 
Four Ties Lit Review Issue 2 Volume 1

Summer 2013

Do You See What I See by Greg Glau

Issue 2 Volume 1 features photography by Greg Glau and Toni Marksoukos, fiction from Erin F Robinson and Jon Steinhagen, non-fiction from Nicki Blackwell and Kristine McRae, the poetry of Sarah Brown Weitzman, Benjamin Norris, Simon Perchik and much more.

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Four Ties Lit Review Issue 2 Volume 1

The Work Issue

Published by Four Ties Lit Review at Smashwords

First time digital rights to each work in Four Ties Lit Review Issue 2 Volume 1 were secured by Four Ties Lit Review. All rights revert to original authors after publication

Copyright 2013 Four Ties Lit Review

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Letter from the Editor

In this our second issue and third volume of Four Ties Lit Review, I believe we've achieved a serious accomplishment. The growth of the magazine and the additional number of submissions has allowed us to be more selective than in previous volumes. The acceptance rate for this issue was approximately five percent of the pieces submitted to the magazine. Although it made their work harder, this has allowed the editors to choose only the cream of the crop for publication. It was an intentional decision to remain approximately the same size magazine (more non-fiction then last year, but less poetry) despite the increased number of submissions, thus theoretically improving the quality of the magazine. I am proud to be associated with this publication.

We look forward to continued growth and success and I have begun to set plans in motion that will allow for both. As well as securing permanent additional assistance to run the magazine, we plan to incorporate and make FTLR a non-profit organization in the coming years. We hope you will join us in this journey. As always, we ask your assistance in spreading the word about FTLR.

I would like to thank my editors: Robert Keegan, Ben McClendon, Lauren Milligan, and Molly Wilson; as well as our readers Laurie Wolpert, Khara House, and Lauren "Sully" Sullivan. Without their help this issue would not have been possible. As my time in Flagstaff Arizona is coming to an end I would like to acknowledge to them that I know we have built friendships that will outlast the years to come.

Thank you and happy reading,

Matthew W Larrimore

Editor / Founder

Four Ties Lit Review

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Table of Contents

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Non-Fiction

Announcing Your Place by Kristine McRae

Market Days in Oaxaca by Nina Vincent

Teaching Chronicles by Nicki Blackwell

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Fiction

Dreams in Steno by Erin F. Robinson

Gwen and Kitten's Ground Truths by Kimberly Cawthon

Division of New Hope by John Steinhanen

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Poetry

**Riversong** by Jenny Root

**The Commute by Benjamin Norris**

**untitled by Simon Perchik**

**Lovers in a Cellar by Kevin Oberlin**

**State of Motion by Paul Sacksteder**

**Apprenticeship by Sandy Hiortdahl**

**Streetlamps as Milemarkers by Clair Bowman**

**Fast Food by Jonathan Holland**

a previous version of this poem was published in Twizted Tungz magazine

A Hard Day Teaching **by** **Patrick Frank**

previously published Open Salon.com blog

**Bending** by Sherilyn Lee

**How to Survive on Ketchup and Water by Danielle Hunt**

**With Pantyhose** by April Salzano

**ANGEL # 2,473, N SERIES by Sarah Brown Weitzman**

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Art Gallery

Do You See What I See by Greg Glau

New Your City Restraunt 2012 by Ira Joel Haber

Low Tide Oyster Harvest by Pete Madzelan

Powered Sky by Lean Givens

Snake Work by Susana H Case

Calvert and Preston by Toni Martsoukos

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About the Authors

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About the Editors

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Snake Work by Susana Case

Non-Fiction

Announcing Your Place

By Kristine McRae

Market Days in Oaxaca

By Nina Vincent

Teaching Chronicles

By Nicki Blackwell

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Announcing Your Place

By Kristine McRae

It's almost Valentine's Day again. A sharp wind travels through town from the north and out across the frozen ocean; without the wind chill, it's twenty below. I could drive the almost mile to the halfway house, but it would take longer to scrape the frost from the windshield and warm up the car than it will to walk from my office at the east end of town. Besides, the cold and wind clears my head in a way that an hour of sitting meditation can't touch. I gather my lesson papers and pull on the layers of winter gear. Outside it's still dark. In early February, in Nome, Alaska, the sun comes over the ocean to the south at around 10:30 — six more minutes of daylight than yesterday.

Seaside is the name of our Community Corrections Center, situated unfortunately, if not ironically, between two bars on Front Street. I stop to look at the expanse of ice. The lean, lone silhouette of a driftwood trunk juts up from the jumble of mammoth boulders that line town and act as a protector from the harsh October storms. It's stuck in the rocks and bends reluctantly in the wind, struggling to maintain its stature against the agitated air. That's how I feel today, like that driftwood. A man surprises me as he stumbles out of the Anchor Saloon and I jump to avoid his path. He shoots me a toothy brown smile right before he bends in half and vomits on the snowy sidewalk. The barf will freeze in minutes, and sometime this afternoon the bartender will scrape it into the street with a garden hoe. As I tug on the heavy door, a haze of heat blended with the smell of institutional breakfast billows out and mingles into the morning.

I'm here to teach reading and writing to the Seaside residents who want to get their GEDs. From week to week I have no idea who will show up, who has been released, who's decided to hide in the smoking room, or watch game shows on TV instead of coming to class. I comfort myself with the thought that any amount of teaching that takes place is a positive step. There are no windows in this room; it smells like body odor and rancid milk. An old bookshelf in the corner is so overloaded with discarded Bibles and hardback mystery novels it teeters, as if it could collapse any minute. The students help me push the weight-lifting machines against the wall to make room for one large table and a collection of chairs. Whenever one of the students shifts in his chair the table wobbles and coffee spills from the Styrofoam cups, leaving little rivers of sticky brown. Today everyone is sniffling; they pass among them a roll of toilet tissue and toss the used crumples onto the table. I begin the class with Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese." The first line is You do not have to be good. I ask one young man to read and he struggles through the entire poem. I thank him and ask the group what they think. Silence. I read it again to them. The words flow from my mouth, each line an appeal to love the sounds like I do. I ask them what they think the poem is about.

"Come on, you guys, it's not complicated. What is she saying here?" Silence. I don't know if they are too shy to speak or if they really don't get it. I chose the poem because I thought it wouldn't require much work to figure it out. But I'm starting to realize this class discussion isn't going to go the way of my verbose and sentimentally charged college classes. It just isn't.

Sensing my disappointment, a guy sitting at the end of the table, closest to the door, leans back in his chair and says, "Well, why didn't they just shoot one of the geese for supper? I mean, they were right there."

Standing at the front of the room, in front of these students, my world shrinks. We are a microcosm of souls whose experience shares the commonality of growing up in cold, cold country. But there's also between us the understanding of our dissimilarity. I am the teacher; white, educated, female. They are incarcerated Native men. Most of them didn't make it through junior high in the small villages they come from. Each of their crimes is alcohol related, some of them violent. As I look down at my copy of the poem, now damp with coffee, I realize: I don't believe it. Of course I have to be good. We all do. That's why they're here, because they weren't good. The guy next to me shoves his paper toward the center of the table.

"Can I just take the test and get it over with?" he asks.

***

My students carry a weighty conflict. They are bound by culture and tradition to prove themselves as Native men by living a subsistence lifestyle of hunting and fishing as a means of providing for their families and communities. And they are fated by society and financial need to earn money to fuel a lifestyle that is also dependent on plumbing, electricity, and diesel. There are few jobs in their communities and to receive education and training, they would need to leave their homes. But even if you offered it to them, the opportunity to leave, most would not go.

The climate at the halfway house is less than rehabilitative, and many offenders cycle through several times a year. In ten years the Seaside Center has had seven directors. The case manager position is intermittently vacant, and the residents have little structure outside of meals and appointments with their behavioral health counselors. Often they don't show up for my class because they've gone back to bed or have been called away to assist with heavy lifting somewhere in the community. More frustrating is the established dynamic between the residents and the staff: a twisted power play that manifests itself in lost privileges and punitive, often demeaning, tasks. I'm not saying that the residents are model citizens. They can be rude and obstinate, cynical and sexist. They are used to not getting along with people. After more than three generations of westernization, I have to wonder why we are surprised at the actions of a population that's expected to live in both the past and the future.

One morning the students seemed agitated. When I stopped the lesson to ask them what was going on, they told me they were tired. In the middle of the night, a female resident had covered herself in a blanket so she couldn't be recognized on the video camera and dashed down the hall to the male dorm. The entire dorm was rattled awake by a guard, given toothbrushes, and sent to the kitchen to scrub the floor for the rest of the night. They frequently told me stories like this. On another day, while I was checking in at the front desk, a young man approached the desk and asked when he could make a phone call. "No," the attendant snapped through the Plexiglas, before the guy could even finish his question. "The answer is never, now get out of my face." I flushed with shame for the exchange, and it fostered my observation that many people in who work in "corrections" are desperate for a recognition they will likely never receive.

***

"But this is boring," he continues. "I wish I could just get this over with."

"Well maybe you'd like to join those other guys in the common room. Watch The Price is Right, play some poker. They looked like they were having fun." Instantly I regret the jab. Sarcasm and patronization are mostly what these young men meet on a daily basis. I don't want to distance myself, I want to help. But if they're going to pass the test, I must teach them to think like I do.

So "Wild Geese" was a bust. The students groan as I pass out Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." They're hating this, viscerally, but they need to know something about poetry, it's on the test. They take turns reading the four stanzas. I'm losing them. I need to think these lesson plans through more carefully. There are no "woods" on the Seward Peninsula of western Alaska, no trees. So right off the bat, we're screwed. The only trails they've seen are compressed patches of tundra when tracking a moose, or the windblown snow machine tracks they follow from village to village once the rivers freeze. I decide to take the easy way out. I illuminate, line by line, the double meanings of the words and, exhausted, ask if anyone has comments. To my delight a young man with thick black hair that hangs into his face looks up.

"So, what he's saying is, well, if you don't rob the Native store and spend two hundred fifty bucks on a bottle of Monarch then beat somebody up you won't have to end up here?"

The others chuckle and I say, "Yes. Exactly." And this sparks a cross-table banter about the ambiguity of words, hidden meanings and, of course, how we all choose our paths.

As they file out of the room and head to the chow line, one student sticks his head back in through the door, "See ya next time, teach!" I collect my papers and head out onto Front Street. I feel renewed. Maybe next week we'll write poems. Maybe that will make all the difference. Maybe it won't.

~

Market Days in Oaxaca

By Nina Vincent

Market days are a great example of how deliciously slow life becomes here in Oaxaca Mexico. Saturdays are my favorite. The Saturday market does not really come alive until around nine in the morning. The market sets up in the church plaza by the municipal building and the church itself. Awnings of blue plastic tarps securely tied to poles wave like flags over the individual stalls, letting me know from the corner of my street that the market is up and running. If the blue tarps don't give it away, the smoke and smell of burning flesh rising up into the early morning sunlight do. Tacos and chicken are put on the grill early.

As I approach the mouth of the market I can hear my name called out from a few stalls down. Past the couple who sells plastic in all its various forms – toys, utensils, laundry baskets, garbage containers, and plant pots. Plastic in reds, blues, greens, yellows, pinks, and tans. Plastic – the ever present soon to be found on the side of some hillside or road, environmental nightmare. I move past the first stall of fruits and vegetables laid out in color and abundance on long tables. Piled high and precarious, the fruit calls out to me, as do the men from the taco stand and the fish stall.

"Guera, guera, viene la guera. 'Guera,' I was to learn one day means 'white one,' or 'pale face.' It is neither a compliment nor and insult. It is just a fact. A fact that I, with my blond hair, blue eyes and skin so remarkably wan and pallid here among these Indian people in their rich brown skin with long thick black manes and dark endless black eyes, cannot escape. 'Guera." At times I forget how white I am.

