Senior Editor - Tom West
Editor in Chief - Max Gahm & Mike Hamod
Staff - Yianni Charalambopoulos, Mike Hylind, Grant Lloyd, Nick Mazyck (a.k.a. Nico), Alec Mitchell, Chichi Udochi
Photo Editor - Christian Louzan
Faculty Advisor - Mr. Baird
The Monitor has gone digital for the spring issue this year, in hopes that it would become a future trend for spring issues to come. The pocket-sized booklet that has become the home for Monitor issues the past couple years will return next fall, however for now, this green issue will serve as an experimental digital experience for the readers. There are many people to thank for this issue, especially Senior Editor Tom West, whose hard work, and tireless writing and editing will be missed by the entire staff. As editors next year both Max and I hope to carry Tom’s enthusiasm and work ethic into making the literary magazine even more improved. This issue though is dedicated to a new faculty addition to the staff who helped spark new ideas in meetings, and helped polish many of the pieces in this issue. Mr. Byars provided new insight and flair that was necessary in order to make this edition of the Monitor as first-class as it could be. We hope that he will continue in the next few years to provide his insight to writers of our staff so that we can continue to publish first-rate work for our dedicated readers. So now I leave you with the final issue of the Monitor this year, and hope that you enjoy it over the final days before a much deserved summer break.
Sincerely,
Editors Michael Hamod and Max Gahm
Table of Contents
"Moment"- Tom West
"Last Stroll"- Lance Roberts
"Black" - Junius Randolph
"A Piece of Paper" - Charles Thorpe
"Once More to the Creek" - Tom West
"Obsession" - Mike Hamod
"Wax Hands" - Max Gahm
"Untitled 1" - Mike Hylind
"Untitled 2" - Mike Hylind
"Restless"- Mike Hamod
"At Dusk" - Max Gahm
"Left of Main Street"- Nick Mazyck
"Solid" - Yianni Charalambopoulos
Winner of the 2009 Diversity Writing Prize: "Such Tired Eyes"- Vincent Carbone
"Post" - Grant Lloyd
Photo: Austin Weinstein
Moment
By Tom West
Huddled close, comforted by cheap beer and cigarettes,
Stand-ins for thumb-sucks and pacifier-puffs.
What went in came out in hot pavement streams,
Billowed into the cold. The seven of us alone,
Seen only by stars and the parking-lot fluorescents.
The world lay still, didn’t exist beyond
The inside of the car, our pow-wow’s cramped space.
Words gushing like oil used to,
Taking turns taking drags of the night,
Surrendering to little fits like Shamen
Getting lost down the rabbit hole
Where the world brightens.
Photo: David Lenz
Last Stroll
By Lance Roberts
White stubble stretched from his bottom lip to his neck, like a needled porcupine. A blue bucket hat shielded his balding head from the sun and a speck of sun block sat on his nose. His eyes stared into the waves while they crashed. Their blue darkened the sand until retreating back into themselves. His lips were pale and dry, hanging open and inhabited by his large, red tongue, which shimmied back and forth as he forced air in and out of his body.
“Grand-dad?” I asked him. He sat staring. His memory was setting like the day. “Remember when you used to pick me up from school and help me with my homework? Remember the Saturdays we spent watching cartoons together?” All my attempts were useless; nothing could push the marble in that Rube Goldberg machine. He sat there, heaving in and out, watching the waves.
Photo: T.J. Root
Black
By Junius Randolph
Black can’t reflect.
The clothes at a funeral.
The shade of sunglasses.
The color of ink.
An eclipse.
Pupils.
Black is inhuman.
The insides of a computer.
A button on a remote.
Wires linking this to that.
Asphalt, color of tar.
Black.
A burnt piece of paper.
Apples with a stain.
A thoughtless mind.
The crook.
Death.
Black equals no light,
Black isn’t white,
Black is me.
Photo: Ian Pederson
A Piece of Paper
By Charles Thorpe
August 9th
My Birthday
A bomb dropped
His ashes
Lunch with Mary
“So, were you?”
