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the lab reviewvolume 1: issue 3Faculty Advisor

Patricia Ann McNair

Chief Editor William Horner

Associate EditorsMalissa Stark, Melaina de la Cruz, Giovanni Perry

Layout Cover Design William Horner William Horner Department of Creative Writing Faculty

Randy Albers, Jenny Boully, CM Burroughs, Garnett Kilberg-Cohen, Don De Grazia, Lisa Fishman, Re’Lynn Hansen, Ann Hemenway, Gary Johnson, Aviya Kushner, David Lazar, David MacLean, Eric May, Patricia Ann McNair, Joe Meno, Nami Mun, Audrey Niffenegger, Samual Park, Alexis Pride, Matthew Shenoda, Shawn Shiflett, Tony Trigilio, David Trinidad, Sam Weller.

The Lab Review, a journal of student writing, is published online by the Publishing Lab through the Creative Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago, on a monthly basis. Fiction, creative nonfiction, stories in graphic form, poetry, visual art, and photography, were submitted by students for consideration. Visit us online at thelabreview.com for past issues, market research, and industry interviews and videos. For information on studying creative writing: http://www.colum.edu/Academics/CreativeWriting/

Copyright © 2015 Creative Writing Department

Editor’s Note: Finally, we have reached the end of this hectic semester. We’ve all been busy with exams and presentations and papers, but now it’s time to relax and enjoy a few months of freedom, and to those graduating, a lifetime of it. And what better way to celebrate this semester than by showcasing the work that you’ve taken the time to create than by electronic publication you can show off to anyone? It will have been my first and last semester working for the Publishing Lab by the time this issue is out and I can say that I have never felt more productive or proud of this publication than any piece of work I’ve written. Though this issue deals mainly with poetry, it should be noted that every edition we’ve published has had its own identity about it, though sometimes we weren’t aware of it. And that spreads to every word written by their individual narrator or story teller. While working here, I wanted our readers to expand what they know and what they thought they knew about the world around them and how it’s presented, and this conviction is reinforced by every poem, essay, or short story that these writers want to share with you. We also have submissions from some of the editors, so you can see what we’re up to. On that note, to my co-editors, Gio, Malissa, and Melaina, it has been a pleasure to work with you and be a part of something we all believe in. I would also like to thank Patty McNair, our faculty advisor, for guiding us through this tospy-turvy world that is publishing. To my fellow readers, enjoy. -William Horner

fictionralphy’s last scoop | Malissa Stark . . . 8

creative nonfictionlennon | Cody Lee . . . . . . . 13

art and joy: an interview with eric charles may 17 private nothings | Brandon Lee Vear . . 26

poetry

“cross to bear” | Taylor St. Onge . . . . . 4

villanelle surréaliste| Brandon Lee Vear . 6

pilsen | Claire Doty . . . . . . 7

rubble | Deanna Miera . . . . . 11

i don’t say what i mean or mean what i say | Siobhan Thompson . . . . . . . . . 25

author bios . . . . . . . . 31

end note . . . . . . . . 32

contents

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“cross to bear” | Taylor St. Onge

I saw your dead body today. I saw your motheryour brotheryour father cry. Stood back, remembered how to curl in on myself— origami folded my tear ducts into the shape of your bruised and beaten brain—refused to admit to myself that the corpse in the boxlooked anything like the boy I used to know.

“Cancer was stealing his youth.” 1

The Catholic Priest wearing robes mottled with red, the coffin in slate grey, and your family donned in black; swirled together,we looked like the somber aftermath of Chernobyl. Father Evansays that this is what ambivalence2 looks like. (He says that you parallel Jesus, the first Christian martyr,3 “the true meaning of Christmas;”4 you were born with a death sentence on your head.5) ((I guess your parents don’t know that you’re an atheist.))

“Do you believe that he will rise?” 6

I sat in a mausoleum this afternoon. The walls weremade of dead bodies in nice suits and nice dresses,damned to lay with closed eyes, with puffy eyes, in coffins for all eternity. They did not allow us to watch your casketget stuffed into the wall with the others. No one watched. Yourfamily left with us. Your last few moments unburied were alone.

“Born into a world that would seek and then take his life.” 7

I didn’t get to say one more goodbye before they sealed the lid shut, but I suppose all is well because I didn’t get to say goodbye before your final breath either. I don’t think I would’ve wanted to

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see you a second time in that padded box anyhow.Your hair was parted wrong, everyone said so. Themakeup on you was too thick, everyone thought so. Therosary placed in your hands was everything you would not have wanted, everyone (but your mother) knew so.

“Your son meant something to me.” 8

Father Evan says that it’s okay that you’re dead now because you’re finally without your human faults and without sin,9

but Kalena and I liked your faults and liked your sins. I donot want to picture you without them. I’d rather picture you swimming through the stars like water, envision you lassoing up asteroids and becoming the meteor’s flaming, falling star tail then imagine you with stiff hands and closed eyes andhair parted too much to the left.There has never been a time whenyou have not crossed my mind.

“Thank you for letting this priest ramble.” 10

____________________________________________________________1 “Cancer was stealing his youth.”2 “Ambivalence.”3 “The first Christian Martyr.”4 “Helped us remember what Christmas really means to us.”5 “Born with a death sentence on his head.”6 “Do you believe that he will rise?”7 “Born into a world that would seek and then take his life.”8 “Your son meant something to me.”9 “But without sin.”10 “Let this priest ramble.”