When first we arrived I noticed how delicious is the dark sensuous skin of the men and women here. I longed for their dark sexy eyes and long black hair worn in so many sophisticated or simply convenient styles. Now I don't notice as much. I don't see their color and I often don't feel myself in my own. I sometimes cringe when I look in the mirror and see how pale, devoid of color and thickness I am. I feel paper thin, easily seen through or torn. These people are like leather, thick, soft, tanned and pliable. The sun soaks into their skin as if they were chosen receptacles of the suns warmth and light. It does not bounce or glare off their skin, but rather it seeps naturally into their pores providing a space where warmth and color linger side by side.

"Guera, guera, no vas a comprar un taco?" I have been going to the Saturday market here in San Felipe for three months now. I have not once bought a beef, pork or chicken taco. I have considered it several times, but I always arrive directly after my tea and toast in the morning – the gringa version of breakfast. Early is best because then I am able to buy the fish laid out on blocks of ice. If I arrive before the sun has risen high and mighty above the market, I may get to the fish before it melts on its bed of cold thus avoiding the slow rotting of scaly bug eyed flesh covered in flies eagerly nesting and laying eggs.

"Guera, compra un taquito." I know they are no longer expecting me to buy a taco. It is a game. Our game. They are playing with me as children do here. Taunting, and teasing; I gladly return the taunts and teases. As I buy my fish I banter with the young vender whose face is painfully riddled with ripe acne. I almost don't notice what once disgusted me. We banter and insult, laugh and moan with feigned hurt at the insults we toss so lightly back and forth.

I make my way past the woman who does her needlepoint and crochet work. She sells cotton threads of many colors. At one time I was crocheting juggling balls for my son Eli from her cotton colors. She asked me with greed, need and glee how to make the balls, seeing the opportunity for a marketable item. I sat with her and her daughter that day and showed them how. Too labor intensive; too different? She has yet to produce any.

I continue towards the cries. "White one, here comes the white woman." I smile at the women who laugh with the rest as they announce my arrival.

At first when several of the market people called me "Guerita," I thought they were saying 'abuelita' – little grandmother. This was not long after the children at the Centro de Esperanza where I work, guessed my age at sixty-five. For the first time in my forty-one years I felt concerned that I might actually look that much older than I feel. One day, I turned to an older woman who had just called out "guerita," or to my still rusty Spanish ear, "abuelita," and asked her why she called me "abuelita" when I was certainly not yet that old.

"No Guera," she explained somewhat amused, "no abuelita, g-u-e-r-i-t-a."

"Guerita?" I inquired, "What is "guerita."

"White one, pale face, like you Guera." she told me

"Is it an insult?" I asked her.

"No, "she assured me, "just a fact."

"Guera, guera, que vas a comprar hoy?" Calls out the woman who I have chosen to buy from each week. I pick and choose from her sometimes sorry looking tomatoes, knowing that the stall back a bit further had glorious looking tomatoes. But now, when I show up there after so many weeks of not buying the woman scorns rather than smiles, and asks why I have not come to buy in so long and charges me more than she once did.

I know I am always paying a higher price than the natives. I am a "gringa," different than a "guera," A gringa has money; lots of it. Endless amounts. We are rich. Compared to any of these people here selling at the market, I am a very rich gringa. I think that this more than anything is what separates me from these people. It is not my white flashing thin skin, but rather the knowledge they have of whence I come. This will never go unnoticed. This element of who I am, much more than the color of my skin will set me apart from the people of this place.

I find a few decent tomatoes. I stick with my chosen vendor rather than suffering the insult of the punitive one with her bright, clean, firm, ripe tomatoes. Rich green broccoli, string beans, papaya the size of watermelons, deep green chile poblanos, small and sweet tangerines, carrots short and thick, sprigs of parsley, episote, cilantro, yerba buena and mint thrown in as a gift. I pile my purchase high in front of me or wave it in the face of the vendor and place it in my colorful plastic woven grocery bag. She calls out a price; "Dos pesos" then adds two more on for the next item I wave at her.

"Mas cinco, mas uno son diez pesos. " She looks to her left as someone else calls out,

"Cuanto?"

"Tres," she says then calls out what they owe thus far "veintiocho." Then back to me as I wave two avocadoes in her view.

"Diez, diez, diez" she says, calling forth my numbers from the recesses of her mind, "diez mas dos, mas quince son...... veintisiete, vientisiete, vientisiete. Then quickly to the woman beside me,

"Vientiocho, vientiocho.... Trienta y dos." On it goes until my bag is full and she calls out my final price,

"Cuarenta y cinco." Forty-five pesos. Four dollars and fifty cents for a bag so full of fresh fruits and vegetables, that I can barely carry it home. Quickly, she moves to the far right end of the long table and rips off sprigs of yerba Buena.

"Quieres perejil, o cilantro?" She asks me.

"Episote." I tell her. "I bought fish today." Episote is an herb that I have been told goes best with fish. I made a soup from the head, tail and skeleton of the fish I bought and had filleted last week. The episote was delicious with both the garlic fried fillets and the fish soup.

Last week, I don't know why, but I was sure the vendor counted wrong. She added ten more pesos on than she should have.

"Cincuenta y tres." She called out

"Fifty three?" I said, "No, no. Fue forty-three, not fifty-three."

"No" she assured me with just enough hesitation to convince me I was right, "Son cincuenta y tres."

"No," I argue, "I know it is only forty three because I only have fifty pesos with me so I was being careful not to go beyond that." A moment of gringa paranoia sets in; 'She's just trying to get more from me.'

She moves out from behind the table seemingly amused and exasperated.

"Vamos a ver." She says as she comes around and we start taking things back out of my grocery bag.

'What am I doing', I all of a sudden ask myself. We are talking about one US dollar. I have taken precious time away from this woman's business for one lousy US dollar. There is no principle that I feel can justify my mistrust or righteousness. I feel foolish. I am not even keeping track of her recounting each item. I have decided to give her the ten pesos whether I owe them to her or not.

"Si, si," I tell her, "you are right. I am sorry. Take back the broccoli."

"That leaves you enough for more lemons." She tells me as she moves back behind the table.

"No " I tell her, "we have a tree in the back yard."

"Then what about herbs or...." I take whatever it is she offers next and vow to myself to never question or haggle over ten pesos again.

'Gringa, guera, gringa, guera,' I think to myself. And then as I leave the market and stop to pick up the fish that has been filleted for me I hear the banter, the laughter,

"Guera, guera, how about a taco." I smile and call back,

"Not today." On my way out of the market square I see the tamale lady on the corner.

"HMMMM, any mole tamales today, the ones wrapped in banana leaves?" I ask.

"No hay mas" she shakes her head. Hmmmph, missed them again. I walk past the tamale lady and there, on the wall that encloses the tree and the dirt court for the marble games, are the kids from Eli's school and my English class.

"Maestra, maestra!" they call out. I wave, smile, joke, take the apple that is offered me, or the five pesos owed for the vocabulary handouts from weeks before.

Guera, guera, maestra, maestra, I don't think I've heard my real name called out in ages. When I round the corner and step behind our high adobe brick wall into the front entrance and yard of our Mexican compound it is like I am entering a different world. Here I am a North American raising a child, managing with my husband and our household and family. Here I am not as free an agent as I am outside these walls. Here I have history a past and a thread that ties me to my gringa self, and that sometimes rubs me the wrong way while at other times grounds me. I lug my heavy market bag up onto one of the unpainted wooden tables we bought at the Alabastos market. We furnished our home so basically with all unpainted, unvarnished plain wooden furniture. Tables, chairs, a few stools and a set of shelves. That's it. No couch, not really, nothing fancy or extra. I don't even notice how sparse is our home except for the constant echo that prevails because of the emptiness of our white tiled floors and ceiling.

I pull the big green tub out from under the sink. I have long since stopped using the garafon water to wash our veggies. It is too much to use, and too much work for my husband, Harvey, to have to haul the big glass or plastic jugs of water from the corner store or farther. I allow the tap water to run and run, filling the green tub. We have been told by some, that the San Felipe water is safe. We have been warned by others, that it most definitely is not. I squeeze double the amount of Microdyn into the tub and start sorting my veggies and fruit. I soak that which I intend to use for cooking that day, first. If it is broccoli, or tomatoes, fruits which float or veggies that are too tall to fit in all at once I must remember to come back and flip or spin them after fifteen minutes so that any amoebas or bacteria's that await our susceptible gringo stomachs are killed. Washing our market purchases takes a good part of the day. At first I would attend only to that; cleaning, cutting, drying, and storing our Saturday market treats in a refrigerator that is entirely too small. Now, I leave things to soak, do something else and come back to change water or veggies a little later. It used to be a job; time consuming, tedious, a hassle almost. Now it is just a way of life. It slows me down, keeps me close to my food, aware of its nooks and crannies; its size and its floatability. Some Saturdays I try new recipes. Estofado, fish soup, chile rellenos, or a new vegetable crema. It may take me literally all day between the shopping, washing, drying, preparation, periodic visits back to the market for some forgotten or unforeseen ingredient, or visits with Jenny who comes by on Saturdays as her mom goes to the city to take a computer class or do something for the library.

I love Saturdays here in our little village above Oaxaca City. I love when my eleven-year old son Eli ventures out while I am cooking to see if any kids are out in the plaza playing marbles. Eli won at marbles, "canicas" the other day for the first time after five weeks of school and losing. Perhaps it wasn't the first time, but there was something about this particular win that called him to tell me about it. An event in his day that felt important and remarkable to him, and therefore to me!

I wonder if our year here in Mexico will change the lens through which Eli sees the world. He is understanding amazing amounts of Spanish now, and speaking with greater ease and regularity. I notice how much more independent he is. Here in our village, he can wander out to the corner store to buy milk or some other needed item. He is an expert at maneuvering the frighteningly chaotic city streets which in and of itself is remarkable as at home I would continually have to yank him back to the sidewalk as he aimlessly sauntered into the flow of traffic. He is bolder in his stepping out. His courage and willingness to make the best of often difficult situations finds me swelling with pride and respect.

Here in Mexico unlike his very wealthy sheltered life in Marin, Eli is exposed to levels of poverty and struggle that were not visible to him at home. He has experienced a culture that does not hide the raw and open wounds of poverty. Dead animals on the streets, people with festering wounds and children who grow up selling sticks of gum and cigarettes in order that their families may share a meager meal at the end of a day are all daily realities that weave their way through the events of our own. Because of my work with the street children, and because many of the kids in Eli's class have homes without doors that open into rooms with dirt floors, and families that share a single bed in the same room that the wood fire is tended for cooking, these circumstances of a life lived in a country where so many people never go beyond a third grade education because school is a luxury that many families cannot afford, have all become a part of his everyday life. He has become friends with some of these kids. He has begun to appreciate how hard our neighbor Pepe works, and how young he is. He is curious and shocked by the hard-edged street children who move about in their world with a steel attitude of bravado and bitterness, while just under the surface lay a wounded frailty that is heartbreakingly tender.

I hope that my eleven - year old son will walk away from this year with a sense of confidence in himself. He has done something quite impressive here in Oaxaca. He is mastering a second language and sitting in a classroom with mostly indigenous children learning math, social studies and science in a foreign language. He is learning to accept the cultural differences that at times rub up against him so rudely abrasive on his white, privileged, thin skin, and he does so with such grace and generosity.

And of course I hold on to my dream that if we can expose our children to other cultures, other ways of being in the world that when it is their turn to make decisions and policies they will be less likely to create and support the wars that destroy the homes and the families of the children they once knew and hopefully came to respect.

I move back into the kitchen and begin selecting lunch food from the array of floating colors before me, wondering if I will have to run back to the market for one forgotten fruit or another.

~

Teaching Chronicles

By Nicki Blackwell

She looks at me with glazed eyes as I read excerpts from Candide aloud to my 12th grade English class, her posture compliant, but miserable. On the first day, she opens her purse and takes out her mirror and makeup case and lines her eyes in kohl as I read. I choose not to fight this battle and ignore it. We spend two days on the definition of satire, as her makeup routine progresses to include several layers of mascara and a curling wand each day. But she is listening; she chimes in just enough to color the discussions with her wry observations and let me know she is on top of this excruciating topic.

