joe slid off Barbies skirt, revealing a tan plastic
pelvis sans panties.
Barbie reached for her high heels.
No, keep em on, Joe growled, you know I like that Joe buried
his face between Barbies unnaturally long legs, and Barbie subsequently moaned. Ken, horrified, began to feel himself slipping off the
ladder. His limbs became spastic and flaccid from the blatant betrayal. He fell face first into the flowerbed, completely ruining the roses
hed been tending all day.
Ken sulked over to the pool and sat on one of the chaise lounges.
He didnt know what to think, his mind was racing and none of his
emotions were positive. Feelings of hatred, wrath, rage, anger, overwhelmed him and then the next moment he would have to contend
with the other, sadder side of the emotional spectrum. It was here
that Ken contemplated suicide, but first a drink. He entered the
Dreamhouse through the pink French doors on the back patio and
retrieved a small plastic can labeled soda with a red sticker from
their refrigerator. Pretending to sip this, he reclined once again by the
pool and drifted off. He would remain there all evening.
When Ken awoke it was early afternoon on the next day. He imagined that if he were like the big-gods he could experience a headache
right now, and maybe even a sunburn. He heard the familiar chattering of Barbie and company from the den. Slinking through those
same patio doors he tried so hard not to be noticed, but he would
have no such luck.
Ken you worthless excuse for a husband, The woman dolls found
great amusement in this remark. Where have you been?! You so

26 | Turek

rudely neglected to take the ladies coats to our closet. Shame on you.
Ken, always trying to avoid any kind of serious conflict, submitted
and grabbed the coats that were piled on a recliner. Barbie leaned
over to Teresa and whispered. You remember the plan, right? Teresa
nodded and slowly followed Ken.
As Ken struggled in assigning each of the womens coats to a small
plastic hanger, Teresa sauntered into Barbie and Kens bedroom, her
blouse was unbuttoned and her skirt hiked high, revealing a little bit
of plastic cheek.
Hey there handsome she slithered over to Ken.
Um, hello Teresa Ken was tense, on guard. Never once did he
warrant direct attention or interaction from Barbies friends. Half of
him welcomed it, half of him was concerned, almost afraid.
You know, youre actually pretty sexy. Ive wanted to say that for a
loooooooong time. Teresa began to undress.
Um, Terry? Could you stop doing that please? Please put your
clothes back on. Kens eyes darted across the room, anywhere but
Teresas half naked body.
Its Teresa, baby, she grasped his forearm and shook loose the coat
and hanger he was holding.
Teresa please STOP! Ken pleaded, but he was too late. She had
already placed his claw-like hand on her chest.
Rape! she yelled, Barbie, Stacie, help! Ken is trying to rape me!
The other woman dolls raced up the stairs, eyes wide and what they
were witnessing. Stacie had actually taken the time to snap a photo of
a beleaguered Ken with his hand on Teresas bosom.
Thats it, Ken, Barbie hissed, Were getting a divorce. And she
dashed off.

Truthfully in Kens mind a divorce sounded like a swell idea,
but it would be under his terms. He would not be forever shamed in
the toy community, especially not for something he didnt do.. He no
longer slept, he lay in wait.
Days went by before he would see Barbies friends again. But he

Turek | 27

FICTION
would make the necessary arrangements. He would call Joe, and little
did Joe know (or toy society, for that matter) he would be an accessory to murder. Ken phoned Joe, with a story about how he needed
some basic repairs done around the house, and Joe was more than
enthusiastic about said repairs as he undoubtedly saw this as another
occasion to do some basic repairs to Barbie. Ken told him to fetch
him 2 bic lighters, as well as some duct tape and a steak knife just to
have around the house for possible renovations in the future.
Later on in the day Joe would arrive with Kens laundry list of
supplies. Barbie was undoubtedly out on one of her lavish shopping
expeditions and Ken was nowhere to be found either. Instead Joe was
met with a list of chores:
1. Loosen all of the bolts on the new satellite dish-so it can be
rotated with ease for reception quality.
2. Please increase the speed and velocity of the Dreamhouse Elevator, as Barbie is losing patience with how long it takes her to traverse
the different floors of the house.
3. Leave all of the supplies youve brought in mine and Barbies
bedroom.
-Ken
Once Joe had finished Ken had crawled out from under his painful
hiding place in the rose bushes, he took some time to inspect Joes
work and was most pleased. A great deal of this could look like an
accident, but there was a certain fun that accidents prevented.
The next day was the day that the ladies favorite soap opera aired,
simply entitled Im Rich. and they gathered in front of the television. Teresa had a weeble-court ordered restraining order for Ken
which dictated that he would have to be no less than 300 feet from
her. Ken stood his ground and was adamant about not being ejected
from his own home. Upon hearing this news Teresa kept her act up
and began to haughtily leave the Dreamhouse, despite audible protests from the other women. Ken climbed the ladder to the slanted
pink roof, placed his hands on the satellite dish and waited until Te-

28 | Turek

resa was in position. He knew he had only one chance at this. Teresas
heels clacked on his plastic porch and upon hearing this, Ken pushed
with all of his generic might. The heavy satellite began tumbling down
the roof and onto Teresa, crushing her frail plastic body. The rest of
the women went to investigate not because of the crash, but because
their television reception was now completely fuzzy. When they came
outside they were nothing short of horrified by what theyd seen.
Ken peered over the side of the roof, and shouted It was an accident! I was only trying to adjust the pic-
MY FRIEND!!! Barbie screamed, cradling what was left of Teresa.
Somebody call for help!
Stacie retreated inside the house when a familiar glimmer to head
for the phone caught her eye. Jewelry, money, and fine footwear
seemed to be lined up one after another. She began to follow the trail,
subsequently stuffing each item into her purse as she went along. Ken
climbed down from the roof and toward the lever which controlled
the Dreamhouse elevator. On the elevator landing lay one of Barbies shimmering pink ball gowns, and it was no secret that the other
doll-women coveted this. Stacy sat on the landing and struggled to
stuff the dress into her now overstuffed purse. Ken violently pulled
the elevator lever into the down position and a faint Uh-oh could
be heard as poor Stacie too was crushed to death.
Honey! Theres been another accident! Ken shouted, barely able
to mask his glee. Let me make sure Midge is ok! Ken rushed down
the stairs and grasped the push-handles of Midges wheelchair while
Barbie continued to cradle Teresa and feign a good solid sob.
Midge! Ken locked eyes with the hideous old doll, pitying her
somewhat would you like to go for a ride?! He asked this patronizingly, like one would a child. Midge responded with nothing but a
thousand yard stare. Ken waited a few seconds before Midge finally
threw her hands in the air and exclaimed, RIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE!. Ken
pushed her wheelchair onto the very same elevator that crushed
Stacie to death only moments before and accompanied her to the

Turek | 29

FICTION
second floor of the house. He positioned her at the top of the stairs.
While going to his bedroom to fetch the lighters he shouted to Midge.
This ride is called Rocket Ship! Are ya ready, Midgey?! Midge
threw her arms in the air again, while Ken broke one of the lighters
in half. A putrid liquid pooled out of one of the lighter-halves and
onto the Dreamhouse floor while he dumped the remaining contents of the other half onto Midge. This is the fuel explained Ken,
and Midge was none the wiser. Ken used the other lighter to ignite
Midge while simultaneously kicking her wheelchair down the stairs.
Wheeeeeeeee-ahhhhhhhh BLAST OFF! she yelled, becoming a
glorious flaming ball of plastic at the bottom of the stairs.
Ken peered out one of the open upstairs windows, he exited his
home and clasped his chopstick like hands around Barbies neck.
Squeezing as hard as he could he screamed at her. You are a DOLL.
You are all DOLLS! I am an MAN. I am WORTH SOMETHING.
The weeble-doctor reeled back in horror. Mr. Ken, you murdered
four women because you were unhappy in your marriage? Ken
thought long and hard at what to say next, Oh very much so, Doctor.
Well then Kenneth I think were finished here today. Ill relay all of
this to the weeble-judge. This is practically an admission, you understand that, right?
Ken nodded.
So then it should come to no surprise to you that murderers like
yourself find yourself flushed
Ken nodded again.

Mrs. Jameson entered the upstairs bathroom in her home
with the completed laundry, scrounging for the mismatched socks
and pairs of underwear that her children would have undoubtedly
left here. She noticed the toilet seat was up, and that it appeared to be
clogged. Two tiny plastic legs protruded from the siphon.
Damn it Miranda grumbled, fishing out the doll with her
thumb and index finger Sally! John! I thought I told you never to
take your toys into the bathroom, its full of germs!

30 | Turek

summer In
Spillion

Grace Reed

The crack of a bat and the crack of a skull are more alike than youd
think. In that split second of impact when the ball connects, your
heartbeat stops. For that matter, the world stops, and waits, breathless, to see what happens next. Home run? Concussion? Ah, the
suspense ushered in by that resounding crack.
Of course, the ball hadnt actually hit Clarkson Graves a ridiculous name for a seven-year-old, Jessica thought but try telling
that to his mother. The woman had been perched on the edge of the
bleachers for nearly half an hour, leveling that stare at Jessicas dad,
her eyes mere pinpricks under penciled-in brows. The instant the ball
hit the ground, she had catapulted herself with a shriek onto the field
and scooped her son into her arms. Any other seven-year-old would
have wriggled away, but Jessica held the private opinion that Clarkson
Graves had never learned how to wriggle. Looking something like a
bored lapdog, he remained clutched in his mothers lap, half-suffocated with righteous indignation.
Jessicas brother Allen was still hanging onto the bat, twisting it in
his hands. Every few seconds he glanced back at the outfield where
the other boy had been, then up at Dad. When the ball soared
toward Clarksons head, Allen had remained frozen at home plate.

Reed | 31

FICTION
He seemed to be making up for that now with an overabundance of
nervous energy. Jessica had crept down to where the little group had
clustered and peered out from the valley between her brothers shoulder and her fathers.
Fly balls happen, Mrs. Graves, Dad said again. Allen is one of
our best players, but sometimes hits go wild. Clarkson was paying
attention which is what we want in an outfielder, he added with a
wink at Clarkson. But there wasnt anything else Allen could have
done.
Mrs. Graves flicked her eyes toward Allen, who nodded vigorously
he always knew how to pacify grown-ups, Jessica marveled. Then
Mrs. Graves lifted her pinched chin and took in the whole baseball
field crunching brown grass, wavery white lines connecting the
bases, a dugout that leaned slightly to the left. The sun smoldered
down on Spillion like one of those cartoonish suns from a crayon
drawing, its waxy spokes of sunlight filtering through the greenery on
the avenue. It was the sultry heat of August, the heat that had always
meant baseball for the citizens of Spillion. The boys didnt play in a
league, or even really have an official team. It was just that they woke
up every morning when the world began to simmer and lunged for
their mitts, dashing from all parts of town to the field. Dad, bored
with his vacation from supervising the high school team, lounged on
the bleachers and shouted advice that the boys took and ignored as it
pleased them. It was all very informal. It was summer.
Youre quite right, Mrs. Graves said softly. Sometimes phenomena occur which are out of our control. Currents, for example, she
went on, can be quite unpredictable. Look what happened to Catherine Stevens.
Jessica couldnt breathe for a moment. Allens jaw dropped open.
Even Clarkson leaned and twisted so he could regard his mother with
the proper amount of shock.
Dad regarded her steadily. Thats not a name you should throw
around, Mrs. Graves. That was a terrible tragedy

32 | Reed

And I intend to prevent another one. Mrs. Graves stood abruptly, tumbling Clarkson onto his own two feet. These unregulated,
helter-skelter antics have got to be put to a stop. I have had private
concerns for several years now, but held my tongue.
Jessica couldnt help it. She let out an uncultured giggle. Mrs.
Graves glared at her briefly before shouldering her teal leather handbag the one that made Jessicas mother say that Henrietta Graves
had taste and continuing.
Now that I have a personal stake in the matter, I think it is high
time someone revealed these games for what they truly are: a danger
to all and sundry. I shall see you at the town council, Coach Chambers. And with a perfunctory nod, she swept away down the third
base line.

On their walk home, Allen reached for his fathers hand when they
crossed Vine. It made Jessica smile from her perch on Dads shoulders; Allen hadnt wanted to hold anyones hand since the first day
of summer, with his mitt already an extension of his left arm and his
grass-stained ball leaping up and down from his right palm. Mother
tried to hug him like she did on school mornings, sighing in Dads direction when Allen ducked out of her arms and darted out the door.
But now he held his ball like a scoop of ice cream in the waffle cone of
his glove and squeezed his fathers fingers in his own.
Dad? he asked. Mrs. Graves cant really take away baseball, can
she?
Dad didnt speak for a moment. Sometimes he did that, like a king
pausing before addressing a crowd. Jessica waited patiently from her
great height, one sandaled heel bumping gently against Dads chest as
he walked.
Allen tugged at Dads arm, impatient for an answer. Dad smiled
at them both as he swung Jessica down onto the curb. No, she cant
take baseball away, he said. Now why dont you, me, and Jess go

Reed | 33

FICTION
cool off this afternoon?
Allen grinned and raced away down the sidewalk, leaping nimbly
over the cracks where tree roots had broken the tyranny of cement.
Jessica watched him go, then reached up and felt for her fathers hand.
Her fingertips strayed to the watch on his wrist, smiling at the knowledge of the secret words on the back: Happy Fathers Day Dad.

