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LOOMINGS

The Vibrant&

The Obscure

2011

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Editors-in-ChiefFrancis Petruccelli

Jill McFee

Prose EditorRachel Bailey

Poetry EditorHarry Ruedi

Art EditorChloe Donaldson

LayoutAngela Nelson

Humam AlMukhtar

AdvisorDr. Michael Stigman

Loomings 2011Volume XLII

Published byBenedictine College1020 N. 2nd St.Atchison, Kansas 66002

Materials appearing in Loomings may not be reproduced or reprinted without the express

written consent of Benedictine College and the authors of each work. Writers, poets, photographers, and artists contribut-ing to Loomings retain full rights to their work and need not obtain permission from Benedictine College for reproduction.

Cost per copy $6.00; copies free for students; 750 copies.

Cover ArtFront: Color Wheel ~ Angela NelsonBack: Untitled ~ Elizabeth Szalewski

Dear Reader - How many moments of your life slip by without being caught by the eye? By the ear? By the skin? By the heart? How often do we consume life without tasting it? The joy of art is precisely the height-ened awareness it brings to both artist and audience. The artist sees more, hears more, feels more; he or she not only lives but knows the taste of living. As Henry James advised to writers, and indeed, to all artists: we are to be the ones “on whom nothing is lost.” Art is capable of rendering the vibrancy of life permanent. It is equally adept at unveiling the obscure, giving it new form and radiance. For this reason, we have chosen “The Vibrant and the Obscure” as the theme of the magazine this year. The stories, poems, pictures, and drawings are arranged in the magazine under the guidance of a color wheel. We hope you enjoy the artistic efforts of your fellow classmates, and we ask that you allow yourself to become enriched by this magazine. You too may be one on whom nothing is lost. Thank you for reading! Francis Petruccelli and Jill McFeeEditors-in-Chief

It is a summer of uncertainty. As they all are.Hydrangeas lay their overgrown heads through the white rails penetrating a floor afflicted with crushed cans and stale butts. They give their perfection to this sullied space and crown it with a strange beauty. Your songs come through with a forced tone on a small white computer. Sirens are fading in the background.We sit here too often I think. I think.

Adam’s EyesCynthia Jensen

SilentConversations

This slim space opens to view the world from a secluded perch.Fringed in chimes and hanging plants, we are protected. We are seated explorers in this narrow aisle.Years have I sought asylum here.Escaping to melt my mind on your white wicker.

Questions fall from our mouths, oddly shaped and sometimes heavy.Hitting the floor with no expectations, we leave them there to look at. The rest we have is silently held.Contemplating in company.We rest here, in the eye of the existential storm.We will become restless I think.I think.

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Joslyn Marko

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Playa, El Salvador~Nick Porretta

You held my hand when I firstsaw the strip of blue-meets-green Pacificas we approached the pierstretched out like an elastic string before us.

After we walked the white-spattered pier,we let the ocean touch our feet, feelingthe sand implore our toes to remain forever. You held my hand and we watched the waves unfurling like the uncurling wallsof a dying tornado.

Ocean

Lesl

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aden

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It was a late spring afternoon in London, and Perpetua Norm had just decided to found her own country. This was not a rash impulse brought on by a burst of youthful idealism, as her parents would no doubt mischaracterise her forthcoming disappearance, but rather a reasoned and well-informed notion that she had been seriously con-templating for quite some time now. [...] The immediate impetus for her decision was a tiff she had just had with her parents over the subtleties involved in having a right and proper teatime. It was sadly apparent to Perpetua that Lord Terabinth and Lady Condraline Norm did not regard herring snacks and dried pineapple as proper accompaniments to tea. It was possible that they meant well, but was it really necessary for them to be so petty over such a small, private matter? It was a trifle on the face of it, and she had endured such arguments before, but the accumulation of disagreements on almost every conceivable aspect of English life had worn her down over the years and finally touched a nerve, such that she could no longer bear to suffer them. [...] This new country, she had decided, would be named Para-gonia, since that was one of her goals: the creation of a paragon for other governments to appraise. As far as she could tell, the business of setting up a new nation in such a manner was an entirely new and unexplored enterprise, but one of the guiding tenets of her philosophy on life, such as it was, was that just because something had not been attempted did not mean that it was impossible. [...]

A few nights later, Perpetua sat on her bed, surrounded by charts and figures and lists, and mused aloud to Dilettante, her short-hair cat and the future mascot of Paragonia. “I think we’ll need some more settlers: scientists, engineers, vicars, farmers...two of some jobs, but not all. It might have done for Noah, but we can only fit so many on the boat.” [...] All the necessary components were coming together nicely, she thought. She had already made a trip to the country to get some farmers and fishermen on board and sounded out a few of the people with whom she kept in correspondence through various letters, but she still needed more people to colonise Paragonia properly. They would probably be concerned with basic subsistence for the first little while, but the more educated people they had, the less they would have to reinvent the wheel later on, so to speak. [...] In addition to gathering settlers, she had purchased a fine ship earlier that day. She had elected to do business with Woolwich Dock-yard, England’s Largest Purveyor of Nautical Vessels Since 1771, and the gentlemen at Woolwich had been only too happy to oblige her in shedding a portion of the Norm fortune. [...] She had arranged for Woolwich to have the ship moved to Ballingsgate Dock so she could load it with supplies and people, bade farewell, and strolled on out.

Patchwork parasol spinning over her shoulder, Perpetua wan-dered into the eclectic mess of Hilligoss Appurtenances and Sundries the next morning and cleared it of a significant portion of its inventory

ParagoniaEan Henninger Abridged

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Early Traveling~Johnny Severson

within the hour. Old Mr. Hilligoss was charming as al-ways in his animated, vivacious fashion, and he was positively delighted by the thought of young Miss Norm going off to start a new country. [...] “Good for ye,” he cackled, rubbing his hands together. “Givin’ the children more things to learn in school. Very civic-minded of ye.” Perpetua tossed Mr. Hilligoss a mock salute and asked him whether he had any suggestions on what else she might need. His bushy eyebrows did a little dance as he contemplated the question. “Well,” he ruminated, “ye’ve not bought a flag yet, and ye’ll need a flag. Flags come in handy for all manner of things, and it just so happens that I have me a flag-making kit in this shop. Sedgwick and Southworth. Top notch quality, ye know.” More nimbly than one might have thought possible, he dodged an Indian man loaded with swaths of fabric, clambered over a bookshelf full of interesting binoculars, and disappeared behind a rack of pomegranates, which wobbled as he struggled with something beneath it. He triumphant-ly popped back up with a faded brown box with drawings of various flags all over it. “This has everything ye’ll need to get start-ed,” he proclaimed. “Cloth, stencils, scissors, the lot.” [...] “So you really believe I can do it?” “I believe ye can do it, girl,” he said, “but whether ye can do it well is another matter. Ye’ve got a chance to make a new start, but ye’ve also got a brain what’s been stewin’ in the paradigms and standards of another culture. Mind yer mind, that’s all.” Perpetua assured him that she was quite able to avoid bias and wrote out a rather large cheque to Mr. Hilligoss for the goods. She had got everything but the galley sink, which they hoped to have in by Thursday. She left the shop through its back door and surveyed the enormous pile of sup-plies taking up most of Mr. Hilligoss’s loading court-yard, then regarded the steam cart that she had rented to transport the pile. “I might have to make a few trips,” she nod-ded decisively.

That afternoon, after loading up the ship, Per-petua set up a booth down by Ballingsgate Dock with a banner over it advertising thus:

She had named Ballingsgate in her advertise-ments as the place for interested parties to find her, so she hoped to be able to gather both settlers and crew over the next few days. Interest in her venture had been quite heartening thus far. It seemed that she was not the only one looking for a fresh start on things. Some passers-by could be heard grumbling that it was bad luck for a crew to have a woman on board, but others pointed out that it was really the woman who was having the crew on board, and so the grumblers passed on their way, momen-tarily confused, if not mollified. [...] A tall, dark-haired young man came to the fore. Though by no means a dandy, he was dressed in a way that bespoke nobility. “Hello!” she said, giving her parasol a twirl. “Any questions about the venture?” “Miss Norm, I presume?” he asked softly. Perpetua’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?” “We’ve communicated before,” he said, be-mused. Perpetua blinked, then suddenly matched his Scottish accent to one of the addresses in her little book of correspondents. “Finn! I thought you weren’t coming!” A wry smile twisted his mouth. “Funny how be-ing disowned can change one’s plans.” Perpetua’s mouth fell open as she appreciat-ed the depths of Finn’s troubled relationship with his parents. From what she had gathered in his letters, it was even more troubled and antagonistic than hers. Although coexistence with her parents was far from pleasant, she would never have regarded being disowned as a possibility. “That’s awful,” she breathed. “Are you mak-ing out all right?” He shrugged. “I can’t say I’m terribly both-ered.” “Well, welcome to the fringes of polite soci-ety, then.” Finn shifted, evidently eager to change the subject. He inclined his head toward the ship. “Does she have a name?” “The christening’s for later.” “Ah.” “Well—we’re leaving Friday. Do you have lodging?” He nodded. “I was given a pittance to get by on.” “All right,” Perpetua said. “Well, I dare say I shall see you then.” Finn gave a slight bow and turned to go. Perpetua remembered something. “Finn!” He turned back. “It’s good to finally meet you.” The ghost of a smile flitted across his face. “Likewise, Miss Norm.” He disappeared into the

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TRAINING CREW NEEDED FOR TRANSATLANTIC VOYAGE

ONLY PEOPLE WHO KNOW WHAT THEY’RE ON ABOUT, PLEASE

TEACHING EXPERIENCE BENEFICIAL

APPLY BELOW

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crowd. Perpetua gazed up at the sea birds circling in the sky above and smiled as well. This endeavour was going most interestingly—the best way to go, in her opinion.

