Children, Churches and Daddies

Editorial

There is so much to discuss that I don’t know where to begin, but a good place is always the cover. The people on the cover are your editorial staff, so now you get a little peek into who makes up these issues (Mike, our cover coordinator, didn’t get us a photo - how ironic...) Which brings us to the inside of this issue - our second prose issue to date. We’ve received so many good stories lately that we thought we’d just put them all (or at least a good number) of them together. So for those of you who like short stories, you’ll really like this issue. There has been a lot going on in the personal lives of the editorial staff here at cc+d, which has made the production of these recent issues a little difficult. My mother and Eugene Peppers’ father were recently diagnosed with cancer - his father is going through chemotherapy after one round of surgery; my mother required three rounds of surgery. But the outlook is good for both Mr. Peppers and Mrs. Kuypers, which makes it a little easier for all of us to work, to say the least. Our thoughts are with you both. AIDS Watch is now a regular part of cc+d, it seems - and there are a bunch of great political and news stories in this issue, too. So relax, read on, but wait 20 minutes before swimming. And enjoy! -Janet Kuypers

lunchtime poll topic

In the Movie Heathers, four snotty high-school women would come up with a weekly question, and poll everyone in the cafeteria for an answer. The called it the Lunchtime Poll Topic, and answers would be funny, bold, interesting - but at least they made you think. We here are Children, Churches and Daddies thought it would be a good idea to foster some discussions - or debates - of our own with a monthly version of the Lunchtime Poll Topic. If you’re interested in being a part of the Lunchtime Poll Topic questioning, email me with your email address, and your answers can be printed here. If you’re interested in responding to a Lunchtime Poll Topic that you’ve seen in print, email or mail us and we may use your letter in the Letter To The Editor section. so, riddle me this, batman: abortion. what do you think? pro-abortion or anti-abortion? pro-life or pro-choice? and what do you think of protests in front of clinics? and... do you think legislation will ever change it back, make it illegal?

Teresa Huminik, Eve Bartlett, Dawn McCallum, Amanda Chaseman and Jack McCallum - at LRPro Pro-Choice. I think protesting in front of clinics is a constitutional right, as long as they don’t interfere with those entering the clinics. The minute the step in front of someone who is entering or chain themselves to the door, they are blocking the other person’s constitutional rights. Potential life should never be given more value than life. And yes, I believe that if we’re not careful and take a more active approach to ensuring a woman’s reproductive rights, abortion could become illegal again. By the way, I don’t notice any of our law makers stepping forward to introduce legislation where men have to have vasecotomies (or however it is spelled). If they can tell a woman what to do with her womb, why can’t they tell a man what to do with his... lower region?

Ted Kusio, Editor. i go with fat elvis.

Ben Whitmer, Writer. certainly i’m anti abortion. i wish we lived in a time and place where abortion didn’t need to be an option. where there were things like health care, food, and educational options open to all. y’know, someplace something like this pretends to be. i am, however, thankful for the debate. there’s nothing to a bring a smile to my face like seeing christians and capitalists howl about the sanctity of life.

Alexandria Rand, Writer. I find it irritating that all the terminology for pro-choice sounds worse than pro-life. They say pro-life is the same as pro-family - does that mean people who believe that women have a right to their own bodies don’t believe in families, in the family unit? No, I’m sure they do - and they probably believe in a healthy, less dysfunctional family than their pro-family counterparts. Does the fact that they are pro-life mean that we as pro-choicers are against life? No, we’re for life - we’re for a life that is taken care of, that is nurtered, that is able to have a chance. That isn’t hated by the parents for spoiling their misspent youth, that isn’t the pawn of parent attempting to get more welfare money. No, we’re for life - the life of the woman, who is alive and independent (unless you talk to the pro-lifers again).