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villanelle surréaliste | Brandon Lee

Vear

I tried to speak but the room shattered with silenceJ’entends une voix, langue étrangère,

An unturned stone, communication defiance

Ou la langue d’un diplomate, Oh, comment le monde marchaitAn uncompromising dialogue, what’s left out unfair,I tried to speak but the room shattered with silence

N’était-ce pas le language que Magritte employait?Looking deeply, brown eyes beyond what’s true, she’ll share

An unturned stone, communication defiance

Trans-puzzled outlook on how to see the world today,On vera qui est ignorant, reflet dans le verre

I tried to speak but the room shattered with silence

Peut-être dans des vies antérieures, je lui ai tenu la main, on a dansé,

Nothing understood yet my infatuation to declare,An unturned stone, communication defiance

On est perdu dans la traduction, mais on est parfait,Within kissing distance, this woman I do stare,

I tried to speak but the room shattered with silenceAn unturned stone, communication defiance

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pilsen | Claire Doty

we trudge bythree men sitting in a barber shopguitars and songs before themlegs spread, feet proddingheads solemnly bentto what they’re there for

a man itches a lottery ticketwith a penny, maybe a dimegrocery bag liftedas he goes to work

dirty, silver spoon train stationwelcomes with a muddy smelltwo drunks stationed at the doorone bothers us on the other sideof the tracksuntil he is told, “No alcohol here”he only made noise and a terrible, stench filled airI could only make out “motherfucker”we trudge by on the Loop trainelevated

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ralphy’s last scoop | Malissa Stark

Ralph delivered two perfect scoops of chocolate ice cream into a ceramic bowl and one messy scoop of vanilla.

“Hey there, sonny, watch what you’re doing.” Inside the tub of vanilla ice cream was a “z” shaped swirl of chocolate ice cream the color of hickory. “Now that tub is contaminated, you’ve got to change out scoops Ralphy boy.” Ralph’s father Chuck reached around him and hoisted out the five gallon tub.

“Pops, that’s such a waste of ice cream. It’ll taste good just the same,” Ralph protested as he handed the ceramic bowl across the counter to the woman he was serving.

“Big Man Ice Cream Parlor prides itself in A-plus service and that means the whitest, cleanest Vanilla scoops in the windy city.” Chuck said, winking at the woman across the counter and she giggled.

Big Man Ice Cream Parlor. Chuck was a big man, the big man, in fact. He was not just wide and bulbous like Santa Claus, but was a whole foot taller than his eighteen-year-old son. Paul Bunyan might be a distant relative of Chuck’s. Ralph—Ralphy, as his dad still called him—was short and slim, more like his mother, something his brother’s had no problem making fun of him for.

Chuck made his way through the double doors to the back area of the parlor, leaving Ralph to tend the front by himself.

This time of night, as the sun was spreading itself like butter on a slice of Wonder Bread across the horizon before disappearing into the night completely, was a peak hour for customers. Last year Chuck had invested in a brand new Admiral 517 radio and it drew in the neighborhood more than the smooth, handmade strawberry ice cream could. Families who couldn’t afford radios would wander in and buy penny candies for the kids or nothing at all to listen to the nightly radio. Chuck didn’t mind the loitering. It was good publicity as he figured it, still trying to recover from the depression like everybody else.

Other families who had a radio just made it a weekly tradition to come in and hear the near crystal clear tunes streaming from the Admiral and help themselves to a milkshake in the meantime.

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Tonight it was all the usuals: the Gallos, the Flints, Mrs. Gold by herself, Mr. Maloney and his grandchildren, and Frankie with his girl, Dolores. It was Ralph’s Friday night family. Too bad you can’t pick your family.

As everyone settled in to their bar stools and vinyl covered chairs, the March of Time was just beginning. The arguments were already beginning between the Friday night family.

“If I hear one more thing about that twit, Eleanor, I think I’ll blow my brains out.” Mr. Maloney slammed the back end of his spoon on to the table creating a sharp ping. He was shushed instantly by the group.

“Really, Tom, is that anyway to talk in front of your grandchildren?” Mr. Flint interjected.

“Oh, what do you know,” Mrs. Gold scowled at the cranky old man who was nearly her age.

Ralph took off his paper hat and began to pull his apron over his head, preparing to sit just for the March after working all day. His father, of course, interrupted him, yelling from the back, “Ralphy, come back ‘ere a minute will ya?”

His limbs moved instinctually to re-dress for work as he walked through the swinging double doors.

“Bye Ralphy!” The Gallo twins, six-year-old girls with dark hair and dark chocolate stains on their mouths, mocked Ralph as he exited the room.

The chrome doors snapped closed faster than expected on the loose back of Ralph’s shirt and un-tucked it from his trousers. As a result, he jumped at the cool breeze and tug at his back.

“Why are you acting so squirrelly?” Chuck was leaning over the sink washing metal milkshake cups.

“Well, Pops. Actually.” Ralph stammered. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” This was it, he thought. He was finally going to tell his Dad that he didn’t want to be the ice cream man. No more trips to the beach dragging the ice cream cart through the hot sand, no more ringing bells, no more sticky hands.