A bottle of champagne shattered into a hun-dred green shards, further polluting the Thames as it struck the hull of the newly baptised Sealander. “I told you not to do that!” Perpetua yelled at a bewildered Woolwich representative as the Seal-ander pulled out of Ballingsgate Dock. “A waste of perfectly good champagne,” she pronounced to a colonist who happened to be walking by. In just seven days, Perpetua had gathered unto herself the makings of her very own colony: Farmers, fishermen, a teacher, engineers, families, a writer, a vicar, dispossessed nobility, and many more besides. They numbered two hundred and forty-two, all told, and they were a motley crew, but they had one thing in common: The dream of a new, better life for themselves. For Perpetua’s part, after leaving a cyphered note on her bed for her parents to find and eventu-ally decode, she had turned her face to the sea and not looked back, save to berate the man from Woolwich. Now they were sailing down the Thames with nothing standing between them and the open sea. From behind her came the sound of leather shoes clicking across the deck. Turning, she was gratified to see Finn come up to the railing and join her. His letters had shown a keen mind of exactly the sort she wanted for her new country. He was a bit of a mystery for all that, but she was sure there would be time enough for them to become better acquainted. “A fine ship I’ve picked out, don’t you think?” “Very fine, miss.” His dark eyes tracked a pass-ing barge, then turned to look at Perpetua. “I must confess myself curious, Miss Norm. I may have missed the finer points amid our cor-respondences, but I don’t believe you ever men-tioned just why it is that you want to found a new country. Why not emigrate to a place like America and work within the society to change it?” “Change!” Perpetua gave a sharp laugh. “I tell you what, Finn, people talk about change a good deal, but they enact that change much less quickly and frequently. Now if I’m going to change something, I’m not doing it halfway. Instead of fight-ing societal ills from within the culture, wouldn’t start-ing a new and improved society be much easier? The Americans have done something like it, and it’s a fine start, but even they haven’t got it all right. But do you know what they are doing? They’re setting an example for other countries. Just look at South

America and all its revolutions!” There was a wild gleam in her eye as she looked to the horizon. “I’m going to do the same, only not quite so violently, and once we find a modest, unclaimed is-land somewhere, I should be able to get by without having to revolt against the Crown and deal with all that bother.” “And what do you have against the Crown?” “Ah, shall I lay it out for you?” she smiled. “Well, we’ll go with the short list. Social stratifica-tion, government corruption and inefficiency, and treating people like commodities simply has to go. Repressive gender roles, double standards, and unhappy marriages are rampant, living conditions in London are grimy and crowded, and...” Her eyes darted up for a moment as if scan-ning through a catalogue of grievances. “Also, I’m not entirely keen on things like cricket and Parlia-mentary democracy sticking around.” “All that and cricket, too? That seems a bit harsh,” Finn said wryly. “Oh, don’t be silly,” Perpetua yawned. “It’s a perfectly horrid sport.”

America! Such was the talk among those on board the Sealander as they first came into sight of the southern portion of that grand continent. After traversing the Pacific, they had weaved through the Caribbean isles and were now skirting the South American coast. [...] Perpetua herself had mostly been perusing

Frozen~Kathleen Shaneyfelt

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maps, lecturing the people on Paragonian govern-ment, and advising the pilot and crew in her role as captain. It was a constant annoyance to her that practically every place they had visited was under either Spanish or French control, and every island that might have been worth having was already in-habited by other colonists who were most reluctant to move. They had meticulously checked the coasts and islands against their store of maps, hoping for something to claim, but had found nothing of im-port. Thus Perpetua had decided to push south and not go ashore until they were past the equator. Today they had just come within sight of an archipelago that was possibly ill-defined, which was to say that not all the islands that were there in real life seemed to be on the maps they had. Perpetua saw a definite possibility that they could claim in-nocence and blame the cartographers for any error perceived by the Brazilians. “I say, isn’t that a ship?” someone called. Per-petua extended her telescope and peered through it. Indeed, coming around the side of one of the islands was a naval frigate flying the Brazilian flag. “Oh, good,” she said tightly, “we won’t have to get out the rowboats.” The frigate drew along-side the Sealander. They were about the same size, but the frigate was clearly armed. A man shouted across to them.

“Prepare-se para ser abordado!” “Is that Portuguese?” Perpetua asked a colo-nist whose name she didn’t know. “Do we have any-one who speaks Portuguese?” Perpetua only had a bit of German and French herself. It transpired that Mr. Darkin, a naturalist and philosopher they had on board, could speak Spanish passably well, so she elected to try him out. The captain of the naval frigate crossed a gangplank to the Sealander and stepped onto the deck, accompanied by four armed soldiers. He strode right up to Mr. Darkin and fixed his dark eyes on the scientist, who to his credit returned the eye contact unflinchingly. “Que país você é?” Mr. Darkin bowed and said something in Spanish, and the captain responded in kind. Darkin turned and explained to Perpetua. “He would like to speak to the captain, who I’m telling him is you.” He shot something at the captain of the Portuguese ship, who stared at her in disbelief. “¿Una chica?” Perpetua could guess what he was saying. “There’s no need to act so surprised about it.” More than a little testily, she explained through Darkin that they were colonists in search of land on which to start a new country, and if they could please have those islands over there that didn’t seem to be on

Bridg

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r~ Tina Sc

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the map that would be splendid. The captain ex-plained, also through Darkin, that the islands in ques-tion were under the control of the Brazilian govern-ment regardless of whether they were on a map or not, and he did not think the government would be very keen on giving them to a boatload of strange English types anyway. “Are you sure we couldn’t have just a couple of them?” Perpetua asked. Darkin sighed and re-layed the question. “There is a penal colony on the largest one,” he reported back. “If you wish to try your luck as neighbours he will ask his superiors, but he doubts it will be possible.” Perpetua sighed. “Never mind; it’s not worth the bother. We’ll just soldier on, then.” Darkin com-municated this to the captain, who bowed to Darkin and gave an awkward jerk of the head to Perpetua. He and his men returned to their ship and sailed off. As the Sealander moved on, Perpetua gazed through slitted eyes at the receding islands. She was beginning to have a slight apprehension that she might have been born a couple centuries too late. “He had a bit of a fancy jacket there, eh?” It was the colonist she had addressed earlier, now ad-dressing her in entirely too familiar a fashion. “Oh, give it a rest,” she snapped. “Go and make yourself useful.” The colonist looked taken aback, but did as he was told. “I’m going to the map room,” she declared to nobody in particular. There had to be some uncharted or unclaimed land somewhere, and she was absolutely going to find it. If there wasn’t, what was the point of all the expeditions that went on out of England?

Pale moonlight spread itself over the water as a band of orange along the landlocked horizon proclaimed the sun’s last stand. Perpetua fanned herself as a meagre breeze limped by. She had just got done telling off a young couple for being waste-ful with their food allotment, and it had got her rather more agitated than usual. They were well past the equator now, and if they didn’t find land they would soon be heading out of the tropical climes and into the winter of the Southern Hemisphere. Nonetheless, the climate was still quite warm, even after sunset, when the sky was a deep purple. Footsteps on the deck announced the presence of Finn. “Good evening,” he said. “Good evening,” Perpetua returned. “I take it you’re just off your shift?” He nodded. They stood in silence for a moment. Perpetua was not particularly inclined to converse at this time, so if Finn was going to say anything, he would have to do it on his own. She wasn’t going to encourage him. He cleared his

throat. “Perpetua...may I be frank?” “I dare say you’ll find you can,” Perpetua said warily. “Well,” he said, “with all due respect...it’s just that I’ve been making note of your behaviour recently, and I must say, I think you’ve been...well, deteriorating, sort of.” “How do you mean?” Her eyes narrowed. He took a deep breath. “I mean that you’ve acted rather hypocritically at times. You have talked at length about equality in all aspects of life, and while I have seen that you are capable of being decent to other people, when something happens that you don’t like or that you have to really work for, you revert to form. You act like...like an aristo-crat.” “And how am I like an aristocrat, exactly?” Perpetua’s voice was hard and level. Finn set his jaw. “Lazy. Domineering. Dismis-sive. Not all the time,” he said slowly, “but enough that it shows. I believe that letting one’s actions speak for one’s beliefs is by far the better course, and I follow that to the best of my ability. You might consider the same.” “I can see why your parents disowned you,” Perpetua snapped her fan closed. Finn winced al-most imperceptibly. “Bad form indeed, miss.” He turned and went below deck before she could retort. Miss. How condescending. She might have expected such judgement from other people on board, but she would have thought Finn, of all people, would understand her. It was really just too much. Piqued in the extreme, she flung her fan into the sea, then just as suddenly, all the fight went out of her, and she slumped against the rail. Finn was right. She was used to getting everything she want-ed, even if it wasn’t everything her parents wanted, and now that she wasn’t getting it, she was falling apart. Sighing, she turned away from the sea and went below decks.