A smile
“Of course”
House of Cards
A man built a pyramid
A pyramid fell down
A man built a cross
The Louvre
A picture, a painting, a symbol
This
And your eyes
Photo: David Lenz
Once More to the Creek
By Tom West
I walked in my woods for two hours, my thoughts accompanied by the ringing of a damnable Christmas music which jingled and jangled like shackles and jives. My feet crackled out a steady rhythm in the leaves until I reached a familiar place, the trail which I had once daily biked up-and-down in years past. Crossing its crushed stone, as though a white line, my feet knew their off-beat tracks well. Near the creek, the Gunpowder, I sat on a fallen bough, watched, and penned an escape into my notebook.
Certainly, this place had known me well through seasons living and exhaling. I had seen the water crusted in ice, the tadpoles frolicking in it a few months later. And, always, a big, gray slab of granite would lay half-sunk across from me like Death’s morbid forehead poking out from the deeps. But, Death aside, I dreamt of sitting atop it, surveying my quasi-kingdom, a grin on my lips, my clothes wet from the swimming, my young, warm body rebelling against a man’s price. I wondered if my father would have done the same as a child, thought of him up there beaming the way he would sometimes, just like the Coca-Cola Santa.
My thoughts flipped to summer families floating down the creek, buoyed in black tubes, hovering over the frigid flow. I could see them seeking sanctuary on the warm boulder, beached like seals, talking with one another about days, football, dreams, or saying nothing at all. We would be sitting, wearing the bargain suits we would have bought together from Target, a size too large here, and a smidgeon too small there, each of us sacrificed to a sale-price. I thought of Monopoly nights, of saying grace, of refrigerator magnet messages, of height-marks on kitchen doors, until a familiar dog’s bark ricocheted down the valley, melting my dreams like ice-cream on that same summer day until I could once more feel the cold lapping at my cheek.
Photo: Austin Weinstein
Obsession
By Mike Hamod
Smell of charred rose petals filled
The tired, gray boy’s nostrils
Churning his stomach like
The engine of a steamboat.
Shoveled piles fell like water on the fire.
Steam hissing from the frozen cement
Soaked his methodical arms;
Constantly feeding the flames,
Which poked up like hungered hatchlings.
Soft blue eyes
Reddened, watered, and smoldered
More than the fire licking his hands,
Hands that had blistered and broken.
Cold, November wind blew an empty box
across the empty street and caught his eye.
The tired, gray boy turned
To feed the ravenous flames.
Photo: Ian Pederson
Wax Hands
By Max Gahm
The maple door was heavy and its reddened chips floated to the floor. It creaked heavily as I walked into the store. The room was small and illuminated by an orange incandescence, which glowed through wax candles of all shades and shapes.
“Hello,” a woman’s soft voice said from the left side of the store. I hadn’t known that she was there until she spoke. “Hello,” I responded politely and approached her. The smell of fresh, warm wax grew stronger as I got closer I got to her. “I’m looking for a gift for my mother.” The woman was old, with cracks in her dry, pale skin and peppered hair tangled in a ball. Her eyes and hands were focused on the twirling wax machine before her. I stood uncomfortably awaiting a response. The woman paused and slowly moved her head toward me. Her lips were like raisins and her eyes reflected the reddish glow of the wax and fire underneath her. And then she nodded down to the machine and said, “This one will be just perfect.” I found a wooden chair across from the machine and sat down. The woman’s focus was back on the twirling wax, which she began to thin into the shape of a stick. The woman wore a once-white apron stained in a colorful suffusion. Her hands were encased in a shell of wax, but still worked on with grace. I tried to see the color of her eyes, but all I could see was the gentle flame flickering in and out. “This will be perfect for him, he will love it,” the woman mumbled. I hesitated and continued to gaze at her. “It’s for my mother,” I told her in a soft voice. The woman continued to mechanically work on the candle, ignoring me.
After a few more minutes, she was finished and rose the candle into the orange air. Wax dripped off of the bottom and onto her lap. Her flaming eyes stared and relished at her masterpiece. And she said it again, “He will love it, just like the others...” She stuttered as she said it, and her voice became almost inaudible at the last word. “It’s beautiful, she will love it indeed,” I said. Suddenly, the woman’s body shook, nearly dropping the candle, and stared at me with confused eyes. “What do you want?!” she cried as loud as her voice would allow. I swallowed hard and responded, “I...am looking for a candle, for my mother. I came in a few minutes ago.” A confused expression was still painted across her face. “Well, take a look around. You can’t have this one,” the woman said forcefully as she placed the candle into a small box, wax still dripping from her hands.
Photo: Eli Hutton
1.