The watch back gleamed on the riverbank, winking at Jessica like a

secretive star. Secret-keeping seemed to be the theme of the day; Dad
said she and Allen shouldnt tell Mother what had happened with
Mrs. Graves, nor where they had been all afternoon.
You kids need to know how to swim, no matter how spooked the
town is, Dad had told them as they shimmied out of their clothes.
Rivers dont have to be dangerous if you take the time to understand
them. Allen stacked his shirt, shorts, and shoes just like Dad, while
Jessicas cotton dress bloomed like a patch of wildflowers transplanted
onto the sand. The swimsuits Dad had bought them still smelled like
the big store in Olmsburg. Mother always had to remind him to cut
the tags off of new clothes, but she didnt know about the swimsuits,
so the little white rectangles stuck straight out from their seams on
invisible plastic tethers.
Allen tried every stroke Dad showed them, dragging his long limbs
through the water like one of the orangutans theyd watched on
National Geographic. Jessica liked the backstroke best; she couldnt
see where she was going, but she could watch the clouds ferry across
the river of sky framed by the curtsying willows. She let the coolness
of the water weave through her hair and lap at her eardrums. Dads
voice eroded the little knot of fear that someone worst of all, Mother might catch them.
They stayed in the water until the stiff tags turned pulpy and melted
away in the current. Jessica watched hers go, a lump of mashed ink,
and wondered if a human body would float away that fast. If Cather-

34 | Reed

ine Stevens had floated that fast.

Cmon, Jess, Dad called from the riverbank, the nickname
almost a chuckle. He flashed her one of his big smiles, the one that
took up his whole face and crinkled his eyes like tissue paper, as he
fastened the band of his watch. Lets go to the playground, water
bugs. So they went. Dad pushed them on the swings until water
droplets no longer flung themselves in long arcs from their hair, and
then they went home when the watch told them it was time for supper.

Mother waved the still-damp swimsuits in Dads face, screaming,

Do you realize what this means? She had found them draped over
some bushes in the backyard, ruffled like enemy flags by the breeze,
and stamped into the kitchen where Dad sat at the table. The noise
attracted Jessica, who came and stood in the doorway.
Elaine, calm down, Dad said. His face betrayed no emotion.
Mother, on the other hand, was the color of a boiled tomato.
After what happened in July, she hissed, you have to drag our
children down to that river and throw them in? I wont stand for it.
I will not have you endangering them just because you disagree with
Henrietta Graves!
So you heard what happened at the park, I take it.
Of course I heard! Clarkson could have gotten a concussion or
worse
If the ball had actually hit him, yes.
You let Jessica trot around after you when you run around that
field. What happens when shes the one who has a close call? What
about your own daughter? Mother tossed her head triumphantly,
dislodging a strand of hair from her coif which strongly resembled
something Mrs. Graves had worn a few weeks ago.
Jessica knows she needs to pay attention on the field, Dad said.
Shes watched the boys practice, she knows what can go wrong. Shes

Reed | 35

FICTION
taken the time to understand the game. As he spoke, Dad counted
each point he made on his fingers. It made Jessica think of the way he
listed off the safety rules at the beginning of every summer.
Mother snorted and threw the swimsuits on the primrose-patterned linoleum, where they landed with a slap. Theyre children,
for Gods sake. Maybe when theyre older theyll understand, but isnt
it easier just to
To what, Elaine? Dads jaw had tightened, his eyes narrowed, and
his fingers slowly curled under his palm on the table. To lock them
up until theyre smart enough to survive this world?
Jessica watched Dad as Mother launched into a new tirade. He
sat still in his chair; he wasnt stony, like the imposing statues by the
courthouse downtown. But he wasnt going to yield either. Well,
good, Jessica thought. For her, Dads presence was a barricade no terror could overwhelm, so she couldnt recognize the reasoning behind
Mothers fear. She could, however, recognize the look on Mothers
face; it was the same determined, haughty expression Mrs. Graves
had worn as she towed Clarkson off the field. Would the two mothers
make the same face again, Jessica wondered, if all the children went
down to the river?
The swimsuits had landed halfway under the table, just out of reach.
Jessica had hardly ventured one bare foot into the kitchen when Allen
came clattering down the stairs and made Mother look up.
Why dont you two go play? Mother said, stretching her tight
smile so that Jessica could see all the little lines in her latest coat of
lipstick. Nodding rapidly, Jessica grabbed her brothers hand and
yanked him out the door.
Ive got an idea, she told him. Is it okay if someone else comes to
play with us?

trees, past picnic tables and benches which, after a month of neglect,
already looked like something out of an old photograph. The ribbon
of water gleamed in the late summer sunset. A hush fell along with
the dusk.
Are you sure you guys know how to swim? Clarkson demanded,
his shrill voice shattering the peace. Jessica nearly ran into him where
he had stopped and was regarding her nervously. My mother says
its dangerous to come down to the river.
Yeah, well, my dad says nothings too dangerous if you understand it. Or something like that. When he still didnt move, Jessica
grabbed Clarksons elbow and towed him toward where Allen was
waiting.
The path took a lazy turn around an oak tree and spread out into
a beach along the shallowest part of the river. Without a word to
Clarkson, the two siblings settled in the sand, removed their shoes
and socks, and splashed into the water. When they were up to their
knees, Jessica turned and looked at the other boy.
Well? she asked.
Clarkson regarded them from the edge of the path, looking as if he
could feel his mothers arms ensnaring him again. I dont think my
mother would like it he muttered.
Then whyd you come? Jessica asked. Its fun, she added in a
nicer tone before turning away and wiggling her toes in the cool silt
of the riverbed. After a moment, she heard two shoes hit the sand
and a few slow footsteps approach the water. The ripples nudged
her shins playfully when Clarkson finally waded in up to his ankles.
When he edged closer to her, Jessica splashed him with a handful of
water, the setting sun catching the droplets and winking at her like
the back of her fathers watch.

Jessica tiptoed along the riverside path, even though there was
no one but a few frogs around to hear. Allen led the way under the

36 | Reed

Reed | 37

EditorsChoice
At one point, City of Roses was about a
scientist trying to save her mothers vision
using mad science. At another point, it was
a psychological examination of Meredith.
Over time, it grew to become an analysis
of what home means to the members in
a struggling family. The consistent thread
through all of the drafts is the family bonds
tying the story together. The story, as it is
now, is my attempt to zoom in on family
bonds between three very different characters and show how family bonds simultaneously bring them closer and pull them
further apart.

38 | Dankers

CITY OF ROSES
Alex Dankers
Lucille Sable stagnated after Meredith Sable escaped. No explicit
forces made leaving difficultnot their mother, the city, the people
but the Sable sisters chose to isolate themselves, and so only they
could free themselves. But, with Meredith gone, Lucille grew into
the woodwork of their ancient house, like a bicycle propped against
a growing tree that decades later encapsulates the bike with only a
wheel popping from the bark to indicate something lay within, something screaming for help while sinking away over the years.
But Meredith left Lucille with their reclusive mother, Margaret
Sable. Margaret was not negligent and certainly not uncaring, but
her health kept her from leaving her room in the attic. Through a
wide window, Margaret stared at the sky from when the sun cast the
houses shadow to when it set. She wishes it hadnt come to this. She
wishes that she could have held the family together all on her own,
but the process was exhausting.
Maybe Meredith was a coward, maybe a visionary. She left to
pursue her dreams away from the family, but she left behind her
inspiration: Lucille. She lost her inspiration before she left, in fact.
Her self-propelled motivation only went so far without Lucille. Uninspired motives are unloved children, growing up filled with holes
and idiosyncrasies. As motivated as Meredith was, only Lucille could
inspire her.
So Merediths escape can hardly be called an escape at all. Not

Dankers | 39

FICTION
without her twin.
If anything good came from Margaret Sables illness, it lies in the
possible reconciliation of the sisters. It offered a reunion and one final
chance for the sisters to leave their isolation behind.

What a disappointing sight. Disappointing, but unsurprising. With

Mother bedridden, Lucille cares for the house and the garden, but
she hardly cares for herself. Ivy-vines creep up Mothers Craftsman
house. They crawl across the sides of the building, into shingles,
poking through broken glass and curling along dusty windowsills.
Moms rosebushonce blooming with fragile red flora, now a bundle
of greying thorns and crunchy brown petalscries for death or a
new chance at life, some end to neglect. The hydrangea bushes do not
even bother blooming. Blackberry vines invade a patch where daffodils once grew, they creep across our crabgrass and thistle lawn, they
dig under our chicken-wire fence where Mother grew her vegetables.
I left home for New York and returned to a weed-pillaged mess.
Lucille failed to tend to our house. I cannot decide whether it
should be restored or razed now. Can the foundation even support it
anymore? I once loved this house: one room on the edge carved from
windows, each taller than I ever grew, facing a nearby field to get a
perfect view of every sunset; wooden pillars, carved with the likenesses of goddesses or dancersMother was never clear whichhold an
overhanging roof with thin, sturdy arms; a stained oak porch where I
sat in a rocking chair while watching Lucille garden with Mother, and
Mothers attic gable, supported by arched buttresses, pokes outward
like an observatory with two smaller gables below. This house seemed
noble, like a lumber castle tucked between the forest and plains, now
diminished into a rotten porch with nails bared, windows broken
with bent frames, a dirt-spattered home friendlier to carpenter ants
than people. I left for seven years and my childhood home became a
ghost.

40 | Dankers

With the house in disrepair, it was no surprise that Lucille could

not care for Mother. She called me one week ago, her voice stammering in that nervous Lucille wayshe pauses, she apologizes, she
becomes distracted, and she seems like she could break in between
each word uttered.
Mom iswell, shes getting sicker now, Meredith, and I dont know
what to do. I know youre busy in New York, Im sorry, Im so sorry, I cant do this alone anymore. She admitted to me once that she
thought of herself as deadweight. She admitted this only once when
we were younger and never brought it up again. Maybe she thinks
I forgot. Her voice rose a bit. Im surprised this rotary phone still
works though, so thats pretty neat. She has always made trite observations to distract herself from her nerves.
I wanted to leave because of her, really. Mother rested in her attic
every day while Lucille vibrated with tension. Her fingers are chewed
stubs, but she doesnt chew her fingernails; instead, Lucille chews the
skin around them. She pulls down with her teeth and rips off skin
with pieces of cuticle. Blood seeps under her fingertips. Mother never
reprimanded Lucille, but would always bring her cold water to alleviate the pain of these self-inflicted bites. Mother never tried to address
issues in any proper way. I personally think it ruined Lucille.
I walk to the porch and drop two duffel bags. A nail catches and
tears a small pocket on the side of one bag, so my toothbrush pokes
through the hole. People in the bag manufacturing business scatter
pockets around their bags: a row of wallet-sized pockets in front and
on the back of the bag; tall, pencil-thin pockets on each end piece;
five or six impractical interior pockets for good measure. I can barely
fit a toothbrush in any of them, let alone actual luggage. When I sew
pockets for dresses and skirts, I need to take into account viability on
a convenience and fashion scale, but I still make better choices than
these bag-makers. If I left any innovations in the field before I left, it
was a trend of adding pockets to traditionally (and tragically) pocket-less articles.

Dankers | 41

FICTION
Lucilles face peeks through a crack by the heavy oaken front door.
She nudges the door, and, attached to only one hinge, it tips forward.
The rusted bottom hinge creaks, bends in half, snaps. Lucille stumbles backwards, frightened, inside while the door plummets through
the porch, scattering a cloud of dirt and sawdust, snapping through
porch boards like a cinderblock through a windshield. The door sits
in a woody crater. Lucille peeks back outshe has always been lanky
and gaunt, a few heads taller than me, this towering, emaciated woman. I bet four Lucilles shoulder-to-shoulder could fit in the empty
door gap. She sees me, excited enough to momentarily forget about
the door, and flashes a quick grin. She wears a sweater, far too large
for her long torso. While it is too large for her, it looks like a childs
sweater, such an abrasive shade of magenta with glittery smiley faces
plastered about, one grinning into her armpit. The sleeves obscure
her hands. She waves and a sleeve flaps, but she sees the broken door,
puts her hands over her mouth, moves them back to her chest, and
wraps her arms around each other like two tangled vines. I swear
I can hear her heart still pulsing from the crash. I think I can see it
pushing against the sweater, trying to burst from her ribcage to find a
donor body that isnt incompetent.
She spills her words. They practically dribble onto her sweater.
Im sorry, so sorry, the door broke but Ill fix it later, hi Meredith, I
missed you, you can come in now, let me make you some tea. She
breathes deeply and spills words again, Mom will be happy to see
you, are you going to stay, I fixed up the guest room, Im sorry the
house is a bit messy, but I tried to fix it, do you want chamomile
or green tea, were out of Earl grey, I know you love Earl grey, Im
sorr
I cannot stand Lucille. I cannot stand how she ruined our childhood home, how she shuts herself inside, how she keeps away from
non-familial human interaction, and I can absolutely not stand how
she apologizes so much.
And I missed her more than anybody. No matter how much I

42 | Dankers

cannot stand her. I hug my sister. She stops rambling. Do not panic. I
am here. Do not worry. I will stay with you and Mother now. It will be
like old times.

Mother adores Lucilles birth-story. When I was young, I wandered

home with friends, and, every time a new friend arrived, Mother
made a point of telling the story. She makes my birth sound like a
dentists appointment by comparisonin the hospital, out with a
baby; see you again in two months because the other twin likes your
womb too much. The story used to embarrass me but, like a scar or a
bad haircut, I grew to like the story as much as Mother.
In January twenty-five years ago, Mother went into labor with Lucille. I was two months old. An anomaly, a pair of twins months apart,
my birth one month pre-mature, Lucilles one month late. This was
also the first night in a while where our yard held onto a substantial
amount of snow, two whole feet. Mothers car could not climb snow
piles, so, clad in an open pink-with-white-stripes bathrobe (which
she still owns and wears regularly) with me in one arm and Lucille
on the way, Mother climbed down the ladder from her attic, waddled
downstairs, set our phone receiver against her shoulder, and dialed
9-1-1. She struggled a bit to dial a 9 on a rotary phone while in labor
and holding a baby in one arm.
But, of course, the phone lines were overburdened that late-night
by city residents who rarely dealt with this much snow. Mother stifled
her shouts, hoping I would fall asleep and make the night marginally easier on her. So, of course, I stayed awake and cried through the
whole ordeal. She wrapped me in a blanket to protect me from the
January chill leaking into our house. She dragged our phone closer
to the coucha disgusting chartreuse monster, one cushion with
yellow fluff poking through, another missing entirely, leaving only
two cushions on a three person couchto the point that the cord
was completely horizontal from wall to receiver. Mother slumped

Dankers | 43

FICTION
into a cushion. She listened to the music of the Please Hold line
for an hour before an operator answered her call. Apparently they
played Livin on a Prayer and I Died in Your Arms Tonight on repeat.
I understand they were popular songs at the time, but they seem a bit
inappropriate.
9-1-1, whats your emergency? When Mother tells this story to
Lucille, she claims she was perfectly calm reciting the circumstances
and details of how to reach our hidden house, and to please hurry.
When she tells this story to me, she claims, I screeched at that phone
operator like a banshee in the end of days. She was such a sweetheart,
I feel so bad about it now. I am sure she gets a few calls like that daily
though, the poor dear.
Ditches and ice obstructed the ambulance on the way to our home.
Tow trucks, at the time, were as tied up as the ambulances. Every
emergency vehicle was either too busy or unprepared to reach Mother. By the time the towed ambulance made the drive, the sun rose
from behind the house and Mother cradled baby Lucille in her arms.
Graciously or spitefully (depending on who heard the story) she
accepted a ride to the hospital. They drove into the city and cut the
umbilical cord inside the hospital.