Gary Pool, Free-lance writer and editor, Bloomington, Indiana I am not “pro abortion.” I doubt there are many involved in this emotional debate who would refer to themselves as such. I do, however, believe in a woman’s right to have control over her own body. I am therefore pro choice. I do not think, were I a woman, that I would ever have an abortion, but I am not a woman and therefore will never be faced with that agonizing decision. Though there are many, among the ranks of the so-called “pro-life” movement, who are women, I find it more than a little presumptuous that the debate over a woman’s right to choose an abortion is being, and has been, carried out largely by men. Certainly the most vociferous, and the most violent proponents of the “pro-life” agenda are self-righteously motivated males. I see this quite clearly as a continuation of the centuries old assertion of bodily control and subjugation of women by men. It is indeed sad to imagine abortion. But is it not equally sad to imagine the lives of many thousands of unwanted, uncared for children? Those of the extremist religious right, whose opposition to abortion is by far the shrillest and the most emotionally based, are also among the same groups that oppose AFDC and other welfare and educational programs that benefit poor, often unwed, mothers and their children. Though there is, from time to time, some token support for adoption of unwanted children, these religious zealots spend a good deal more time and money trying to prevent abortion of the fetus than they do the adoption of the unwanted child that results when that fetus reaches maturity and is born into this world. Like other such emotionally charged debates, it is hard to see this one clearly through the clouds of vitriol that surround it. One wonders at times if a reasoned and rational discussion is even possible in the present social and political climate, especially when the leaders of the “pro-life” movement so often encourage their followers to resort to doing violence, even murder, and many of those followers are all to eager to cmply. Of course, as is true everywhere in our society today, the total lack of any kind of responsible political leadership is also a tremendous contributing factor to the rancor and confusion. As long as politicians continue to pander to certain of their constituencies and play games with such hot-button issues, the situation is quite likely to remain the same for the foreseeable future. I do not believe, however, that the Supreme Court, or the Congress, will completely outlaw abortion. But I do feel that we are going to see stricter limitations enacted and upheld, especially on the state level.

Stefani P., Region 1 director, WRL. I work with Right to Life, and I have to put in my two pennies on this. I am pro-life, in all instances except when a womans life in in danger. I also feel that it is NOT a womans body. The baby has its own blood stream (even blood type) which never mixes with the mothers, its own DNA code, its own brain and its own sense of awareness....this indicates that it is its own person, NOT a part of the mothers body. I am pro-woman AND pro-life.

Gabriel Athens, Writer They talk about the rights of the unborn child, but they forget about the rights of the already-born woman, the woman who would have to give up the remainder of her life to take care of that child, or at least the next year if she were to have an adoption. And there are waiting lists for babies - but they’re for newborns, white ones at that. Let me see these republicans say they’ll take care of all the black welfare crack babies in America and then I’ll believe that adoption in our country is a feasible solution.

Andy Lowry, Editor, Fuel (alowry@mcs.com) I’m voraciously pro-choice. I don’t care what people’s opinions are on the subject, but keep your hands off my body. And the fact that the rich old white men are making these laws are another whole topic. Plus, aborions WILL continue even if they are illegal, it’s proven. Also, what about all those babies (esp. of color) waiting to be adopted (30,000 in Chicago/Cook County alone).

Shannon Peppers, Writer This shouldn’t be a political issue. I’ve worked with women who have been raped, and if I ever had to tell a woman pregnant from a rapist that she had to keep what this animal did to her... God, I can’t even imagine it. Imagine having this most traumatic experience happen to you, something that’s going to take a very long time to recover from, something that alters your life and you’ll never forget, that you’ll always have to live with. Then imagine being told that you have to give birth to and raise this monster’s child, that you have no choice, and that every time you look at this child, you’ll see the eyes of the man who raped you. Imagine that. Just imagine it. If that’s the way it is supposed to be, then that’s a clear sign that we don’t care for the women living in this country. And if we can’t do that, how are we supposed to care for the unborn?

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus

BLESSED ARE THE PRO-CHOICE CHILDREN

Garbage pails make uncomfortable bassinets and belt buckles leave strange tattoos Little girls can only stretch so far for daddy before their time Arms are odd ashtrays Closets are dark and basements as cold Cocaine is hard to get when you can’t walk yet Flesh bleeds and bones break Murder more justifiable before they have a chance

I’m begginig to favor mandatory sterilization.. 1 death to a living child from abuse...you don’t get another chance. Pro-choice means you control your own body...not that of the child you give birth to (beyond NORMAL child-rearing.) All those Pro-lifer’s who carry a fetus with them to a protest (no respect for it OUTSIDE the womb, eh?) should be countered with police photos of children who have been killed by the hands of their parents. Let them see what they are fighting for.

