Editorial Staff:
Tom West – Editor-in-Chief
Max Gahm – Assistant Editor-in-Chief
Mike Hamod – Assistant Editor-in-Chief
Chichi Udochi
Grant Lloyd
Nick Mazyck
Alec Mitchell
Yianni Charalambopoulos
Tyler Priebe – Photo Editor
Mr. Baird – Faculty Advisor
“Seemingly easy”—that’s how I would describe the job of Editor-in-Chief (E.I.C.). Watching previous E.I.C.’s perform their duties during clubs and activities, I formed a false impression of what it would be like to sit on The Monitor’s metaphorical throne. It’s tough work to hound people for their writing, to round-up the troops, and hardest of all is making it seem effortless. Henry Bond proved a wonderful example last year: his work behind-the-scenes brought our publication to its current aesthetic prowess. He served as the impetus behind what we now affectionately call the “summer day under a tree” edition, the trench-coat-pocket-sized booklet that you currently hold in your hand. Henry also tirelessly sought out material, making it snow instead of waiting and hoping. Thanks go to the crew this year for paradoxically maintaining and bettering what Henry paradoxically maintained and bettered last year, etc. I’d also like to thank the courageous students who submitted their six word shorts to our scrutiny and, furthermore, I’d like to congratulate the winners on a job well done! So, without further ado, I bid you enjoy your copy of the “hot cocoa in hand, back to a warm fire” edition of St. Paul’s premier (and only) literary magazine.
Sincerely,
Tom West
Table of Contents:
“Your Attention, Please” – Tom West
“Signs of Life” – Mike Hamod
“…Aftermath” – Chichi Udochi
“Kindgom” – Max Gahm
“The Walk Home” – David Lenz
“Sea Light” – Max Gahm
“World Within” – Tom West
“Free at Last” – Junius Randolph III
“Perfect Machine” – Mike Hamod
“Whispers by the Fire” – Max Gahm
“Radio” – Nick Mazyck
“Sunday Shoes” – Christian Louzan
“Vagabond” – Tom West
“A Chapter” – Charles Thorpe
“All Around” – Nick Mazyck
Flash-Fiction Competition Winners/Honorable Mentions
Tom West
Your Attention, Please
With their rise at morning
And their fall at twilight
Day breathes in their colors.
One seeks to dominate:
The red for the blood-shed,
The blue for the tears, and
The white for the wrapped dead.
The towers, skyscrapers,
False-prophets behind them
Loom grander and graying.
Michael Hamod
Signs of Life
(Based on Toni Morrison’s Beloved)
The scent of sweet red petals clung to the suspended body bouncing off of the ash tree. A rash had formed where the rope rubbed the neck in the eerie autumn wind. Aimless flies visited the drying body, but were quick to leave, appalled by the thing. A smile was still fixed on the rotting face; fixed on a suspended machine.
Sethe sat drowning in the shade of the nearest oak, keeping the devilish sun from stoking her thirst. Her small hands mindlessly ran the dry grass through her fingers, allowing the sharp tips to scratch her palms. She hummed out deep breaths that followed the echoing call of the crows, cloaking the sound of the body’s beating against the tree. Red autumn leaves followed the pattern of the soulful notes, dancing around the expressionless limbs.
Turning her head she looked over the land, her lifelong home. The colors of the rustling leaves shone in the sunlight: gold, mustard, copper, a deep jade. The only tree covered with crimson housed the cadaver. Sethe licked the salt resting on her wet lips trying to satisfy an inner, jostling emptiness. She was left with loneliness’s dissatisfaction, which was as present and uninviting as cold rain on a winter’s day yearning for snow.
A craving shot through Sethe’s body, flowing through her veins like the leaves in autumn air. She found it harder and harder to breathe; each breath less and less filling. Tears softened the brown of the girl’s young eyes until black outlines replaced them. A change had come over her, a fearless look that could capture souls. Resentment began to eat away at Sethe’s innards like worms ravaging a corpse. Why had she accepted the freedom of death and left her one love alone? She had never questioned the love of the woman hanging there, the power that her devotion held over her, but in the end what did that count for? No memory of that devotion could be picked out as Sethe helplessly watched the insects ravage the body.