[...] Perpetua leaned on the rail and stared at the dark, unbroken coastline. This close to land, the sky was a shining, endless grey, reflected by the rus-tling water. It felt as if they were trapped in a giant clam shell, with land being the hinge and the sea and sky two enormous halves. If the hinge was not there, she thought, those halves would just fall away and they would be free. “Brilliant,” she sighed. She had been in a dismal mood ever since her confrontation with Finn. Though part of her was still holding out, she had to admit that she had been guilty of many of the same follies as her parents. [...] And now she had brought these people with her, promising them a new life

that now seemed unattainable. She didn’t deserve to lead them, but she didn’t know what to do but to press on. As she gazed down into the water shad-owed by the boat, she felt a kindred spirit in the darkness of the depths below her eyes. A smooth chunk of driftwood meandered alongside the boat as a solitary sea bird swooped down and landed on it. A crest from the Sealander nudged the wood enough to upset the bird, which screeched and flapped its wings. The driftwood bobbed down as the bird pushed off, then righted itself and floated off in a slightly different direction. An unexpected breeze rustled Perpetua’s hair. She remained in the same position for a mo-ment more, no longer looking into the water so much as beyond it, then she straightened up and thumped the rail. It seemed to be made of good, solid wood. She turned around and inspected the deck, taking in each detail with the appraising air of a realtor who has just walked into somebody’s home. It was better than any of her other options, she thought, but first, there was something else she needed to do. With newly found resolve, she strode across the deck and rang the ship’s bell. “All hands on deck!” As she watched the curious people trickle up from below, it occurred to her that this was the first time everyone on board the Sealander had been gathered together on deck. It was a lot of people, and a good way to start, she thought. Perpetua took a deep breath and cleared her throat. If this went over on the ship’s crew like a tonne of bricks, she could well go over the ship’s edge like a petite nineteen-year-old. “Well. Ah. As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve had a spot of difficulty finding an island to colonize, but I would like to extend my thanks to all of you for being a decent sort of lot in bearing with me and not mutinying so far.” She cringed and immediately wished to retract her statement. Better not to lead them to the idea if they hadn’t already got there, she thought. “I’ve got two items of business here, both of which I think are rather important.” “Now, I’ve got a new plan, but first, there’s something else. I know this whole venture was my idea and that I’ve had much to do with it, but there’s a bit of a problem. I have been quite remiss in displaying many of the qualities which I ought to expect of a Paragonian leader, and I—I think—” Her voice caught in her throat. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her nerves. “I have failed to enact change.” The soft whisper of the waves was the only sound on the ship. She sensed nothing coming from the crowd, positive or negative, but she had come this far. She might as well finish what she had started. “I acknowledge the possibility that I am not

the best person to lead you all. I think we—or I—as-sumed my leadership as a given fact. I know I was acting like it, in any event. But my intent really is for us to be a full democracy, so if you want to elect someone else to be our President, please do.” The continuing silence brought out further doubts in her mind. What would she do if someone else became President? After weeks at sea, she still had only the most basic knowledge about working on a ship, and none of the training that the other colonists had. Her skill set mainly consisted of order-ing people around and gleaning abstractions from books. A small sigh escaped her nose. If she had to scrub the decks, so be it. If she didn’t return to her ideals, she would end up with little better than a miniature dictatorship. “Anyone?” she asked. There was still no re-sponse. “Look, just because I’m the one proposing the election doesn’t mean you should act afraid of me.” She decided to let her actions speak for her and walked down the stairs from the poop deck. Moving to stand among the people, she turned and faced the ship’s wheel along with them. “I nominate Miss Norm.” A deep voice with a Scottish accent came from behind her. “I second that!” someone else said. “All in favour of Miss Norm, hands up!” came a shout from somewhere in the crowd. Looking around, Perpetua saw a sea of hands arise as others pushed her forward. “No other nominations?” Perpetua paused. Like her, many of the people had been trained to hold the aristocracy in higher regard. But she could work to change their minds, and if she had to do it as their president, then so she would. “Well, if you insist,” she sighed. “Though I do think a term limit would be a good idea.” There were some cheers and applause. “Well, now that we’ve decided on that,” Perpetua said, “I have a new idea about this whole colonization thing. Actually, it’s not a new idea so much as a realization, but I’d like you all to hear me out. I’ve—I’ve found our country. I’ve found Parago-nia, and do you know what? It was right under our noses all along! We’ve been viewing this ship as a means to an end—a fine end, to be sure, but what if the ship were the end itself?” [...] “Most of you came out here looking for free-dom, and that’s what this boat is: freedom! Now, I know some of you turned out just looking for work, and we’ll be happy to let you off at the port of your choice, within reason and with compensation. With a little ingenuity, the rest of us can live off the sea. It’ll take a lot of hard work and some getting used to, but we can do it. We can make this ship our country.” She paused, breathless, and looked at the

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gathered people. “A ship as a country?” asked one of the colo-nists. “Aren’t countries meant to stay in one place?” “Of course not! Whoever said a country can’t move about?” “Er—no one, I suppose...?” “Right!” “And we’re all going to fit on one boat?” another voice called. “It’s all very well for travelling, but for the long term?” “We can get more boats! A whole archipela-go of boats! A floating flotilla country!” Perpetua felt light-headed. This was madness, but then, she had always been a bit mad, more or less. She jumped up onto the railing and put her fist in the air. “Who will come sail away with me?” she shouted. There was a pause where it seemed as if she might be the only one who still believed in Paragonia, but then Finn came forward, then an-other person, then one after another until almost the whole crowd was with her. Even Dilettante conde-scended to come up from below decks. Perhaps fif-ty people remained, many of whom were the crew she had intended to drop off anyway. Now that the colonists had been trained in shipboard operations, they should be able to manage on their own. “Well, thanks very much,” Perpetua smiled. “I expect we should be setting up a Legislature and Judicature shortly. And remember, I may be your president, but I want you to let me know directly if I’m doing anything you disagree with. That’s how democracies are supposed to work.” She found Finn in the crowd and nodded in thanks.

“Where’s our flag, then?” someone shouted. “Capital notion!” Perpetua said, snapping her fingers. She slid down the railing, hurried down to her quarters, and removed a piece of folded black fabric from its shelf. She went back up on deck, and, letting it fall open, revealed the flag of Paragonia. Its design had been inspired by some experi-ments in optics which she had read about: A white ray of light struck a prism, viewed from the top, and split into multiple rays of coloured light. It was nicely symbolic of unity and diversity, she thought. She handed the flag to two young men, who walked over to the Sealander’s central mast and hoisted it up to further cheers and applause. “It looks like some of them still think you know what you’re doing,” Finn remarked mildly as he climbed the stairs and took the wheel. “I’ve always known what I’m doing,” Perpet-ua laughed and followed him. “Just not for very long before I do it.” “Do we have a bearing, Madam President?” “Head east,” Perpetua smiled. Everything now seemed perfectly clear to her: Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, James T. Cook, and all their lot had made it so that the only really sensible course for starting new coun-tries these days was to make ones that moved. They might have been giants, and she might be just a young, upstart runaway, but she and her Parago-nians—no, the Paragonians—would chart a new course, and in time, who knew? Perhaps they would indeed become a paragon for other countries. Paragonia’s journey had only just begun.

Tre

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Porr

etta

Driving the machine is the blood coursing through his veins. Thesmellofthewheatfillshisnose, And the chaff covers his skin.

Thegoldenwheatofharvest, thebrighteyesofhischildren, the warm heart of his wife . . . These are his dance when he lays down at night.

In memory of Ronald Lowell MisenerMarch8,1949–December7,2010

Humi

dity

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The sunset seeps into his eyes As he hears his children laughing and calling to each other back home: A dream given him by his father in a childhood long ago.