“I know you were really bothered by me wasting ice cream earlier,” Chuck ignored his son. “I wanted to show you what we really do.” He dried his hands on a pink rag and walked over to a refrigerator with a piece of paper taped to it that read, milkshakes. “You see, those ‘contaminated’ tubs of ice cream, I don’t throw them out. It’s just important that the wares look good in front of the customers. Each flavor has to look clean and just like that flavor. I use the ‘contaminated’ bins back here to make the milkshakes and malts. See,” he lifted up a strawberry milkshake he had made for himself, “you never would have

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guessed that a bit of vanilla got mixed in there. We’re just striving for the appearance of perfection. Does that make sense?” Ralph was thoroughly unimpressed. “Good to know, Pops. Thank you.” Chuck slapped his son on the back and Ralph flew forward and used a counter to stop his momentum. “Now go get ‘em son.” “Pops—“ “Yes?” “I don’t want to work here anymore.” Chuck, who had gone back to washing dishes stopped but didn’t look up. Silence strolled along the room. “Pops?” “Go wipe down the counters up front.” Ralph had come too far to back down now. This was a courage he had never been able to muster before. His older brothers were both able to get out of the family business, but he wasn’t about to go work in a coal mine like them. “I want to be a sports writer, Pops. I think I would make a really good journalist, I’m very observant. And you taught me everything I know about baseball. And I could take you to games with me while I write my articles.” Chuck thought about this before responding, “Get out. And tuck in your shirt.” Ralph lowered his head and walked back through the double doors, tucking in the back of his shirt. He slipped the paper hat off and his curly red hair sprung up and he pulled the pink striped apron over his head. The words coming from the radio floated in and out of his thoughts as he folded the apron neatly, “and because of this, First Lady, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt has resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution.” A loud clang echoed throughout the room as Mr. Maloney’s spoon flew across the room and smashed into the dial of the radio and the knob popped right off. Loud static engrossed all sound of the unhappy listeners yelling at Mr. Maloney. “What is going on out here?” Chuck entered the room, dabbing his puffy eyes just in time to see his son walking out the front door. He waited for Ralphy to turn around and when that didn’t happen he went over to the Admiral and picked up the knob that had landed on the floor beneath the counter.

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rubble | Deanna Miera

She’s been to a place where befriending the monsters in her head comes easier than trying

to get them to leave;

where time has made empty shellsof the phallic embodiments of men’s great egos– built high to make love to the sky

Once reaching for God,they now crumble under the pressure of try, from exhaustion and the weight of attempt

Give Up

Her eyes hotshe travels to a place of hopeless despair

Where the rubble looks like clouds or a warm mattress saying lie down on me

Give Up

Her sanity is measured by the sentences scratchedabout what she can remember of her old self She is not herself, you see

In the rubble where she tore herself up no one could hear the demons eating away at her brain

and scavenging for the scraps of her last hopes for normalcy of peace

While she held up her hand,God turned his back like everyone else, busy with other things

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God rewards the righteous, the pure, and the rightShe punishes herself for her sins so God doesn’t have to

Will there be a plane on the tarmacwaiting at the end of this bad dream?

Will she lie down this time;pledging her body to decay,

purging her consciousness from light, retiring her mind from an exhausting short life?

Wiping your eyes with the back of your hand in the rain doesn’t work they way you’d hope

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lennon | Cody Lee

I never listen. It’s been some sort of small cloud that drips onto my scalp wherever I go. The moment someone tells me their name, it’s gone from existence as if they forgot it themselves. I can sit through an entire workshop without hearing a word, mostly because I don’t care. I don’t care about the time you got drunk and lost your virginity, and I hate to say it but I could care less about your grandfather’s passing. Perhaps I’m self absorbed but then again, name a human who isn’t. (If you attempt, know that actions do not speak on thoughts). As much as I would like to get full fulfillment of my hundred and twenty thousand dollar tuition, it doesn’t help my attention when I turn my head to see six students texting and three unconscious. Why should I pay attention if you won’t, and why should you listen if I don’t? I propose a solution: let us begin, together.

Imagine a classroom of twenty students, all completely engaged for four hours and focused on the growth of one another. In one room could sit the next Gertrude Stein or William S. Burroughs, Albert Camus, Timothy Leary, Joan Didion, and God, but to become great we must find our flaws and build upon them, open-mindedly and holding hands. We are not the enemy, but rather stepping stools to a revolution of beauty, a beauty present in the minds of each of us. To unlock the gates it takes a simple seed of thought and expression, at times confrontation unpleasant to the ear.

Tell me something that I never want to hear. Tell me that my diction blows and explain why. At least try. In doing so we help ourselves create the voice that won’t stumble in interviews or “blahhhhhhhhh, never mind” in everyday speech. The one thing that I ask is simple: before you say, “I don’t get it,” take the time to think. As humans, we don’t “get” many things. Why do we live? A question that remains unanswerable, but fun to figure out. We wonder why the clock says, eleven twenty-seven whenever we look and ask if all dogs go to heaven but the true answers lie within us. With our thoughts we shape the world, and without them, where are we?

We walk naked among the trees. Sponges of green moss tickle our feet and we watch out for spider webs, not out of fear but because this is their home too. White streams of liquid air

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trickle in the same direction as us and I kneel down to drink. I feel it slide down my throat and into my belly, forming a bond between my bones, organs, and soil skin. The breath of the Earth sways the leaves and we have nowhere to be, but here. We play hide and seek in the forest but your golden flesh sticks out from yards yonder and I come running. Never tripping, but gliding above grass and fellow species of the universe. Your arms blanket my ribcage and we fall onto a bed of bushes underneath the sun’s fingertips. A kiss sends tingles to my toes and when I open my eyes I sink into yours, two planets to explore. You are not a woman and I am not a man, but beings of balance both timid and sure, solid and fluid energies of love.

The sky is polluted with tar and THC, the same scum that slides in our bloodstreams before class and makes slugs of human skin. We wake up hung over and say, “Fuck it, I’m going to sleep.” I drink beer during homework assignments and spit bullshit into a computer screen, manure prints behind me. The amount of temptation that plagues a student is overwhelming, like the comfort of a pillow or hit of a joint, or two, or three, but if we plan to meet our dreams, we must stand on our feet. Get out of bed; go to school because the rude alarm clock of the future lies ahead for those who disagree.