Her rough hands dug at the ground next to her, allowing the soft soil under her yellow nails. She felt the weight of the earth in her palm. She stared. The eternally smiling face, the skinny arms and legs, and hands that could craft devotion and sorrow into anything they created, all melted in with the beautiful scene, yielding like night yields to day. She felt revulsion towards the limp body for giving in; for letting herself no longer fight. No longer was her heart a healthy red.
Sethe flung the blend of dirt and stone at the perished slave and watched as it struck her breast. She howled like a wild animal as she continued grabbing handful after handful of earth and watched as each whipped the body around, until its white rags were browned. With the last throw, she lunged towards the body and fell, bent-over on hands and knees. She crawled gracelessly over the remaining distance, feeling the soft grass and dry leaves crumble beneath her.
She whimpered like a cub and took the dangling feet into her small hands. She pulled them towards her, and began to wash the dirt away from them with her tears. Hands moving without any thought to guide them, washing the filth that had laid claim to the callused feet. Anger turned into shame, shame for not trusting the woman’s devotion. She sat for a while and rose once more. Breath came back to her in the crisp air. She gently lowered the corpse from its perch. Softly, she dropped it onto the ground, turning the body so it could face the cloudless sky. She stared at it, God’s punishment for all of them; a reminder of that which shouldn’t be remembered. And as gently as a feather floating to the ground, she kissed her Beloved.
Chichi Udochi
...Aftermath
When the battle is won
Then my people come
But will they believe
Seeing atrocities?
Seeing their brother’s silence
The only thing united
Can they achieve,
What I believe?
Isolation was their past
Destruction was mine
Don’t speak about blood
It’s erased from my mind.
No more moonshine
The only light in darkness
That’s where my soul is
Can they help me find it?
Victory was ours
But it isn’t mine
Rebuilding by the hour
Maybe it’s a sign
Something to enjoy
Before the next war
Last time to express
Their dominant success
The dream of aftermath
The last breath of battle’s wrath.
Max Gahm
Kingdom
Where scattershots of rainbow shards kept netting light*,
Unseen eyes gaze through cracked walls.
Where red dust seeps through glassless windows,
Their breathing is heavy and alive.
Where pews lay in wooden rubble,
They sit and pray.
Where gold crosses mellow in new sunlight,
And day has cleared the sparkled night,
Glistening upon shattered remains,
And the faces of those lost.
*Excerpt from Eamon Grennan's The Quick of It
David Lenz
The Walk Home
It was getting cold, and the only warmth I found was the steam blowing my way from battered manholes. Street lights came on and the people of Baltimore flocked to their night clubs and restaurants. Their eyes judged me while we passed under the sidewalk scaffolding, but they were nothing of worry to me. It only mattered what inner city Baltimorians thought of me, because they were the ones who decided whether I got home on my two feet or in on a stretcher.
I stormed my way through the authoritative orange hands on the street corners, not wanting to stand still for a second. Bodies sitting on street corner benches growled words of hate at me as I passed, assuming I was running from their browned skin. I wished they knew that I was running from them and their street corner, not their skin, but there was no way I was about to stand still. A man, his skin as black as the night, walked past me and muttered about his hunger. I stared at his face, his sweat-caked head covered by a ripped maroon beanie. Draped over his malnourished frame was a puffy mica-colored jacket, splotched with spit stains. He creeped his head towards me, and stumbled over to me like a baby taking its first steps, moaning that he hadn’t eaten in days.
“I only have fifty cents,” I stammered.
He snatched the coins and jammed them in his pocket.
“Thank you, sir,” he quavered.
He fell against me and embraced me in a hug. The man started to cry. “I love you,” he croaked. He forced it past his white lips several times, moving his arms along my back and pulling me tighter each time. I stood rigid, arms at my side. Hoping to appease him, I half heartedly rubbed him on the back with one hand.