The Sables never owned a television, though their living room

always begged. It practically dusted a spot off itself for a televisiona
patchy cream armchair, nearly a quilt from the holes mended by Meredith, stared along with the chartreuse couch, the dining room chairs
and table, and an antique cat clock at an armoire leaning against a far
wall, blocking a colossal window. Double doors on the front could
open outward and slide into the armoire, the drawers were removable, and both Meredith and Lucille could fit inside. Without these
drawers and doors it seemed more like a casket than a container.
Despite ample space, no clothes or television blessed the armoire.
But the siblings did take the drawers, stack them on top of each

44 | Dankers

other, and build a fort from a childhood blanket, the side of the chair,
and two couch cushions. The two slept in the makeshift home more
often than their actual rooms for a month before Meredith tore the
fort down to make a skirt from the stained baby blanket.
That fort really brought life to the empty living room for the one
month though.

I guess we grew up. Maybe it happened over time, a slight slipping

from childhood into obligations or maybe there was a precise MomentWhen I moved to New York? When I graduated from high
school?but Lucille and I grew up.
Lucille stayed with Mother and now works as a digital artist, selling
art on commission with whatever internet we could afford given our
distant location. She begged Mother to find her supplies and turned
her room into an art studio. First she had to gut the room, relocating her bed and dressers into the living room. I helped her dust the
floors and throw out her trivial childhood toys. She spread ratty blue
tarps across her floor, draped the walls with canvas, plopped a wobbly
kitchen stool wherever she sat, and painted the walls. She started
sleeping on the couch, but her tall body always left her ankles dangling off one end.
At about the same time, I left for New York to pursue a fashion
design career, but barely left a mark on the industry after seven years,
an amateur professional-cluttered city. One of my designs made it
into the back of a fashion magazine, my name in a small caption, my
current career peak. Every other day I feel like quitting and moving
home permanently, but then the next day comes and I keep trying
despite the evidence that I should stop.
Meredith. Since we were toddlers, Lucille always pronounced my
name oddly. For mere, she said mary; for -deth, she said death.
Marydeath. Mother tried to fix this quirk exactly one time, but she let
it stick for Lucilles comfort. Meredith, come in, Mother will want to

Dankers | 45

FICTION
see you.
Beyond the general lack of maintenance, the interior of the house
changed little since I went to New York; Lucille never left a large footprint on the layout of the house after she made her room into an art
studio. In fact, her old bed still rests in the living room with the old
sheets still bundled in one corner of the mattress. Our rotary telephone sits on a corner table in a spider-web jacket, still connected to
the phone lines, probably a fire hazard. Our kitchen appliances, once
a matching cream shade yellowed into mustard tones with thick dust
layers on their tops. Mothers Kit-Cat clock, already vintage when she
salvaged it years ago, stares straight ahead, unmoving. I pull it off the
wall, turn the clock dial to the proper time, and wind the cat; it only
gazes forward, fully dead. I hang it back up, wipe dusty palms on my
skirt, and follow Lucille upstairs.
I hear Lucille at the top of the
thick ladder to Mothers attic. Mom, Yes, I will get you
a rose. It was nice
Merediths home now! Mothers
to see you,
voice murmurs. Yes, shes coming
Mother...
up right now to see you, mom! I
climb up the ladder and can stand
tall in a cramped attic space. Lucille
hunches. She bounds down the ladder once I enter the room. Mother
sits in a rocking chair facing our one unbroken window in the one
pristine room of our house. The wood floors shine, not a bit of decay,
a stained-glass vase with a slightly wrinkled rose radiates in the
windowsill, Mothers bed next to her chair is immaculatepressed
sheets spread across her bed, tucked around each corner with careful
hands. Mother looks weary. She grew wrinkles, deep circles under
her eyes, and a thinning head of gray hair. She sets a quilt aside, stops
her chairs rock with bony feet, and leans a hand against a thigh to
lift herself. She slips her feet into a pair of fuzzy pink slippers and ties
her bathrobe. She hobbles over to me, her back leaning forward. But
her eyes still sparkle as always, a deep brown tinged with white along

46 | Dankers

the edges. In poor lighting, her irises look completely black, a shade
passed down to Lucille and me. She grins with her lips, never one to
show her teeth.
Why, Meredith, you need to come home more often. Your mom
gets to missing you pretty quick. She puts her arms around me and
squeezes. Like a vise. I grimacetheres no reason I couldnt have
visited in seven yearsand squeeze back, but not nearly as tight out
of fear that I may break her.
I can stay home as long as you need me to, Mother. Are you well?
Oh, Ill be just fine now that my daughter is home. You can leave
whenever you need to dear, dont let me keep you. I never could hold
you back, you were always my wild child. She chuckles and releases
me, still grinning. You need to go back to New York! My daughter
needs to get famous so she can fly me over to New York to wear her
dresses on a runway. But right now your Mother needs only one other
thing of you. She shuffles back to her rocking chair, leans slowly into
it, and nods back and forth. She points a finger at the shining vase on
the windowsill. My rose is wilting. Could you please head out and
pick me up a new one?
I nod, despite her being turned away. Yes, I will get you a rose. It
was nice to see you, Mother, I will be back in a bit. I can hear her
rocking chair creak as I climb down the ladder out of the attic, head
to the living room, and step past our fallen door.

Its hard to say that Meredith grew up in that house, if she grew at
all. But when she went to New York, Meredith kept an intentional
distance. Geography split her off from her family by a few thousand
miles when she left to the other side of the United States, but, when
she made it into the city, she left behind the West entirely. She kept
her tone, words, and apparel formal, handling family and friends like
an interview. Fortunately, this made job hunting in New York simple.
Unfortunately, her peers imagined Meredith as an ice queen, leaving

Dankers | 47

FICTION
Meredith with few major connections on either side of the country.
And, oh, her frustrations were intense. Even though she grins while
she walks, its easy to tell that Meredith never truly smiles anymore.
Her grin is just another formality.
Lucille, in particular, drove Meredith away and into this nature.
Meredith felt Lucille was coddled by Mother, held close to home
and kept safe within fantasy while Meredith struggled in reality. She
struggled to perform for friends, teachers, and for her own ambitious
goals. But Lucille dealt with none of these, dealt with only Mother
and their garden.
Meredith strove to become her opposite, the anti-Lucille because,
to Meredith, it seemed like there was nothing to Lucille. Like she
existed without a substance, a life wandering in a void. Purposeless.
And Lucille did feel that way.

Lucille, I am going to go pick up a rose for Mother, I shout into

the hole in our house. Is there anything we need from the store?
Lucille appears on the porch, a few torn sheets of notebook paper
flat in her hands. Fresh cyan paint stains dig into her shirt, abrasive
bright splotches in the sunlight. She nods.
Yes, actually, we need a lot, because, with Mom in bed, I only have
what Rose can get us once a week when I send her and
Rose? Who is Rose? What does she have to do with shopping?
Lucilles hands crinkle the papers. Oh, Rose is my personal shopper I met on the internet. I think it is pretty funny when Mom wants
Rose to get roses so when I e-mail her that on the list I always give
it a line by itself, Rose would you please get roses? and then I add a
little smiley face.
I frown. I commit to this frown, I frown with my forehead, eyebrows, and cheeks to show my disdain. How much are you paying
her?
Lucille balls up the paper. Oh, it isnt that much, not much at all.

48 | Dankers

You know, I like to make a smiling face with a colon and a three. It
looks like a kitten face, its really cute, Meredith.
I try to frown deeper, moving my eyebrow as low as I can. I want
the edges of my mouth to touch my chin. Lucille Marie Sable. It
hurts my throat to talk in this tone, a bit lower than Im accustomed. I
would describe as either an impression of a demonic ox or a frustrated foghorn. I speak a pitch higher for my vocal safety. Lucille squirms
and looks away from me, her arms curl to hug herself, two magenta
sleeves with cyan polka-dots crisscrossing her chest. How much. Are
you. Paying her?
Lucille glances over at me. She moves a sleeve to her mouth, a hand
peeks from it, and she chews at her cuticles. Its only ten percent. Ten
percent of whatever our order totals are. Weve only needed Rose for a
year, and I used to go grocery shopping when Mom could come with
me, but it hasnt cost that much Meredith, really! My art has been
selling lately.
I rub my temples. You will e-mail Rose later, you will thank her for
her services, but you will say that you will not be using them anymore. Okay? Lucille looks away and nods. Okay. Good. I walk over
to Lucille and hug her, keeping distance between our torsos to protect
my jacket from paint stains. I know you do not operate too well in
public, but I am home now and can help you again like when we were
kids. Okay? She rests her chin on my head, I can hear her sniffle. It
will be okay, Lucille, I am not mad at you. I am just upset that you
spent on something so frivolous.
But its not your money to spend! Lucille flails out of my hug. Her
voice shatters. Its not your money to spend and it isnt frivolous to
me! What do you even know, Meredith? You left us for seven years
and come home thinking you know everything about me, but you
never even know what to say to me unless youre criticizing me or
trying to comfort me, like Im this pitiable mess or have some disease youre afraid of catching. She wipes at her eyes with her sleeves.
Cyan paint smears on her nose. You dont know anything and Rose

Dankers | 49

FICTION
is more supportive than you ever were because she sees me as more
than a victim to help. She runs inside, sobbing. The grocery list lies
on the ground in a ball. I pick it up, flatten out the bent papers, and
walk inside after Lucille.

Lucille Sable feels defined as a burden. This definition invades her

every thought, her every breath. She thinks of herself as a physical,
mental, emotional, and economic burden on her sickly Mother,
on her twin sister, even on the professional shopper she hired so
she could be home at all hours to paint. She tries to paint her way
through it all, the emotional and economic stresses. When the paint
seeps into her bitten fingertips, it soothes her, like an artificial medicine. And the act of painting itself relaxes her. She focuses on murals,
on large canvas stretching wall to wall. Lucille likes to paint trees with
black branches swarming outward like lightning. She likes to paint
eyes in sunflower shades peeking from the bark, arms and legs in the
shade of the sun before it sets sprouting in twisting lashes from inside
the wood. Her suns are always cyan because she loves warm sunny
colors accenting everything else. These murals end up looking like
black spiderwebs in a Technicolor world, but theyre so large that she
can hardly sell a piece.
When she finishes painting on good days, she smiles at herself in
the mirror and thinks of herself as a Love Tax on her family, an
obligation they handle at the proper Moments.
Lucille began accepting her eternal status as The Burden in grade
school. Lucille grew with a lanky, skeletal stature. She towered as a
child among children and now, as an adult, she continues to dwarf
those around her. But years ago, on the elementary school playgrounda concrete patch with one rusted swing set planted in a field
of woodchipsheight did not designate prestige. No, noteworthiness
came with respect. Respect out of fear or generosity. Respect built on
some foundation of passion. A bull of a girl, with wide eyes, a perma-

50 | Dankers

nently furrowed brow, and wide flaring nostrils, valued passion. A full
four years younger than Lucille, the bull-child passionately rammed
Lucille into the concrete and became notoriousthe second grader
who beat-up a sixth grader! And although Lucille bled, although she
cried, and although she begged her Mother to homeschool her after
sixth grade, Lucille felt relieved with her pain. To her, it seemed purposeful. Lucille helped the bull succeed. She was a tool for success
not her own, but success nonetheless.
Success seemed designated as Merediths callingMeredith, the
plucky, older sister, the New York fashion designer, the daughter that
went to college, the daughter who left home, the motivated daughter
who actually tried. Lucille had inspiration, yes. She wanted to open
a bookstore, to open a caf, to be an artist, to leave the house and
breathe the air around her, but it simply never happened. At her core,
she always wanted to be Meredith, to be the doer.
Of course, Meredith changed. Sitting in her room with Meredith
lightly tapping on the door, her voice whispering through (Lucille,
would you please open this door for me so we may talk about this?)
Lucille doesnt know who it was she admired or who she wants to be
anymore. She never wanted to be Lucille Sable, but Meredith seemed
perfect. Infallible.
But here Meredith was, more fallible than Lucille, less trustworthy
than a near stranger who bought the groceries.
With an idol broken before her, Lucille embraces her own identity.

I think it took a few hours for Meredith to leave me alone, but Im

usually alone anyway so I like to think of it as a status quo. I like
status quos, they make me feel like Im building toward an important
revelation, even if the revelation cant be found for a few years or a
few decades or in my own lifetime. I like to think that Im patient, so
no trouble arose when I waited for Meredith to leave. It hurt when
she left seven years ago, but it cant hurt anymore.

Dankers | 51

FICTION
I lift two lids of paint with a screwdriver, the cherry red of an old
sports car and the indigo of a skyscraper seconds after the sun falls
completely behind the hills. I pour the buckets across paint-thickened
tarp and smear the colors into each other with my hands. The mix
looks like a neglected purple, as if an amethyst crushed itself into dust
and fermented for a month in a basement, swirling around with a
band of living sludges.
What a lovely color.