MATTER OF

I don’t force you to raise it so don’t you force me to bear it

And where are they when you need them??? Oh well, MY job is done, The child is born... It’s outta my hands now. Hrumph! What would they do if everyone they scared away from an abortion clinic left their children on their doorsteps after they gave birth to it...unwanted... call the cops?

CONNECTION

A child was found in a dumpster this morning still breathing in harmony with 117 anti-abortionists demonstrating outside a clinics walls that a fetus has a right to life

I agree w/ Gary Pool’s response. I am not pro-abortion... I am pro- choice/pro-life. Life is a gift, don’t be an indian-giver and take it away as soon as you give it. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO BEAR AN UNWANTED CHILD. NO CHILD SHOULD HAVE TO BE BORN UNWANTED! When will pro-lifers realize they are not saving anything, but actually jeapordizing lives? Don’t they read the newspapers? Aren’t they appalled by the number of children killed every day by their own parents? Is it worth the hours or days or weeks or months or maybe years they survived, unwanted, just to die such a horrendous death? Possibly tortured every day they did live? I think my pro-choice stand point is more for the children than for the woman (tho I am 100% for the right to choose)... I do not condone abortion as a means of birth control. I wish more mothers would give their (unwanted) children up for adoption. I wish that adoption were easier. I wish there were more counselling and options available to women who are unaware that they even exist (options)... Nine months is a long time to fester. anyway, I can (and usually do) go on for hours... maybe I’ll do this in installments..but on-line time is costly, so I’ll end my say with a God Bless you Gary Pool... may you multpily in spirit worldwide!

Joe Speer, Editor. Dear Janet, i like to hear different opinions. for example, i can say: let the contentious croats, serbs, and bosnians learn to duck walk. We can’t stop people in America from killing each other, how can we stop the killing overseas? We can’t. If the U.S. military has to get involved, let them sell guns and cigarettes to the combatants. every combat zone provides a market for U.S. arms. Bosnia is not my problem. discontinue news coverage. do like the police do in America when there is a riot in the ghetto, like in south central LA, cordon the area off and let them slug it out. but you asked about abortion. the decision to abort a fetus is the problem of a pregnant female. Men do not get pregnant so men should have no say so in the decision making process. abortion should be a legal option. abortion is like a car accident, it can and should be avoided. we take drivers training and drive sober etc to avoid accidents. we need to educate couples on the techniques of how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. if a pregnancy occurs, then a woman needs to know all the ways to deal with it; let grandma raise it, sell it on the black market, adoption, etc. giving birth to a child is not the real problem, to nurture a child and provide for their education and love them and raise them to be creative members of society, that is the real concern. reproduction for the sake of reproduction is not the issue. rabbits and cockroaches reproduce freely. so what do you get? more rabbits and cockroaches. anyway, thanks for asking.

short stories

The Electric Chair, by Lance C. Burri

“Dinner!” Billy heard his father’s voice, muffled as it reached his room through the floor. He wasn’t hungry, but put down the comic he was reading and went out into the hallway anyway. He could see well enough by the light from the living room on the stairway walls, so he didn’t bother turning the hall light on. The door to his sister’s room was still closed, and Billy pressed his ear against it as he went by. Sometimes he could overhear her talking on the phone. He couldn’t hear anything this time, though, and went on down the stairs.

His father had set up TV trays, one in front of his chair and two more in front of the couch. A second chair sat opposite his father’s, and a coffee table which had been moved to accommodate the trays. A polished wooden plaque on the wall above the television read “Home of The Joneses” in lavender paint. “Sorry dinner’s so late,” said his father. Billy jumped onto the couch, sliding his feet underneath the tray. The lasagna was still steaming.

“S’okay,” he answered. “I had a snack after school.”They watched Pat Sajak introduce the contestants. Billy drank milk from a plastic cup, waiting for the lasagna to cool.