Commitment is never easy, but luckily, we are granted the power of free will. If I don’t want to come to class, I don’t have to. However, if I choose to come and stare out of the window, this leaves an unstable step in the stepping stool, more troublesome to my peers than a missing step altogether. This causes one to think, do I actually belong in school? If only here to please two parents and societal norms; please leave, there are endless other things to do in the world besides sit in a chair, unsatisfied and wasting money. However, if you seek knowledge and growth within your area of interest, just focus. It will be hard work, but the only easy things in life are hookers and nothing at all. Even so, the underbelly of prostitution takes commitment.

I wonder why I do not care about many of the things that I hear. Perhaps topics unrelated to me fail to trigger an emotional connection, but then again in the human experience, everything is relatable to some extent. It is possible that the prose of the students’ is so unbearable, but yet idiots don’t sit in college classrooms. Perhaps it’s the class itself. The walls are white, but if they were painted any other color I would think that I was in Kindergarten. I enjoy writing and philosophy, and every other course that I signed up for, so why the sullen face? I believe that each professor is capable of more than they present. Compared to the students, a teacher is undeniably far more advanced, both in subject content and the matter of life, but for some reason they

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seem to stray away from the latter. If a teacher plans to improve his or her students then honesty must prevail over reluctance. Discuss sufferings, joy, publishing, poverty, and allow me to dodge the difficulties that you never could. Beyond the trunks of the trees, I see twenty bodies of no color. They wear the clothes of their skin. We join them while they dance in a meadow of sunflowers. I twirl you around, around again, laughing with the music of the wind. Until we get tired, we spin others and smile with them, never speaking because there is no need. We feel what they feel, and I know this because we feel the same way. I lay beneath the flowers and you sit elsewhere. We will meet again, if not today, tomorrow, and if not then, sometime soon. I stare at the clouds that pass and watch the television of nature flip channels by choice. Whatever the actors preform win Academy Awards in my opinion. Though we all may seem identical, our minds are incredibly different. Everyone in the forest has unique passions and talents, and levels of both but we each carry the core value of growth. Individual development leads to communal because we share among each other rather than the Old World way of secrecy. If I share something with someone else, it may spark a whole new idea that I never could have imagined. One may question the excitement of endless encounters, but underneath each layer of skin lay fifteen unexplored worlds, and seven billion bodies exist to peel. The outer shell is the hardest to crack, but once inside, the juice of the mind flows beyond imagination. Waterfalls of thought and truth spread like spilled lemonade and only in the act of letting go, can one create such an elegant mess. I see countless suited men walking to work and wonder if they notice the charm of the city. Streetlights flash colors only the lucky can see, but then again if we couldn’t see color, would I be considered an equal? I see women in low cut blouses and wonder if they purposely kill themselves and all females alike. I wonder why I kill myself with cigarettes. Perhaps dying is fun: finally, an escape from the madness of the mind and the ideas that beat at our brains with metal bats and batons. We die every day. Old opinions are thrown into the trash and fresh beliefs blossom into the flowers that we become. We pick from different gardens and choose the seeds that sprout supreme. To each of us, they vary, but experiment with many to see which grows close to the sun. Some may not bloom, yet some will surprise, but trial and error takes time to unfold fruit.

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When I came to college, I enrolled in the journalism program but soon after found out that as a journalist, you are not considered a person but rather an empty body interviewing a real being. For those in the field, do what you enjoy, but I found that I have a mind that needed expression. I switched my major to creative writing and stabbed myself in the eyeballs at every assignment that asked for personal experience. I was so comfortable hiding my emotion instead of sharing it with those around me. Perhaps this is a coming of age story, or maybe a memoir, but above all it’s a story of growth. When I grow, we all do, but only if we take the time to listen. I have made it to the beach where the sand warms my feet and I sit underneath the sun. Although He watches over me, He never looks down upon my imperfections. On the beach, no blemishes spoil my skin, or yours. We met again yesterday, three years since the last time that we saw each other. We haven’t spoken yet and we still don’t need to. The worlds of your eyes have been opened, and so have mine but still they stare in wonder, and beg to be roamed again. We inch closer to the ocean and listen while the waves brush against the pebbles. Out beyond the horizon lay a bed if we so please to sleep. Yet, the sun is still up and there’s no need to dream.

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art and joy: an interview with eric charles may | Malissa

Stark

Eric Charles May, author of Bedrock Faith, and associate professor of writing at Columbia College Chicago, was recently awarded the 21st Century Award. This prestigious honor goes to a Chicago-based author who has recently published an exceptional piece of literature. Bedrock Faith, the well-deserving novel that helped May win this award, is the story of a fictional town called Parkland. When neighborhood deviant, Stewpot returns from his stint in jail, the whole town is turned upside down in completely unexpected ways.

May worked previously for The Washington Post, and has been published in Fish Stories, F, Criminal Class Review, and the anthology Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck.

Lab Manager, Malissa Stark had the opportunity to sit down with Eric and talk about his book, his process, and how to manage life and craft.

***

Malissa Stark: Bedrock Faith is such a thoroughly told novel, it has so many characters that are all thoughtfully examined and real. How do you accomplish something like that? How much time does that take?