Dearest Rose,
Rose, Rose, Rose! Rose. That r sound is quite nice I think. Its the
purr the kitten in your apartment makes. Its like your name contains
a kitten, oh my! Its quite unfortunate, let me dial the fire department
so they can rescue the cat from your namesake. It might get lost in
the o and the s and find itself at the edge of e. If we arent careful,
you may have to start going by Osre! Thats pretty tough to say I
think, so lets not let it come to that. :3
Meredith didnt come back home last night, so I need you. I attached below a list of the groceries we need, but Im also running low
on paint! If you could get a can of each of the following BEHR brand
colors, I should be okay for another month#ECC-32-3U, #500A-2,
#500B-5PP, #680B-7. Ummm... Theyre called Cherry Tree, Refreshing Pool, Mermaid Treasure, and Sugar Plum if you have trouble with
the catalog numbers, Im sorry. And if you could get another can of
any random color as usual, that would be nice too. And yellow and
black! That seems like a lot of paint, sorry if its heavy.... >n<
No rush on the paint, but Mom and I could use the other groceries in the next day or two. I dont know if Meredith will come home
again.
Sorry for the trouble, thank you so much!
Lucille Marie Sable

52 | Dankers

Mom echoes late at night with her coughing and I can practically see mucus leaking from her throat simply from the sound, but
I need to keep painting because I think I am onto something, so I
keep Moms old lantern on all night on my stool and paint. Its a bit
hard to balance on my lopsided stool and my shadow gets in the way
sometimes, but its the best light source we have. Painting goes less
smoothly with the shadows, so sometimes I have to repaint spots of
the canvas leaving a bumpy map all over.
My black trees look too burnt and sad, so I started to mix the black
with the mucky sludge purple I made that one time. I wasted all that
paint before, but Rose bought me new cans so Im trying to conserve
it a bit better this time. Sometimes revelations waste a lot for me to
see what I need. My trees look slightly less sad, but now they are a bit
leakier and make my painting feel like a swamp so I splat yellow birds
against the tree bark every now and then to try to make it brighter.
Dead still, but brighter, sunlight hanging over a funeral.
A splotch of blue makes it onto the bark. Rose brought me the cyan
the first time I told her to pick a random color for me, so Ive been
using it a lot more often. On the tree though, it seems to be a good
window color. I paint in the borders and make a window with a flower pot on the inside. I widen my trees trunk and expand it across the
canvas. I paint in red cracks within the bark of the tree. I transform
the tree into a forest metropolis, a full city forged from one lonely
tree. Or maybe a vein of ore filled with rubies?
One week passed since Meredith came home, but shes already been
lost for seven years. I miss the old her and want her to come home.

Margaret Sables illness truly struck that week. She felt it most in her
temperature, her fingertips, face, and feet seemed to be subzero compared to the rest of her body. She wrapped herself not in her warm-

Dankers | 53

FICTION
est clothes, but the ones handmade by Merediththe thin sweater,
scarves, shawls, and caps sewn from leftover fabric. She wrapped
her feet in socks made from linen curtains in their living room from
years ago. She layered herself heavily, praying that the clothes would
heat her core and then she added ever more layers. A sickly thin
Margaret seemed ballooned by her clothing. One final layer fit snug
around her, a black and red plaid dress sewn from quilts. But, still,
her bones chilled.
Firmly tucked into clothing, Margaret Sable leaned back into her
rocking chair and laid a blanket over herself to watch another days
sunset behind the gray stem of a shriveled flower.

I knew this citys strength when I came back. I knew the risks so I
packed everything. Those two whole duffel bags in my name. What
a pit Ive dug for myself, so deep that it keeps sucking me toward the
center while I slip down from the edges. You dont think to build
stairs until you need a ladder and when you need a ladder hope dies.
I cannot head back to New York. I expected to stay here, to start
fresh near my home and family, so I quit. It only took a few days for
this hotel and this city to absorb a large portion of my savings, and
I cannot bear to call on Lucille for help. I do not think Mother even
taught her how to drive.
The phonebook listed a few friendly names, but, after seven years,
those bonds broke. I always thought of friendly bonds to be like
ribbons, thin and fragile, but not meant to shatter. But, given enough
frigidity, anything can be frozen and any substance frozen enough
can break, even the thinnest silk ribbon.
I pack my bags, one duffel for each forearm, and open my hotel
door with an exasperated hand. I shove to make it through the door
with both bags in tow and my arms ache with the weight of my whole
world. From a window down the hotel hall, I see frost building up on
the windows. Snowflakes. Compared to the criminal sea-foam and

54 | Dankers

black tea leaf color motif of this hotel, I think a small walk in the cold
will be pleasant.
I suppose I need to go home and apologize.

The snow flurries lick at the edges of the Sable residence and find
the cracks leading indoors, the broken windows, twisted panes,
rotted woodwork, and hole in the front door. The heat drains from
the house like blood from a stunned face and snow tumbles in thin
powder swirls across the hardwood floors. Flakes creep into Lucille
Sables lamp-lit room and melt inside, congealing with paint layers
on the floor. Lucille tossed aside her brushes and now paints with her
fingertips and torso, with the edge of her sweater for texture improvements. The forest city coats itself in fingertip smudges and the thin
sheen wiping of a sweater sleeve, but the colors blur with each new
stroke, a bright spiral condensing into a cracked black whole center of
paint layers. I cannot say for certain whether the chill penetrates the
layers of paint on her body or not.
But, if it does, Lucille likes the
I always thought cold. She wants it. In this Moment,
of friendly bonds Lucille hopes to freeze with her
to be like ribbons, fingers sprawling across the canvas,
her dirty paint stained sweater and
thin and fragile,
scowl immortalized in winbut not meant to twisted
ters chill inside the decrepit house
shatter.
like performance art.
To Lucille, the painting absorbed
the Sable home and now everything is part of the painting. A dying
rosebush outside with frostbitten leaves, a heavy door trapped in a
crater, goddess pillars dancing while struggling to hold up a house
that is more natural than professionally made because the ivy digs so
deep, and with one perfect room in an attic gable.
Maybe somebody stumbles across the house at noon and explores

Dankers | 55

FICTION
the house, witnesses the deep tunnels dug by carpenter ants, the Kit
Cat clock frozen at 8 p.m., the living room with the chartreuse couch,
the patchy chair, the husk of an armoire, a long abandoned bed. They
enter Merediths room and see it entirely gutted with seven years of
dust mingling with a weeks layer of snow, both layers in equal measure. And, maybe, they will be so fascinated that it will inspire them
to write a poem on the spot. Or maybe theyll be disgusted and leave.
Or curious enough to explore the rest of the house.
Maybe they skip Lucilles door completely. They walk upstairs and
have their foot sink the wood floor to their knee. They spend ten
minutes pulling their foot out, scratching it in the process. Maybe it
leaves a scar, adds a splash of red to the woodwork and, just maybe,
Lucille would have splashed that color on the ground herself if she
could move.
Maybe after opening the door to Lucille Sables room, they spot her
icy statue frozen against a mad portrait. Maybe they write a poem on
this spot instead, but with paint thinner, and they lead the poem out
the door. The stranger sets the portrait of a house ablaze to free Lucille Sable. Maybe a tired, sick Margaret Sable, tucked in sentimental
layers and a checkered dress, will finally feel warm.
Lucille leans her forehead into her painting and sobs. Tears dribble
down the side of the painting. She begins to giggle like a child, like a
criminal. She knows that the stranger, the arsonist in her hypothetical
thoughts center, is her sister.

Continue reading at LandEscapes.wsu.edu...

56 | Dankers

INTERVIEW WITH WRITER/PUBLISHER

SCOTT OLSEN
How did you get your foot in the door of
getting published? Any advice for writers
trying to get started?
I did several special projects and the reason
I did those was because I saw holes in what
was available. I was writing non fiction and I
wanted to know why no one was publishing
more variety. I wanted to read a book that
didnt exist and because I knew other editors
and writers I knew I could do this. I began
putting my work in the mail and sending it to the journals that I
admired. I often got rejected. I do want to emphasize that I really did
find outlets that I wanted to be a part of. There were magazines that I
loved being a reader of and I desperately wanted to be a part of them.
How does you background as an editor affect your self as a writer? Are these two selves ever in conflict?
They are never in conflict and they both inform each other. The best
advice for any writer is to read anything. When I read un-publishable
stuff I can tell myself What do I want my work to be?
Quote from the Prologue of Olsens book Prairie Sky
Here is a question:
What must the angels think of the earth?
Imagine, for just a moment, the leap of their arrival. In the moment
before, they are ethereal, weightless, timeless and light, the moral
sparks of eternity. In the moment after, they have atomic weight. They
have mass. They have capillaries and tympanum and knees. They
have synapses that do and do not fire. When they inhale, they smell
juniper or sage...
We live on an unsteady planet
What must the angels think when they arrive and their physical eyes
see thunderstorm, cliff face, a miniature rose? Move, they think. Keep
going. There are so many stories, and my time is short. Be ready.

Interview | 57

ARBOREAL
ANECDOTES
Shandra Clark

At night, the trees tell stories.

POETRY

At night,
the wind rattles cars,
and the rain slaps the pavement,
and we stand
with our feet
sunk three inches deep
into the freshly-wet grass
and the trees whisper,
but they also
listen.
We hear
our own lives
blasted back
with the sounds
of drizzle on leaves,
and wet rubber
on the wet road,
and wise trees
in light breeze,

58 |

Clark | 59

POETRY
and we cant
bring ourselves
to listen.
Our stories live
and they linger
gingerly wrapped
around every single leaf,
hugging blades
of grass,
caressing ears
as they are carried
on the wind,
drawing the shade of night
and lifting it again
and we still
cant listen.
There are memoirs
carved into tree trunks;
there are romances
written in sets
of muddy footprints;
there are comedies
etched into the night sky;
there are tragedies
spread across
soaking city streets;
and even
when we try,
its still so hard
to listen.

60 | Clark

Orange street lamps

illuminate the texts
of our lives;
leaves and branches
glow with their secrets
as we wander
around at night,
but even when theyre right
in front
of us
we still only sometimes
listen.
I know we are afraid
to read our own biographies
spelled out
letter
by
letter
by rolling tires
and shaking forests
and smashed grass
and sticky mud
and maybe
that fear
is the reason
we dont
listen.
But when the trees
shield our eyes
with the dark of night
and lean in close

Clark | 61

POETRY
and tell their tales;
when the sky
wraps around us
and gets into our souls;
when the forest
takes our feet by force
but politely asks
that we lend it our ears
maybe
just maybe
we can try
to listen.

HE WISHED FOR
SWITZERLAND

Bailey Badger

First bloom of red-orange sweep

recalls for the pass of photos
of the lake and leather-soled ice skates
dangling around your neck
just shy of the afternoon radio blues
The pluck of French short, gentle strings, and high horns
scratch through the suspense of sterile plastic and soap.
You collect the winds
as bitter as the shores of Versoix,
at the final time we count,
un,
deux,
trios
and from your respirator
you blow out the candles.

62 | Clark

Badger | 63

POETRY

IVORY TOWER
Brittany Kealy

Rapunzel,
Why have you made your closet into an ivory tower?
Recklessly dodging life while
Opening your arms wide to the
Arrows of a nation with
Careless aim.
When might we return to a time when
We were grounded in gender less same ness
I, your pretty prince,
Writing sonnets and
Romancing wildflowers into bouquets;
You, my dashing princess,
Hunting foe and
Fighting convention into stillness
With your hair tied back tight and your
Mascara: a lusciously feral war paint.
Rapunzel,
Return us to this code of arms
Where you, lovely lady, wanted to
Slay me down,
My leathered armor caving to the possibility of you,
Hungry, and thirsting,

64 | Kealy

For something your enchanting guards find

Nightmarish,
When in actuality
We are just saving each other from a
Limited reality, an old and
Predictable form of story.
Indeed, we are an eerie host of unusual construction,
A dragon of mettle that tyrants forgot to pour into
A chilling iron mould of
Typical romance and courtship.
But I prefer the fire to shape us.
I prefer to dream on,
Dangerously,
Using the ivy and age of your tower to pull myself into this
Template home, a cell with an endless horizon,
Where you will gather my pride in the folds of your tulle
And carry me gently to our bed,
So that behind these ivory walls in this high tower of a
Moment,
I may allow you to loosen my chains and help me
Abandon my weapons,
Once again, to breathe
Fire to this closeted
Prism of our own fantastic
Kingdom, where two people might continue to play at
Fairytale.

Kealy | 65

POETRY
With every passing day.

MIRROR MIRROR
D Corson

Taraxis, but rave not thus

The tide rises,
But never seems to fall.
And the cracks along the canyon
Just outside this house
Grow deeper every day.