By Mike Hylind
We communicate
Through a glass case
and computer tests.
From dry white stones
arranged smiling around
a missing tongue
to a fresh, moist beard
with an eight year degree
The crow hat was chased away
The sand robe dusted off
The dead desert flowers
Like colorful organs
Were plucked and discarded
Part of the skull
Was found and reattached.
Naked now
In Paris, New York, Beijing
Crowds gather around
The celebrity child
Though it was probably
Ugly.
2.
If calling on such distant walls,
speaking though you stand alone,
find some comfort in Echo's calls.
You can't be sure that cavern halls
have an end past the dark and stone
If calling on such distant walls.
But when your pleas survive their falls
and leap back up in matching tone
find some comfort in Echo's calls
Bundle noise into compact balls
and loan them with a knowing groan
if calling on such distant walls
But upwards if you hurl them all
you will never, despite your moan
find some comfort in Echo's calls
the void of space does noise dissolve
confounding us and what we’ve known.
If calling on such distant walls
find some comfort in Echo's calls.
Photo: Doug Slaughter
Restless
By Mike Hamod
Fading waves rush the parting particles.
Caressing each one to the side.
The course of lifeless love-making
Shifts between these two bodies.
An endless ballet for a position
Small and insignificant against the
Brawling surge.
Photo: Ian Pederson
At Dusk
By Max Gahm
He sits on the porch steps,
Cool August sky bleeding pink.
Breeze blowing across his closed skin.
The cracked, maple door screams.
She clicks across the porch.
The dusk air swallows her voice,
She brushes by in a cloud of perfume,
Pearls. A red dress.
A diamond.
The perfume fades,
And the maple door drifts to a close.
Photo: Tom West
Left on Main St.
By Nick Mazyck
Silence
It is absolute
Always finite, very rare
I walk across the road
Cold black rock
Breaking the silence
I take the left on Main St.
Tuck my gloved hands
Into my black coat
I walk on the dreary sidewalk
Walking past a blank field
Hearing the moans and cries from below
Photo: Doug Slaughter
Solid
By Yianni Charalambopoulos
The glass rang as the pieces fell to the ground. I put my milk down slowly and walked toward the living room. A shadow struggled on the wall, a fat man who seemed burdened by every step. I darted into the darkness to crouch in the corner. As he moved into the lights, I saw that he was much fatter than I had expected. The fluffy, white snow from outside layered his candy cane suit and his red hat, which had a puffy, white tip as if he used it to go fishing. His face looked as if he had just dove into fresh snow, accented by his white beard. He put on a small pair of glasses and read from a piece of paper. A sac hung over his shoulder shining as if he had crafted it out of gold. The sac was empty, but when he stuck his hand in out came with it an enormous box. I stayed in the darkness hiding like a mouse. Then, he opened the front door, shook off the snow like a dog after its bath, and left.
I paced toward the decorated pine tree where the box lay. I opened the box to find a life-sized nutcracker. It had curly long hair that came down to its shoulders and a small nose in the shape of a beak. Dark spots filled in his upper lip and under his chin. His lips were cherry red and his cheeks rosy. His shirt was a glistening Greek flag. He wore long gray pants, and his shoes were white.
Photo: Eli Hutton
Winner of the 2009 King's Vision Diversity Writing Contest:
Such Tired Eyes
By Vincent Carbone
Why do you look at me
with such tired eyes?
What have I done to
you to deserve such
torment? Have I done
some foul deed? com-
mitted some great crime?
Why do you look at me
as you rattle your cup?
I am tired. I have worked.
I long for home. Have you
no home? No? So sad.
Why do you look at me
with such saddened eyes?
Is it my wealth? Your lack
Thereof? Do you hate me
for it? Don’t. For as I know
nothing of your pain, you
know nothing of mine.
Why do you look at me
with such begging eyes?
Can you help your place.
Can I help mine?
clinck!
Why do you look at me
with such startled eyes.
If you can’t help your
place, why can’t I?
Photo: Tyler Collie
Post
By Grant Lloyd
A mother whittles her red-haired child a toy.
Dead deer lie poached along the freeway.
Community vineyards replace
Crumbled buildings.
One heartbeat
And the city thrives
In a bath of silence.
An urban jungle becomes
A throng of cultures, creatures,
And life goes on in a celebration of ruin.