“Where’s your sister?”

“Her room, I guess.” Billy’s father called upstairs again, then moved his tray, grumbling to himself, when there was no response. He rose and walked to the stairs.

Billy blew on a small fork-full, testing it gently with his tongue before eating it. He could hear his father’s knock upstairs, then his voice, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. His heavy footsteps thudded down the hall, and a minute later the middle-aged man walked back into the living room. He went to the third tray and picked up the plate. “You want any of this?” he asked, his voice hard-edged. When Billy shook his head his father scraped most of its contents onto his own plate, then picked up the unused cup and carried them into the kitchen. Billy heard the milk go down the drain.

His father was pulling his shirttails out of his pants when he came back in. His tie had already come off, draped over the briefcase he had left near the front door. The snap would be next. Billy’s father was always saying he needed new pants, and his mother always said that it was cheaper to lose weight. He pulled the tray up to his lap and began to eat in earnest, barely looking at America’s favorite game show.

Twenty minutes later Billy carefully slid under his tray, ducking his head until he knew he was clear. His father was already finished and had pushed his tray to one side so that he could kick the footrest out of his chair. His 7-up can was propped against the inside of his leg.

“Done, Billy?” he asked, glancing at the eight-year old.

“Yeah,” the boy answered, trotting away from his half-empty plate and around the end of the couch. He headed for the stairs, but stopped as the front door opened. His mother followed the door as she pushed it, holding a briefcase and a purse awkwardly in one hand, bracing the door with the same arm and jiggling the key out of the lock with the other. That done, she stepped in and dropped her things.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said to Billy as she removed her coat.

“Hi, Mom. ‘Nother late day, huh?”

His mother smiled apologetically. “Yeah. I’m afraid so.” She closed the door and walked into the room. Billy’s father turned around in his chair and acknowledged his wife’s entrance. “Hi, hon,” she said in reply. “You learn a lot in school today, Billy?”

“Naw,” he said. “Jeff hadda go to the office for yelling at the teacher, though.”

“Great,” she said, a sardonic hint in her voice. “Any dinner left?” she asked her husband.

He shook his head. “I just cooked up that frozen lasagna,” he said. She nodded, kicking off her shoes.

Billy headed upstairs. Halfway up, he heard his sister’s door closing, and she passed him as he reached the top. “Watch out,” she said, nudging him over with her elbow. Tanya was fifteen, with straight blondish-brown hair like her mother’s. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans, ripped at the knees, and a tank top cut off at the middle.

Billy sat cross-legged at the top of the stairs and peered through the banister, where he could see nearly the entire living room.“Where are you going,” his father asked as she came down the stairs.

Tanya pulled a windbreaker out of the closet. “To Laurie’s,” she answered.

“It’s getting kind of late,” her mother said, standing by the couch.

“How come you’re going to Laurie’s?”

“I won’t be gone long, Mom.”

“Is anyone else going to be there?” she asked.

Tanya finished pulling on her jacket and zipped it, keeping her eyes lowered to her business. “I don’t know, Mom,” she said.

“Kevin isn’t going to be there, is he?”

Tanya slammed the closet door and turned angrily toward her mother, her hands planted firmly on her hips. “Are you ever going to give me a break, Mom?” she asked. Billy pressed his face up to the banister, not wanting to miss the argument he knew was coming.

“I’m just trying to look out for you...”

“Well I can look out for myself!” Tanya interrupted, her voice rising into a screech.

“Honey,” her mother continued, her own voice hardening, “Kevin is not the kind of guy we think you should be dating.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Tanya spat, turning around dismissively.

“Hey, you watch your mouth,” her father called, turning around in his chair. “And you listen to your mother, young lady.”

Tanya just shook her head in apparent frustration and reached for the door.

“Hold on, Tanya,” her mother said, taking a few steps toward her and assuming a stern demeanor. “Have you even done your homework yet?”

Tanya only looked back for a moment. “Christ, Mom, will you get off my case!” She walked out, slamming the door behind her.

Her mother watched the door for a few seconds before dropping her hands in futility and turning back to the living room. She walked around the living room set, dropped herself into the other easy chair across from her husband. “That girl just doesn’t want to listen anymore,” she said.