The cracks along the canyon

Just outside my house
Grow deeper every day.
At night my sky cries
And the rivers far below
Overflow and dam off all the roads.
Im late to work every day.
The Church sends sandbags
After every Sunday service,
But they havent done much good.
They wash away by Friday every week.
Summer or winter,
The weather is always the same.
Months and years dont mean much when
Clouds block out the sun.
Dusk comes! great thunder clouds roll across
The plains just beyond the roadway
Full-moon prairie fires get closer to my home

66 | Corson

Corson | 67

POETRY

Much of This,
without you
Jack Stilwell

I run in the black

Alone, wearing black
My footsteps speak silent
Greetings, diffuse blindly
Biting cold air, cutting my lungs
Side-stepping headlights
Ducking past windows
I careen around corners
And bury my feet in hills
Running the tread off my shoes
Running out of my shoes,
Off the road, into the black
This is not a hard life
My reflection tells me again
Waking every day to win
My bent ear reminds me
Im twinless, but not so alone
Catching the earth before
It rolls away beneath my feet

68 | Stilwell

Smiling in the snow

Deciding I like it here
Its unclear and here
Not a matter of where,
Not of place or frame of mind
But wholeness
All without and all within me
I love the lives in the crowds
Their bickering stories
Their lingering glances
And peripheral musings
The strangers, cell phone locked
Who collide front to front,
Bodies meshing in an intimate tangle
A blushing hurried rush away
Are you one?
But theyre not on their own
Turning stones underfoot,
Winking, walking past picture frames
Driving at night in the rain
Without lights or wipers,
Without any thought at all
And if I see you now youre
Just around shoulder height
Thin as grass, so thin that
Youre gone again
Carried off on a wind
Strong is the mantra
Unexposed metronome

Stilwell | 69

POETRY
Fasten the ties, turn the screws
Pick myself up again and again
Scrub the rust, bare, anew
Breathe, pure breath, full breath
Perpetually gaining
Shedding excess
Always evolving
I was born so life is mine
Repeat, run the drills
Remember the lines
I stood on the porch and
Watched gravel spit from the
Tires and smelled the smoke
Licking skyward from the new
Tattoos in the asphalt,
The burnt rubber reminders
We could not catch you
Gone in less than a moment
I still dont know what its like
Write it down, every moment
Write it without word or feeling
Experienceand lock it away
Own all the pieces, savor them
Ensnare the surrounding world
It all comes in handy
Feeling full all alone and lost
Within others, I remind myself
There is no lonely place
Yet you went off on your own

70 | Stilwell

I forget there is no right way

Intention in all conscious thought
Dissecting the brain daily
My motion and straining
Bettering body and mind
I do it all so I might
Create something beautiful
Though that means so little
Having not done so
Having no idea what its like
Chancing theres nothing else
The lines unravel, lift off my tongue
Distracted and curious
Dancing away, dancing toward you
Would you grow with me?
Mantra fading fast
Lost on an echo
Sea standing still
Theres comfort in stasis
This is not a hard life
And there is no lonely place
But I still dont know what its like
But maybe Ill float
Off the binding on a breeze
And past the noise
Like when I walk in the crowd
Halfway there, yet halfway
Lifting from my shoes,
Overhead and out of sight
Picked by a faceless whim
Carried across congested light

Stilwell | 71

POETRY
Rolling along sun-kissed waves
Of budding and bending stalks
Smoothing textured hills beneath me
Smearing the earths pallet in my palms
Its paints sinking in crease and callous
I pause over whitewater
Foaming
Breaking
The tide returns
Stretched in pushes and pulls
Teased in rises and falls
Reminded just how close
Drifting frames, swaying view
Line flying off the reel
At any moment the tether
Might unfurl and draw
Too taut and sever
With a snap

and there,
Thats it then,
Just like you
Must be what they call a sudden
Id like to stay awhile,
So, you know,
I wont say Im gone, but
There I go.

72 | Stilwell

Snow globe
Cappy Spruance

I want to rummage through stacks of books with you,

dirty, musty books,
so that when we rustle their pages we choke with joy.
I want to sit on the floor, legs crossed
and pile adventures in my lap.
Youll stand on a stack of encyclopedias and reach for
that perfect copy of Alice in Wonderland
while I flip through Tom Sawyer
until you reach down and say, I found this one for you.
I want to be lost with you inside a fiction more beautiful than the
huge snow globe we inhabit,
always shaken by someone else til were displaced
tiny flakes in a fish tank.
So I think if I have to get lost, Id like to be holding your hand
when my dreams for this life
seem so broken
like this damned snow globe
because arent they supposed to make you smile
and turn the sky white?
The sky was grey today. This snow globes defective.
I want to be poor with you,

Spruance | 73

POETRY
but only with you,
because poverty isnt romantic
unless all the riches in the world exist in the gold flecks in your eyes.
I want to be anything with you
because youll be anything with me
and that could stop this snow globe shaking.

Watching a
video on The Weather
Channels website,
subtitled, A Deadly
Japanese Tornado
Jair Brooks

At what point does this get deadly? Wheres the action?

When does anyone get rubbed out?

smoothed over by a pressure,

with or without purpose

like a mistake in graphite.

All I see is a swirling mass of dirt.

Sure, thats impressive,

but Ive seen movies.

Is this tornado even the same one

that (maybe) killed ten seconds ago?

Perhaps it changes out

all its parts at intervals?

Like us every

seven

years.

74 | Spruance

Brooks | 75

POETRY
Tuesday

weekday blues
D Corson

Tea three times.

Coffee with sugar, no milk.
Simple things
So sings the sky.

Wednesday

Sunday
Souls fed on a diet of photo-bloom
And 10 oclock morning gloom,
Stand facing the back door sabres poised en garde,
Waiting to be framed forever in picture-perfect postcard
Weekly, these and other Stone-wrought Sunday lies
Low-tack immortalize the sunrise.

Two hours behind the kiosk line

Will color your lungs darker than a Roslyn coal mine
And tag your toes with blind fugazi snows
Before the lunch rush muffles its industrial scream
Distant voices tinged with punk rock
And stained with prenatal shell-shock
Fifteen minutes late for afternoon tea.

Monday
A horse by any other name
Certainly would not be a steed
And a shaft of light on any other day
Would be far less guaranteed.
So open wide Candlemouth!
Morningtime has come,
Sweetly, quietly, boldly
And unwanted, above all.

76 | Corson

Corson | 77

EditorsChoice
This poem began originally as two
separate poems. One came from the
decompressing and therapeutic drives
alone across the state, the other came from
remembering a midnight walk I took a few
years ago through a town I felt I lost my
allegiance with.
I noticed, and so did the people I shared
the two poems with, similarities in their
atmospheres, so I set the two aside for a
while and when I returned they practically
stitched themselves together. I ended up
with a poem born from forgetting things
behind me, ignoring things ahead, and just
driving with an arm out the window and
the radio too loud.

DISSOCIATIVE BRIDGE
Jack Stilwell
I dont often notice whispers
in my tendons or weary drifting bones.
I dont own the invisible burden.
I like the town a fading echo.
The tethered dog barking
in the nighttime rain, the drops
peppering the tired lamp-lit
sidewalks, comfortable as antiques,
I like soulless. Lost in mirrors.
I am uncorked. I exhale for hours
and sink into myself, traversing
arid space and pale sunlight
filtered through threads of dust.
Oils rise from the morning
and bear iridescent brushstrokes
beneath the fog.
The dissociative bridge connects at no end.
None arrive alone.
Consider the unobservable spaces,
the puddles of cloud and dinosaur bone.

78 | Stilwell

Stilwell | 79

POETRY
Seeping skyward without gravity.
All things becoming unsettled.
I am beckoned to desert,
to heat lines dancing over
and blurring the distance.
The pulse of the road, bred
by imperfections and winds,
becomes my own.

80 | Stilwell

INTERVIEW WITH POET KATHLEEN

FLENNIKEN
How did you get your foot in the door of getting published? Any advice for writers trying
to get started?
First, for me, it was coming out as a poet to my
friends. They knew me as an engineer and now
I was writing poems. That was breaking through
the first barrier. Then, it took me about a year to
work up the guts to actually send out my poems
to magazines. I started small. I did not start with
the New Yorker. I did some research to find out
how to maximize my successes and I think that
was a good thing because I did get some early successes publishing in very
small magazines. And its what kept me going because theres lots and lots of
rejection. So start small so that you can have those successes.
Poem from her book Plume": "Richland Dock, 1956"
Someone launched a boat into the current,
caught and delivered fish to the lab
and someone tested for beta and P-32.
Someone with flasks and test tubes tested
and re-tested to double check the rising values.
And someone drove to the public dock
with a clipboard and tallied species and weight.
Chatting with his neighbors, Which fish
are you keeping? How many do you eat?
And someone with a slide rule in a pool of light
figured and refigured the radionuclide
dose. Too high. Experimented frying up
hot whitefish. No. No. Then someone decided
all the numbers were wrong. Someone
from our home town. Is that why we
were never told? While someone fishing
that little boy; the teacher on Cedar Street
caught his limit and never knew.

Interview | 81

Untitled #12
Biomes
Jonathan S Matteson

ART

82 |

Matteson | 83

ART

Untitled

Cameron Overturf

84 | Overturf

Untitled

Nathan Howard

Howard | 85

ART

Abandoned Cabin

Erin Richardson

86 | Richardson

Sumpter Porch

Hannah Lambert

Lambert | 87

ART

Untitled
Alexa Turner

88 | Turner

Untitled
Nathan Howard

Howard | 89

ART

Held Breath
Erin Richardson

90 | Richardson

Strength
Michelle Webster

Webster | 91

ART

Untitled

Wave

Christina Rodriguez

Cameron Overturf

92 | Rodriguez

Overturf | 93

ART

EditorsChoice
The inspiration for this piece began
during a time of great hardship. Over
the course of time, I created a boxed and
limited world within my mind. Eventually, this lifeless, robotic, and grey mindset
gripped the core of me. All of the life, zest,
joy, and love I once held was squeezed out
of me, and I had nothing left that was good
to give. Fortunately, this war I had declared
upon myself, was so painful, that it forced
me to find balance and peace within myself. To say the least, my entire inspiration
for this piece came from my desire to find
the calm within the storm. The overall
painting represents a place where freedom
and peace can truly be found and felt within any human who truly seeks it.

94 | Pollard

Bittersweet Harmony
Ashleigh Pollard

Pollard | 95

Ten Days in
Havana

Christine Rushton

NONFICTION

96 |

Three flights, several languages, an eight-hour delay in Miami; I

had finally set down my bedraggled bones on Cuban soil. Whether it
was the humidity that curled my hair into an 80s afro or the 50s-style
automobiles lining the road outside the airport, I knew Id stepped
into an era unlike my own.
Cubans stood in throngs outside of the single arrival gate, some
waiting for their relatives to return. Others dragged green plastic-wrapped gifts from family members in the United States. I could
make out the form of a television in one, and I thought, nearly every
household in America owns the device. In Cuba, its a privilege.
Leaving the airport, I noticed another man saunter by adorned in a
pearl-white suite , dark glasses and gold embellishments. The woman hanging off his right arm wore leopard print and six-inch stiletto
heels. Her purse could have paid for one of the antique cars parked
in front of her. Swinging my carry-on over my shoulder and securing
my pack, I took a breath and escaped into the shelter of my travel
groups tour bus. Less than an hour on Cuban soil and Id already begun to see the debilitating divide between the few people with wealth
and the hundreds with but pennies on which to survive.
For the next ten days I would spend my time in a socialist culture

Rushton | 97

NONFICTION
devoid of the liberty Id learned to take for granted in America. But,
Id arrived with the intent to learn through the eyes of a journalist,
and therefore processed the beautiful cultural color mixed with the
pain of oppression through words. Each morning I would wake,
climb to the hotels top-floor breakfast room and gaze across the
worn streets of Havana to the teal blue waters of the Caribbean. Then,
sitting with my cup of American black coffee, I would write.

May 2013
Greenish brown with ripped fuzz, a tennis ball flew with bullet-like
precision past my left ear as I, alone, maneuvered one foot in front of
the other through the streets of Havana. The three Cuban boys whose
feet shared the uneven cobblestones with my own had shed the ties
of their school uniforms and taken up a game of catch. A Cuban
carriage taxi driver caught the ball that had just skimmed the hairs
of my ear, and lightly tossed it back to the boys as he tilted his head
to silently warn them. Hitting a visitor in the streets would not fly as
well as their pitches.
The dynamic of Cuba reflects two extremes: one of light-hearted
play and one of suppressed anguish. Visiting the Instituto Superior
de Arte (ISA) students in Havana opened my eyes to a side of Cuban
youth I had yet to come across. Years of regulation hindering the
citizens from learning new technologies, pursuing their passions,
and exploring freedoms of democracy, has filled their hearts and art
pieces with anger.
One artist who specializes in carving wood flat stencils on which
he lays canvas to shade and rub, started as a student at ISA. He studied for five years before the school accepted him back as a professor.
Between shy, hesitant smiles and hand gestures used to tear down the
language barrier between my broken Spanish and his English, he conveyed that the subjects of his pieces often reflect very powerful men.
Some of my work is driven by my passion.

98 | Rushton

Standing before a stack of his finished pieces, he swept his right

hand over one portraying a man with a funnel filled with nails going
down his throat. He explained that parts of life are often hard to
swallow.
Still smiling and humbly sharing, there was an odd disconnect between the melancholy tone of his drawings and the way he pleasantly
presented the works, confusing my opinions. The level of competition
to succeed in Cuba often drives its citizens to defect, like the ballet
dancers from the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Several have toured the
U.S. with the company only to seek asylum and positions in companies like the Boston Ballet. There, they grow in their careers.
This man achieved success and expresses power and oppression
through the stroke of his pencils, but shares his work with fearless
pride. The scars of his country appear in each line gouged into his
wood stencils.
Just across the lawn of ISA, a 15-year-old Cuban girl lifted the
horsehair bow to the taut strings of her violin and began to perform.
She played without sheet music .
After having spoken with a man who overcame opposition, I approached the girl facing the start of her oppression.
Amanda Michelle Estrar Rodriguez, the young violinist, presented
the piece Abandoned Nest by Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini at
the ISA violin competition. Like the wood stencil artist taking on his
field, her performance pitted her against other Cuban musicians for
both the competition and a potential spot as a student at the school.
I want to get to a higher level for this school, Amanda explained.
[ISA] also has a level exam from one year to another to stay in the
school. I must have good records in my specialty.
Amanda looks to her mother, a percussionist, and father, a pianist,
for her musical inspiration. Practicing three to four hours per day for
the last seven years at her current school, the Guillermo Tomas Bouffaratigue Music Conservatory, she has dreams to soon enter the ISA
program and eventually play in the National Symphony Orchestra of

Rushton | 99

NONFICTION
Cuba.
Cesar Quintana Medina, ISA University Extension Specialist and
Public Relations Coordinator, emphasized how Amanda must perform well at the competition and then make another audition with an
extensive interview to enter the school.
They are asked a lot of questions because we are looking for
talented students, Cesar put realistically. We can teach the skills, but
not the talent.
In one performance, Amanda could become one of the select few
Cubans privileged with capital opportunities. In one performance,
Amanda could fall from the graces of a treacherous social ladder.
ISA started as the Havana Country Club, which was open to the
wealthy, white community, Cesar said. After recent and pending
renovations, the site now houses the university that teaches roughly
1,500 arts students from 18-25 years old studying all Cuban art forms
except jewelry, textile and glass.
Cesar said a typical five-year program hosts students from Venezuela, Colombia, Germany, China, Cuba and even three from the
United States. They study their specialty as well as subjects like math
and language.
For musicians like Amanda, they must complete four years and
then devote one year of service to a community group, like the symphony.
You can come here at 4 a.m. in the morning and find students
practicing piano and violin, Cesar said. It is open all the time. They
have their own key and can work in the night because it is more quiet
and cool.
Most students spend hours practicing to keep up with the intense
competition, but many end up touring in different countries for opportunities after they finish their studies .
For them, ISA is their only door out. For Amanda, its her gateway
to a future.