“Thank you, that’s very nice,” I blurted, “but I really have to go, okay?” He proclaimed his love for the 50 cents I had given him over again, planting his face in my thin, sweater. I could feel his face. It was colder than the air around me. I tried to pull away with my shoulders, but his lanky body just pulled me closer and held me stronger than I thought possible.
“I LOVE YOU!” yelled his white lips into my sweater. His saliva and the steam of his breath left my sweater soggy. I shoved off of him with my shoulders, but he wouldn’t let go. Wedging my hands between our bodies, I thrust my palms into his palpable ribs and sent him back to the brick wall of the building behind him. Turning on a heel, I turned north onto Charles street. “I LOVE YOU!” he shouted one last time, as I turned another corner.
Max Gahm
Sea Light
The salty water runs down her arm and back into the calm waves. Her smile glows under the charcoal sky and hovers above the blackness of the sea. I smile back and look down toward the moist sand that is lodged between my toenails. There they are, cutting through the dark water like fireflies swimming in a summer night. The shards range from being large, small, jagged, smooth, blue, green, red. The girl’s gaze still kisses at my cheek. She is watching me, as her small tender eyes examine my movements. I pretend to stare down at the lost, sea-engulfed glass, watching as waves carry them over our knees, only to suck them back to us. The only sound comes from the sparkled waves, fluttering in and out, and a gentle breeze that begins to blow harder. I hear her breathing now, light and heavy, her breaths getting taken out to the sea. Then, her eyes turn from me, and suddenly the water has become darker, colder. She bends down until her nose nearly grazes the inky surface. I dare to look. “I’ve never seen this color before,” she whispers, her breaths still being taken by the wind. The girl rises, and holds in her small hand a bronze-colored piece. She looks at me and inches closer. I feel the wet iciness of the back of her hand, the warmth of her palm still holding the piece of glass.
Tom West
World Within
Frozen,
I become one
With the timeless tableaux.
Droplets dangle from the tips of stony fingers
Where scattershots of rainbow shards net light*.
Placid pools gawk open-mouthed at my flashlight
And the ancient air clings close to sap my warmth.
My thoughts breed cacophony in the silence,
A static that crescendos while I am still.
There is only my breathing
And a feeling of nakedness.
The mental machine starts,
Cables begin to crawl,
Drawing me backwards,
My feet dragging in a wakeful slumber.
Further on,
Light trickles along the walls,
Faint birdsong glides in,
A porthole glimmers above
Blue and green
It is the mouth of the womb,
The link between a timeless place
And a place where there is no time.
*Excerpt from Eamon Grennan's The Quick of It
Junius Randolph III
Free at Last
I couldn’t hear anything. Gone was the buzzing of pellets flying past, the whooshing sound of rockets, and gone were the sounds of a soldier’s last moments. The piss on my pants dried. My fingers didn’t fidget on my gun anymore. I couldn’t feel the red, pus-filled, blisters running along my feet like train tracks.
Something jumped out of my chest. It tugged my body over to another shattered wall of some Italian’s dream store, while the American tank I was hiding behind earlier blew up. I dropped to the ground and put my arms to my helmetless head, using the new beat-up wall as cover and hearing the air crackle under flying pieces of shrapnel and leftover bullets. I carelessly watched an American get his leg shot into the air, blood and piss spraying all over the ash-covered ground. My gun punched me in the chest and I quickly rose to my feet. The cartridge was full, the trigger waiting, and the scope surprisingly clean. I stared at the wall for a second. It was grey, and had cracks going in all directions like the ones on city streets. “Renaldo’s Bakery o Sant’Anna di Stazzema” was spelled out in faded white letters.
I peered over the wall and saw a white man. Not like our squad leaders: skinnier, fragile, petite. His limbs hung from his body like brothers in Alabama nooses. I leveled my gun, aimed at his head. He was staring at the sky, probably waiting for God. My trigger pulled. The German dropped his little gun, his eyes darting wildly as he tumbled to the shattered cobblestone. He tried, but couldn’t find me, his Merchant of Death. I’m black, next to a gray wall, with a green army outfit that has been shot at so many times, it has grayed from fear and dust. A dog with color in his eyes wouldn’t be able to find me. With that, he dropped like a sack of potatoes. His Italian friends from the massacre would be waiting for him in Hell.