Eric Charles May: A lot of time and a lot of revisions. One of the ways to get a well-rounded character on the page is to give the reader a well-rounded view of them. That means, usually, seeing the characters at their best, at their worst. I do a lot of going into certain character’s point-of-view, in the sense that we get their internal thoughts and their internal rationale for why they’re doing what they’re doing. Which, even though it’s wrong-headed, if the reader never understands what this character’s

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understands what this character’s motive is, it’s very easy to take a kind of one-dimensional view of who the character is. You need to have the character in moments of reflection and contemplation. I purposefully went in to a lot of points where the character is simply thinking about what they’re doing or why they’re doing it, so the reader understands what this person’s motive is, even if the motive is off-the-mark or wrong-headed. It isn’t off-the-mark or wrong-headed to the person who’s thinking it.

MS: That’s hard enough to do with one character, but you do it with so many in Parkland.

ECM: Yeah, but the thing is, you just have to give each character his or her due. That’s just asking yourself as the author the question: have I done that? Have I given the reader any rationale for why the character acts this way? Eventually we get Mrs. Butler’s rationale; we don’t get it right away, but we get it because it really could have been a blind corner if we never got into her head about why she was acting the way she was acting.

MS: Do you have any organizational method to keep those characters separate so they don’t get confused?

ECM: One of the things that I did was divide the novel up into books. Stewpot Vs. Irma Smedley, Stewpot Vs. the Davenports, Stewpot Vs. Mrs. Hicks, Stewpot Vs. Everybody, the Neighborhood Strikes Back. All of these were done, in part, to keep things straight in my own head. I also felt by having it blocked out that way, the reader knows okay, this is who we’re dealing with in this section, as opposed to having it go in and out and back and forth. There were so many characters and so many rationales being displayed, I thought I had to do something to keep it clear. It was going to be difficult enough for readers to keep up with so many characters.

MS: Okay. So that was as much for you as it was for the readers?

ECM: As much for me as it was for the readers, yes.

MS: You teach Advanced Prose Forms, does any of that genre mixing between fiction and nonfiction come in to play?

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ECM: I had to do research. Primarily, I had to read the Bible. I read the Bible, I read the Daily Missile the Catholic church has, I read an encyclopedia on biblical phrases, a couple of other books on the Bible. There was a conference of religions that happened in Chicago in the summer of ’93. I did research on that. I had to do research on the exact legal rights of someone who tries to declare themselves insane. I interviewed a defense lawyer. Fortunately, one of the best defense lawyers around is my next-door-neighbor, so he was a ready access and was able to give me a lot of information on defense lawyers and how defense lawyers work with clients, and interrogation rooms, and the old lock-up at police headquarters at 11th and State. I also did research on arson investigators with the police department, not the fire department. It’s part of bomb and arson. I had to investigate the effects of heatstroke and renal failure because that’s what happens to Mrs. Hicks. And some of that, the plot was determined by what I was able to research. What are the possibilities of getting a transplant after a certain age?

MS: Is it safe to say that you enjoy the research aspect of it?

ECM: Oh yeah, research is fun. It’s loads of fun. You have to be careful of what I call “rapture of the research.” You get so deep into the weeds of research and are so enjoying it that you start trying to cook up ways to get the research into the story that the story may not need. I chose 1993 because that was the one year there were no elections in the state of Illinois. I knew I was going to have an alderman in the story and I just did not want the story to get bogged down in a lot of political stuff. I didn’t want to make it ’94 because that was OJ Simpson and that would have just sucked up all the oxygen in the room of an African American community. They’d be talking about OJ when I wanted them talking about Stewpot. The year that I placed it in was determined by a lot of those events. If things had worked out differently, I might have put it in ’97, I might have put it in ’98. ’93 was the one year that worked the best.

MS: This is a pretty hefty book, what did the editing process look like?

ECM: Writing a whole lot and then pairing it back, which is

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a lot easier to do than to expand it. I learned that from being a newspaper reporter; it’s a lot easier to cut back than it is to expand. You basically throw in everything but the kitchen sink and then maybe the kitchen sink too. Then once you’ve got the entire thing you can start to make informed choices about what actually needs to be here. There was a whole family that I took out of the novel. They were going to move into Irma’s house and have Mr. Glenn buy some other house across the street from the Davenport’s. But I realized that what I was going to have Stewpot do to this family was pretty much, kind of a repeat of what happens to the Davenport’s. I took that out because there was a whole side story with this family’s son and Delphina. I decided that Reggie would be easier because he’s already in the story. That’s what you start doing, you start saying who do I already have? By doing that and by taking certain things and moving things around, it gives you more space to add some more things with other stuff. For instance, I originally had Mr. Glenn getting some paramour of his to fake getting pregnant, but then I said wait a minute, I already have Irma. All I had to add was a little bit about Mr. Glenn befriending Irma at Mrs. Hicks’ service and that set that up.

MS: And she already had the motivation.

ECM: And she had the motivation. So you begin to see that taking this out, moving this around, begins to work better with characters that you already have. In some ways, it makes it a cleaner, easier to do. I would have to go back and look at my original versions to see all that I took out. The novel seems very complete without it. I had a whole block party scene where Brother Crown shows up at the block party, not at the railroad station. It was very long—it was a good scene, very dramatic. He was walking from picnic table to picnic table. But there was an easier way to get him into the story. Sometimes you just have to tell yourself: what is it that I need to have happen? In the case of Brother Crown, I just need to get Brother Crown into the neighborhood, that’s all I have to do. His importance comes after he gets there. MS: Have you thought about writing more about Parkland and these characters?

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ECM: I had until everyone started asking me if I was going to write more.

MS: (laughs) Sorry.