100 |Rushton

Dinner later that week at the docks near Hemingways museum

satisfied my need for cuisine familiar to my American stomach:
pizza. No meat, no diced vegetables, just dough and cheese and a
thin slathering of marinara. Contented and relaxed bumping away in
the backseat of a taxi with a speedometer perpetually reading nine
kilometers per hour, we pulled next to another car with a family and
a three or four year old girl waving
in the back. As the wind from the
For them, ISA is
Malcon coiled her light-brown
their only door out. hair around her face like a cobra,
For Amanda, its
her smile forced the corners of my
her gateway to a
own mouth to turn up in return.
future.
But when I finally looked into
her eyes, I realized her Cuban
heritage damaged the likelihood of
her success in achieving any potential dreams. Amanda and the wood
stencil artist may have a chance, but they live behind the adobe walls
of a rare school for the talented.
For the first 18 years of my life, I wanted to be a professional horse
jockey, a veterinarian, a fiction author and the CEO of a publishing
house. The women I have come across in Cuba thus far hold taxi driver jobs, clean hotels, and/or sell their bodies as prostitutes.
A woman my group met twice, because she is a taxi driver, told
us the government requires her to pay at least 50 CUC, the Cuban
currency, to them each day she works, but she only receives 10 CUC
a month on which to live. Another Cuban said he had a friend, albeit
male, that studied to practice as a gynecologist. He gave up his studies, though, to own a taco cart because he achieved more success in
that business.
In the neighboring car, as the breeze once again whipped through
the young girls hair, taking one strand through the night sky, past the
Malcon, and into the Caribbean, I saw the rippling waves engulf and

Rushton| 101

NONFICTION
sweep away her future. I realized my limited time in Cuba provided
both optimistic and pessimistic insights, and that with the potential
of the embargo lifting, the girl may have the chance to pursue her
passions.
However, now, watching how her role models live day-to-day with
little more than food, water, and a job that pays more to the government than to their own families, I fear her dreams will never reach
fruition. I only wish I could collect a few strands of my own hair and
offer her even one-fourth of the opportunities Ive received in only 20
years as an American.

Three Cuban boys dodging rancid meat and crumbling architecture

on a dust-filled Havana street do not dwell on the privileges other
children their age might have. One day they may paint, sing, or shout
their frustration, but for now they toss a ball around. For now, they
play as boys .

102 | Rushton

The Woman I
Kissed
Matt Benoit

She asked me to come over and bake cookies.

So I did, and now, after combining butter and sugar and walnuts
and chocolate chips, Im on her couch with my hand against the small
of her back.
I came over around 10:30, and after getting lost trying to find her
apartment, I am redeemed by her presence and led to the flicker of
lit candles and a kitchen full of ingredients for chocolate chip walnut
cookies.
She talks about her eveningabout eating steak with her brother
who lives in Moscow, about watching There Will Be Blood and about a
bunch of other details Ive already forgotten and will never remember
with any accuracy.
She fixes me an egg nog spiked with White Christmasa mix of
cheap brandy and cheaper rum and we listen to soul music piped
from a shitty mp3 docking station she says her dadthe dad she
hasnt spoken to for a whilebought her one year for Christmas.
She wants to smoke weed, but the small spice bottle on the coffee
table her mom gave her is empty. She says shes trying to quit.
Tonight she wears jeans with holes in them, and no belt, and after
baking several dozen cookies shell take to work tomorrow afternoon,

Benoit | 103

NONFICTION
she changes into a loose-fitting top and stares into a mirror while
combing her long and wild brunette hair.
She puts on a leather jacket, and we go for a walk on Greek Row
before I drive her cara red Volkswagen Jettato a grocery store.
She says Im a good driver.
On the way back to her apartment, she tells me she thinks shell
lose her good looks soon, the same good looks I was instantly taken
with the first time I saw her.
She shows me the stuffed E.T. she
sleeps with every night, and evenIt lasts only a few
tually it is late, and then later still,
minutes, sweetly
and suddenly its 4 a.m. and were
slow as it happens
lingering together on her couch and but all too fast
I can no longer stand my nerves
when its over.
and growing fatigue.
Can I kiss you? I ask simply.
She takes her time, and asks me to close my eyes. At first its a light
peck, and then a series of pecks. The sound of soul musicthe Stevie
Wonder Pandora stationstill plays from the kitchen.
I feel the warm press of her lips against mine, and eventually, her
tongue. I press back against her, grabbing the back of her head to pull
us closer together. We lay back on the couch thats barely big enough
to hold us, and her hand lands on the center of my chest.
I tell her she has a cute nose and kiss her on the forehead, my hand
sliding under her shirt, along the smooth, warm curves of her side
and back. I can feel my legs trembling.
It lasts only a few minutes, sweetly slow as it happens but all too
fast when its over.
Somewhat reluctantly, she tells me she has to kick me out, and we
say goodbye . She tells me to squeeze her, and I do. The next morning, I wake up tired but happy.
We agree to spend more time together in the few weeks before she
graduates and I leave Pullman for an internship. She tells me she

104 | Benoit

wants to see the play Im in, but when I scan the faces in the audience
that afternoon, I dont see her.
She stops responding to my text messages.
I never see her again.
I have no pictures of her except the ones in my minda memory
that, with time, will fade and smudge and weather until that night is a
barely recallable moment in my life.
But for now its still fresh, like a wet kiss on a cold night.

Benoit | 105

EditorsChoice
My Good Friend, Fa navigates true
events framed by a zealous professor, a
chaotic government program, copious
amounts of coffee, self-prescribed medicinal booze, and Murphys sympathetic third
law. These singular elements formed a
crusade; a holy-economical war so justified
by experience, that a higher power deemed
a candid college kid and his imaginary
friend fit to pursue the one true question:
What the hell happened with my Financial
Aid?

106 | Purvis

MY GOOD FRIEND, FA.

Jesse Purvis
My mind, with some reluctance, rummages through fragmented
memories of emotions, settings, and detrimental thoughts of little
ivory teeth and unhinged smiles. All due, in part, to a small white
room containing thirteen chairs, ten students, and a professor while
the walls, decorated with two white boards and an assortment of gaudy colored fliers, are lifeless and neglected. My professor, a towering
man with a white beard and rectangular frames, correlates real-life
misfortunes to the craft of writing.
The clock displays the same mistaken time from yesterday while
my professor breathes words that trifles the air, tantalizing my orientation towards university finances with abandoned optimism. My
eyes wander from the black spiral notebook, defaced with amateur
doodles of eyes and chicken scratch notes, as I allow the words projected from Peter Chilson to sink in.
We all know that one person, the type of person who never shuts
the hell up. This statement to define a source of benighted frustration: that one person.
While a few faces flash across my mind, I realize... I know him all
too perfectly. With strings of sounds by varying voices without prose,
he leaves questions unsettled. He steals my certainty with a smile and
trembles it to the core. His eyes extend to my hardships while his
hands guide me off cliffs.
Condensation crawls down my plastic Starbucks cup with dark

Purvis | 107

NONFICTION
brown liquid cradled undisturbed. My hands drape off the side of my
chair with four wheels rolling back. The other students dart into the
conversation, raising their hands and endowing personal experiences
of that one person. Their stories resonate around me. I am trapped
in the metamorphosis of that one person, the core of all my prior
stresses of college that congeal into a shadowy form with a single,
tangible name:
Financial Aid; Fa to his friends.

I had my first encounter with Fa as a freshman at Everett Community College. My first semester I worked forty hours a week stocking
cosmetics at the local WinCo while being a full-time student. My
life was consumed by school and work with repetition of long hours
and homework. Psychology 101, stock the eye liner, American Sign
Language 201, face the soaps and deodorants, Macro Economics 103,
toss the abandoned warm steaks, Accounting 101, work the graveyard shift.
Still, knowing that my year would be unforgiving, I filed for FAFSA, a program that delegates financial aid scholarships and loans for
future and current students in the United States. I was promised fiscal
support by the first day of school but when the start of school came
and went, I was left penniless.
I had to pay for three crisp and four semi-wilted textbooks, reaching a bit over $350.00, along with the $80 parking pass, and a non-negotiable $50 gym bill with what little savings I had. Two weeks passed
when I was entrusted with my loan. The experience was a minor
inconvenience at worst, that repeated four out of my six quarters at
Everett Community College.
Near the earlier months of 2011, I applied to a single university and
was, with great joy, accepted by Washington State University. I transferred as a Hospitality Business Management major and once again, I
utilized FAFSA with great optimism.

108 | Purvis

Then, Zzusis happened.

Zzusis, as defined by Washington State University, is a web-based
student information system [that] has features to help students complete online University business quickly and easily. In essence, Zzusis
is a tool of pooled resources that has been crafted to enrich students
experiences with things such as signing up for classes, viewing varying types of finances and bills owed, as well as important notifications
and, most importantly, the status of Fa; among other things. Zzusis
was implemented March 28th, 2011, in time for the new school year
and my first year at WSU.
The launch was an absolute failure.
I spent hours each week in line. The queue rivaled the length of a
football field. Students poked at their phones, their ears engrossed
with music, and their butts flat on the floor. The bodies inched
forward as our classes came and went. Fa marched up and down the
halls, a voyeur to his own catastrophe. The calendar weeks digested
each other as these concerned bodies kept reappearing. Each time
my foot crossed the taped blue line at the very front, I received the
same response: we have everything needed for your aid and are just
waiting for it to be processed, no more than a weeks time.
While I waited in these lines and went to classes and ate cheap noodles and borrowed money and sat in my room, I still faced the costs
of university:
$987 for eighteen semester credits worth of books,
$203 for a low-level parking pass,
$230 for the Student Matriculation Fee,
$400 dollars down payment for my living quarters,
$X in daily food expenses.
My savings account, which had dropped to roughly $400 after the
trip to WSU, was instantly used up leaving a modest $1,420 in fees
which I had no money for.
One week turned to two, two to three, three to five, five to eight,

Purvis | 109

NONFICTION
and eight to twelve. I waited twelve weeks during a sixteen week
semester while I burdened my family and friends and myself with
unpalatable stress. After twelve weeks of hearing by the end of the
week, a financial advisor finally looked with intent into my pleas.
Zzusis, to everyones surprise, had nothing to do with my issue. Fa
was there the entire time. He was waiting with the resolve to properly
introduce himself.
A signature, one single signature on a piece of paper that could
be printed out for $0.09 at the local Cougar Copies and addressed
in three minutes, was missing. I had borrowed money from people
who cared to endure heavier financial adversity on my behalf. It was
twelve weeks of stressing about food and of relying on friends for
any real substance and when they went away during winter break, I
chose isolation in the vacated Pullman. I couldnt dare ask for another
dollar for gas; for anything. The thought of asking, begging, soured in
my blood, so I stayed in my room with Fa as company.
We became close during the twenty-three and a half hours a day
in a dorm room over Christmas break. I ventured out long enough
to get ice from the basement and taste fresh air while bodiless voices
echoed amongst the hollow atrium and winter winds howled against
my window. Twenty-one nights nursing 59.2 ounces of liquid bitterness called Vodka while my voice conversed with unresponsive infomercials. Fa watched in silence, another shadow dancing along the
walls. I cooked dehydrated noodles in my water stained coffee pot,
flavored with vinegar and salt. It felt good the heat in my stomach.
We became buddies in those days of holiday cheer, the three musketeers: Fa, Jesse, and Jesses bottle. All wondering how it was allowed to
happen. How long Fa schemed, what design had been implemented?

It was never isolated to a single year, no.

Two weeks into my current year at WSU, I watch my boss, the Assistant Hall Director, prop his arm against the inner door frame and

110 | Purvis

say, Im going to have to let you go. He is hesitant and his composure shifts slightly. He wears old fashioned blue jeans and a pullover
grey sweater with the zipper half way down his throat. His glasses, a
dark charcoal with Joe crafted on the side grace his eyes. My feet
hover under the old splintered table, lifeless and I hear Fa at the piano, two dozen feet away.
What what happened? I drop lower into my chair, pressure
burrowing into my neck. My ears soak up each syllable and I try to
decipher what it all means. A mild breeze sneaks through the partially open window and crawls over my hot skin as I begin to welcome
dismay.
He gives a vague response; irrelevant while my tongue drives out
another question, Do I have any options? My fingers pick at each
other.
I dont know, but I cant afford to
How long Fa
pay you and the other desk assisschemed, what
he says with effect. Ill try
design had been tant,
and figure something out, but were
implemented?
all pretty much screwed.
Soon after, while I sit at home, an
email appears. The contents conjures confusion, unrequited, for any
response eludes me.
You are eligible to receive a work-study award, Fa typed with
faceless hands, however, if you choose to accept, a bill will appear on
your account. My cheeks flush fully as disbelief settles bitterly.
The bastard.
I had hoped this year would have been different. My boss, months
before the school year, offered me a job as a Desk Assistant. It was
perfect, paying $10.46 an hour through work study a need-based
system of Financial Aid.
So, why is it, as the dust hangs in forgotten ceiling corners, Im told
its a sham a lie a conspiracy against my financial stability? I had
just gotten a name tag a rectangular piece of metal with my name

Purvis | 111

NONFICTION
etched on a canvas of crimson the WSU logo validating my employment through the school. I spend the following moments still, lost
in my mind. I fantasize thoughts and scenarios rather than ask my
boss. If I ask the one pounding question that drills at my frontal lobe,
it would mean Im back to reality. Reality being a cold shit storm of
confused expressions and awkward gestures of reassurance, I hesitate.
So, Im fired?