She soldiers on. Then, as we discuss South Park and The Simpsons, her dramatically outlined eyes ignite. She bravely discusses institutions that have failed her family. She illustrates her concerns with clippings she brings in from newspaper articles about the DREAM Act of 2011. This proposed legislation provides a path to citizenship for children who have grown up in the United States, but whose parents are either undocumented or in immigration limbo. Her comments lead the class on to a discussion of the impossibility of building a life in this country without the privileges of citizenship granted to children born in this country. She and the other student share their worries about never getting a driver's license or going to college if this legislation doesn't pass.

This discussion is carried on against the backdrop of the unspoken existence of the many other grim realities that most of my students are facing. These students attend our alternative high school because they are facing a variety of obstacles to completing their education. Some need the flexibility of our schedule because they hold down full-time jobs or have children to support. Many have gaps in their education due to frequent moves, homelessness, health problems, or repeated involvement in the juvenile justice system.

The next Monday, we conclude our discussion of the political repercussions of the DREAM Act of 2011. She discusses the possibility of going to law school with a sense of fatalism, yet a tiny spark of hope is in her Cleopatra eyes. She knows this will be out of the question without the in-state tuition that this legislation would guarantee for her. She asks me to bring in one of my husband's law texts to see if they are actually written in English, since she claims the judges and lawyers she has dealt with speak in a private language all their own. She embellishes this comment with the observation that most gang symbols are easier to interpret, and the class erupts in laughter. I am aware that she knows whereof she speaks, as she is on probation and has a brother who is reportedly gang-involved. Though her eyes continue to be elaborately decorated throughout these discussions, I haven't seen her makeup case in weeks; she must be performing this ritual in homeroom or on the bus now.

The next week, we begin a writer's workshop and I meet with each student to discuss their individual topics. When I speak to her, I ask if she would be interested in writing an article about the DREAM Act for the student newspaper. She agrees, and begins a first draft in her journal. She writes fluidly, her i's always adorned with polka-dotted dots. As I review her work, I find passages that have been pulled verbatim from internet news sites. We meet over lunch to discuss the concept of plagiarism in the age of the internet. She is unaware that interweaving these passages into her original work is considered unethical. I assure her that I know that she had no intent to copy other writers' work. But initially, she is insulted, and refuses to meet my eyes during class for a day or two. As I review her journal at the end of the week, I see that she has begun working on the article again, and uses quotation marks when she references the sites. Her quotation marks curve up and over the letters in an unusual celadon hue. The color reminds me of her favorite eyeshadow. I wonder where she found a marker in such a subtle green. I picture her taking a trip to an art store, roaming the aisles, looking for just the right shade to get her point across to me. In my imagination, she carefully tries out several shades and marker tips on a piece of paper before making a selection, just as I have seen her use her hand as a palette to test a sample of colors before she selects her eyeshadow shade for the day.

She finishes her first draft and we meet again over lunch to have an editing session. I tell her how much I have learned from the research she has completed for this article. I admit that I am ashamed that I wasn't following the details of this important legislation more closely. She tells me, "This is the first time in my life that I have been interested in a political issue. I check every night on the radio to see if there is any news." Her eyes well up, and she rushes across the room to yank a tissue from the box. She folds it into a square and carefully blots the tears under her eyes. She explains to me, "I will never really feel like this country is my home unless the DREAM Act passes. I could never have children, I would be so ashamed, it's like I am a criminal just because I live here. I have to live on the down low even though I have been here since I was five, and it's not fair."

I am humbled by the realization of the shadow lives that she and her family have been living right here in our ridiculously affluent county. For a moment, I choke up and I am unable to speak. She saves me by pivoting gracefully to view herself in the mirror beside my desk. She checks out her mascara, and announces that no damage has been done and that she is good to go.

As we begin class the next Monday, the intercom squawks, and through the static, we all hear she is being called down to the principal's office. At our school, this frequently means that a probation officer is waiting in the office to check out a student's status. The other students are silent and look down at their desks. She reluctantly gathers up her purse and notebook and deftly weaves through the desks and leaves the room without a word or a backward glance. A requirement of her probation is that she always have her monitoring device with her. It was in her backpack, not on her person, as required by law. She leaves school with the officer and never returns to class.

I read her journal entry for the last day that she attended class. She wrote - Good bye Mrs. Blackwell. P. S. You really need to use eyeliner at least under your eyes on the lashline. Green would be a good color for hazel eyes. See you on the highway.