Onthatfinalday,Godwillwalk throughthislifeofmydad’sandsay, “GoodJob.WellDone. WelcomeHome.”

A Man of IntegrityKatie Crowley

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Big brown eyes I’ve learned to loveOver many lengthy yearsA friend to help me though the timesAnd heal my storm of tearsHe comes and sits down next to meAnd my mountains turn to fieldsMy spirit stirs as he cuddles closeHis warmth becomes my shieldHe never tries to question meHe just stays by my sideUntil at last I dry my face And close my heavy eyes.Only to awaken to a cold wet nose And my favorite pair of big brown eyes.

B r o w nE y e s

Light at Her Back

Jordan Kratz

Katie Williamson

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LaborJesse Egbert

Rodeo ~ Chris Sinclair

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A piece of a part parceled out,

A short stack, stocky and stout.

Leaves leave left to golden leaf

And rods reed red on the ruby reef. Man mans his station to his bestBest besets vices, which vices his soul.Lay not late nor lamentate lestYou stay stranded on selfish shoal.

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Untitled~Elizabeth Szalewski

Which, whence, when or why

Does the doer dare to deal the die

Fickle yet friendly does fate find

Poor persons punished in perilous brine.

Stealth is sure to steal the steel endWhich weighs, wrecks, wickifies wretches,Abandoning armourless ardent menTo tote twice the things of the trenches.

So sweat the sweet serenity of laborAnd find faith to fecundate, to favorThat hard, wholesome, healing havenWhich work wills man to be saved in.

18

I couldn’t say for certain why it is that I feel so foreign to myself when I speak about the reigns of kings and themud most often used for bricks in Kenyabut each time my mindfights to understand thosethings I do not knowmy artist heart can’t helpbut feel a little lostabout itself.

Foreign

Jill McFee

Brain Study 1 Elizabeth Szalewski

19

Elizabeth Szalewski

Sheets, multicolored, snappingCome alive in NaplesSocks from thousands’ feet,Hung out in the smog-swarthy airAssimilated houses, apartments--close breathing neighborhoods,Screaming the mean and familialShops scrape by on hand carved figurines,The wooden aesthetic of the city

Kamikaze Vespas and no right-of-way,To live vicariously is a death wishPeople together, interweaving, interactingNaples requires full participationStuck in an alley too small for the bus,Provoking passing fists, hands and arms flailing,Gestures are punctuation, spelling and pronunciationYelling swarms of individuals, but no crowd-coverYou are not allowed to blend in,They don’t believe in hiding,They see you

A slick-haired youth eyes back pocketsCamped out on the rocks by the harbor,Mangy cats pile near homeless tents, groping-gnawing fetid trashOil streaked aprons peddle street sfogliata,But pizza is their specialtyAn expressive smile hands me an espresso,That I watched drip slowly out of stuck groundsCafé oozed round the leftovers built up from yesterday,Still as creamy as any Napoli shot,As dirty,And as fierce

The bene bene bene of the brazen woman on the phone, Speaks southernThe region Rome-and-up tries to ignore,And tourists skirt for lemons and PompeiiFor sake of history, they might visit the tombs,Leaving with a catacomb knowledge and no wish to returnBut in Naples, we walkedIn the grit and the ‘giorno’

A Day in Napoli…

Jessica Sch

iffer

Whps

i

Sarah Lippert

The texture of her insecurityA topographical mapAll bluffs and cragsSinkholes and drastic storefront artificesStained as the lipstickShe leaves on five-o-clock shadowsFull time defenseHalf time doldrumsThree shifts a weekDensely scentedStale Marlboros and sultry bath saltsFaux-fur jacket with ruching for classShe pops her onomatopoeia gumAnd clip-clops her wedge heelsAs she walks away from her latestLast mistake.

Abercrombie RegretSarah Lippert

Lucky StrikeKathleen Shaneyfelt

20

Last One... I Promise...

Taking A Breather

Lucky StrikeKathleen Shaneyfelt

Marilyn MonroeLaura G’Sell

That morning at breakfast, Ellen Prack’s husband Gerald said that he no longer loved her. She was picking at a crystal bowl of plain yogurt and cherries and he had bacon and eggs. Ellen nodded when he spoke to her –“My dear, it seems as though I just don’t love you anymore!”– and took another sip of her coffee, black and no sugar. “Are you listening, Ellen? I don’t love you anymore. I’m, I’m incomplete. That’s what it is. I’m not fulfilled.” “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. The yogurt was too runny, too sour, and probably made with skimmed milk. She didn’t like the way it coated the cherries, and the cherries bled into it and made pink soup. She would have to speak to the kitchen staff, as she had expressly requested fresh, whole, raw-milk yogurt, for her delicate di-gestion. Gerald stirred around his eggs over his plate, mashing large, greenish-yellow crumbles into flat cakes against the china. The eggs were overcooked. So was the bacon, which made grease over the plate and glis-tened on Gerald’s lips and on Gerald’s chin and in Gerald’s morning stubble. “I do feel that way, and I think you must notice. We have no connection.” “Perhaps not. Do you think the farmers’ market will be open today?” “I don’t even find you attractive anymore. You’re skin and bones. In fact, in fact El-len,” and he leaned forward, his black velvet housecoat dragging in the bacon grease, his graying hair flopping limp over his eyes, “in fact, I despise you, Ellen.” He grinned, biting down on the word and hissing it through his teeth. Ellen took another sip of her coffee and folded her napkin in her lap. The yogurt

was simply inedible. If the famers’ market were open, she would go herself and pick out the yogurt. The kitchen staff must be down-grading her dairy and pocketing the rest, which was hardly inexcusable, as Gerald was always late with their paychecks and one of the girls had just had a baby. No one was supposed to know, because she had promised her boyfriend that she had had an abortion, but had really left the baby with her sister in the next town. It was perfectly reason-able. “I hate you, Ellen. You don’t love me any-more, either. You’re an ice maiden!” “I’m sorry you feel that way.” The yogurt from the Neilson Farm was the best. Every-thing was organic and clean, ran by sweet-faced, ruddy, stocky hippie children who still wore seventies clothes and listened to recorded albums. Misty Neilson had founded it when she was out of college. She had a degree in agriculture and a degree in biol-ogy and a minor in something silly that Ellen couldn’t remember. Perhaps romantic poetry or sports journalism. Misty had seven sisters and two brothers, and they all lived to-gether with their friends and animals, and it was terribly weird and unsanitary, and they were poor as anything. But, that was a good place to get yogurt and milk, and sometimes they made cheese. It wasn’t their season for cheese, but eventually they may have it. Misty was a good conversationalist, if loud, and she worshiped tree spirits and practiced sympathetic magic, the mandolin, and Byzan-tine Catholicism. “You are, Ellen? Because, right now, I don’t feel we are communicating. Ellen! El-len!” And then, much lower, like an audition for a television commercial about secrets in dental hygiene: “Ellen.” He waited as she lit up a cigarette and then took one of her hands. “Ellen.” “Gerald.” “I might have an affair. Maybe go with a brunet this time. Warmer hair color than blond. Icy, cold, fairy queen blond. Hitler loved blonds, you know.”

BreakfastChloe Donaldson

22

“Hitler had dark hair.” “But he loved blonds.” She blew a long stream of smoke out. There were cobwebs in the corners of the gothic dining room windows. It was very Old Hollywood vampire thriller. She could imagine Bela Lugosi in an opera cape, gliding like a shadow along her dining hall and saying that he doesn’t drink… earl gray breakfast tea. “Ellen, you didn’t reply. I’ve upset you.” “Don’t fret yourself.” And now Gerald rushed from his chair, knocking over the salt shaker, and knelt beside her, clasping her housecoat sleeve and her hand. “I’m sorry already! Oh, El-len, you’re the light of my life! Together we are like, like, like those great loves of old, in literature and song and epic poetry, El-len, sweet, fire-queen! Oh, if you want to

be cold, be cold, Ellen, just look my way. Look my way, you distant… distant… distant star…? Yes, star! I live for you!” She stubbed out her cigarette in the cher-ries and turned to look down at her hus-band, who had begun to murmur snatches of Yeats and Wordsworth, mixing up lines with Shakespeare and rhapsodizing poorly. She patted his hand and then wiped off the ba-con grease residue it left on her fingers on a napkin. He remained a few minutes, snif-fling and making groaning sounds and trying to cup her breast now and again, which she stopped by slapping his fingers. Eventually he stood up and went back to his chair, smiling like a schoolboy who had just lost his vir-ginity. She glanced at her watch. “I’m glad we had this conversation!” Ger-ald said.