After work, I sit at home glaring at the red numbers of my bank

account. I recall each expense made in preparation of future checks
I was promised. Othello a crme colour classic rock styled guitar
with nylon strings that turn fingertips black, sits in the far corner,
mocking me.
Othello was a purchase acquired at a local music store with a
coalition of muffled practice rooms, hushed voices, conflicting harmonies of guitars and pianos, and mechanics of registers mimicking
handmade bells as they print black ink alibis that swarmed freely. All
agitated the air, all suspended in my ears as I picked Othello up from
the glass counter and walked out with my new $457.83 child.
Its irony really, the name. Othello, the Moore of Venice, was one of
Shakespeares plays. The terrific irony was said by Emilia, I am glad
I found this napkin, her finest line for it inspires Fa, his mantra and
his muse. The casual waterfall of tension upon tension; an item not
significant in itself, but sets a story of tragedy, of stress, of avoidance,
of Fa and the unforeseeable future he dictates.
Even without Othello, I spent my nights in the natural habitat of
drunken college students: scratched felt pool tables, neon signs that
laminate walls, and thunderous bass that nullifies off-key acapella
sing-alongs. My peers, students too drunk to sit, women with napkins for skirts, men too self-conscious to dance, and the occasional
dry humping couple, all consumed my prophesized budget for their
companionship. A few good nights at a college bar: $80.

112 | Purvis

Even the impulse buy of a 48-pack of strawberry and brown sugar

Pop-Tarts for $9.98 becomes a grumbling regret.
I recollect the taste of winter; the sensation of salt and disappointment, a sharp memory of frustrating wants when five dollars was
meant to last a week. I finish my bowl of top ramen and egg with soy
sauce, costing a rough estimate of sixty-seven cents and my brain
pictures the weeks of wintery sequestered nights, eating this exact
meal while secluded in an abandoned dormitory, a frozen memory to
avoid. Its all incentive for war, an incentive to act.
I scurry to the financial aid office before closing time. Their office
resembles the sterile disconnect of an emergency waiting room
posters of encouragement and helpful information decorates the walls
while a small cubicle holds residence in the middle.
The secretary shuffles papers in practiced repetition, noting my
presence. I observe her with an awkward approach.
Shes cute.
A fluster of thoughts occupies my focus. Notions overlapping
emotions as I try to think of words to ask; what magic syllables could
solve my issue; what definition to give my thoughts valid meaning?
I panic.
Hi, I got an email about work-study and have a few questions,
a fifteen degree difference between the outside and the office starts
sweat down my back. A television of at least fifty inches draws school
adverts too quick to read.
Do you have an appointment? she asks. A sustained glance
around at the twenty-some empty chairs that cluster one half of the
room.
No, I say, half asking.
I think the scholarship office down the hall might be able to help
you quicker, she delegates me away.
The corner is sharp as I see three advisors deep in discussion,
no students to help. I later learn they are barred from walk-ins, to
address me. I make eye contact with one of the advisors: a dark blue

Purvis | 113

NONFICTION
dress shirt and heavy dress pants with a face containing a goatee and
rampant eyebrows. I convey my craving to be seen with a glare, with a
blame behind my retinas that searches for my friend, Fa. Trust begins
to chafe away with each stride from the one place I should find help.
The metal ting of a hotel bell expands outwardly into the back halls
of the scholarship office, drawing out a forty-something suit pant
woman. Hi! Financial aid directed me over here, I say. My arms rest
on the counter next to colorful papers that silently scream Scholarship information! Look at me!
Slight eye contact is made before I begin my journey of discovery
with this unknown woman. Im trying to figure out what happened
to my work-study. Would you be able to look that up for me? My
neck tenses in cynical frustration.
Oh, yes, she smiles with an eastern European accent. She moves
to the computer, my I.D. card in hand, and slams precisely into the
keyboard as seconds dawn into minutes. So, you dont have workstudy. If you want to use though, we will charge your account. She
speaks with the same knowledge of my email, with Fas words. To
pay myself to work for the school or to not work at all. Trying to find
out why I was given work-study aid to begin with, we consume five
minutes.
Its frustrating, tiring, and redunThe annoyance,
dant. I trudge away none the wiser.
the irritation, the
A few days have passed in foolish
exasperation and
indiscretion since my epiphany for
vexation, displeaaction. I sip sweet discount orange
sure indignation
juice when my phone briefly rum it chews moistly
bles on the side table. Two posters, a
into my thoughts.
shirtless Ryan Gosling and a mostly
nude girl my roommates and I call
Cindy, mirror the wood-paneled wall of my townhouse I share with
two women. Sand color tables with grey tops socialize among the impossibly dense couch and chair. I swipe open the text message from

114 | Purvis

my boss.
Hold off on getting another job I may just be able to keep you.
Ill let you know once I find out more!
I have grown accepting of being jobless, having a work week of a
couple of hours at most, but now this. I lust for the definite, unquestionable knowing of where I stand. Having a job is resplendent in
numbers, but this constant change its unnerving. Nothing about
financial aid or work-study has been clear or precise and Im tired of
being lifted and dropped like a ball in Fas game.
Ive had enough of this. I fortify my resolve with emotions of deranged fluctuation.
I gather my supplies: keys, wallet, books, and bag for the days classes. The annoyance, the irritation, the exasperation and vexation, displeasure indignation it chews moistly into my thoughts. My focus
abstracts as I sit through the first class. I give my absent opinions on
peer reviews, mostly noting the drafty windows to myself with inner
dialogue, incubating a nameless vendetta.
My focus sharpens and narrows in the second class as eleven students and one professor discuss that one person. It strikes a source
of motivation, vexed blood thick as oil. The class is released and Im
unleashed with intent to hunt.
I make my way to the financial aid office, requesting a meeting with
whoever is in charge. I sit in the empty waiting area, resolve brimming dangerously, surrounded by cold seats unpopulated. No cute
secretary, no distractions. A few minutes pass and Texas, a soft spoken woman in a baby blue sweat suit comes over. A quick explanation
of my desires then our pens mark the same dates.
One week passes and I take a seat across from Joy Scourey, the
assistant director of scholarship services and athletic aid compliance
a conspirator with Fa. Her room is bestrewn with decorations of
motivational pictures, sticky notes with mild reminders, and a few
frames of faces Ill never see move. Scourey, with her dark brown hair,
a navy blazer, and a red sweater with a floral pattern near her collar-

Purvis | 115

NONFICTION
bone, collects the questions I sent in preparation.
I sit nervous, unsure of due process in an interview, only knowing
this woman has answers that I crave. Perhaps she took pity on me, an
understanding that I am a chihuahua among eagles, as I thank her yet
again for seeing me.
Lets start with question one, she said to my relief. We use to
have work study only for a small population of students but wanted
to change and revamp it to where, those who file the FAFSA on time
could get extra help. It is a first come, first serve system, but helps
more students now. My pen strikes letters into my paper as Scourey
speaks at a difficult tempo. I should have borrowed a tape recorder.
So, did students receive false notifications of work study this
year? I ask.
What happens is that employers hire students before they get
verification of work-study, which they are addressed specifically not
to do, and are left without the required financial means. Joy continues while her explanations interchange between comprehensible and
bewildering.
In my collected summary, I gather that dormitory halls are a large
unit of work-study utilizers that Financial Aid wants to support, not
penalize. The plight, as she progresses, is with students, employers,
and the financial aid offices ineffective communication.
I can attest to that.
As the interview comes to an end, Im left with a gun on a mantle,
robbed of a target. Questions of where the burden of fault lies plague
my mind. Perhaps I missed an important notice for work-study, skipping over the part where it gives a step-by-step procedure.
Thanks for your time, I say across the threshold. My thoughts
cave on each other as I instinctively find the closest exit. Internal
dialogue erupts as notions and theories converge.
Can I blame the hall and my boss for premature action? My boss
gave me a job position that needed to be filled by a certain date. He
is unable to wait for verification and most likely assuming the Zzusis

116 | Purvis

notice of work study was good enough and hired me. Perhaps then I
can blame the financial aid office, claiming them as complicated monsters set out to play with my micro-economy by dictating unrealistic
rules.
Perhaps I can blame Fa, my relentless companion.
Conceivably, in blunt truth, I
realize that blame wont solve my
How long Fa
problem.
schemed, what
My amateur questions were met
design had been adequately, yet my fingernails suffer
implemented?
as I bite them in nervous contemplation. I walk home, passing other
students and wonder if they have met Fa. I wonder if they know
him as intentional or belligerent in his schemes. Perhaps they are
Fas favorites. They are the special few that receive his blessing every
semester and every year without trial. I question my own bias as I
fell into a witch hunt and realized the one person who is supposed to
have solutions spent the last half hour stating what I knew first hand:
Fa is terrible at communicating. But is that an answer? A decomposing venture of communication; lines rusting while phones evolve into
paper weights?
Financial Aid helps the worthy, or so the dictionary definition
states. Annually, I find myself pushing buttons, checking this box and
that box, defining my area of study, race, and ancestry with cascading menus, and then moving to the empty space where I attempt to
describe my merits all while shining the bright light of grandeur upon
myself in fewer than 500 words; compelling a faceless individual I
never met before to serve sweet fiscal support right into my pocket,
completing the entire process in under thirty minutes. I cant help see
convenience in the term worthy. Is Fas tyrannical reign just another
bitter pill to swallow?
At times, other causes of worthiness come from being one of the
first people to complete and submit their loan needs, not necessarily

Purvis | 117

NONFICTION
an inquiry of aid, yet being seen as merit-based for a thousand dollars. I question the parameters of worthy set by Fa while simultaneously reaching my hand out, asking for a promise of help from hands
that dance nimbly amongst the hours and days.
Hypocrisy.

Another Desk Assistant hired on false assumptions of work study

support sits next to me in our office. The floors rasp with every movement as we sit in front of our boss. He discusses the situation. Its of
little reassurance, for our boss lacks as much understanding of why it
happens as we do. Again, the beauty of communication, or perhaps,
the lack of understanding was brilliant. The end result is of disbelief
that swells around the walls of the small office, a haunting addle of
why. Fa wraps his arm around my neck.
Now as the year nears its end, the other Desk Assistant and I talk in
tampered passing and I feel the commonality of annoyance towards
Fa. Its an annoyance without hope of justification. We talk above traffic that streams beneath our feet on Stadium Way with frigid air that
dyes my fingertips blue. He confesses, I was going to quit when this
all started. I was looking for other jobs in town that I at least could
count on.
Yeah, I remember you saying something about that in the office.
We side step towards the bridges rail as a group of three pass. Do
you know if youre working next semester? I know the answer was
irrelevant, they cant afford to pay us out of pocket anymore but I
still feel the need to ask.
Nah, it cuts into my study time too much anyways.
Seeing him experiencing the same game with Fa, I feel the compelling push to at least ask. Do you know why you lost your workstudy?
I had initially got work study on needs-based financial aid, he
pauses as the winter wind picks up, adjusting his orientation slightly.

118 | Purvis

The reason why I was later denied work study was I had accepted
the full amount of aid that I was allotted, so the funds that normally
go towards paying for the work study program, I had already taken
that full amount. I had nine hours left over to pay for the work study
hours.
That uh that sucks.
After a few more minutes of talking, we part ways with a see ya
later. With the iced coffee now frozen to my hand, I consider carefully what he said. Was that what happened to me? I make my way back
home, mentally reviewing the process of accepting loans and applying
for FAFSA and the notice of a work-study award. Perhaps I accepted
the wrong money, negating what work-study could do. I dont want
to think that perhaps I am the cause of my own troubles. That Im
the misfit cog in the machine that is Financial Aid. I feel Fa walking
behind me, mimicking my steps.
I get home and power my laptop. A click after a few strums on the
keyboard, I come across the Washington State work-study page. The
description of need-base hangs on the grayscale background. Students are eligible for work-study if they have at least $1000 of unmet
need-based eligibility. A mixed sense of relief and further confusion rests on my spine. I never met this major requirement for work
study, a single elimination of possible cause. The question as to why I
received the notification remains.

I still sit behind this splintered desk, underneath a ceiling light that
rarely turns on. For a few more weeks I am expected to hand out ping
pong balls and vacuums or help the occasional locked out student,
with a pay cut to $9.18. I spend my hours enamored with little understanding of what has occurred. My rounds to various people of the
Washington State University hierarchy, high and low, are rewarded
with impalpable answers. Ive scouted the internet for understanding.
With some luck and persistence, answers were found; answers of triv-

Purvis | 119

NONFICTION
ial importance, minor battles for footholds in a larger war.
Im left to believe that this incident is a symptom of a persistent
communication breakdown. It makes sense to the point where I cant
question it. Though, Im still left with a feeling of a greater issue. I
tried to fight for my job, which came to its own conclusion independently and regardless of my actions: next semester I will once
again be jobless.
I taught myself on the basics of Financial Aid, I have spent my time
of isolation with Fa, and I realize I have never known college without
knowing issues with loans orchestrated by him. Perhaps that is how
its meant to be.
I still look for a hint as to why I almost lost my job. Why I was able
to go twelve weeks without seeing a dime during my first year at university. How it becomes acceptable to expect Financial Aid to be late,
when, according to a new Wells Fargo study, which surveyed 1,414
millenials between the ages of 22 and 32, more than half of them
financed their education through student loans. Fa exists to help, or
torment, at his leisure through either merit or need-base aid, orchestrating a system that communicates through Dixie cups and strings.
I will pursue it, this accountability. Until then, I try to focus on what
college is meant for: teaching.
A lesson of life, and of choosing your friends..

120 | Purvis

INTERVIEW WITH WRITER REBECCA

BROWN
How did you get your foot in the door of
getting published? Any advice for writers
trying to get started?
I guess my experience was, getting published
was a way to make the work public someway,
right? Whether through reading it or Xeroxing it and printing chapbooks with friends
or making small magazines or a small book
publishing house among friends or community. And then those thing eventually branch
out, and then you meet other people doing big presses and by the
time it gets to where youve got a community thats interested in your
work. So to get published is like a long process of engaging in creating
a publishing community of which you want to be a part.
Quote from Rebeccas story A Ventriloquist
She is behind me, underneath. Im on her lap and hollow and her
hand is up my neck, that hole. Shes got her hand -- its firm and stiff
-- around the wooden end of my wooden tongue. Its painted black
with that special spiffy waterproof paint that makes everything look
shiny and wet. Shes got her fist around that stump and she is tugging
it, shes wagging it and saying things that I would never say.