I have never seen her again, but her journal remains next to the plants on the bookshelf behind my desk \- the green doodles she drew on the cover blending in with the leaves of my spider plant trailing over the edge of the shelf, often the first thing that catches my eye when I turn on the light in my classroom each morning.

~~~

New Your City Restaurant 2012 by Ira Joel Haber

Fiction

Dreams in Steno

By Erin F. Robinson

Gwen & Kitten's Ground Truths

By Kimberly Cawthon

Division of New Hope

By Jon Steinhagen

~

Dreams in Steno

By Erin F. Robinson

From the time she was a very small child, Emily dreamed of being a court reporter. Her mother had been a court reporter. Some might even say Emily's mother was one of the best court reporters who ever lived. When Emily qualified to sit for the state licensing exam, the world found itself needing to make room for the new best court reporter, for Emily was gifted in the way five-year-old Mozart was gifted when he first placed his fingers on the ivory keys. The music exuded from him as the sweet breath exhaled from a cherub, just as the words exuded with perfection from Emily's fingertips onto her steno machine.

She passed her licensing exam with five errors when the total errors allowed were 50. This was unheard of, and the examiners re-counted her test three times to be sure. The pass rate for the state licensing exam was 45 percent, and the drop-out rate for court reporting schools was 50 percent, which meant that less than 25 percent of all students would finally pass the exam and become court reporters, most missing just under the allotted 50 errors. Who was this Emily who missed only five? She was more pixie than woman, thin, small stature, black silky hair, delicate nose that turned up just at the end, and pink lips curiously shaped as a piece of Valentine heart candy.

She was sweetheart of her school, and all the instructors doted on her as she typed her tests on the typewriter, "Do you need any white-out, Emily? Of course you don't. You so rarely make mistakes." Her classmates might have been jealous except that they all couldn't bear to be rude to her face, due to her sweetness. Some just talked about her out of her presence or didn't talk to her at all. It's lonely at the top, her father would tell her. And so when Emily received the letter from the state licensing board telling her she'd passed with only five errors, she did not wave the paper in the air or gloat or cheer. She folded it neatly and slid it in her pocket, picked up the steno machine she rented from her school, and returned it for good. It was time to buy a brand-new machine that would be all her own.

"The Charcoal Stentura 8000 with the floppy drive, upgraded memory, and realtime serial port, please," she placed her order into the phone receiver, twisting her finger into the curls of the cord. Charcoal, but she preferred to think of the color as steel. Oh, so sleek. She waited at the door, watching the trucks drive by and make deliveries to her neighbors. The suspense was too much for her. To pass the time, Emily went shopping for her new wardrobe. A court reporter must be dressed impeccably at all times, her mother would say. A string hanging from the hem may as well just mean a word missing from a transcript to an attorney. Black was always a safe color, as well as navy blue. She chose four business suits, two with skirts, two with pants, and a pair of shiny black patent leather pumps.

The package arrived in the mail a week later. It was more beautiful than she'd ever imagined, the shiny black keys, the LCD screen to light up and show her text, the new and improved clutch to prevent the keys from stacking, the smooth steel-colored body. Emily popped open the hood to expose the innards of her Stentura, and as she pressed each key, she adjusted the tensions and the height of the keyboard until everything was just right. Stroking the body of her new machine, she thanked Karl Drais over and over, proclaiming him a genius for inventing such a magnificent piece of machinery.

With her new license card in hand, CSR number 12199, she marched through the columns of the stone-clad courthouse, applied for the open position of official court reporter, and after performing a realtime demonstration for the clerk, was instantly hired.

Shortly after beginning her new job as official court reporter, the nightmares started. They recurred nightly, in slight variation. Rushing to the courthouse, running late because of a faulty alarm, she sits in her seat and realizes that she's forgotten her Stentura. But there is no time to run back home and retrieve it, as the judge is a very punctual man and enters the courtroom, to have the bailiff shout, "All rise. Court is now in session before the Honorable Judge Tiger. Please be seated." And he begins to speak immediately. Emily's thin hands grab for any paper in sight, be it scratch paper, a Kleenex, napkin. She furiously writes the judge's words on the paper, doing her best to hold it down flat so as not to tear it. Please don't ask for a read-back, whatever you do, she prays.

"Madam Court Reporter, could you please read that back?" Her heart stops, the blood draining from her face. And just as she opens her mouth to read back, her alarm would sound, her body springing up, hands clammy with sweat. Oh, thank God, she would whisper to herself. As a precaution, Emily began sleeping with her machine beside her so that she would never cause her nightmares to become a reality. Most single young women living in their very first apartment on their own might take comfort in a worn teddy bear from their youth, but to Emily her Stentura functioned just as well.

It didn't take too long before attorneys circled around their prey in the dark wood paneled courtroom where Emily reported for Judge Tiger. Fresh blood was so tempting, especially when the carrier of the blood came in a bright-eyed, unsuspecting package. Andrew Billings, Esquire, handed her his newly embossed business card when the clerk asked for appearances Monday morning before motions in limine. By Friday evening, they sat at the Royal Exchange, having a drink at happy hour with Andrew's cronies. Green attorneys sat against the padded booth across from Emily, begging her, "Spell out my name in steno! Here's a napkin."

And as she spelled out each of their names, Andrew watched her smirking. "Spell my name now," he asked. She wrote neatly on his napkin with her felt-tip pen, "APB/TKRAOU." One of the greenies said, "Whoa! It's like Sanskrit. How can you read that?"

"The letters are from the English alphabet, so it's not anything like Sanskrit," she said, followed by an awkward silence she perceived as meaning that she'd said something offensive. "Not to quibble, though. Yeah, I guess it is like Sanskrit!" she rehabilitated herself while twirling a tendril of her silky black hair.

But Andrew pursued an explanation for his name. "What's with the slash mark?"

"So in steno you're writing syllables, not individual letters. Your name has two syllables, hence the slash mark."

"What about a word like 'communication'? That's got five syllables. It couldn't possibly be faster to write out five syllables than just typing the word letter by letter," he challenged.

"That's why we come up with briefs, or abbreviations. The word 'communication' I write in one stroke, and it would look like this," and she printed "KPLUPBGS."

"What? That's totally ridiculous! It looks nothing like the word 'communication'!"

"Of course, it doesn't look like anything to you. You don't read steno. Anyway, each reporter learns the basic steno theory, and then depending on her creativity, she can create new briefs or different ways of writing words and even phrases." She looked up from her napkin to meet a table full of blank stares. Why do I even try to explain this, she wondered? It always gets the same response.

She proceeded in simpler language, "It would be like giving a room full of kindergartners a pile of construction paper, some scissors and a bottle of glue and telling them to build a castle. Some of the kids may build a pile of mashed up sticky mess, and some may build a perfectly-to-scale construction paper mansion with all the bells and whistles. It's all about natural talent and creativity. That's what separates the good reporters from the bad ones, my friends." She leaned back against the padded seat, pushing her empty glass to the middle of the table. The green cronies pounded on the table and laughed while Andrew slid his hand onto Emily's knee and squeezed. "Wanna get out of here?" he asked.

In an unprecedented move of impulsivity, Emily grabbed her purse and climbed into his Range Rover. They ended up lying in her bed, sheets tangled around their ankles, Andrew's arm draped around her as he snored. Yet Emily couldn't sleep, her gaze frozen on the lonely Stentura machine charging in the corner of her bedroom. Fearful of the nightmares, her thumb and forefinger gingerly tweezed Andrew's arm off her torso, placing it gently on the bed as she slithered away. She cradled her beloved machine, smoothing it over with her delicate fingers, gripping it by the round lip and placing it between her and Andrew on the bed.

"Emily, why is your court reporting machine in the bed?" Andrew stood over her, his hand on her shoulder, the morning sunlight peeking through the blinds and landing on her face. She shielded her eyes from the brightness.

"And what is this cable doing around your neck?" He plucked at the cord that Emily used to plug her machine into her laptop through the serial port. It was wrapped around her body and plugged into the Stentura at her side. She ungripped the serial port hub in her palm and ran her finger along the ridge the hard plastic had left on her skin.

"I don't know. I just need it close to me."

And so Andrew Billings, Esquire, became a regular guest in Emily's apartment, sharing dinners, rides home from the courthouse, and occasionally bed space. Emily's machine lay lonely in the corner of her room, charging power from the outlet on the wall, the four walls of its carrying case shielding it from the night's cold. While Andrew wrapped her in his arms, she longed to be close to her machine. Night after night, she would slip from his arms and spend the last moments of moonlight lying on the floor next to her machine, smoothing it over with her fingertips, pressing on the keys quietly, sometimes falling asleep for a moment to awake and find her cable wrapped around her body and plugged into her machine, the conduit for their exchange of passions and dreams.

An affection developed between Emily and Andrew that seemed something close to love, but Emily's career as a court reporter took the front burner in their warming relationship. Indeed, she did become the new best court reporter that ever lived, a master at accuracy, a genius at realtime. Her reputation made its way around the courthouse, from courtroom to courtroom, judge to judge, the clerks and bailiffs all whispered behind cupped hands in each other's ears, "Have you heard about Emily? They say her record is perfect, p-e-r-f-e-c-t. All the judges fight over her. The other court reporters can't stand it, now that they have to work harder to keep the pace with her."

The other reporters glared at her through the glass doors of her courtroom, watching her type away on her machine after hours, perfecting her craft, finding new ways to write more efficiently, new strokes to fit in more words at one time, incorporating in the asterisk key to her outlines and programming her software to translate every single piece of steno into an English word, all the while dressed impeccably at her secretary's chair with no arms – the arms get in the way of her flailing elbows when the attorneys start arguing and their speed hikes up to 250 words a minute – and she does all this with the coolness and finesse of a gold-medalist ice skater landing her triple axel.

"Are you really going to sleep with the machine right there? Won't you trip on it if you have to get up in the middle of the night? Also, the light from the charger keeps me awake all night," Andrew mumbled, toothbrush in mouth.

"I don't understand why it bothers you that I like to have it close to me."

"It's just weird. Don't you think it's a little weird?"

"Weird to want to be near the thing that brings me joy, comfort, the thing that makes me feel like I'm the best at something? No, I don't think it's weird at all." She pulled the sheets back, fluffing her pillow.

"Aren't you supposed to be saying that about me, Emily?" he stopped brushing, waiting for a response.

"Fine. I'll move it!" And so she strapped her machine into the suitcase and rolled it into the living room, huffing and puffing with agitation.

In the middle of the night, when the only sound that could be heard echoing through the apartment was the turn of the hand around the clock, Emily felt a longing for her Stentura too painful to ignore. She wandered the hall until her toes met the suitcase that held her machine. Wrapping the cable around herself and plugging it into her Stentura, she curled up beside it on the cold ground, reaching her arm under the suitcase flap and placing her warm hand on the keys. Emily wondered what might happen if she just placed the end of the cable into her mouth, just as kiss, that was all. Her lips touched the plastic as she fell into a deep sleep.

"What the hell is going on, Emily?!?" she heard coming from somewhere in the dark room, her head cloudy from sleep. Andrew stood over her, holding the flap of the suitcase up, and as she looked down at herself, the cable which she had kissed was still in her mouth, pulsing, glowing blue, as if energy was being exchanged somehow between machine and human. He threw down the flap of the suitcase in disgust, rousing her out of confusion. A sense of shame rushed through her, the secret having been exposed, but she also felt relieved at not having to keep it any longer. Andrew stomped down the hallway, and she could hear the shuffling sounds of clothing. Moments later he snatched the keys from the entry table, and as he looked over his shoulder, before leaving through the front door, he said hoarsely, "I can't do this anymore, Emily. I'm sorry."

Emily rolled her suitcase along the rainy sidewalk that led to the front steps of the courthouse, glancing back, making sure to avoid the deep cracks or puddles that might hurt her machine tucked safely inside. Most commuters wore sneakers on the train and then on the walk to work, but Emily strove for utmost professionalism, wearing her patent leather pumps. She thought to herself, this will be great with Andrew gone. I'll have more time to work on my writing. I can read my transcripts faster. But really, what she was thinking was that her Stentura could be in bed with her again.

She tucked her machine in bed beside her, propped against Andrew's pillow, and she fell into a peaceful sleep, dreaming she was in her courtroom and the words from the judge and attorneys puffed out of their mouths and floated up in the air. Fishing for a butterfly net under her desk, she watched the words as they passed by her. And as she swung the net to carefully catch the words, her machine lit up with anticipation, waiting for her to bring the words down to it and place her fingers onto its keys so that they could capture the record together in a synergistic union.

In the morning Emily placed the filter into the coffee maker, admiring her shiny Stentura on the kitchen counter. While she waited for her coffee to percolate, Emily oiled the clutch of her machine, dusted it off, cleaned out the crevices with a Q-tip, and then used the same Q-tip to clean her ears. She cracked her neck and her knuckles, sprinkling a little oil onto her own joints, thinking it couldn't hurt. Andrew would have never let her do this, she thought. Her mind wandered to Andrew, how he'd punch her toast into the toaster, butter it for her just how she liked, nuzzled his nose into her neck as she leaned against the counter. "We've got to take care of each other, you and me," she told her Stentura, shrugging off any remnants of Andrew's nuzzles. As she filled her cup, she lifted it toward her machine and offered, "Coffee?"

The calendar in court that day was light. Judge Tiger had spent the morning ripping apart two attorneys who he caught communicating with jurors outside of court. He'd sanctioned them after giving them a reaming which was both mortifying and exhilarating for Emily to report. There was something she enjoyed in watching beads of sweat slither down the attorney's head, his white-knuckled fist flexing and unflexing as he waited for the agony to end. The transcript would be a treat to read. She could have the afternoon off to work in the courtroom on transcripts if she wanted, Judge Tiger told her. "Or maybe you could even take the afternoon off, Emily?" the judge said.

"Huh? I don't need the afternoon off, Judge. Thanks, though."

Judge Tiger rubbed his balding head with a folded white handkerchief. "Look, Emily. Don't take this the wrong way. It's not that I don't appreciate you, but I think you work too hard. You're young. Don't you want to spend some time with friends? Do you have any hobbies?"

"I like working. And I don't have time for hobbies. I'm trying to make my writing perfect."

"Nobody's perfect, Emily. I really don't mind if you make a mistake here and there. I just want to see you happy. What happened to Andrew? I haven't seen him around lately."

"Oh. We sort of broke up." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"That's a shame. I really liked Andrew," he said, as he stood and turned to step down to his chambers, unbuttoning the back of his robe.

Emily worked diligently on her transcripts, taking a break to unwrap a sandwich she'd packed in a piece of wax paper from home. While she nibbled tiny bites from her lunch, she talked to her machine lovingly, "Don't worry, dear. I'll feed you soon enough," and she pulled a stack of steno paper out of her case, separating the seam along the clear plastic shrink wrap. She placed the stack of paper into her paper tray and fed a leaf through under her machine's roller, securing the paper tightly, testing a few strokes to make sure the paper fed through evenly. Beautiful, she thought. The dark blue ink against the paper brought her such joy, as though she'd pressed the last jigsaw piece of an enormous puzzle down with her thumb. She loved her machine. Together, they just made sense.

And as Emily caressed and cooed her machine, Andrew stuck his head against the window of the courtroom door and watched her. She looked up and her eyes met his. They pled with her in some strange way. She heard the door resist against the lock. He mouthed, "Will you let me in?" Swiveling in her secretary's chair, she turned her back to him and faced her machine.

Emily ignored his phone calls and consumed herself with work, assigned to trial after trial. From motions to jury selection, all the way through deliberation and the reading of the verdict, she and her Stentura were there, collaborating on the perfect transcript for her judge and the attorneys. As they examined their witnesses, she calculated each day in her head how many pages her transcript would be, how many attorneys would order copies, multiplied it by her page rate, letting the growing numbers float around in her head, fantasizing about all the things she and her machine could do with the money. The other reporters called her "Automaton" in the break room, for Emily was becoming slightly robotic, a polite "Hello" here, a "How are you doing" there, with an insincere lilt in her voice and never waiting for a response.

Judge Tiger's growing concern was a nuisance to Emily, who was beginning to feel she was being chastised for her hard work. "Have fun, go on dates, Emily. You should be out there doing things. I only bother you because I care about you. I don't want you to lift your head from your desk one day and find that life has completely passed you by. I mean, at least go outside and enjoy the sun on your lunch break!" To appease him, she unlocked her machine from her tripod and took it outside to sit on a bench and eat her lunch. It was the last day of spring, and the air was crisp with a hint of sweet warmth emanating from the green trees and lawns slowly waking out of hibernation.

She placed her machine beside her, and while she ate her meager sandwich, she asked the machine what he wanted to be when he was young. She nodded while she listened to his silence. "I always wanted to be a court reporter," she said. "I've been in love with words my whole life. The ability to capture them and place them onto a page, the thought that what I do in the courtroom could affect a person's life forever, creating a transcript, a record of history that could be used on appeal for their case...it's just exhilarating, don't you think?" she turned to her machine and smiled. "I've been so happy since you came into my life, did you know that?"

And while she ran her fingers across the smooth keys, a group of pigeons waddled toward her. Breaking the sandwich into little pieces, she spread them at her feet and allowed the birds to scurry around and pick up the remainder of her lunch. She wasn't hungry anymore.

It was dark when she arrived home that evening, fiddling with her keys and propping her carrying case up while she unlocked the door. The headlights of a Range Rover pulled up to the sidewalk, and when she saw that it was Andrew, she scurried into the apartment, rolling her case inside and shutting the door behind her, all in one fluid movement. After she flicked the porch light off, she placed her eye against the peephole to watch him. Yes, he was approaching her door. "Quick, let's hide in our room!" she told her machine while she unpacked it from the case.

He rang the doorbell. "Emily, I know you're in there. I just saw you go in. Look, just let me in. I don't want to fight." She stayed in her room, sitting on the bed with her machine, but he persisted with the ringing, "Emily, come on. Just let me in, please."

She knew he wouldn't leave. The tripod was still in her carrying case. Emily pulled the tripod out and extended it, holding it like a three-pronged sword in front of her for defense as she opened the door.

"What do you want, Andrew?"

"I just want to see if you're okay. I hear people talking about you in court. They're worried about you. I'm worried about you."

"I'm fine, really. I wish everyone would mind their own business."

"You're fine, really? What's with the tripod, Emily? You think I'm gonna hurt you?" He motioned to her weapon.

"I don't know. Maybe. You could have been a burglar, or maybe a psychopath. Who knows these days?" still pointing the tripod at him.

"Can you just put that thing down so we can talk? Look, I care about you. I know things didn't end well between us, but I still care."

"You don't understand me at all, Andrew! Things ended fine between us. You couldn't accept me for who I am, and I'm okay with that. Now, can you just leave me alone?"

Andrew grew solemn and stepped towards her, placing his hand on the tripod, "Can't you just let me in, Em? Can you let anyone in?"

She shoved the tripod at him, prodding him like cattle, insisting that he back off her porch. "Just leave me alone! I'm happy. Can't you just accept that?"

As he turned to walk back to his car, Emily waited until she heard the sound of his engine starting and disappearing before she folded up her tripod and tried to calm herself, feeling clammy and flustered. Emily and her machine spent the evening on the couch, flipping through the channels on the TV screen, not really watching any one thing, stewing over the words that Andrew said which she couldn't quite manage to catch in her net.

Standing before the bathroom mirror, she oiled and dusted her machine, getting it primped for bedtime, also taking time for herself, cracking her joints, applying oil to her skin and massaging it in. She put her pajamas on and slipped a fluffy blue terry-cloth cover over her machine. "Why is everyone so worried about me?" she asked the machine, while she brushed her long, silky hair. And as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, her fingers ran across something that felt familiar on the back of her neck. It felt like the serial port on the back of her machine that she'd felt so many times when plugging it in to hook up to her laptop. Nine perfect pins. She smiled at herself in the mirror. Tucked into bed, she plugged herself into her machine with the serial cable, and as they lay together in the dark, she held her Stentura 8000 close to her, blue glowing energy coursing through her veins and between them, synapses fired and dreams united.

~

Gwen & Kitten's Ground Truths

By Kimberly Cawthon

It is a little known fact that flight attendants are avid fans of true stories...

"Alright Kitten, wow me," Gwendolyn said.

"I don't think you're ready for this one," Kitten said.

They were flight attendants and it was a humid night in the Houston airport. For over a year, the two of them had been meeting once a week in airport lounges around the States to have a strong spirit or a strong coffee—depending on their work schedule—and try their very best to top the other with stories of lives uncommon. The tales were revealed to them high in the sky or in the bustle of a crowded airport during a snow delay. Some were passed along from passengers or other flight attendants both seasoned and new. Each week was a new competition. Have the strongest tale—the best story of love, loss, danger or just a better story than the other.