Her husband shrugged. “What’re you gonna do? Kids are like that all over the place these days.” He lifted the can to his lips, forgetting that it was already empty. He reached out and placed it on the coffee table, disappointed. “Maybe we should ground her, you know?”His wife was shaking her head. “Maybe we should see a counselor or something.”

She pushed the footrest out of her chair and leaned back with her eyes closed. The man sighed out loud and focused his attention on the television.

“I’m so tired,” said his wife. “I think I’ll just fall asleep right here.”“Seinfeld’s on later,” he answered.

“Hmmm,” she considered. “Maybe you could tape it?”

“Sure. We gotta tape?”

She shrugged and rolled her shoulders, pressing deeper into the chair.

Billy stood up quietly, the excitement apparently over. He had hoped to hear how his parents were going to punish Tanya, but it looked like they weren’t going to talk about it anymore. He walked into their bedroom and switched on the television there. The Simpsons would be on in a few minutes.

A Bad Day In Paradise, by d. v. aldrich

There are two things I hate in life - war and Elvis Presley look-alikes; other, less serious, problems seem to fall into one of those gray areas, very much like the boredom I’m experiencing right now. I was banished from my bedroom tonight for reasons I don’t understand, and I’ve already spent my inheritance dialing 1-900-PSYCHIC. So, unless I want to play with my wife’s collection of Barbie dolls or harass the cat again, I need to find something else to occupy my time. Perhaps the best thing for me to do is to take a few minutes an reflect on what got me into this mess in the first place.

Last evening my wife and I stopped at a cafe, alongside the Gulf of Mexico, trying to kill about an hour before, hopefully, enjoying a beautiful sunset off one of Florida’s beaches. “Will that be all?” the waiter questioned us in snippy tones after we had ordered only shrimp cocktails and a couple of beers. Speaking politically correct, I’m not financially challenged, but I thought the price of a shrimp cocktail was exorbitant. “Let’s see, six dozen live shrimp for $6.00 at a bait shop vs. one dozen dead shrimp for $8.00 at this restaurant, there’s something wrong with this picture,” I complained to my wife.

“We are paying for the atmosphere and the cooking of the shrimp,” she cordially offered. “Okay, I’ll buy that,” I responded, then observed the tattooed biker chick sitting to my left, the cigarette butts on the floor, and our waiter’s look of anger when I requested he bring us the urn since we were obviously paying for the shrimp’s cremation rites.

Well, that was yesterday, and today would be a new day. “Let’s go back over to the beach this morning and grab a few rays,” I suggested to my wife, hoping to make up for the hissy fit I’d thrown last night. “Sounds good to me,” she replied, and we were off to the beach.

We always have a great time at the beach, except for one thing - quarters needed for the stupid parking meters; I never have enough, and today was no exception. Even though I had robbed $3.00 worth of quarters out of my daughter’s lunch money, I don’t think the sun’s rays ever penetrated the sun blocker we were using before we ran out of quarters. Deciding the meter maid probably wouldn’t believe our claim of diplomatic immunity, we packed up our beach supplies and headed home.

“The toll road is bumper to bumper today,” my wife commented after we had been sitting in traffic form some time. While patiently awaiting our turn to donate our share of money to the governor’s swimming pool fund, my only two thoughts were I hoped my license tags wouldn’t expire and prayed my bladder wouldn’t burst before finding relief in my bathroom at home.Having no change, I offered the tolltaker the sum of my weekly allowance to which he tersely responded, “Do you have anything smaller than a $20.00 bill?” “I have a $15.00 bill from our veterinarian,” I came back with a smirky grin on my face. You know, I’m pretty sure the tolltaker signaled me I was ‘number one’ on his list of favorite people. How kind, I’ll have to send him a Christmas card this year.

After checking my tires and my wife’s yelling out the window, “You’re gonna get arrested for indecent exposure!”, we stopped by the supermarket on our way home.