Interview | 121

EditorsChoice
Is College Worth it?
Calvin Elam

DIGITAL
This video was inspired by my personal frustration with higher
education. I spent five days a week in classes with students who
seemed to be there for no other reason than to pass and graduate;
it was disheartening. The assignment that I created this video for
asked me to address the relationship between technology and an
issue relevant to humanity, so I tried to answer my own personal
question: is the limitless knowledge available on the internet
killing universities?
The video was shot with a Canon T3i, with all footage comprised
entirely of hand-drawn images.
Watch the video at LandEscapes.wsu.edu...

122 |

Elam | 123

FICTION
Alex Dankers is a Creative Writing and
Womens Studies major from the
Columbia River Gorge. When he is not in
Pullman, he can usually be found living in
a house in the woods fifteen minutes from
civilization.
Grace Reed is a creative writing major from
University Place, Washington. She sees college as an opportunity to focus on pursuing
her passion for words and storytelling, which
she does by taking as many English classes as
she possibly can and devouring good books
on weekends.

CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Turek
Graduated Fall 2013

POETRY
Bailey Badger is a senior at Washington
State University, graduating with a degree in
Creative Writing and a minor in Professional
Writing. A Seattle native and a lover of travel,
you can always find her with her face two
inches from a book at her favorite spot on the
beach. This fall, Bailey is taking off to Europe.
This time around, she wants to become fluent
in French and plan a camping trip to Iceland.

124 |

Contributors | 125

Jair Brooks is a mid-twenties, Aussie-American English major who enjoys excess

amounts of chocolate, music, and the internet. He writes mainly to remember, sometimes to forget, and occasionally to make
himself believe he exists with his own unique
ideas and ways to phrase them. He has
dreams to one day be a rockstar covered in
tattoos, but would be happy just to publish a
book of poetry or something.

Cappy Spruance is a Psychology major and

English minor in her third year at WSU. She
enjoys performing at poetry readings in her
hometown of Spokane when shes not curled
up with her cat, Mickey. She is most at peace
with a cup of tea and a good book by her
side. Snow Globe is dedicated to her family
for giving her so much love and support.
Jack Stilwell I have this romantic idea of
waking early and filling a hole I dug the
night before with fire and starting a pig roast.
While it roasts Ill write at a table in front of
a window that looks out at trees. When Ive
written what needs writing at that time Ill
get myself outside and move around a while
before settling again and reading until the
pig is finished roasting. At an old and heavy
round table covered in gouges and stains
and scrapes Ill eat the pig with people I love.
Well drink and we wont take ourselves seriously because we exhaust seriousness on the
things we do. That about sums me up.

Shandra Clark Growing up in the harsh

and rainy badlands of Western Washington
served as a foundation for Shandras perpetually grey mood and the fact that her veins
flow with coffee instead of blood. She developed her love of verbose insults and her ability to write an A paper in less than 12 hours
while studying English at Washington State
University. Theres a 50% chance shell go to
law school after college, and a 50% chance
that shell take her cat and her records and
spend the rest of her life in a tree somewhere.
She also likes burritos and David Bowie.
Brittany Kealy is a juniorish senior person
at Washington State University. She studies
English with an emphasis in secondary education, and considers her knowledge of Write
Bloody poetry a minor, and life skill. Hailing
from Gig Harbor, she pledges strict allegiance
to the PNW and the color green. Her daily
bread, Oreos and coffee, fuel her poetry, as
do the loving glances of her muse. She loves
elm trees, semicolons, and probably wants to
chat about books with you. On brave days,
she occasionally calls herself a poet. With joy,
she thanks LandEscapes; today, is a brave day.

126 | Contributors

ART
Nathan Howard was born in Redmond,
Wash, and transferred to WSU in the Spring
of 2013. He is currently studying journalism and media productions in the Edward
R. Murrow College of Communication and
hopes to eventually work as a photographer
for the Associated Press.

Contributors | 127

Hannah Lambert

Jonathan Matteson has recently been certified into the Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) program at Washington State University as a Studio Artist minoring in Art History. Prior to
relocating to Pullman in 2012, Jonathan lived
and worked near Vancouver, Washington. In
addition to his professional background as a
sought after marketing consultant and speaker, Jonathan has also played bass guitar in
several bands. Jonathan has come to WSU to
pursue his dream job to become a full-time
artist and art educator. To learn more about
Jonathans art, please visit his website at www.
jsmatteson.com
Cameron Overturf is a senior Art History
major from Woodinville, Washington. He
works mostly in digital medium and is an
intern at the WSU Art Museum. He is
inspired by Kim Assendorf and other databending artists and hosts a math-rock
radio show on KZUU.

128 | Contributors

Ashleigh Pollard is 22 years old and grew up

in the whimsical lands of Puyallup, Washington. Growing up, Ashleigh spent most of her
time as a focused athlete, and as an imaginative free-spirited artist. After growing as an
athlete through playing collegiate volleyball
for the College of Southern Idaho, Ashleigh
transferred to WSU to pursue a degree in
Elementary Education. When Ashleigh isnt
busy hugging trees and playing with kids, she
is a yogi, eats like a rabbit, enjoys painting,
and is an avid wanderer.
Erin Richardson is an undergraduate business major at WSU. She has always enjoyed
travel and photographing her experiences.
She spent her earliest years playing around
with her dads camera collection. She can be
found in many wildlife clubs on campus and
fills her days taking care of the birds in WSU
Raptor Club. Backpacking is her passion and
she always sets aside several weeks a year for
a long outdoor trip. Erin is excited to have
two submissions accepted into LandEscapes
this year and hopes you enjoy her photography as well.
Cristina Rodriguez was born in Vallejo,
California to Gabriela Ibarra Barrera and
Roberto Rodriguez Diaz. At the age of 13, she
and her family move to St. Louis, Missouri
where she graduated from Lafayette High
School. Currently, she is majoring in Zoology
as well as getting a double minor in Spanish
and Art at WSU. Art has always been a huge
passion of hers since the day she could pick
up a crayon. She is very inspired by nature,
animals and people around her and uses art
to bring attention to the quiet beauties in life.

Contributors | 129

Alexa Turner

Jesse Purvis, born in 1991 in Fort Braggs,

North Carolina, and raised in Washington, attends his fourth year at Washington
State University. Inspired by Robert Frost
at a young age, Purvis pursues a degree in
Creative Writing after abandoning business
school his first year at Washington State
University.

Michelle Webster, born in 1989 in Kirkland,

Washington, she grew up loving to draw.
Instead of getting picture books at the library
she would get How to Draw books and
practice. In high school she took some art
classes and further developed her skills. After
high school she went on to study Landscape
Architecture at Washington State University
and graduated May 2012 with her Bachelors
degree. She uses the spacial analysis skill
she learned in school to further improve her
work.

Christine Rushton is obtaining a double

degree in communication with a journalism
emphasis and flute performance. She has
recently accepted an instructional associate
position at Syracuse Universitys S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication for a
masters degree in journalism. Rushton works
at The Daily Evergreen, where she is now designing a new web and social media manager
position. She has previously held positions as
the editor-in-chief, managing editor, copy editor, and a reporter. Through the Edward R.
Murrow College of Communication, she has
traveled to report in Cuba and Guatemala.

NONFICTION
Matt Benoit is a multicellular organism
whose ambitions are often exceeded by his
inherent lack of motivation. A graduating
communications major from Bellingham,
Washington, Matt seeks to write well, travel well, and make people laugh as often as
possible, even if at his own expense. He once
interviewed Sir Mix-a-Lot.

130 | Contributors

DIGITAL
Calvin Elam hails from the small, unassuming
town of Cheney, Washington, where he neither
grew up on a farm or owned livestock. Deftly
incompetent with numbers from an early age,
Elam shifted his sights from the more profitable mathematical avenue to the more intrinsically rewarding avenue of literary arts. And
by literary arts, he means comic books and
sci-fi/fantasy movies. Elam eagerly awaits his
post-baccalaureate return to the spare room in
his parents house.

Contributors | 131

CHIEF
Ana Schmidt is a Junior/Senior. She is addicted to the food channel. Cant eat anything
she bakes. Is not so secretly in love with
Cormac McCarthy. And loves stilted
sentences. Fin.

FICTION

EDITORS

Andrew Braddock is a senior fiction editor,

finishing a double degree in creative writing
and public relations. He is a tutor in the Writing Center, and likes to help people with their
academic papers. When Andrew is not in a
caffeinated consciousness on campus, you
will most likely find him reading, spending
time with friends, or playing pool at Ricos
Pub. He loves you.
Katherine Naulty is a senior Rhetoric and
Professional Writing major with a minor in
Political Science. She is currently the Associate Director of Student Legal Services and an
Administrative Tutor at the Writing Center.
Her favorite thing to do is to sit on her front
porch wrapped in a big blanket, feeling the
brisk morning while drinking a hot cup of
tea. She loves pugs, cute cat photos, reading
closing legal arguments, and family holiday
festivities.

132 |

Editors | 133

Emily Noyes is a senior aiming for a

Communication degree. She is easily excitable and runs off coffee. She dreams of one
day finding her fortune in an old chest from
the Goodwill and using her wealth to buy
groceries, pay bills and then maybe feed
some puppies.

POETRY
Regan Bell is a transfer student in her junior
year. Shes majoring in Creative Writing and
working on her Communications minor. This
is her first year with LandEscapes and she
plans to one day vacillate between New York,
where shell work in the publishing industry,
and South Africa, where she plans to save the
great white sharks.
Blair Rezny is a bearded American. He is
finishing his degree in political science and
ethics. Please refrain from stroking the whiskers of this hale and hearty creature without
permission.

Marcela Rodriguez is a Rhetoric and Professional Writing major. She loves photography,
rain, daffodils, Neruda and high-fiving trees.

134 | Editors

ART
Kelline Blake has always been passionate
about drawing, painting, and crafting, and
excited to now help LandEscapes promote
the artists of WSU. She is a DTC major and
Professional Writing minor, and hopes to go
into editing and publishing after graduating.

Amber Larks is nineteen years young and

starry-eyed about the world, life, and its
possibilities. She has a soft spot in her heart
for photography, animals, nostalgia, and delicious chocolate-y desserts. Her wanderlust
grows greater every yearand wherever her
travels take her, her camera will be in hand.
Cera Rodriguez is a crazy person who does
everything to be involved in the art world.
She will graduate from Washington State
University with an English degree focused in
Creative Writing, all the while spending her
academic time involved with the Compton
Union Building Arts Committee, being the
chair of the Visual, Performing, Literary Arts
Committee, and oh yes, going to classes. Cera
loves to paint, draw, or paint and draw, or
even draw and paint. She has an obsession
using blues and yellows, a problem that she
attributes to her love of Wes Anderson films
and Day of the Dead. Radiohead, Interpol,
TV on the Radio, and the Arcade Fire run
through her bloodstream, and if you catch
Cera at her hungriest points, she will make
you enchiladas.

Editors | 135

NONFICTION
Jessica Schloss is earning her bachelors in
English and Digital Technology and Culture.
She is also completing a minor in Biology.
She is one of the nonfiction editors with
LandEscapes, and an intern with Blood
Orange Review. Jessica hopes to be an editor
after she graduates.
Josie Tarr likes pina coladas and taking walks
in the rain. She also likes rainbows, sunshine
and butterflies (but not moths), as well as scifi and fantasy books. Sadly, she is not the redhaired guitarist/leader of a certain 70s band,
the reference to which she will be subjected
to forever.
Jill Warwick loves Netflix, sleep, country
music and the color green. She is a communication major and will graduate in May.

MUSIC & DIGITAL

Adrienne McCullough is a sophomore at

Washington State University. She is a Communications Major and Film Studies Minor
and plans on going into advertising. This
is her first year with LandEscapes. She is
excited to be a part of the team as a Digital
Multimedia/Music Editor.

WEB
Mara Almanzor is a short, sweet, and extremely dedicated individual. She is a caffeine-addicted insomniac with high hopes
and big dreams. And currently as a sophomore at WSU she is majoring in Digital
Technology and Culture with a Multimedia
Authoring concentration and double minoring in Fine Arts and Film Studies.

MARKETING
Kaelyn Cole is a sophomore who plans on
getting a major is Communication with a
specification in Advertising. She also hopes
to get minors in English and DTC before
she graduates. Her goal is to study abroad in
England for the duration of her junior year.

Karl Howell is a Junior English education

major at Washington State University. He
enjoys listening and playing music, specifically
crazy Heavy Metal. Karl tries to actively participate in that scene as much as possible, but
is a member and plays quite a bit with the significantly more mellow local band, Soulstice.

136 | Editors

Editors | 137

DESIGN
Kelsey Johnson is a pluviophile who hails
from the west side. She loves coloring books
and classic films, and if she knows the song
thats playing, youll always catch her singing
along. As a sophomore in the DTC major, she
is passionate about design.

Molly Dolan, as a senior at Washington State

University, graduated in the Fall of 2013. She
double majored in Digital Technology and
Culture and Spanish with a minor in Fine
Arts. She loves painting, design, drawing,
photography, and anything else that involves
using her creativity. She plans on traveling
the world one day, and is happy she finished
up school at WSU and will continue to cheer
on the Cougs.

Guess What,
You cant fool us. You picked up this
journal, so that means you have an eye
for the creative. So dont just read,

Join us!
Submit, become an editor, or view our
journal online at:

landescapes.wsu.edu

facebook.com/lewsu | landescapes.wsu@gmail.com

We accept submissions for:

Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, Art, Digital Multimedia
and Music.
We hire editors and staff for:
Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, Art, Music, Digital Multimedia, Design and more!
Get credit and become an intern!
138 | Editors

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