"Don't build up an inevitable fizzler," Gwendolyn said. "Out with it."

"It's not a fizzler. It's a contender."

"Ha," Gwendolyn said, inserting a piece of spearmint gum.

Gwendolyn was 43 and a goddess of the sky. She was a top-paid stewardess—having paid her dues since 1994—she now ruled the first class flights to St. Croix and San Paolo serving scotch to billionaires and champagne to their post-divorce girlfriends.

Kitten wasn't her real name, but truthfully, Gwendolyn didn't remember her real name. She was 25 and a spring chicken in the world of customer service at 30,000 feet. She was on her second year of employment working for a smaller airline whose domestic flights to boring towns shrunk against the tales of Gwendolyn's dreamy stretches with foreign dignitaries and celebrities.

"You go first," Kitten said.

"Nope. You."

"No. Let's save mine for last. It's a gem."

Kitten was ambitious and it was the only reason she was able to sit across from a professional like Gwendolyn. She didn't just work for one airline but kept another in her back pocket for those days off when she could take the red eye to Denver and wish it was Denmark. She knew, as anyone in the airline business knows, it's all about keeping one's eyes on the up. The longer you stayed in the game, the more exciting the clientele, the cities, and those cities were the reason she wanted a career in the sky.

Gwendolyn didn't have many friends, especially female ones. There weren't many in her pay grade or in chosen lifestyle, but she liked Kitten and made her a weekly guest in her life because she was unique and in a purely vain observation, Gwendolyn saw her old self in the hungry girl.

Somehow, some way, Queen Bee Gwen and Little Fly Kitty kept crossing paths in the airport bathrooms of Baltimore, Miami and occasionally Sacramento, and one late evening in Chicago, Gwendolyn caught Kitten applying eye drops and asked if she wanted a drink before take-off. Kitten agreed.

Gwendolyn drank the last of her red wine and readied her response.

"Alright. This is the absolute truth. There was a woman named Abigail, who, like us, chose a life in the sky. She was an original Pan Am doll, back in the days when you were required to speak French and rock that blue uniform like it was a second skin."

"She was a great beauty who had lovers on 6 continents, vowing to never be a bride, to never retire. At 63 she was still in the air, still in heels and a pencil skirt. She met him on a flight to Rome. He too was 63, a former priest, who, up until that year, had traveled all over the world on Vatican business. They didn't have to chat much because while the cabin was asleep, she sat across from him, the two of them mapping each other's lives by staring into one another. He knew and she knew they had been born and raised and grown old on the same pages of life, and though both were prepared to meet their graves without ever belonging to anyone, when they landed, he grabbed her hand and asked her if she would join him for an espresso and if she felt like it, marry him when her cup was empty."

"A former priest wouldn't talk such a smooth game," Kitten said.

"He had half a century of practice! Let me finish." Gwen continued.

"She said yes. They had cream puffs and macchiatos for breakfast and after, drove his car to Milan where she bought a white Chanel suit. He wore navy D&G. He was feeling quite dizzy over the realization that a long time prayer was being answered by the most perfect woman imagined and while they said their vows, it was he who nearly fainted..."

"Where did they honeymoon?" Kitten said, a smile lifting her cheeks.

"I'm getting there."

"Get their faster."

"Think of it, Kitten, a bride at 63. It's brilliant. It's absolutely stellar, and to a former celibate. And they didn't waste any time, not one more second, because they both knew. The search was over."

"Naturally, the two of them had been absolutely everywhere. They had set both feet in almost every city in the world, smelled the smells, drank the teas. And that night in Rome, after a courthouse wedding, a dinner of perfect cannolis and tiramisu, they lay in each other's arms, listing off cities, one by one, a city uttered after each kiss.

Turks & Caicos.

Been there. 2001. Missionary conference.

Kiev.

Stayed for two weeks during a pilot strike.

Sri Lanka.

Red Cross Relief. 1988 and 1992. You?

Dated an Australian jewelry maker. Took me on a dig for raw topaz.

"And it went like that for two days. They made love and revealed their lives to one another with each new city, each year, each great moment in front of a famous castle, church and monument. Finally, they discovered it, a city they had both never been to."

Kitten leaned forward and crunched a cube of ice from her empty glass of gin and tonic with extra lemon.

"Croatia." Gwendolyn said.

Kitten smiled wide. "I love it," she said. "So simple."

"It's foolish to say "love" concerning places you've not experienced."

"Of course," Kitten's smile dissolved a bit. It was the truth. Kitten hadn't made it to Europe yet. Not even Heathrow. The love came from the As in History class, the A+ in Geography class. And though Gwendolyn often gave little digs like it to remind Kitten of her place in the stewardess hierarchy, she never got mad, but bizarrely loved her for it.

Kitten came from a small, snowy, American town in the heart of farm country and descended from a long line of strong women who were all early wives and mothers anchored to the kitchen floor. None of them could ever pack a suitcase with their best dresses and get on a plane for a weekend of adventure in a new place.

By 22, all of Kitten's friends were married, most with new babies and it would have been easy for Kitten to follow the same path, but there was a magical weekend in Boston after a ballgame and a beer and a bench in a historic park with a handsome bartender that made her crave the tastes and smells of the next town and the town after that. And now, she had been to Boston 87 times. Eventually Boston would become Beirut or Bucharest, because in the flight attendant life, all those flights, all those cities, those dingy airports in the early dawn and late evening, would eventually unlock the world, and one morning, she would get off a plane and be in Kuala Lumpur with eyes and ears forever changed, a lifetime away from kitchen floors and mini-vans. To her, no baby laugh or wedding dress was worth giving it up.

"What's Croatia like?" Kitten asked.

"You know I hate that question. It's different for everyone."

"I know, but still, for the sake of the story."

"Croatia is Sexy wrapped in Lovely," Gwendolyn said.

"A sexy honeymoon at 63..."

"Perhaps there were sexy moments, but the two were so happy to have found each other and to be in a place that was untouched by both their eyes."

"And how long ago was this? Are they still together?" Kitten asked.

"I'm not sure. The woman who told me said she thinks they both got food poisoning from a rare strain of E Coli in the hotel cantaloupe and died a week into their stay. Or, it may have been a different couple she knew and this couple—the stewardess and the former priest—are both 77, holding hands somewhere in Key West."

"Hmmm. I like it. Bravo," Kitten said.

"Shall I crown myself now?" Gwendolyn pulled out a tube of plum lipstick and colored her lips.

"And mine just gets ignored?"

"I don't think you can beat it." Gwendolyn said.

"Alright, hush." Kitten said. "This is the absolute truth. There was a girl flying from LA to NYC and she was a day away from her 26th birthday. She was a traveler, an artist and she was sad about turning 26 because it was the exact age her own mother and father were when she was pushed out of the womb. She felt inadequate because 26 would not be to her, what it was to her parents."

"This is boring," Gwendolyn said.

"Shhhh."

"She was asked what she wanted for her 26th birthday. The only thing she desired more than anything was to watch an old video tape of her parents holding her a few days after her birth. Her mother and father were virgins when they married; they had only known each other. Her dad was a mechanic in the Air Force. He always wanted to fly jets but his bad vision kept him on the ground. Her mother was a travel agent with terrible plane anxiety. She was their first child. When she was born, they had to run some tests so she couldn't leave the hospital for a few days. Her dad went out and bought a camcorder, which in 1986, was not a cheap purchase. They didn't have much money, but he had to have a way to capture the moment."

"He set up the camera in a quiet waiting room and filmed him and his wife sitting on a small sofa, holding the baby girl between them. Then he stood behind the camera, filming her mother as she held her in total silence, staring at her face as her infant self slept; little pieces of plastic around her wrists and feet. Then her mother would sit behind the camera and her father would hold her and put his lips against her hair and his nose against her cheek and not say a word and the film goes on like that for nearly two hours, her parents, both 26 years old, completely, utterly, possessed by the love of their child; holding her in complete quiet."

"And she wanted to know what that would be like, to see her parents at that exact age, holding their child, a little girl who came from the purest love. She saw the tape when she was a young girl, never understanding it. She didn't know if it still existed or how she would find it, watch it, but she wanted to see it more than anything. All their hopes for her in that video, the peace on their faces—she wanted to see, perhaps, what 26 should be and would never be for her. Perhaps if she watched the tape, she could hope for 36."

Gwendolyn was looking at her empty wine glass. She gave a gentle nod. "Did she ever find the tape?"

"I don't know."

"Not bad," Gwendolyn said.

"Not bad?"

"You can't think hippie-gypsy-woe-begotten-parent-tape trumps 63 year-old-bride?"

"It will when I tell you I'm the 26-year-old."

"Bull."

"It's true."

"Prove it," Gwendolyn said.

"I can't. You have to trust me. Is this the look of a liar?"

Gwendolyn peered into her face.

"Of course it is. We're all liars. Every storyteller is."

"Are you sure?"

"No. I'm not sure." Gwendolyn said.

"I totally won. You don't know if I may have just revealed the deepest part of my heart to you, or, if I spun the whole thing. And now you're wondering because it was a strong story and the cards could rule in my favor based on your judgment. Your confusion crowns my head." Kitten smiled.

Gwendolyn scoffed, not yet letting her eyes leave Kitten's.

"From here on out, I declare no personal stories. No non-fiction of any kind."

"Maybe it's not personal. I could be lying my ass off." Kitten smiled.

Gwendolyn looked at her Rolex and sneered. "It's a draw," she said. "Let them be few and far between."

"Fair enough." She stuck out her hand and Gwendolyn shook it. Kitten would count it as a victory. To date, she only had four absolute triumphs against Gwen.

The two women picked up their bags and started to click their heels down the empty paths of the airport. Gwendolyn started to veer off to the international terminal and stopped.

"Where will you be on your 26th?" Gwendolyn asked.

"I start in Milwaukee, then Cincinnati and I think I end in San Jose."

"Nope. Here." Gwendolyn handed her a small piece of paper with a confirmation number written in it.

"You'll get into Zagreb at 1pm."

"Croatia!"

Gwendolyn winked and started walking, pulling her little black suitcase behind her. She turned around once more to see Kitten still standing there, the tiny piece of paper in her hand.

"Which hotel? What should I eat?" Kitten asked.

"Don't know. Never been there."

~

Division of New Hope

By Jon Steinhagen

We are married for a goodly time and then we are not.

What is surprising is how young we are when it is all said and done or should I say when it is all yelled and done. We are finishing while our friends are beginning. We were bright new pennies minty and minted fresh when we had decided to attempt that which our timeworn friends are only now attempting. Marry young. It is still done or at least it was still being done when we did it. Youth is a welcome mat she tells me and she also tells me we never wiped our feet. I tell and have been telling others these friends that our young marriage came about because I wanted to prevent her from being eaten by alligators and there is much truth to this despite all the laughing. We originated as Southerners in all our white trashy glory and gradually migrated to Yankeedom and that is perhaps why we are still young after enduring so long together.

But this isn't about our era of non-eternity and starry-black-eyedness. This is about our work in the Division of New Hope.

We continue to see each other every day except Saturday and Sunday because our paychecks come from the Division of New Hope and our offices are at opposite ends of the grand echoey waxed and ringing Third Floor. Most often we are reminded of each other in passing. We nod as others nod or split a flat good morning. We sit at the same long smooth table on the last Thursday of every month. I see reports that betray her authorship and she sees ones betraying mine. She is occasionally assigned to one of my teams or I to one of hers where neither of us are the leader. We are professionals which is to say that we are naturally how we are to each other and are not performing and there is no tension. Those who work with us have no idea we are no longer married because they did not know we were married. My name is very common and she took it and this name is so common that three others on our floor have it and so you see we weren't special after all just shareholders of a few letters of the alphabet. We could be siblings. We could be cousins. We could be anyone.

But this isn't about the adjustments we never needed to make. This is about our work in the Division of New Hope.

***

Recently on a field exercise she asked me if I had met anyone.

I meet people all the time.

You know what I mean.

I do and therefore my pretending I do not would seem to indicate that it is none of your business to begin with.

All right then do not answer my question.

The only reason you asked the question in the first place is because you yourself have "met someone" and you want me to know therefore by asking me you think I will ask you in return which saves you from coming right out and saying it.

And by taking great delight in your windy deduction you answer my question after all because if you had "met someone" you would have answered yes to begin with.

Unless this game of verbal tag we are now playing is my way of saying this is hardly the sort of conversation one conducts in a professional setting.

I still conclude you have not "met someone."

I meet people all the time.

***

I must mention at this point that there is no reason why she and I should not and could not be meeting people in the way she means and she means romantically. I am forty and so is she or at least she will be three weeks from Tuesday and she is still quite lean and active and treads gently and I am of course heavier but it is solid heaviness and one side of my haircut is splashed with silver and I am told it is most distinctive and sexy.

But this is not about our retention of our youthful unchildrened bodies or our current market value. This is about our work in the Division of New Hope.

You are no doubt aware of the Division and its purpose so there is little I can add to that. Let me point out that in the work we do at the Division of New Hope she has and always has had a completely irritating way of collecting information while in the field. She cannot help but ingratiate herself with the families we meet. She behaves as if this ingratiating manner is inbred, but it is not nor can it be to anyone in our line of work. Watch her sometime. It is a trick of the neck and tilt of the chin and children and adults are won over. I should say watch the people she interviews rather than watch her as it is always the case that you can learn more about a work of art by watching anyone react to that work of art than you can by looking at the work of art yourself. In this way you will see that her effect, that is the effect she has on everyone except me who sees it for what it is you can see that she causes the same sort of reaction children in Kenya display when watching Charlie Chaplin for the first time. The gleam from the exposed happy teeth could blind you.

I cannot call her out on this because it is not overtly an overt thing and there is nothing in our code that says we cannot bewitch our research. My secretary once let it slip during a lunchtime lapse into candor that people are only intimidated by things they cannot do and people they cannot be. My secretary is a very wise lady almost fifteen years my senior and is most adept at the xerographic machine and even though she speaks well enough and wisely I believe she got it incompletely. I believe we are irritated by the appearance of comfort in others when there is none in ourselves. That is intimidation.

I am not saying that I am or ever was intimidated by she who used to share my bed and breakfast nook. I am making an observation of how she is able to achieve something that no one else can achieve and there ought to be a law against it.

***

Every now and then I am required to have a word or two with her after the morning prayer.

Good morning. I have received an invitation to so-and-such's wedding.

I have not.

I know.

Because they still think we are yoked.

It is not my fault if your friends cannot remember the slightest things.

Slight is right.

I will not rise to that.

Very well.

I merely mention this because I assume you will not wish to be seen with me.

You are mentioning this because you don't want me to come with you.

I did not for one moment think you would be seen with me.

I am seen with you now.

We are in a professional setting.

You can be such a child.

I may not go myself.

Then give me the invitation and I will bring a guest.

The invitation clearly invites us and does not invite one or the other with the enjoinder "and a guest."

Give me the invitation.

Here it is.

Thank you.

You have ripped it in two.

I'll take my half and you can take yours.

You are obviously the one who is behaving like a child.

I'll either see you there or I won't.

***

But this is not about our labored negotiations and reterritorializing. This is about our work in the Division of New Hope.

My secretary has taken to saying things like there are no shades people either do something or they do not do something. She is almost completely correct. I believe people either choose to do something or they choose to not do something. I tell her one word I tell her Choice. Choice. Choice. It is all choice.

We see each other on Saturdays and Sundays now because business is being forced to boom and there are more of us and there is great urgency and we have been issued blazers the color of picnic sunshine. You cannot miss us.

She believes in our work and I believe in our work and we have been with the Division for a goodly time and we are for the most part looked upon as stalwarts and we can answer any questions you might have. She has taken to letting her hair grown long and chestnutty and I have been learning that I cannot have dinner with ladies fifteen years my junior. It is not the great canyon of years that is bothersome it is the small cracks in flexibility. I am expected to remember everything I say and wish and want and not only remember it all but to never swerve. I am constantly reminded that I am a contradiction and this did not seem to matter before. I am learning that I am still improvising and I do not understand why nobody values improvisation anymore. Perhaps nobody ever did and she and I were unique in that; that was all we knew how to do. We knew how to not do things.

On the day I screw up the courage to ask I be relieved of fieldwork I find that she has already asked and been granted leave from fieldwork. I throw myself into fieldwork. I am earnest in my research and quick. I am a dynamo.

Q: Do you foresee a change?

A: Not really.

Q: Do you want a change?

A: Definitely.

Q: Can you imagine a change?

A: Sure.

Q: What are you willing to do for that change?

A: What are my options?

Q: Answer the question if you please. What are you willing to do for that change?

A: Whatever you say.

***

I am a fountain of work in my dazzling coat and my still young self. I devise new questionnaires and leave them breathless.

Q: Do you know the meaning of happiness?

A: Happiness is being happy.

Q: Since you do not know the meaning of happiness are you willing to be told the meaning of happiness?

A: Sure.

Q: And once you learn the meaning of happiness would you share it with others?

A: Of course. Except my cousin Jeff, he's pretty much a douche.

Q: What if I told you it is not happiness that we're after?

A: It's not?

Q: Answer the question.

A: I'd be confused.

Q: What if I told you it is new hope we are after?

A: I would wonder what the new hope is.

Q: Something better than the old hope, something that improves upon the old hope, something that makes the old hope look like despair.

A: Sign me up.

***

I see her skirting the great glossy hallway as I approach. I see her without her blazer. I have no invitations in my pocket. I have no memoranda to pass along. We are weeks away from the next long table meeting. I have nothing.

I take to returning to where I live and sitting in the one comfortable chair by the window with a single lamp burning over my shoulder. Some nights I fail to remove my blazer. I am interested in the little slice of world I see from my window. I watch the plunging of the buildings into darkness the springing of the interiors into light the slivers and crescents and slices and cookies of the moon. I stop coming up with ways to improve the work we do at the Division of New Hope. My imagination has exhausted itself.

***

I see her sitting outside her own office and ask her if she is waiting to see herself.

Don't be an idiot.

I trust all is well.

You may trust.

If all is not well I hope you know I am all ears.

Oh I'll bet you are.

I have not seen you in the field.

That's because I've not been in the field.

If you do not wish to talk to me then say so.

I don't want to talk to you.

***

My secretary waters my plants and says things like roots grow deep unless the plants are in pots. I do not correct her.

Q: Do you like this coat?

A: It's awful bright.

Q: Doesn't it cheer you up?

A: It's ugly and annoying.

Q: Really?

A: You look like a goddamn life raft.

Q: Perhaps I am.

A: Look, I'm busy.

Q: Wait, wait. Are you aware of the work we do?

A: Vaguely.

Q: And?

A: I think you're fools.

Q: We're trying to convince you.

A: Of what?

Q: Of whatever it is you need to be convinced.

A: I don't need to be convinced of anything.

Q: You can't just give up.

A: Too late.

Q: Too late? Then how do you survive?

A: What kind of questions are you asking?

Q: The wrong ones, it seems.

***

I see her next in my office.

Listen, I told this guy I met this really nice guy I told him I'd had an abortion.

But you've never had an abortion.

I know but that's what I told him.

I am still trying to figure out why you told a really nice guy you had an abortion.

I felt it was better than telling him I fell.

And now I am trying to figure out why you are telling me all this.

Because for the first time in my life I've figured out how to lie.

Oh.

I mean lie without provocation.

There must have been provocation.

No I don't think so.

Then what do you think.

I think he was a really nice guy and I should get out of here.

***

As our numbers increase and our fieldwork expands there is resistance. This is a shock to all of us. We had been doing so well. My secretary is let go. I am forced to do everything myself. The xerographic machine does not like me. We are asked to return our coats. We wear our own clothes. We have meetings at the long table every other day. She is no longer there.

Q: Do you foresee a change?

A: Why not? Change is inevitable.

Q: Do you want a change?

A: We've already had a change, a big one.

Q: Can you imagine a change?

A: Once upon a time I didn't know what to imagine. I was of the mindset that everything was bright and new and perfect and whatever was going to happen to us would just happen and that would be exciting. It wasn't so much about things changing, it was about things flowing. I don't suppose you'd understand. Although you did, once.

Q: And what are you willing to do for that change?

A: I didn't answer your previous question.

Q: Then answer it.

A: I can't answer your questions because we're not really listening to the answers. We never did.

Q: What if I told you it is new hope we are after?

A: I'd wonder what the so-called "new hope" is.

Q: Something better than the old hope. Something that improves upon the old hope. Something that makes the old hope look like despair.

A: We didn't despair. And don't say we did. We just didn't know what we were doing. But at least we're young, we're youngish, the roots don't go that deep, do they, even after twenty years? Because we were young and are still young? Right?

Q: This is not about us. This is about the work we do in the Division of New Hope.

Which closed last Friday.