ECM: No, it’s the kind of question a writer wants to hear. Right now I don’t have a novel in mind to write about it. I thought about writing something historical about how Parkland was formed and the first settlers that came. But you still need a story. It’s got to be more. That kind of story never interested me very much. What I have been thinking about doing is a collection of stories that are Parkland-centered in one way or another—with maybe some historical stories. That is actually something that I find interesting. So, I’ve been toying around with some ideas. And it will allow me to use some of the backstory that I wasn’t able to use in the novel. There’s all kinds of backstory I have about Mrs. Motley and how she met her husband and a whole host of other things: backstory of Mr. McTeer that I was not able to use because I had to figure out, okay I’ve got to pair back. There are some things that are mentioned only in passing, like Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Motley locking horns over Huckleberry Finn, stuff like that which actually might work in the short story. Some of this will be things that were mentioned in the novel that will be explored in a more elaborate way in short stories. And also I can throw in some more Parkland stuff that didn’t make it into the novel at all. I’ve already started a short story about what happens when Vernon passes and there’s a big contention over who’s going to take over as Alderman. Another story about a couple from Parkland who lose their house. They’re not in Parkland but they’re from Parkland. If I do anything about Parkland, that will probably be the next thing. Even before I sold Bedrock Faith, I had started another novel which only briefly touches on Parkland because one of the characters is from there.

MS: So you’re staying in that world?

ECM: Yeah, but it takes place mostly in two other Chicago

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neighborhoods. If you think Bedrock Faith has a lot of characters, this one has a whole lot of characters. It’s a story that centers around a crime. It’s got homicide detectives and mob guys and newspaper reporters and bar owners and a disgruntled student, and college students, and a whole host of these characters from these other Chicago neighborhoods. It’s gotten pretty long, but like I said, you write it all, you do everything, and then when you decide to start pairing back, you can make informed decisions.

MS: You won this 21st Century Award, congratulations. Do you see readers paying attention to awards? Who pays attention to these kinds of awards?

ECM: Well, to say that you’re an award winning author is better than not being able to say it. In fact, I did a reading last Thursday that was sponsored by the Chicago Writer’s Conference and in their internet blurb about the reading, they called me an award-winning author and I think sometimes just saying that means more to readers than exactly what the award is. It’s a nice thing to have because a lot of writers were up to win this award. To have my novel, my writing picked—I mean, last year the woman who won it was the woman who wrote Divergent, [Veronica Roth]. It’s very good to have someone who has no vested interest in liking you acknowledge your work is good. You don’t want to be in the position where you’re depending on others completely for your own sense of validation but its certainly something I think readers take note of when they’re thinking about what to read. It can’t hurt.

MS: What’s a question about writing or publishing that you’re surprised you’ve never been asked before?

ECM: When you’re writing, how do you juggle writing and ones private life?

MS: How do you juggle writing and your private life?

ECM: You juggle it. Right now I’m single, so it’s easier. If one is married and with children, it’s a more difficult thing to do because a significant other and spouse and children need you to be there for them. Children don’t care one wit that you’re a

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writer. Toni Morrison, who was a single mom, got divorced right before the birth of her second child. She says, children ask things of you that the rest of the world doesn’t. It’s more difficult in that situation because they just need you to be there and do what children need parents to do. That means you may have to do what Toni Morrison did, which is get up early in the morning and write for an hour, which is how she wrote The Bluest Eye with two small children and a full time job as an editor.

MS: That’s amazing.

ECM: I often times cite that when I hear students saying they don’t have enough time. You make the time. For me, it’s easier because I can arrange things. I can say, no I can’t go out to dinner that night, I’m going to stay home and write. I don’t have someone at home right now demanding that they get part of my time. Sometimes people like the idea of being involved with an artist way more than the reality of being involved with an artist. When they find out that means, no I can’t spend the weekend with you because I have to get my work done. It’s a process and it’s not something I can split. For me as a writer, about four hours a day, generally, is about all I can do. That’s how you juggle it. You don’t start to obsess about when you get the time in, as long as you get the time in. You take the weight off of yourself. What you have to do is say, what is the reality of how much time I’ll have to write today? It might only be thirty minutes, so you write for thirty minutes. The next day it might be an hour. The next day you might be back to thirty minutes. If you can get even thirty minutes in a day, after a month you have a decent amount of writing done. Life is difficult enough. Life gives us enough things to fret and worry over without making our writing something we fret and worry over. I don’t beat myself up anymore if it happens that I don’t get any writing done that day. I believe your art should bring you joy. If writing makes you happy than I say maximize the joy part of it, as opposed to trying to maximize the unhappiness part of it. That’s a terrible burden to put on yourself and the only person who is feeling that is you. No one else is going to feel it. Sometimes if you’re a writer you’ll have a deadline. Of course, that’s a different kind of a deal. That has more to do with the marketing and the business than it has to do with reality.

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Sometimes the thing to do is don’t make promises you can’t keep. Don’t tell a publisher you’ll have a novel published in a year when you know that to try to get a novel done in a year is really going to be difficult. If you know you can get it done in two years, say two and a half. Some things just can’t be rushed. Don’t try to make it into something that causes you pain and discomfort and grief, because why do you want to do that?

MS: Do you have any last advice for aspiring writers?