I turned my back against the wall and stared directly behind me: dead buffalo infantries lying in a red pool that would soon suck them in. We went through training together, looked through Playboy together, some of us even lived in the same states. I saw dead Italian beauties, naked, lying facedown on the ground. Their bodies battered, hair ripped from their heads by the raping Nazis and the “Consensual Sex” of Americans. Their hands were lying out there waiting for someone to lead them into heaven.
We’re not home anymore. No more sweet smell of cornbread and lemonade. No more salty chicken for dinner or greasy bacon for breakfast. No more hard stares from [the] white man, with his brand new white pillow case under his rocking chair, a glass of lemonade, and his shotgun in his right hand. There’s only the cracking sound of fire and the echoes of little boys and girls staring with their bulgy eyes up at us chocolate giants. No more Italian women wanting you to try their new, handmade apple pies. No more tiny Italian men, admiringly wanting to shake your hand. I stood posed with my gun across my body, with the unmoving bodies, white and black, all at my feet.
Mike Hamod
Perfect Machine
The cues of bright neon lights
Burn the powder on the faces
Forced to stare at the hushed world.
They remain blinded,
Yet fixated.
The low hum of inspired minds
Fills the room like rising water
Drowning everything.
Their smiles smear the night red,
And eternally spin the world.
The steady clock ticks
Waiting to turn anew
With corruption’s perfect pleasures.
Rigor mortis sets,
Freedom rots until
Rebellion clouds reason
Again.
Max Gahm
Whispers by the Fire
(Based on Toni Morrison’s Beloved)
The warm milk had not yet settled in the girls’ stomachs as their mother’s footsteps faded gently up the staircase. Drops of snow still slipped down the window glass as the fire crackled besides the girls. Denver couldn’t take her eyes off of Beloved, who was lying beside her and slowly drifting asleep. Denver thought about the day, and how much fun the three had together, playing and falling like children at the pond, together as one. Denver smiled. She knew Beloved was feeling the same way. She couldn’t let her fall asleep, not yet. The snow was still falling and Denver didn’t want the day to end.
“This is how it feels, ain’t it?” Denver whispered.
Beloved’s eyes flickered open, the reflection of the fire mixed in puddles of black.
“Right? This is how it feels?” Denver urged.
“How what feels?”
“To have a sister. To be with a sister.”
Beloved ran her hand across her pillow and gazed at Denver.
“But I’ve always been here. You know that.”
The milk in Denver’s stomach churned. She thought again of not pushing Beloved too far, to the point where she wouldn’t want to come back. She wanted to be there, lying with Beloved by the fire with her mother content upstairs. She needed her sister there, couldn’t have it any other way.
“Did you see Sethe’s face today?”
“What about it?” Denver asked.
“It was so happy. I’d never quite seen it like that.” Beloved’s face was smug.
“It usually don’t look like that. It looked good today.”
“Why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Why don’t her face usually look like that?”
“She goes through a lot, that’s all.”
“Feels good when Sethe is happy. Right?”
“Of course. She my mother.”
“Mine too.”
For a moment all that could be heard was the gentle whip of fire, the creak of the stairs. Remnants of snow melted down Beloved’s hair.
“We don’t need that man anymore,” Beloved said, her light breaths kissing Denver on the nose.
“Paul D? No, suppose not. It’s just the three of us now. Women.”
“We never needed him.”
“No, suppose not. But maybe she did.” Denver pointed her finger upwards.
“She don’t need him. Look at the way she was smilin’ today. No thanks to him.”
“Guess you’re right—You’re right.”
“She need me, right?”
“‘Course she needs you, Beloved. We both need you.”
“But she needs me?”
“Yes, Beloved. I just said it.”
“I like to hear it. I like to hear that Sethe needs me.”