~~~

Low Tide Oyster Harvest by Pete Madzelan

Poetry

**Riversong** by Jenny Root

**The Commute by Benjamin Norris**

**untitled by Simon Perchik**

**Lovers in a Cellar by Kevin Oberlin**

**State of Motion by Paul Sacksteder**

**Apprenticeship by Sandy Hiortdahl**

**Streetlamps as Milemarkers by Clair Bowman**

**Fast Food by Jonathan Holland**

a previous version of this poem was published in Twizted Tungz magazine

A Hard Day Teaching **by** **Patrick Frank**

previously published Open Salon.com blog

**Bending** by Sherilyn Lee

**How to Survive on Ketchup and Water by Danielle Hunt**

**With Pantyhose** by April Salzano

**ANGEL # 2,473, N SERIES by Sarah Brown Weitzman**

~

Jenny Root

Riversong

for Karinna

You're near him in the taverns, the alehouse

jugbands that grok the shimmy-jimmy long-

haired swing and jive, the banjo

and washboard can make you feel he's

again alive, those thimble-fingers clack-

clacking the rhythm so quick and sure

you forget for awhile the life you'd planned,

babies and other bands, music

on the road with bards and troubadours

singing and spinning beside you

while you dance or play, but you're working,

now, work hard and long until it aches,

dullness takes away the sharp pain

of his absence, grounding you in the life

you live with passion and dance, the glass

pendant of his ashes a presence

you're never without, like the river

of music and work, work and dance, as now

you know it is the dance that heals

even in the undertow.