ECM: Keep writing. I often say to my students, I’m a good example. My first novel was published just before my sixty-first birthday and it is no less sweeter for the wait. I’m not saying to wait until you’re almost sixty-one years old, but I’m a good example of what can happen if you just keep at it. I started Bedrock Faith when I was forty-nine. At that point I had no novel published, no book published. I could have very easily said, Eric, this isn’t going to happen. A man’s got to know his limitations, etc, etc. But I didn’t. I kept at it and it took me ten years. If I had not done it, all of the wonderful things that have happened to me since the novel was released, would not have happened. We wouldn’t be having this conversation. It’s the people who keep at it that eventually get something like what they want out of the process. Sometimes life will intrude. I was a newspaper reporter for four years, that kind of stopped the fiction writing pretty much in its tracks. Keep writing. At some point you have to sit down and write it. When you’re frustrated, keep at it. If the fiction is bogging down, write a poem. If the poetry is bogging down, write an essay or write in your journal. I’ve worked out problems in my novel by just having conversations with myself in my journal. Keep the writing going, that’s the best advice I could give to someone.

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i don’t say what i mean or mean what i say | Siobhan Thompson

I want to tell you how I felt today.It was blue. It was a sticky orange. It felt like a leaf falling from a tree in early August. It felt like wanting to listen to a song that your friend doesn’t like, so you just think about the lyrics instead. It was like a ring turning your finger green. It was like waiting for someone to text back when you know they won’t. Today, I felt like a tiny moth slamming into a large, bright, and beautiful light.

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private nothings | Brandon Lee Vear

————————————————————————————The author is mindful like a sky gliding seagull bringing

regurgitated food for its chicks back at the nest.————————————————————————————I.

New Year’s Eve two thousand and twelve, at one forty-five ay em, we arrived back at Amon’s house. Sitting outside smoking, we could see the ferns reflect a dark shade of emerald against the tiles from the moonlight. The weather was somewhat cool but the air was heavy and humid. The modern Ikea deck chairs and patio shone uniquely in this dark, moonlit showroom.

Nobody told us about the stars.

The sky was almost clear when looking above from the chair. The only clouds could be mistaken for cigarette smoke.

Looking down again, the dusty cream tiles outline the ferns, only one or two cracked, here and there. This house is a safe haven from the excess around us and once you are inside those black metallic gates, you know you’re home again. You’d think to hear music at this time on New Year’s Eve but the only sounds are the crickets and insects buzzing around our ears. We can’t see them but they definitely exist. I look up at the cigarette between my index and ring fingers of my left hand. It burns slowly, about three quarters of the way done. The filter tip, orange-brown, is slightly wet. All I can see of the paper is the tiny Marlboro logo that is stamped near the filter, shining in the light like the ferns. Some ash drops and I witness the smoke rise up slowly. It dances up into the night’s sky, it continues and I stare at the smoke until I take another drag.

————————————————————————————Open up the metaphoric umbrella to observe that we as

human beings have an innate need to create.————————————————————————————

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II.

The cloak of the evening is worn by the sky. It is dark; only to be brightened by the luminous moon. Listening to the sounds of the insects once again, a new tone catches my ear. The wings of a bird.

We both hear the wings flapping.“A crow by the sound of it.” Amon tells me, his voice is raspy

and tired from the excessive drinking and smoking earlier in the night. I looked at him, pausing for a moment, then nodding my head agreeably, all the while thinking “He doesn’t know anything about birds, and neither do I; but know he’s right. It has to be a crow...” The feathers of the crow shine sleekly in the moonlight, like the dark reflection of the bird’s beady black eyes as it looks menacingly down on us, judging us as it circles over, ‘two wasted youths, wasting away: one slunk over in the deck chair and one now with his head between his knees, one with the grey fedora hat and the other with the bald spot emerging in the light when you look from high above, communicating through ways only the quiet can.’ At least that’s what I imagined the crow’s inner dialogue to be.

The voice of harsh reason returned to my own inner dialogue: Was it even a crow? Was it even a bird? Does it even matter? Who cares anyway?

————————————————————————————Since the beginning of time, humanity’s obsession with

creation and making sense of the world around us has been the unresolved and never ending storm cloud that lingers over the collective consciousness of our species.

————————————————————————————III.

Amon hears footsteps and I hear the sliding door, it’s Dhiren. Dhiren is the kind of guy that you know is always up to something. Dhiren is Indian by race but is often mistaken for a rich Arab or Persian because of his light skin, neatly cut hair, neatly trimmed beard and neatly fashionable dress sense.

He’s bored.

It was, like most houses in the neighborhood, a decadent mansion. The place was three stories high with floor to ceiling windows and a black terra-cotta roof that was made up with tiles that were probably hand crafted. The Roman design of the structure was juxtaposed by the ridiculously large marble falcon

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statues that guarded a daunting silver electronic gate. All the while, Dhiren was still babbling on with his theories of what a ‘fun’ new year should consist of. His need to express his ideas and my absent mindedness led my thoughts to drift into the memory of the neighbor’s small fountain beyond that silver gate. It was the work of a stonemason’s artistry; a six foot tall stone miniature-replica of the Roman ‘Trevi Fountain’. Every chiseled detail was clear from the ripples in the men’s muscles to the flow of their robes. According to the famous legend, if you throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain, you will return to Rome.

I remembered taking a piss in their fountain that night.I continued to look at Dhiren as he explained how he now

wanted to crash the neighbor’s party, his lips moving rapidly, trying to spit out a sentence convincing enough that it would sell the idea to Amon and I.

————————————————————————————I myself am fulfilling my own need to engage in some sort of

creative process.The perverse nature of humans confirms the meaning of the

act as both creators and observers.We are inclined to observe, inclined to document, inclined to

create.————————————————————————————IV.