Bittersweet Addiction Kathleen Shaneyfelt

23

24

Freedom~Nick Porretta

25

I could feel the warm glow reflected in my eyes as I gazed into the danc-ing flames. The fire twisted itself into amazing shapes, constantly chang-ing and shifting. The only steady thing about it was its incessant move-ment. The light it cast flickered uncertainly across the darkened trees, the shadows jumping from place to place as if evading some hidden enemy. Smoke billowed in a drifting spiral towards the stars, which glittered back with their own faint burn. The way the firelight dimmed and brightened, the colors smoothly flowing into one another as it grew, entranced me with its beauty. It was the fire’s constant energy that somehow made it so calming. Finally, I sighed contentedly and turned away. I swung my flamethrower over my shoulder and giggled to myself as I headed farther from the burning building. That therapist was right; it had helped to find a hobby.

ConflagrationCynthia Jensen

26

OrangeAnna Wills

27

I thought you were an orange sycamore leaf on cracked pavementstill living, flexible, fierce, but it was a front. I thought you wereorange but you were brown. You were brown so when the dirty,thick-soled sneaker landed on you, you crushed crunched stuck tothe grooves on the bottom. Little, dry-veined triangle pieces of youmashed between the hard rubber treads.

You never notice shoes stepping on leaves. No one even looks.I didn’t notice the light-headed smell near your room shut tightor the front door creaking after we were all in bed.I didn’t notice the cigarettes in your sleeve when you waved at meand I didn’t notice the pill bottle in your left pocket when yougrabbed your keys, left for school.

I wasn’t even looking when the shoe stepped on you.I heard, though—I heard the crunch of your brown veins cracklingbroken, stuck, your little fragments held together by the shoe.You looked orange to me.

OR

ANGE

Leslie Naden

28

My bland heart is pleading a case it doesn’t believe init only wants to stop the waves in your forehead and the wayI have to watch you crumple when I sayI’m sorry but you know I really mean I’m not sorryenough to change and I care about otherthings and I’m not the same, not yours.

the click and clench of your teeth tells me you don’t believeme, but the shake in your hands tells me you knowyou can’t fix it because we’re not broken,I’m a car door and you’re a vase and you wanted meto still be a flower.

Over Leslie Naden

SimpleKathleen Shaneyfelt

29

As the image hits my retina I am left spiraling With vague recollections of a distant eraWhen you enchanted me, an intense appeal Long peeled off by the musty hands of timeRevealing a far less glorious, less vibrant visage Than I had ever imagined you could be, A distorted specter of your former lightAnd the image so lustrous and vivid in my dreams— It was no more—no, it had never beenYou have always been like this, only appearing So much brighter then because I myself was So much brighter then, enamored with the mirrorSo as I turn to you now in my tumble toward earth,As to the object of a distant past, grasping vainlyToward a happiness I have so long been lacking,I only see, perfectly reflected back at meMy own gloom

Mirrorof

MemoriesMatthew Bang

Ti

me

Trap

Abstract

Flower

Jordan Kratz

Jordan Kratz

Memoriesof

Mirror

Cyn

thia

Jen

sen

Cynthia Jensen

Lucinda

Assassin

Bug

31

Walls of pine green like phalanx standOn either side of the path of hard land.Wild grass scouts ahead to seeIf hard land’s prisoners can be freed.Now after the clouds have mourned and criedAnd drought and thirst have gone and died,Silent are the greens as they contently drinkAnd with roots, to the depths they sink.Cocoon drops of water clingto underbellies of branch and bar,Resembling prisms that singAnd shine like celestial star.The elder magi of silent plainsBeckons all to hold their mental reignsTo listen to his daughter, Thought,aSilent fish tickle Lady LakeWith soft kisses on the surfaceTo relieve the annoyance for her sakeAnd smite the flies that swarm her face.Her brother Beach minds not,The sun who makes his face hotNor those who on his face deface and trampleFor the joyous children laughs are ample.

Jessie Egbert

Another November dawn, an unam-bitious patch of pale orange pulling itself above the dead treetops and losing its way in the lowering clouds. Janice stepped out-doors, bow saw in hand. Seeing her white puffs of breath reminded her of the jacket hanging on her chair in the dining room, but she rolled her hands up inside the sleeves of her old, grey flannel shirt and strode to the woodpile. Janice needed a job. The woodpile was under a lean-to with a corrugated metal roof. She tugged a long, thin branch off the shifting stack and dragged it over to the sawhorse. It was chilly. She sawed quickly.

*** Past the stumpy, peony bushes in front of Janice’s chain link fence, across a yellow vacant lot, sat a tidy brick ranch in a well-manicured yard. A white, baby barn dominated Janice’s view of the yard. A gentleman in a dark, green jacket and white khaki pants walked from the brick house to the barn. Meticulous Mr. Hoffstudder, former mayor of the small town. Beneath his ball cap, Janice knew, his white hair was VO5’ed into a perfect wave. She remembered sitting in a meet-ing with the rest of the Sentinel staff, the day after incumbent Hoffstudder lost the mayoral race to Harris Goode. The head editor said that election

TheMinorTragedyofMayorHoffstudder

marked the end of an era. A month later the Sentinel was bought by the big city paper. Janice bent over to pick up the three log sections she had cut already. The rough branches stubbed her cold fingers. She laid the wood in a milk crate. Fodder for the stove. Her right arm ached. She walked around the sawhorse, putting her back to-ward the Hoffstudder homestead. Now her left elbow beat the tempo for her saw. She heard Hoffstudder’s rider-mower growl to life. Hoffstudder was a patriarch in the lit-tle town. He had occupied most city coun-cil positions, gradually easing his way into the mayor’s seat. He sat there five years straight. The man’s yard was perfect. No dan-delions. He had a pond. In the summer his grandchildren hunted frogs on the bank. In the winter Hoffstudder fought the messy, migratory geese.

*** “The Great Bench Debacle” pre-cipitated Hoffstudder’s downfall. The town ordered six red, wrought-iron benches for the Main Street sidewalks. Janice recalled her opinion column: is pedestrian traffic on Main Street sufficient to justify more than a single bench? The benches were finally installed—backwards. They faced out toward the

Ann Heschmeyer

32

Running Through SmokeLaura G’Sell

street, instead of toward the storefronts. Hoffstudder acknowledged the contrac-tor’s mistake, but pleaded for under-standing. “Let’s just wait a while before we drop another pile of cash to fix this,” Hoffstudder said. “Who knows, we might like it this way.” But in rolled the heavy clouds of revolution. In October Harris Goode, the rising businessman in the city whose young family lived in town, won the mayor seat with the promise of “different leadership.” Hoffstudder’s lawn mower still grumbled in the distance. Janice pushed the saw back and forth as she reviewed her options. She was reluctant to leave writing. The Senti-nel job had actually found her, a bright-eyed journalism student, fresh out of college. The log dropped. She bent over and tossed it into the milk crate. Scrape, scrape, scrape again. It was tedious, but she was warmer. Over the saw and distant mower, Janice heard another, harsher sound. An indistinct chorus of barking? Woofing?

Squealing? A bad horn? A cacophonous crescendo. She turned and looked across the yard. A frantic gaggle of Canadian geese streamed out from behind Hoffstudder’s shed. There were twenty or thirty of the panicked birds waddling as fast as they could. Hard upon their tails was the green lawn mower, breathing fire. Hoffstudder rode, brandishing a baseball bat above his head. Driving into the middle of the crowd, he swung left and right with wide sweeps of the bat. Mr. Hoffstudder’s wordless shouts and snarls rose over the confused fracas. The geese began tumbling up-wards, a confused mass of wings, bodies and necks. A vortex of honking, flailing grey arose around the mower. Rising higher in the air, the geese spread and flew. Glory. Valiant Hoffstudder sat. The mower paused. He watched the birds retreat. The bat twitched. With a final, defiant swipe at the receding geese, Hoff-studder turned his charger and drove to the shed. Janice McConnell stood, convinced not all the stories had been told.

33

Colorad

o Cab

in~

Nick Porretta

The sheen on SuperiorReflects ordered form

The sole untouched rhythmBeat, the lakeside song

Where wind instrument is literalAnd Loon sings lead

Where sun sets and risesOblivious to season

Wonder what the rocks wonderWhat secrets the treetops keep

Questions posed of silenceAre answered in the ease

With which the sun sinks today.

Sarah Lippert

Boundary Waters

Kathleen Shaneyfelt

Gra

nd Te

tons

34

35

The ocean pretends to haveGiven your eyes its own shade,But Neptune can’t showTheir sweet smile.My coffee, meanwhile,Attempts a rude farceOf your hair.But nothing shares quite the same lustre.A girl there walks somewhat like you,One flicks her hair quite like you do,One sneezes like you,And there, the audacity!