~

Benjamin Norris

The Commute

Doors drag themselves, and we thrust through

reeling from signs that flicker and switch

with shutter-speed trips, cutting this way and back.

We take pains avoiding inky gazes –

the strange and the fattened, locked into their wrists,

caught up in the stars, the columns of tales –

families, lost wives, the barking, the sad

the girls who have murder cut into their hands.

The morning's still flashing, in typical ways –

attempting to prove that changes can come

from this tepid wash of English skies, these

towns pulled from marshlands, the days have drained

such wonders. They built with all intentions –

riveted, nailed, knocked up by top hats,

industrious line upon line, now held

in ghost-faced postcards, praised at stations.

The coast breaks my sight, and somebody tuts

at the sun slashing through the uniform blinds.

A shot of blue, a stretch of sand is caught before

the cities sprint towards us.

~

Simon Perchic

Every wall has a resting place

kept warm though in the dark

it drains, overgrown with cracks

and grasses you brush on footpaths

the way every greenhouse is nourished

heated by the mouth on your mouth

\--another coat seems reasonable

so you paint this wall over and over

till what's left standing overflows

never dries into that slow love song

from before the sun grew huge

it would fit into this room, had time

to stay and night not yet surrounded

falling behind, from far away

weeping into nothing at all.

*

This fire escape once outside

already knows the risk

yet it's the tenement

abandoned, clinging to a street

fallen to its death

as sunlight, still in the open

\--the sun is not enough

two are needed, they calm

each other and side by side

\--two suns! mouth to mouth

the way all wings open

wave to the dead

even with your eyes closed

the morning larger than usual

the fire that is your home.

*

This rain has no moisture left, falls

as the light from bells

struck from behind

the way all hillsides

are hollowed out for stars

no brighter than this grass

though these graves never know

where next, they listen

for pieces, reminded

by how the first sun

broke apart --they hear it

in the dried up warmth

for which your shadow is made

\--what they hear

no longer remembers

your heart was where

it was safe

and before your heart

waves that started its cry

toward the second sun

and then another, then another

and yet this rain comes back

even without a sky

comes as in the beginning

in splendor, not yet a morning

on the over and over thirst

still not allowed in the open.

*

Unless this knob, as usual

swollen the way each star

still has to be pulled sideways

\--what makes the door shriek

is just its darkness reaching out

for crumbs, hungry, terrified

\--for a long time now

these hinges haven't worked

clogged by your hand

turning on the light

to tell from where it falls

the year, the month :the sides

closing in --night after night

and once alongside

they forget how dark it was

force the door to stay awake

count from the beginning

and over your shoulders.

*

Still uneven, this dirt

was built from leftovers

that never dry, smoothed

then fills your chest

with salt, used again

as shoreline and thirst

though you lower your lips

for the finishing touch

not yet swallowed in anger

\--what you bury is the Earth

this time in pieces, unsure

where the mouth goes

once made into a rain

already dust

that doesn't bother anymore.

~

Kevin Oberlin

Lovers in a Cellar

The windows shudder in the rain

like the creak beneath the chair's thick claw

or crickets lost in the quack grass:

everything an echo, same and same again.

A voice from TV shimmies down the stairwell

as we ferret under the carpet,

sweep out corners, run the water,

cock our ears against the furnace.

Same and same again.

We start at the shift of night sounds,

flashlights over the door of sex.

Listen, it's the owl in the poplar.

The streetlight blackens the branches

crossed beneath it like our mingled etymologies.

We've relinquished all our mortal names,

as if we could re-love in treason all we think we love.

Other night. Other lover. Same and same again.

I'll remember not to bury you, but by your wish

inter you where you sleep, ripe for resurrection,

a parody of my crooked throat.

Plainchant rises from the blades. Another choir

shifts like damask, overtaking human noises.

This is the culmination of all our efforts:

like a woman, like a cricket, like a storm.

~

Paul Sacksteder

State of Motion

I'm moving so purposefully

We are returning home from Ely

The high desert is all sky

And weightlessness

I imagine all the points of friction on my body

Until my skin crawls and I can't move

Paralyzed by my inability to find removal

The car still moving

The mountain lions have migrated to California

Despite the predictions of ecologist

Adam at last saw the bighorn sheep

As he was on his way to Phoenix

Jess and Paul are leaving for Utah

My parents are driving in their car

Across the river

To some place in Indiana

All these objects in motion

There's an interstate. Running through Las Vegas. And

sometimes the lights overhead flicker off. Always suddenly.

It doesn't matter much though. You've got your own headlights. The

road seems closer to you. Pulling you forward without

the shadows the lights create. Of course there are other

cars. People. Moving through similar space. Sometimes singing.

Or talking to themselves. Or these days on some hidden

cell phone. Still. I like to imagine that we're all heading to the same place.

That we'll end up at the same party. Next to a fire.

This simple orange glow. My

imagination leaves nothing out. And I can love. Wishing with

all my best. That these friends. End up somewhere

lovely.

~

Sandy Hiortdahl

Apprenticeship

Mark Twain's chair is wicker painted

White as his hair, interlocked

Strands of riverbed reed,

Smooth-cornered and there's

Tennessee Williams in one of those

Green aluminum lawn chairs

With saggy, frayed seat

Stirring the olive around his martini while

Katherine Anne Porter and Flannery O'Connor

Jest about the recent weather,

Seated together on a sturdy

Bench, their mirth catching the attention of

John Gardner, whose strong hands rest on the

Polished oak arms of a rocking-chair

Carved with the North wind's face:

His hair gleams and blue smoke curls from his pipe as

Under the eyes of these masters are others like me,

Hammering, upholstering, somehow oblivious

As they hold and mold the chairs

They will sit on, the chairs and benches they create.

James Joyce saunters over, announces

"It's tea time" but the masters

Laugh and Jim grins at me.

It's a joke they know, but as for me,

I struggle with the rough edges, balancing this borrowed

Ball-pein hammer, these tacks and paisley fabric,

Stretched across the base, resisting me:

I will kneel to try again, to get it right, to make it work.

~

Clair Bowman

Streetlamps as Milemarkers

I want to see you again,

cigarette poised between two fingers of

your gesturing hand, smogging up the air between our faces.

It was winter because it felt like winter, no matter what the month.

Splitting up Normal Street on my bicycle with street lamps as

milemarkers, another wine night in which no one learns anything

new about each other, and there is still the loud drone of music that

doesn't quite fit our moods, we don't even reach a collective mood,

but shamble like pinballs from dim room to dim room, folding ourselves in blankets

of restlessness and intoxication.

Well, I wasn't exactly looking for the holy ghost.

just a few moments to braid together into something

that could justify living in that little town.

But now there is no drama conjured in remembrance

all that comes to mind is the gleam of sun playing across your eyelashes

at Rainbow Basin, while I try to figure out exactly what has changed about the world to make you look so different.

~

Jonathan Holland

Fast Food

Front Counter:

"Seriously, how hard is it to

put damn food in a bag."

You're not sure

if they

require an answer

"Hello! Chicken fag, are you deaf too!"

Voices elevate and faces flush

at any moments delay

or scent of a mistake

Anyone could do this

and they

make sure to let you know

Batter—dip—batter—drop

The only reason

You're here is

because you fucked up somewhere

along the line

You know you're an idiot because

the customer is always right and

the flower caked sweat on your face

tells them you enjoy being insulted

Poking the stubbled chin over

his shoulder, he loudly whispers

"Can you believe the morons they hire at these places?

To them

shredding your ego

is as appetizing as the chicken.

Drive Thru:

"Hey burger Bitch, you gonna take my

order, or should I come in and make it myself?"

Silver Mercedes chrome rims

Black Beemers tinted windows

cars you'll never be able to do more than

compliment circle the drive thru

and shove money at you

God forbid any real person

see their chubby faces

Why that would be horrible for

their reputation

"I ordered honey mustard. You never put it in there."

You hold the bag out of the widow

Snatch—Search—Sour look—Skiiirrt!

You don't deserve a thank you

let alone a smile You work

for them

and don't forget that

Their

five dollar meal pays

your peasant wage

The customer

is KING and you are you

Your voice turns on auto response as

beeps and ass holes blare through your

headset.

A beaten red minivan pulls

to the window with

rust climbing six inches from

each tire

The gear jerks into park

clank—clank—clank!

The window won't roll down

so she opens the door and

extends her jelly jiggling arm

"Ma'am, I'm really sorry,

I'm going to re-ring

your order to make it cheaper.

We have a sale going on."

All you see are cheeks and gaps

of gums between teeth

You hand her bag out in exchange

for a wadded clump of cash.

"I appreciated it" she winks

and pulls away

Her smile is contagious

and you yawn a grin

A previous version of Fast Food appeared in Twixted Toungz magazine.

~

Patrick Frank

A hard day teaching,

the drive to work scary, just before dawn, on a rain-washed two-lane road.  I do this because of the first graders, so trusting, filled with life.  I don't feel like eating.  The world is going crazy.  What can be done?  Winter is drawing closer.  There is a savage wind.

A Hard Day Teaching was previous published on OpenSalon.com/blog

~

Sherilyn Lee

Bending

I'm waiting for my insides

to stop smoldering. So I left my

ringing phone and today's 57 new

emails for the Redondo Beach pier.

I've worked nearby for years and

never stopped by for a break.

Today I sit under a tree,

Waves roll and break,

people ride bikes on the path,

kids shout,

leash tags on dogs jingle,

a bus exhales,

a guy rolls by on his Segway.

Months ago, leaning forward with a crisp

linen napkin in my lap a friend warned

You never get this day back. Ever.

A mosaic of bark protects this tree.

Its boughs pinned with thick green leaves

pointing away from the shore;

they bend.

No one at work was waiting who

couldn't wait just a little longer.

These limbs yield to this

breeze and today so do I.

~

Danielle Hunt

How to Survive on Ketchup and Water

I want you to fig-tail

your ass

like a bell ringing

in perfect succession.

Climb up

those stairs like your ankles

are the last

pair of delicate bones

on this earth.

Let those elbows

hang like carved oak branches,

melon smooth, reeking of sun

and pheromonic-

salts. Whistle

past old-lady

Doreen and her thousand plants,

past the hippies and their drum circle,

past the odd couple

who look like

opposing chess pieces.

Let 'em take

bites of the air behind you.

~

April Salzano

With Pantyhose

around my poem's legs, control top

to hold her middle-aged middle in,

she is kegeled into satisfactory shape,

presentable but not perfect.

I go back to her second stanza,

add some Spanx,

cinch her belt a notch. Better.

Her penultimate line is hanging out

of the skirt I've sewn by hand. This

will never do. I shoo her into the bathroom.

When she does not re-emerge, I go in

after her. Too late.

She is on the floor, pantyhose

around her neck, totally deconstructed.

~

Sarah Brown Weitzman

ANGEL # 2,473, N SERIES

He's been warned so many times

that he will be seen

but he can't resist

those yokeless cakes

he thinks were named for him

and the chewy hinges

of scallop shells.

White or not, they make him visible

to sharp-eyed children

though no one will believe them.

"Saw an angel, did you, Kid?

Eyes like diamonds and

huge fold-up wings. Catch one

and I give you a dime."

He doesn't think it's fair

that he has to keep out of sight

while the K Series who glow

amber as caution lights

cannot be seen

except by the dying.

He studies stones

to see if they'll ever move.

He loves snow flurries and

burst dandelions' milky spores

like a trillion single wings

trying to hook up in mid-air.

He lets them fall

on his tongue. They taste bitter

as stardust but softer.

He hopes he'd be assigned soon.

He's noticed the Guardians

those goodygoodies lining up

to give their reports.

Their jobs make them sad.

They have long memories

but he seems to have none.

Nobody has told him

the reason for the delay.