To me, the party sounded like it sucked. We knew that the only reason Dhiren was interested in crashing it was because of the loud clubbing music and the excessive lights. He just wanted to be in the spotlight socializing, like most people on the eve of a New Year, not in the shadows pondering in night’s silence like Amon and I. The reasons for my reserved behavior towards attending this party stretched beyond the tasteless song choices the DJ was making. Although every other song sounded the same, it was the people who attended which deterred my interest. In Dubai, there was and probably still is a large amount of expatriates, rich excessive expatriates. The likes of which did not understand me and I did not understand them. My friends and family were all somehow or another a part of this culture, even if we didn’t want to be- we were. We were expatriates in Dubai too but weren’t as interested in the glitz and glamour. There was a trend to be clean cut, sociable and materialistic, three things that I was not and couldn’t fake. With regret, I must admit that the principal activity for most people of my age group was to spend as much of their parents’ money as possible; shopping at the mall, buying bottles at a club or anything else that involved the need to

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engage in some sort of act of excessive consumerism. I did not understand why people needed to show off and spend a lot of money to have fun. I thought that maybe people did this to fill the holes of their emotional malnourishment but then I thought that I was too arrogant to think that I was any better. I felt different. Amon felt different. Dhiren felt different. We were outsiders, looking in through the windows of the rich indulging themselves. Although we were ironically expatriates ourselves, and at least in Amon’s case- well off, there was something about us all that kept us away from all the bullshit, not something special, just something different in the way we thought and viewed the world around us. I tried to understand why Dhiren wanted to be a part of their world that night.

————————————————————————————A grave look at the space and place that you might call you

conscience where the grey walls of your mind are painted with rainbows by the inmates living out their sentences.

Deep sea diving at the bottom of the ocean, scraping the sand and marveling the corals, avoiding the sharks and looking for that one thought that may be a pirate’s lost treasure.

You will drown down here. I would come up for air if I were you.

Your oxygen tank is almost empty.

Did you take a breathe?Good.So, we shall continue.————————————————————————————V.

His hair was cut neatly and fashionably, it reminded me of the crow we could not see for it was sleek and black, slightly oily. I finally noticed.

His drunkenness was cause for him to want to crash the party.

“You aren’t wearing your glasses tonight.” I blindly mentioned this while studying his face. Not really listening to what he had to say, my mind drifted back to the house where I imagined elephants stomping around in tuxedos so tight that the stomping was caused by them trying to escape these restricting suits; they were not dancing, they were trying to take the damed things off!

Dhiren had finished talking and his hands gestured towards me with a puzzled look on his face.

“So!?”He exclaimed. “What do you say?”

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I was concentrating on the scar below his right eye. It was different to the others on his face. It was the memory of a small gash, maybe two centimeters long and a millimeter thick, the tone of the scar was a slightly lighter shade than the rest of his skin, making it at this moment, extremely fascinating to concentrate on. This one wasn’t like the others. Not acne scars, it came from something else. Maybe a struggle or a fight or maybe a simple accident at home, tripping over his rug and hitting his head on the corner of his steel desk. I continued to wonder as I stared rudely at his olive complexion, his beard freshly trimmed for the new year. I looked around at Amon. “Let’s go.” I said, and we wandered around the side of the house, across the dusty cream tiles, only a few broken here and there; brushing the emerald ferns that outline the tiles and through to the front of the house and to the outside. Opening and walking through the black metallic gate, out of base-camp and back into the night.

We were the loose buttons of this evening’s cloak. Our threads were weak and we were falling off into the new day and into the new year, but we stuck together. Maybe we will be sewn together again tomorrow evening, creatures of the night.

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author biographies

Claire Doty is a freshman studying Creative Writing (Fiction and Poetry) and Theatre Design (Set Design and Lighting Design). She is delighted to be published in the Lab Review, her first publication at Columbia. Claire was first published in 5th grade in an anthology, and has published poetry through high school publications and now in collegiate publications

Cody Lee is a Creative Writing student at Columbia College Chicago who spends his free time talking to flowers and staring at the sun. He’s also an intern at 2nd Story with a concentration in Story Development.

Deanna Miera is a senior at Columbia College Chicago working towards her bachelor’s degree in arts management and a minor in professional writing. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, she plans on staying in Chicago post-graduation to pursue a job in a humanities-related field. She has spent the past year as an intern with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events and begins a new internship with the Chicago Humanities Festival this summer. In her free time she enjoys sketching, writing, listening to music, and reading.

Taylor St. Onge is a current freshman, incoming sophomore, at Columbia College Chicago. She is majoring in Poetry with a double minor in Creative Nonfiction and Arts and Healthcare. When she graduates, she has high hopes to attend graduate school and become an Expressive Arts Therapist. When she is not reading, working, or writing, Taylor enjoys crocheting and playing with dogs.

Malissa Stark is a writer from Colorado, currently living and working in the Windy City. She has done freelance work in book marketing and journalism along with working as a staff writer for Eco News Network. Her fiction has been published in Crack the Spine, Dali’s Lovechild, Story Week Reader, and others. She is currently working on a novel that takes place in the mountains of Thailand. In her free time she likes to hike, bike, jog, and work her way through her much-too-long-to-read list.

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Siobhan Thompson lives in Chicago and is working towards a B.A in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has appeared in Hair Trigger 47.

Brandon Lee Vear the adopted son of Pablo Picasso but the bastard lovechild of Salvador Dali and Sofia Loren.

end note

The cover images were provided by William Horner, whose photography was previously featured in the Story Week Reader Best Of/Introduction to the Lab Review. These are part of his on-going and untitled collection of B&W photography.