Irish

Refl

ectio

nsJill M

cFee

EverythingMiguel Rangel

A sweater like yoursIs shown off by another,The green one you wore on that nightAt the beach.We made castles by moonlight,Raced waves by the moonlight,Kissed once by the moonlight.You see now, thatEverything’s you when you’re gone.I see you in allWhile yet nothing is you.For nothing is you except you.

36

“ B r i n g t h e s n ow,B r i n g t h e s n ow ! ”

I s t h e t h e s t o u t b a t t l e c r yO f t h e d r y, b r i t t l e l e ave s

A s t h ey l e a p f r o m t h e t r e e sA n d t h e m a d , d r i v i n g w i n dW h i p s t h e m a l l t o a c r a z e,

Ti l l t h e i r b r ow n , h o l l ow m o a n sB r o a ch t h e s k i e sD a r k a n d g r ay :“ B r i n g u s l i f e,B r i n g u s l i f e ! ”Fo r t h ey k n ow

T h a t t h e s n ow i s e a r t h ’s D e a t h l y r e d e m p t i o n .

Yellowstone Mystery Annie Palmer

Miguel Rangel

Firebird Earth

37

It always began with a dull throb. A little twinge in the eyes, a little ache in the neck. Lindsey reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose, pushing higher with her two fingers to put pressure on the hollows under her eyebrows. The tightness dwindled a little bit, and she let her hand fall.

Migraines…Lindsey knew migraines. She had suffered from unusually strong headaches ever since she was little. Her family was not worried since the headaches were not con-stant, and they always seemed to have explainable causes: she held her neck funny all day, she overslept, she spent too much time staring at a computer screen, or stayed squinting in the sun instead of putting on her sunglasses. What made Lindsey’s headaches unusual was that they seemed to happen a lot more frequently than with anyone else she knew. As far as she could tell, they were also a lot more painful. No one else had headaches so bad that simply smiling hurt.

Lindsey leaned her forehead against the soothing cool-ness of the wall next to her desk, wishing that she had stayed home from school. Wishing that she could stay home. She had friends who were able to get excused absences for as little as a cold or a cough, but nothing short of death would convince her mother to let her miss school – and even then she would probably be rolled there on a stretcher. The only time in her memory that she was allowed to skip due to illness had been when she caught pink-eye. Only then, when she could have gotten someone else sick, did her mother relent.

Lindsey’s ear began to itch again like it had been all day, somewhere deep on the inside, so she reached up to tug on it a little and hoped that would help.

The fluorescent light on the far side of the room flick-ered sporadically, as it always did, since nobody ever bothered to fix it. Lindsey closed her eyes against its pulse, turning her head slightly to find a cooler piece of wall. Her eyes felt tight. There was unrelenting pressure in her temples, like blunt sticks were being jabbed into either side of her head. A ringing sore-ness crawled down the back of her skull and into her neck, knotting her muscles with tension. After building all morning, the pain seemed to be reaching its crescendo.

Her parents might not have been concerned by her migraines, but Lindsey was, especially in the recent months. Her headaches had been getting more and more frequent since summer ended. For the last few weeks, she had been in pain almost every other day. Her parents blamed it on the stress of school beginning, or the fact that it was her senior year and she still had not decided on a college yet. Lindsey knew, however, that she was not dealing with enough stress to cause her so much discomfort. She was a lot less worried about her future than her parents were.

Besides, her headaches no longer behaved like regu-lar headaches. Sometimes she felt an odd, twitching sensation at the base of her skull, near the top of her neck or the base

It’s Not a TumorCynthia Jensen

of her ears; or otherwise she would feel tremendous pressure on the back of her eyes and a strange itch in her sinuses that lacked explanation. The weird feelings would end as abruptly and causelessly as they began, and Lindsey had yet to discover a pattern to them. She mentioned them to her parents once, but they had not thought it was significant enough to look into. After a while, Lindsey just stopped telling them things.

Eventually she began to think of her headaches as a separate entity from herself, as if the pain was a malicious, sentient being of its own. She saw it as an enemy that plagued her relentlessly, attacking when she needed it least. It mocked her from its safe haven inside her head, where she could reach it only occasionally through extra-strength, fast-acting painkill-ers.

It was as if some horrible, insubstantial fiend could reach its fist through her skull and squeeze her brain until she cried mercy. One day it would use that power over her to is-sue demands, and she would slowly sink under the will of the beast and become its obedient slave. Lindsey came to think that perhaps she did not need a doctor after all – perhaps what she needed was an exorcist.

The class bell drilled nastily into the back of her head and out through her eyeballs. Lindsey grimaced and waited for it to stop, moving her face from the wall to cradle her forehead in her palms instead. Her inner ear itched.

“All right, settle down,” came her history teacher’s routine opening, despite the fact that his lethargic students could barely muster enough energy to generate a dull murmur. Lindsey could never remember his name. It started with a G, or maybe a P.

Lindsey wished that the nap-inducing atmosphere of her history class would work its magic today and drag her into sweet unconsciousness. Unfortunately, since her first attempt at sleeping away the pain had failed, she doubted that a sec-ond try would do the trick. She had excused herself earlier to the medical office, hoping that an hour or two of sedated rest would banish the brain-fiend, but it was too late. It was at the point when it did not even help to lie down. It felt like her brain had come loose and was floating, swollen and sore, and which-ever way she laid her head it would drop and bruise against her skull. It was a lot less painful to just sit up and try to avoid straining her neck.

The other night she went to bed with a headache slightly smaller than this, and thankfully it was mild enough that she slept soundly until morning. She woke up feeling fine besides that annoying itch in her ears. It must have gotten bad while she was out, though, because before she left for school she found large spots of dried blood on her pillow. She sur-mised that her nose had bled during the night and the medica-tion had kept her from noticing.

The thought frightened Lindsey, and she was con-

38

vinced there must be something seriously wrong with her. She was certain that this was not a normal way for a headache to behave. And, as she should have expected, it did not take long to start up again.

Lindsey leaned her elbows on the desk and pressed her fingers into the hollows of her eyes again, trying to pay at-tention to what Mr. G/P was saying. Although she was as heav-ily medicated as she was allowed to be, she still hurt increas-ingly worse as the day wore on. She hoped she was not going to be sick. Once or twice in her life, her migraine had gotten so bad that the pain actually made her throw up.

Well, she thought, at least if that happens, maybe I’ll finally be allowed to go home.

Her teacher finished passing out graded quizzes from the other day and began to prepare for his lecture. There was a shuffle of papers from all sides as the students nearby put away their quiz results, grumbling about the scores. Lindsey opened her notebook and took up her pencil, hoping to take some notes. She thought that maybe if she paid enough atten-tion to the lecture, she could distract herself from the agony in her skull.

Her ear still itched. The worst kinds of itches were the ones she could not reach directly, and this one was driving her crazy. She wanted to just take her pencil and scrub around in there for a few minutes, but not only was that sure to fail, it might aggravate her head enough to make her black out from the pain. She tugged on her earlobe for the last time – which no longer helped – and resolved to leave it alone and wait for it to stop by itself.

Her face had become hot, as if she had a fever. She could feel each heartbeat in her head, in her cheeks, and be-hind her eyes. She strove to move very little and to breathe softly and evenly, keeping her pulse as gentle as possible. Any sudden movement or irregularity in her breath made her brain throb again. She felt her face flush and go pale, and hoped she was not going to vomit or faint.

Breathe, she thought. Just relax and breathe.Lindsey could again hear a quiet murmur begin to

swell among her classmates; their attention was fading quickly from the lecture. She did not care enough to look for what was

distracting them this time. It took very little to divert their at-tention.

“Dude, what is that..?” someone whispered very softly behind her.

Lindsey was mildly curious, but lacked the effort re-quired to look. She merely continued to cradle her face in her hands. The pressure was building horribly and she heard a deep ringing in her head. Her brain gave such an insistent throb that she could not help but whimper quietly.

Her ear itched like crazy. Maybe it was her imagination caused by her efforts to ignore it, but the itch felt magnified now, focused, almost sharp. Then the inside of her ear twinged so viciously that it actually hurt, and she winced at the sudden sting. She squeezed her eyes shut and resisted the urge to cup her ear with her hand.

Owww.After a moment of eerie silence, a new flurry of gasps

and murmurs rustled through the classroom. Annoyed, in pain, and still curious, Lindsey raised her head to look around at what all the fuss was about.

She blinked. They were all staring at her. Their eyes were wide, and now that she was aware of them, they all stayed very still. Even the teacher had stopped speaking. Re-membering to breathe evenly, she frowned at them, feeling a little dizzy.

“What?” she asked impatiently, unnerved by the whole situation. Her ear tickled insistently. Irritated, she raised her hand to tug on it and brushed against something wet.

She froze.Slowly, with all eyes on her, she brought her hand back

in front of her face and gaped at the shining redness on her fingertips. She shook slightly.

“Why am I…?” Her voice trailed away as she caught her reflection in the glass doors of the cabinet across the room.