Silence. Beloved shifted her head so that she was looking at the ceiling. She imagined Sethe’s sleeping body above, curled tight, her breathing like the beating of an angel’s wing. And only the snow-capped moon watched over her. No one else in the house but her two whispering girls down the white, wooden stairs.
“Beloved?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t leave, Beloved. Don’t ever leave.”
“Where you thinkin’ I would go, Denver?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere. Away, out of our reach.”
“I can’t leave, Denver. Got nowhere to go but right here in this house. She my mother. And she need me.”
Denver wanted to say more, hear more. But the milk had settled, and the fire’s flicker had begun to falter. There was nothing more she could say.
Nick Mazyck
Radio
Woods under par,
Alicia Keys singing,
Nothing-news,
One song praising “rainbow hues”
“99 Red Ballons” on Classic Rock,
Hodge-podge mixes of single tunes—
My soul aches for vacation
My car shakes toward its destination.
At journey’s end,
I’m traffic-weaving like Dan Gurney.
When finally I arrive,
The answer is “no.”
Christian Louzan
Sunday Shoes
(Based on Toni Morrison’s Beloved)
Paul D picked up the axe by its handle, the rotten wood pained with each casual thunk it received as it was dragged across the floor. The shed looked barren, the sad icebox sat in the corner opposite the bed, a pile of soiled sheep blankets. A bottle of cheap wine lay on the floor, the label long since faded. Looking at it, he gave it a tap with the blunt end of the axe, sending the contents of the bottle sloshing around as he, as if playing croquet, quietly tapped it to the opposite corner of the shed. His boots were on, tied up just under the tongue. Half of the sole had separated from the leather, causing the boot to now resemble some kind of snapping alligator when he walked. When he stopped going to church every week, he told Sethe it was because he lost his Sunday shoes, and was too embarrassed to go in his normal ones. At least, that’s what he told her.
“Denver!” Paul D shouted, mustering his strength to yell over his now slurred speech. Playing quietly in the house, Denver blocked his voice out, hoping he would give up and go away. “Denver!” Paul repeated, this time paying no attention to the sound of his voice. “Girl get yo self out here!” Hearing this, Denver put down the stick she was playing with, and made her way outside. Paul D was wordless and he motioned for her to follow him, one hand grasped around the throat of his axe, the other around the throat of a chicken, flailing helplessly under his strength.
The blood ran off the rotting stump, collecting in a tepid pool below. Paul D grabbed Denver by her wrist “Ain’t you never killed a Chicken fo’ you mamma?” he snarled in her face, the smell of cheap wine disseminating from his mouth. Denver’s tear stained cheeks caught the sun penetrating through the trees, her chocolate eyes taking on a new light in the afternoon sun. “Where my Mamma at?” Denver bleated, her arm still grasped by Paul. “I tell you I ain’t know girl. Jesus H. with the questions.” The chicken lay in a pile on the stump, its once luminescent coat perverted with its own blood. The chicken’s accusing eyes probed Denver as she struggled to look away. Paul D had gone now, retreated back to his shed for another taste of the cheap wine. Denver, mustering her courage, bent down and picked up the severed chicken head. The veins in its neck whimsically swayed below it like a mass of streamers, dancing uncomfortably like uninvited guests at a surprise party.
Surveying the surrounding trees, Denver started into a slow jog, quickly turning into a sprint. She disregarded the aches in her feet, and the tiny cuts beginning to form on them. Making her way up to the house, she slowed her sprint to a jog, her jog to a walk. She put her hands on her knees panting, gasping for air and finding none. “Paul? Paul you there?” she repeated. She heard a rustling from behind her, paying it no mind she never saw him coming. Barely feeling the pain in her head before she fell to the ground, her body slumped like that of the chicken in the woods, her dress now perverted with blood. Paul D dragged her limp body towards his shed, stopping now and again to catch his breath. Oddly enough, Denver didn’t look at all peaceful unconscious, her brow furrowed as if in anticipation of what was to follow.