He hovers and waits

while he watches as a father

beats his son, a young woman falls

in love with her jailer,

someone gives birth

to a dying child while

in another town a man loses

his farm, and in another state

a man is murdered. For

centuries he's been waiting

for someone to tell him

what angels are supposed to do.

~~~

Art Gallery

Do You See What I See

Greg Glau

New York City Restraunt 2012

Ira Joel Haber

Low Tide Oyster Harves

Pete Madzelan

Powered Sky

Leah Givens

Snake Work

Susana H Case

Calvert and Preston

Toni Martsoukos

~~~

Powered Sky by Leah Givens

About the Poets, Authors, and Artists

**Patrick Frank** is a poet-essayist-songwriter with a teaching-counseling background and advocate for the poor from Arden, NC. His work has been published in about 60 periodicals and anthologized four times. He has self-published two books. About himself Patrick states,"In my writing I strive for clarity, depth and a sense of mystery. I have been influenced by international poetry and Eastern-Native American philosophy. Personally, I am married and we have three adult kids between us. My wife is an artist and crafter. Currently, I am writing new poetry and working on a book of essays on personal growth."

**Jonathan Holland** has a sense of humor that curdles milk. He writes fiction, poetry, and screenplays but won't write his own bio, so he barters with fellow writers for the 50 to 100 words all about him. Jon will study creative writing and screenwriting at Indiana University in the fall. He volunteers at a youth shelter, helping teenagers express themselves through writing.

**Sherilyn Lee's** poems will appear in forthcoming editions of _The Mochila Review, The Rockhurst Review, The Lindenwood Review, the museum of americana,_ and _Emerge_. Her first manuscript "Under the Ginkgo Tree" was a finalist in the 2010 National Poetry Series Open Competition. "Defying Gravity," her second manuscript, was short-listed for the 2012 Phillip Levine Prize in Poetry. Sherilyn earned her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University Los Angeles. She lives in southern California where she is a referee-in-training for The Los Angeles Derby Dolls.

**April Salzano** teaches college writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is working on her first several collections of poetry and a memoir on raising a child with Autism. Her work has appeared in online and print journals such as Poetry Salzburg, Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Rainbow Rose, The Camel Saloon, Bluestem, Centrifugal Eye, Weekenders Magazine, Deadsnakes, Montucky Review, Daily Love, Visceral Uterus, Work to a Calm, Crisis Chronicles, Windmills, Inclement and is forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly. The author also serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press.

**Simon Perchik** is an attorney whose poems have appeared in _Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker_ , and elsewhere. For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled "Magic, Illusion and Other Realities" and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

**Benjamin Norris** is a published poet and author from Bristol, UK. His work is regularly featured in a wide range of literary magazines and journals on both sides of the Atlantic.

**Danielle Hunt** has grown up in Northern and Southern California. Her work has appeared in Muse, Harlot of the Arts: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion and Web Del Sol and crackthespine.com. She currently lives in Riverside, California with her daughter and husband and has a fabulous garden.

**Sandy Hiortdahl** lives with her best friend, an Australian Cattle Dog named Kismo Blue, in a small brick house in East Tennessee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming this year in Punchnel's, Barely South Review, Alimentum Journal,  OCEAN Magazine, Poetic Story/KY Story, MatterPress Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Nemesis. Learn more at www.sandyhiortdahl.com or tweet her @hiortdahl

**Paul Sacksteder** lives in Las Vegas where he is a stay-at-home dad, teaches, and occasionally ventures outside when its not so hot. His work has recently appeared _Hawaii Review, Sun Skeleton,_ and _Barnstorm._

**Kevin Oberlin** writes in Cincinnati, where he also plays the piano, video games, and with his dogs. His chapbook, Spotlit Girl, won a Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize and was published by Kent State UP.

**Sarah Brown Weitzman** , a Pushcart nominee last year, has had work in numerous journals and anthologies including _Art Times, Rattle, The North American Review, American Writing, Potomac Review, The Bellingham Review,_ and _The Mid-American Review_ , etc. Her second chapbook, _THE FORBIDDEN AND OTHER POEMS_ was published by Pudding House in 2004. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. A full-length volume of her poems, _NEVER FAR FROM FLESH_ came out in 2005. Sarah's latest book, _HERMAN AND THE ICE WITCH_ , a children's novel, was published in 2011 by Main Street Rag.

**Jenny Root's** poems have appeared in numerous literary journals including basalt, Cloudbank,Edge, Windfall, and Elohi Gadugi Journal, with a poem forthcoming in The Meadowland Review.Her work has been anthologized, most recently in What the River Brings: Oregon River Poemsand New Poets of the American West. She lives and works in Eugene, Oregon. Her first collection of poetry The Company of Sharks will be out this fall.

**Erin F. Robinson** holds an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from California State University East Bay. She is the current Fiction Editor for Arroyo Literary Review. Her work has appeared in Ducts.org, The Autumn Sound Review, The Literary Yard, is forthcoming in Blue Hour Magazine, Century 121, and her magazine reviews have appeared in NewPages.com. While not writing or editing, she works as a court reporter in Oakland, California.

Kimberly Cawthon strives to love, travel and write it all down. She is a true southwestern girl and sunshine addict who grew up in the wide open states of New Mexico and Arizona. She is a fiction writer, playwright and educator who recently earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University. Her additional fiction has appeared in Four Ties Lit Review and Love on the Road. She is also a reader for Thin Air Magazine. Her ten-minute play, Egg Whites & Cantaloupe,was recently performed by the Northern Arizona Playwriting Showcase. When not making sun tea and working on her tan, this summer she will complete her first fiction novel of interconnected short stories entitled, Her Gold. She currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona.

**Jon Steinhagen** is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and published author (print and online) of fiction, recently in _The Atlas Review, Cloud_ _Rodeo,_ _Green Briar Review, Wigleaf_ and _The American Reader_ , and forthcoming in _The Minetta Review._

**Nicki Blackwell** teaches English at a Virginia public high school, and has worked for over twenty years as a psychologist in a variety of clinical settings. She studied at All Writers' Workplace & Workshop with director and fiction writer Kathie Giorgio and instructor and essayist Carolyn Walker, and belongs to a writers' group with a focus on literary nonfiction. She's been inspired by her students to tell their stories and to reconnect with her own early memories.

**Kristine McRae** lives in Nome, Alaska with her husband and daughter, though they often migrate to the interior for the warmer summers. She is in the final stages of completing her MFA in the low-residency program at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

In 2001 **Nina Vincent** traveled and lived in Oaxaca Mexico with her eleven year old son, and husband. During that year she worked in a center for street children teaching typing, and then reading. Her work with the street children was at times deeply rewarding, and always challenging. But their work to survive, and make sense of a life that rarely delivered them an easy break was far more difficult than her own.

Ten years back from their year in Oaxaca, Nina currently lives with her husband and their eight year old adopted daughter from Guatemala.

**Toni Martsoukos** is a Baltimore native. She grew up in South Baltimore and spent a lot of her childhood roaming around Fort McHenry. She is a lover of live music and a foreign film enthusiast with previous experience creating, maintaining and updating the foreign film section for an independent video store for seven years. Toni has been cultivating a rapt interest in photography for the past three years. Many pictures are taken with her iPhone 4 and many have recently been taken with her Nikon 1, a birthday gift from the most generous brother in the world, George.

**Greg Glau** is Associate Professor and Director of the University Writing Program at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Greg has co-authored several textbooks and written numerous academic journal articles, and some of his photographs have been published in those texts as well as on book covers. Greg's photographs work to provide an unusual perspective on the beauty of nature.

Greg's prints are on display in NAU's University Writing Program office as well as in the English Department offices.

Greg's prints also are currently on display (with Greg Larkin's photography) at the NAU Bursar's Office, and The North Country Health Center main office. The "two Gregs" had a 2011 show at the New Frontiers Natural Marketplace and at NAU's College of Arts and Letters Dean's office.

With his daughter Trace Glau, Greg has been part of Flagstaff's First Friday Art Walk, for the last four years. Their work was featured in the October 2011 issue of MOUNTAIN LIVING magazine.

**Pete Madzelan** resides in New Mexico with his wife and cat, Manny. Relaxing moments find him traveling and studying the southwest; visiting breweries and enjoying photography, baseball and music from a select group of songwriters, which are needed outlets away from his yearly failed experience at gardening.

Currently he has fiction in The Dying Goose; forthcoming in Poydras Review. Photography in Epiphany-epiphmag.com, Pachinko, BRICKrhetoric, Foliate Oak, Cactus Heart, convergence: journal of poetry and art, and Vine Leaves Literary Journal; forthcoming in Bellingham Review, San Pedro River Review and Aperion Review. Has had fiction and poetry published in Cigale, Bellowing Ark, Wind.

**Ira Joel Haber** was born and lives in Brooklyn New York. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum & The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 100 on line and print magazines including  _Brew City Magazine, Superstition Review, Ellipsis, Taj MahalReview, Paradigm, The Houston Literary Review, Wheelhouse Magazine, Front Range, Meat For Tea, Pinyon Review, Monongahela Review, Cleaver Magazine,The McNeese Review, Red Fez & New York Dreaming_ _._ He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists' Fellowship Inc. Currently he teaches art at the United Federation of Teachers Retiree Program in Brooklyn.

**Susana H. Case** is a Professor and Program Coordinator at the New York Institute of Technology. She is the author of: Salem In Séance (WordTech Editions), Elvis Presley's Hips & Mick Jagger's Lips (Anaphora Literary Press) and 4 Rms w Vu (Mayapple Press, forthcoming in 2014). Please visit her online at:http://iris.nyit.edu/~shcase/.

**Leah Givens** ' photographs have appeared in journals including The Colored Lens, The Bellingham Review, and Drunken Boat. Her work was shown in a juried exhibition at the St. Louis Artists' Guild. Her educational background is primarily in medicine; she received her M.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and has focused on medical research. She is also a published author of short fiction and recently completed a novel manuscript.

~~~

About the Editors and Readers

Khara House is a graduate of the Master's program in English / Creative Writing at Northern Arizona University and the author of a blog for writers Our Lost Jungle.

Laurie Wolpert is a graduate of the Master's program in English at Northern Arizona University.

Lauren Sullivan is currently pursuing her MFA degree at Northern Arizona University.

Poetry Editor

**Ben McClendon** is a PhD student at the University of Tennessee and a graduate of the creative writing program at Northern Arizona University. His work has appeared in Indiana Review, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Yemassee, Toad Suck Review, Cæsura, The Chariton Review, Redivider, and Rattle. Once, while walking near the forest, he saw a dog.

Fiction Editor

**Robert Keegan** reads things and comments on them, and based on his comments, something or other happens. Robert received his MA in creative writing from Northern Arizona University. He enjoys making things up and writing them down, be it stories, plays, or grocery lists containing fantastical items

Non-Fiction Editor

Lauren Milligan lives in Flagstaff with her goofy other half and their equally goofy dog, Mollie. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University in May 2013. Lauren enjoys baking, using her family for inspiration, correcting grammar, and the semicolon. She previously read for Thin Air Magazine and has published work in Saguaro Speaks Antholog

Art Editor

**Molly Wilson** pranced through her childhood in a small town near Yosemite National Park, California. She moved to Flagstaff in 2010 and graduated from Northern Arizona University in May 2012 with a Master's degree in English Literature. She enjoys the editing part of the writing process more than the creative side, and she teaches freshman university students how to hate writing less. She likes taking photographs and reading high brow and low brow literature alike. She previously worked for, and published articles through a local magazine north of Los Angeles, California.

Editor / Founder

**Matthew Larrimore** was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, but moved west in 2007 living in Colorado and Arizona, He received his Master's degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing in May of 2012 from Northern Arizona University. He'll return east to peruse an MFA at Old Dominion University in the Fall of 2013. A veteran of five annual journals including serving as the managing editor of _Thin Air Magazine_ 2011-2012, his own work has previously appeared in _The Chimeras_ , _The Crucible, Aproprosthearts.com_. and most recently _The Noise._

~~~

Calvert and Preston by Toni Martsoukos

###

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