Pale and greenish, her own frightened face stared back at her with a long stream of blood trailing out one ear, but that was not what stopped her breath. Also coming out of her ear were two very long, stiff, hair-like things, sticking straight out from the side of her head.

Horrified, Lindsey saw the things twitch.She suddenly remembered waking up last night to a

warm wetness on her pillow and a sting in her ear. She remem-bered, vaguely, the way her headache seemed to move inside her skull, like it sometimes did, and how she always felt like it was something separate from her, feeding off of her pain.

She saw – and felt – the antenna things twitch again, and she started to scream, long and shrill.

The other students watched in revulsion as the thing in the girl’s head began to move again, pushing out other, slightly thicker appendages – spiny things that looked horribly like legs. Lindsey continued to shriek and clutch at the air be-side her ear, as if afraid to touch it. The legs scrabbled at the side of her face, leaving thin, red scratch lines.

A few other students took up the screaming. The class-mates who were seated next to Lindsey scattered and tipped over their chairs in the effort to get away.

MosquitoNick Porretta

39

Walking on AirAngela Nelson

Lindsey began to convulse and her screams suddenly became staccato. Then there came a loud, sickening crack, and her voice died in a long wet gurgle. She fell forward, face to her open notebook.

The frozen onlookers heard the click and crackle of something moving inside. They saw the girl’s skull split and flake apart like an egg as the creature pulled itself farther out. Blood and certain thicker substances pooled on her desk and dribbled onto the floor. A moment later, the thing – now obvi-ously some kind of insect, about the size of a large rat – was finally free.

Its legs were black and spiny, but its body was some-where between a worm and an earwig, with wicked looking pincers poised at the rear. Two large eyes nearly engulfed its face, with a number of smaller eyes scattered on what was left of its head, and sharp mandibles protruded from below. It had a crumpled mass of translucent material clumped on its back, which was slowly twitching and unfolding like the wings of a butterfly fresh from its cocoon.

A few of the children were still screaming or whimper-ing. The History teacher had fainted behind his podium. Sur-prisingly, no one had yet thought of fleeing the room. As awful as it was, none of them could bring themselves to look away. They were trapped with the spectacle like startled deer on the road.

The insect had a little tube-like tongue, which it was using to lap greedily from the pool of gore. It made small, sticky noises that would haunt the nightmares of many for years to come.

As it drank, the crumpled tissue on its back unfurled to reveal large, translucent wings. They were tinted a brilliant, blood red and shimmered like sunlight through stained glass, disturbingly beautiful in the carnage.

When the creature had its fill, it scrabbled to the end of the filthy desk, causing the students to begin screaming again. Most of them scrambled to the back of the room or hid under their own desks. With one or two flutters of its ruby wings, the thing lifted away from Lindsey’s corpse and made for the open window.

40

Mother Theresa

Laura G’Sell

41

But my arms are not strong enoughTo be held up in the necessary benediction“Seek and ye shall find”But my eyes grow tired from strainingTears cause my sight to darken and blur“Come and I will give thee rest”But my feet are tired from the journeyBleeding and bruised from the road.

Ask and ye shall receiveLeah Blair

“Psychologist Zick Rubin identified the aptly-named, “stranger-on-a-train” phenomenon, in

which we disclose personal information to people we don’t know and probably won’t see again. We can talk about ourselves without worrying that it

will get back to the people closest to us.”

I was sitting with homework on a Star-bucks corner couch when a mother walked in with a toddler and a newborn in a car seat. She was young--very young to have two, but she was composed and, established? Perhaps wealthy? This wasn‘t a high school mamma. We smiled at each other as she unbundled her snowsuit ba-bies, and when the older boy ran for my legs, I broke the ice and politely inquired about names and ages. She was more than eager to share. She asked me if I minded her nursing--I come from a family of ten, nursing babies don’t both-er me in the slightest. That piqued her inter-est. She wanted a big family. She loved being a Mom. She wanted a girl for sure, but had to convince her husband first. Quietly--she didn’t even know him anymore. I didn’t know what to say. How does one respond when a stranger reveals a broken heart in Starbucks? I never got her name, but I know that she strongly believes in breastfeeding, and I know where her kids go to daycare and where her husband works--and that they are growing apart. She never got my name, only knew that I liked coffee…apparently that was enough.

I have never understood why she chose to talk to me that day, but I still think about her story

often. She was my first of many “strangers on a train”…

I got onto the light rail going from the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis. There was a 50’s-ish man talking at people in front of him--a crazy in a stocking cap, with a large mustache and a coat you’d find at Good-will. Or was he? Maybe he was just one of those extreme extroverts who didn’t see they were making other people uncomfortable--It was hard to tell with this one. I made my habitual small-town eye contact and smile of acknowledgement, instantly becoming his next target. He talked to me the entire trip. He was animated. I heard about where he grew

SarahLippert

Strangers

on

a

Train

Shine~Johnny Severson

Separation~Kathleen Shaneyfelt

up, about the raccoons in his backyard--oh, yes, even in the city. I heard about childhood struggles and he became angry, but assured me that that mom was a good mom. He respected her. She was always good to them. His sibling blamed her, but she did her best--then back to being angry, and the raccoons in the yard, and the places he had lived, and the times he hadn’t. Fascinated with his ramblings, yet still trying to figure out if this was a street crazy or a mid-life crisis, I heard my stop announced and bolted off the train. I felt badly for having to leave him mid-story, and that he was now talk-ing at somebody else who was decidedly read-ing Cosmo. I had gotten off a stop too early and was standing in an industrial yard, absolutely nothing around me but an extensive flat lot. As I stood alone and waited for the next train, I began to wonder if Mr. Stocking Cap knew this cement-solitude well.

These faces and stories started to appear frequent-ly. They want to talk, they want to share, they

want to unload to someone…who doesn’t know them?

We were both testing plums--and he asked how to tell if cantaloupes were ripe. My wife always did the grocery shopping, he said. I made some sort of joke about getting stuck with the job today and his face fell. He had been married twenty years, had a beautiful family, and she had just left. He had never had to do the grocery shopping before. He was shaken and the kids were struggling and there he stood in his business suit on lunch break, trying to figure out life between the melons and the broc-coli. Needing to go and not being able to re-spond more than a nod here and there, I tried to listen. I was still standing there fifteen minutes later and this guy was having a mental break-down and bruising the plums and I didn’t want to see him cry. I wanted to say something, but the grocery store aisle wasn’t a good source of inspiration for me. His family was real and his life and he was losing it, and I won’t ever know what happened, because I don’t know his name. I don’t know how his story ended, and I don’t know how he even finished his day, but I know that he had loved his wife and worried about his kids. I know that he was in shock and didn’t

know how to pick out fruit…and that a business suit, clean shave and a brief case are human, too.

I will never cease to be surprised at when and where these faces find me. When I least expect it, someone throws me a life-story with no conclu-

sion. I am always left trying to form and interpret imaginary endings…

We were in a summer play together--he was popular, talented, and I had heard the girls whispering and therefore usually avoided him at risk of being thought another groupie. We fell into step when leaving the building one night. He seemed down, had a bad day. I en-gaged a conversation, and he took the oppor-tunity to talk. In high school he was a wild kid, he mentioned getting caught with girls, sneak-ing out and substances with a grin. Things had changed once in college, he had met her and they had a great relationship. She recently broke it off and now he didn’t know what to do with himself. His seeming self-confidence was a show since the one serious girl couldn’t give him reasons. He was bitter--loved her, but bitter. He told me stories of how she was a hypocrite, and how it hurt because he was at the point where he would say yes, yes, yes, to her, whatever might happen, and she got up and said no. We were still sitting on a bench an hour later. I never had a serious conversa-tion with the guy again. I saw him around, we had mutual friends, but he never alluded to the conversation, never explained himself, never offered another serious word, actually. He was always the joker--one of those magnetic per-sonalities that people loved, but I know that just before Senior year, the player got his heart broke. I know the reason behind his new life perspective…and why he went back to his ex-perimenting.

“Of course, we are more likely to open up to those closest to us, but relationship researchers find that we are also inclined to offer up bits of our private selves when we’re set apart from others, when we feel safe, and when we feel like we can get away

from the other person if we need to.” I barely knew her--both freshman at col-

lege, we were hardly a month into the school year and had never really talked before. She was crying outside, and I sat down and wasn’t put off by her “I’m okays.” I joked, we laughed, I suggested a walk, and tried not to not pry. She didn’t want to talk, but she ended up spilling. It came out--all about a skinny jean boy, one who wasn’t Catholic but she assured me he was great. Her parents didn’t like him, tattoos and piercing, and she was really afraid for him. He’d been trying stuff. She was stuck on him, but he couldn‘t be trusted--couldn’t get over him ei-ther. She was confused and scared and I didn’t know her major, or where she was from, but I

know that she felt vulnerable and had low self esteem, and that he had given her the attention that nobody else had. I’ve seen her many times since then, and I have always wanted to know what happened, but we’ve never been close enough for me to inquire into her personal life.