It ended as quickly as it came; his arms tensed, making the many veins in them visible as his struggled to lift himself off of Denver. His hands trembled as he zipped his pants up and put his shirt back on, leaving all but two buttons undone. His breathing was irregular as his eyes darted around the room. Denver lay on the floor, expressionless, her dull blue cotton dress torn to confetti, her rich black hair full of dirt and pieces of leaves. Paul D left the shed, taking with him a tattered piece of Denver’s dress. Once outside, he bent down over a puddle of brackish rain water, the bottom not visible through the stagnant dirt, and soaked the small cloth in the water. Once completely soaked through, Paul stood and looked around the clearing, casually putting his hand through his hair as he walked back inside. Denver had not yet stirred, her arms still listless by her side, her head wound beginning to crust over. With the tender care a mother gives her baby, Paul wiped Denver’s dirty forehead with the cloth, doing little more than forming dirty blots of water on her face. The tiny oasis slid down her cheeks, boldly driving a path through the mask of dust she wore.
Tom West
Vagabond
Never lost, the vagabond.
A pulse wrapped in gristly skin,
Hard hands and cracked face,
Dull eyes hiding, camp fire-glazed.
His body a hardened, callous shell.
Colors shaft through the walls,
Hang the sun’s smile to dry in the close air,
While hay and splinters comb his hair.
Cloistered in a woody womb,
The track-clacks talk back
Punctuate lines with jocund slaps—
You call this a poem?
Where’s the form, the connections, the meaning?
You’re just writing to write again, aren’t you?
Don’t think yourself so clever as to cloak the self-reflective metaphor of the vagabond.
It’s so damned obvious; you might as well take naked pictures of your mind
and paste them to the moon.
It’s what you want, anyway; it would be one more piece in your narcissistic exhibition.
Here you go, trying to run; hide in the text by throwing up your innards onto a page,
so you can just lie inside the hollow remnants with your secret treasure,
You f---ing insecure turtle.
Aren’t you going blind from all the light being shed through the cracks?
Everyone can see “what” you are, except for yourself.
You may know the “who,” but what you haven’t seen yet will turn you—
And what about “the past couple of months?”
Have you forgotten the ‘past couple of years?’
You’ve self-imposed a phoenix veneer on your soul,
Thinking you’ll never truly burn-out.
Life has plans.
The world has plans.
And they are not your own; non-manipulable.
You can run your greasy hands around its edges, but they’ll always slip,
You’ll always slip and fall back to where you started.
Stop tripping up down-escalators, grab hold of the plastic banister, and ride to the start.
Sweet beginnings yield sweet endings in this mirror-world.
You want recognition without appraisal,
Love without contact.
Wake up! The dream imploded and you’re staring directly at a black hole.
Your fingers can run, your eyes can scurry, you can pedal the metal
in that champagne-colored Mercury of yours, but you’re still stuck in a f---ng flesh-cage—
Enough, enough! You’ve torn yourself to shreds in front of them
but at least you did it before they could.
They’ll still nose the lifeless pieces, but you’ll be long gone.
He’s got a cricket named Jim in a little tin.
With tin overhead, rustic and thin,
He’s a snug bug without a cozy rug.
Door chains rattle, snakes on a train,
But he fears tomorrow and an empty stomach.
He’s a mobile troglodyte living in day-streaked night,
Ever on he rides, her picture bobbing against his breast.
Charles Thorpe
Scars
(Based on Toni Morrison’s Beloved)
My child.
Mine.
Sitting on a charred stump she sifted through the day’s berries, picking out all but the perfect, uniform, un-bruised, un-bloodied ones for our dinner. Beloved’s small smile barely noticeable but when she glanced at Sethe was much bigger on the inside. The blue blood. The berries’ blood. The blood that covered her hands made all of her workings slippery. Whenever she tried picking out a green stem or crushed fruit, she could only handle it for moments before it slipped away.
How could Paul D. leave like that, Sethe’s mind clouded. All of his secrets, his truths, and my story makes him run. A little unexplainable blood and he slips away. The blood that covered her hands made all of her workings slippery.