When writers sketch their characters, they have control. They shape their stories’ ends and can

draw sanity-needed conclusions. I cannot make sense-of or ever know where my fleeting characters

end up--they fade into mid-crisis memories and unresolved plots…

I was on a bus leaving Brussels, on the way to an outer-city airport. Two young men got on last minute and tussled playfully for who would sit where--there were two seats left open, one with me, and one with a guy in back. The one that sat next to me was well dressed, well groomed. I could tell he was outgoing and hap-pened to have a lot of energy at the moment, but I was more than usually withdrawn--trav-eling alone in a foreign city and didn’t know a bit of the language. It didn’t take long for him to start a conversation, though. I can’t remem-ber how he began, but his English was perfect and he was in a talkative mood. Peruvian by birth, but his dad was from the U.S., which he had visited multiple times growing up. The guy said he was a surgeon who was currently work-ing in Barcelona, and he and his buddy (being beer connoisseurs) had hopped a RyanAir flight to Brussels for the weekend--the beer capital of the world, I was told. I was a bit wary of his story, but I warmed up as I sensed a lack of an agenda outside general conversation. I in-quired about his job and he excitedly jumped on the topic. He was passionate about working in Peru--explained the people, their culture, and how much he loved them and wanted to work with them. But there were catches--money is-sues. This job in Spain was a good one, and he wanted to travel around. He talked easily at first--had been through this small-talk before. He progressed and became frustrated, though, struggling to know if he actually wanted to continue with his profession. He really wanted a family someday and the hours were horrible. He couldn’t decide what he wanted to do--stay in Europe, go back, or maybe start something Enlarged Key~Laura G’Sell

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entirely different? He laughed and seemed to surprised to be saying all this to me. Now, I wouldn’t be able to pick him out in a crowd, and his name might or might not be Eduardo, but I know that he was wandering for purpose and enjoyed a good beer, that he loved Peru and the people, that he wanted to raise a close family like he hadn’t had as a kid. When we ar-rived at the airport he thanked me--he told me I had spirit and then ran for his flight.

I remember, replay and try to ingrain the details and the surroundings, the key words and their expressions--their voices, their faces. Why? The

facts have now blurred with my impressions and I sometimes wonder if I am writing false stories?

Why have they become so important to me?

I was on a double Decker in Glasgow and was elected as PR person to get directions. We didn’t know what stop to get off on and it was cold and rainy and January--a typical night in Scotland, but our first in Europe. We were daunted and wanted to make sure we found our bed that night. I opted for the old woman--she looked harmless. She was, and talkative, and although I could barely understand what she was saying because of her brogue, she more than gave directions. She started by introduc-ing herself and talked about the area--I didn’t get up and move away, and she took the oppor-tunity to tell me more. Before she had guided us off the bus at the correct stop, I had found out about her little brother who had drowned at age ten, and that she was from a big family--about how she had children and grandchildren that didn’t come around very often, and that she knew the religious Sisters we were going to stay with. A shoddy bus, a typical sweet beige-wearing grandma with sponge-curler hair and interesting things to say. All she knew about me was a big piece of luggage and a pea-coat, that I needed her for directions, and that she needed my ear.

“Psychologist Zick Rubin identified the aptly-named, “stranger-on-a-train” phenomenon”…And I wonder what I’m supposed to say or do when someone reveals their broken heart in the cor-ner of Starbucks.

Mending

I straighten coiled threadsAnd begin to weave,Repeating patterns in varied colors andThen force myself to undo them.I snip the clinging tiesAnd hem my first mistakes,Tucking frazzled edgesUnderneath.The threads are woven tightly,But there is always a hidden frayEach corner contains a few loose threads.

That fray will snag and catch,Separating what was once sectioned off.The opposing strands mix,Black with white, white with black.And I’ll be left again with dull string to weave and undo.These patterns never finishOr sit wholly mended on the shelf.I’m always hemming cornersOf memory.

Lightning~Nick Porretta

Corners

Sarah Lippert

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The Underdog~Kathleen Shaneyfelt

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It would be easyto lay down our liveslike spades after plowingand walk away with nothing

but the stories on our backsthe vein maps to everywherewe’ve already been

I would walk away with youour hearts in hobo sackswe trade and sling over our shouldersas the dust of the road paints our faces

we’ll know we’re theresomewhere far enough from anywhereit is where we will planta flag and lie in the grasswithout wondering where there is a washing machine

Exodus Jill McFee

Jord

an K

ratz

Liesurely Travels

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Table of Contents3-4 Silent Conversations - Joslyn MarkoOcean - Leslie NadenAdam’s Eyes - Cynthia JensenLa Playa, El Salvador - Nick Porretta6-7Paragonia - Ean HenningerEarly Traveling - Johnny Severson8-9Frozen - Kathleen Shaneyfelt10-11Bridge Over Troubled Water - Tina Schik12-13Trespasses - Nick Porretta14-15A Man of Integrity - Katie CrowleyBrown Eyes - Katie WilliamsonLight at Her Back - Jordan KratzHumidity - Angela Nelson16-17Labor - Jessie EgbertRodeo - Chris SinclairUntitled - Elizabith Szalewski18-19Foreign - Jill McFeeA Day in Napoli - Sarah LippertWhisp - Jessica Schiffer20-21Abercrombie Regret - Sarah LippertLucky Strike - Kathleen ShaneyfeltTaking a Breather - Kathleen ShaneyfeltLast One... I Promise - Kathleen ShaneyfeltMarilyn Monore - Laura G’Sell22-23Breakfast - Chloe DonaldsonBittersweet Addiction - Kathleen Shaneyfelt24-25Conflagration - Cynthia JensenFreedom - Nick Porretta26-27Orange - Leslie NadenOrange - Anna Wills28-29Over - Leslie NadenMirror of Memories - Mathew BangSimple - Kathleen ShaneyfeltTime Trap - Jordan KratzAbstract Flower - Jordan Kratz30-31Strong Characters - Jessie EgbertAssassin Bug - Cynthia JensenLucinda - Cynthia Jensen32-33The Minor Tragedy of Mayor Hoffstudder - Ann Hesch-meyerRunning Through Smoke - Laura G’Sell

Colorado Cabin - Nick Porretta34-35Boundary Waters - Sarah LippertEverthing - Miguel RangelGrand Tetons - Kathleen ShaneyfeltIrish Reflections - Jill McFee36-37Firebird Earth - Miguel RangelIt’s Not a Tumor - Cynthia JensenYellowstone Mystery - Annie Palmer38-39Mosquito - Nick PorrettaWalking on Air - Angela Nelson40-41Ask and Ye Shall Recieve - Leah BlairMother Theresa - Laura G’Sell42-43Strangers on a Train - Sarah LippertShine - Johhny SeversonSeparation - Kathleen Shaneyfelt44-45Enlarged Key - Laura G’Sell46-47Mending Corners - Sarah LippertLightning - Nick PorretaThe Underdog - Kathleen Shaneyfelt48Exodus - Jill McFeeLiesurely Travels - Jordan Kratz

ReadersP r o s eSean McGuire; Rachel Golden; Matthew Gregor; Cyn-thia Jensen; Brandon Boesch

P o e t r yTheresa Kelly; Kirsten Antonacci; Sarah Lippert

AcknowledgmentsThe Loomings staff and advisor would like to convey their most sincere appreciation to those who have graciously given their financial support to the magazine. We truly value their generous donations, which help immensely in the production of Loomings.

We deepest gratitude, we thank: The BC Foundation: Howard Westerman, Jr. (Chairper-son), Kitty Belden, Mike Easterday, Jim O’Brien, Bob Reintjes, Carol Shomin, and Tom Wessels.

Awards

Studio ArtPhotography

Patricia Hattendorf Nerney Poetry Writing Award

The Sister Scholastica Schuster Fiction Writing Award

The Thomas Ross Award for a Promising Young Writer

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Sarah Lippert

Ean Henniger

Leslie Naden

2nd

1st

3rd

Rodeo

Playa, El Salvador

Light At her Back

Chris Sinclair

Nick Porretta

Jordan Kratz

Elizabeth Szalewski

Cynthia Jensen

Cynthia Jensen

Un

tit

led

Luc

ind

aA

da

m’s E

ye

s

Judges

PoetryDr. John BunchDr. Chuck OsbornWilma DagueSr. Diana Seago

ARtDr. Daphne McconnellDr. Jamie BlosserProf. Michael O’HareProf. Ryan MoreheadAndrea SloanMegan BickfordMary Asher

ProseDr. Daphne McConnellSr. Judith SuteraProf. Matt Ramsey

Awards

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