The same blood now rushed through the eyes sitting atop that charred stump. They gazed at her basket then lovingly at Sethe. Her whole life was Sethe. She had desired nothing but her milk and the warmth of her arms. Even now that was all she wanted still. Once satisfied with her work, Beloved gently placed her basket down and went to lie next to Denver on the lonely, budding hill a mile from 124. The trees had become tired, slowly waving goodbye to their falling leaves. Sethe observed her children as she continued to wash their clothes in the river.
Beloved snuck up to Denver ever so slowly to keep her peaceful eyes from waking. Denver didn’t hear the footsteps that could not be heard and only woke when Beloved pounced, giggling, smearing berry juice on her arms. Denver screamed, jumping up and running down the streambed, Beloved chasing after her, her skirt hem dragging in the dirt. They fell softly, lovingly, loving of the grass which caught them because of the other they held and lay peacefully, gazing towards heaven as Sixo had.
Sethe scrubbed not only dirt from their clothes. With the water, traveled fear, loneliness, and worry. Her life need only be her children. 124 was their home, their world.
Beloved and Denver were hers. Sethe Beloved’s. Beloved Denver’s.
A hole in the chest of her white blouse, waving in the water, waved as did the rag which Sixo wore as he laughed in the forest. He gazed to the sky. The holes in his rag waved goodbye. The forest burned. Laughter. Freedom.
For Sixo a forest, for me a river, and for my Beloved a handsaw.
Beloved and Denver rolled, giggling on their soft bed where insects shied from the memory. They eventually stood and skipped back to Sethe, hand in hand. The blood now covered both of their hands as they stood over their mother.
She looked up, “You girls need go and wash up then start dinner. I’ll be along once the washing is done.”
“Yes ma’am,” they said in unison, grabbing the basket and heading towards 124.
Back home, Sethe hung the clean clothes in one of the last warm evenings. The blouse and hole she held tenderly up to the sky. For the first time, it seemed she could see clearly through it. She didn’t have to fight the memory anymore because of her. So she could finally take that clear blouse and destroy it, use it for rags, forget the laughter.
Denver and Sethe cleaning after the meal,
Beloved standing front of the outhouse, staring over at the shed.
She looked in the window, saw Sethe’s face and loved and needed.
The shed drew her until she knelt before it in the darkness.
She looked in the window and saw Sethe’s features.
She faced her fleshy self and the spirit infected it and, for a moment, Beloved fell apart, all her limbs falling, her chest and her head, leaving only a heart and a deep, deep scar. Her spirit looked at the heart, then the scar. Beloved once again looked in the window. The scar grew and grew out from the throat, covering the heart and as she saw Sethe’s face she hated, abhorred, murdered. The spirit and Beloved danced, danced until they couldn’t see each other, couldn’t see themselves anymore.
Waking in front of the outhouse, Beloved gasped,
Gasped for air that leaked through her open throat.
She had to breathe.
She looked down at her black shoes and bent
To pick up the rusty handsaw that perfectly matched her scar.
She looked in the window once more.
Nick Mazyck
All Around
In suicide leaps,
Lifeless snows rain down,
Memories, blurred snapshots.
It surrounds me
Lasting lifetimes.
First Annual Flash-Fiction Competition
(Students)
1. Seriously? Pants? Take it somewhere else. – Austin Surhoff
2. Oh, come on. It’s probably dead. – Christian Louzan
3. Time out: she was a redhead? – Adrian Graham-Chesnavage
(Faculty)
1. Does this detergent remove blood stains? – Mr. Marinacci
2. Our empty bed greets me nightly. – Dr. Weyhing
3. Her blood. His fist. Married bliss. – Dr. Chalfoun
(Honorable mentions)
Death was fun, until I lived - Cameron Bittrick
Since when’ve you cared so much? – John Bruch
A flag came home, not dad. – Austin Surhoff
(And now for the Christian Louzan show)
Only one way to find out. – Christian Louzan
Close that up nice and tight. – Christian Louzan
Where do they keep the matches? – Christian Louzan
Make sure to clean up afterwards. – Christian Louzan
She’s been staying at work late. – Christian Louzan