“Paper or plastic?” the zit-faced bag boy asked. Having stood in the check-out line long enough to determine the cashier’s name tag would still read Anna spelled backwards and hungry enough to enjoy possum noodle soup, I boldly stated, “Forget the paper or plastic crap! Bring us a can opener; we’re going to eat right here!” I really wish I hadn’t made such a rude remark. I just know my wife is not going to cook for a week, and you can bet Anna, the cashier, will make confetti out of my check cashing card the next time I’m in her check-out line.

Okay, so we finally made it home, and I immediately opened the mail. “Look, honey, you’ve won ten million dollars in the magazine sweepstakes,” I joked and tossed Ed McMahon’s personalized, heart gripping letter to her. I have a message for Ed’s cronies should they ever bring a ten million dollar check into my neighborhood, “May the force be with you, the entire police force, that is.”In hopes of getting my wife in a better mood, I spent the entire afternoon replacing some broken wall tiles in our bathroom, which turned out to be a disaster. I admit there was no excuse for my not warning my wife I had dripped some glue on the toilet seat before she sat down.

I was still alive by nightfall and thought the best thing for me to do was to join my wife in watching a little television. Since there was no dinner served at our house tonight, which I’m hoping is only a temporary problem, I grabbed a few snacks and caught up with her in the living room.

I flipped on the TV and surfed through all the stations, finding only sex and violence on nearly all the programs. “Let’s cut to the chase and cut down on our viewing time,” I suggested, and we began watching the national news.

I’ve noticed my wife goes into some sort of trance whenever Peter Jennings is on television. I wonder if he ever glued his wife to the toilet seat? Anyway, Mr. Goodlooks took a break and I heard the Hollywood reporter say, “More nude photos of Madonna to be released soon.” For whatever reason, I suddenly remembered I hadn’t fed the dog.

“Here we go again,” I thought when I noticed three cans of dog food costs about the same as one hamburger at the fast food joint. You don’t suppose? No, they wouldn’t do that, would they?Bed time finally arrived, and my last thoughts before retiring for the night were maybe I’m too old fashioned, and maybe I just need to get with the plan. “I can fix that,” I said to myself, thinking I’m not over the hill yet.

I splashed on my best designer fragrance, Old Spice, and, “yo, ho, ho” I jumped into bed. I snuggled up next to my wife and softly whispered into her ear, “Honey, I think you’re so bitchin’. Wanna tread back over to the beach tomorrow and knock the heads off a couple of brewskis?”

As you’ve probably guessed, we won’t be going to the beach tomorrow. I’m going to be spending my time shopping for a convertible sofa. This couch I’m now forced to sleep on leaves a lot to be desired, which is the exact same phrasing my wife uses when describing my attitude since I found out postage rates have gone up. Goodnight.

Screams in America, by David Caylor

I wasn’t sure when it happened, but an old Cambodian lady had moved in across the hall. I had seen The Killing Fields six times, so I knew she was Cambodian. At first, I felt bad for her. She had come thousands of miles and landed in a one-room efficiency. There she was, packed in with cockroaches. There had to be 100,000 roaches in the building.

My address was 809 1/2 Second Avenue, Apartment 127. She was in apartment 128. The longer the address the worse the place. Nice places have addresses like 29 North Street.

I first saw her one afternoon as I cam back from work. It was warm, ninety-three degrees. The walk home had beaten me. I only wanted to get inside, turn on the air conditioner and read the afternoon newspaper. I went through the buildings’ front door, down a short flight of steps and saw her. She was standing in the hallway leaning up against the door. She looked like an old yellow whore working the building. I assumed I’d be able to walk right past her. As I got closer, she took notice and straightened up. I got out my key and thought I was home.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said. she pulled out a map of the downtown area. It was actually a photocopy of a map. “Do you know where is Land-gon?” I pointed Langdon Street out on the map. It was as hot in the hallway as it was outside. I wasn’t in the mood.“If I go there will I be a Doctor?” she asked smiling up at me. Half of her teeth were rotten.

“I don’t know if there is a doctor on that street or not.” I turned toward my door and she followed me. She pointed down to Gorham Street.

“What street is this?” Her breath was terrible.

“Gorham.”

“If I go here and to here,” she said moving her finger down Gorham to McKinley Boulevard, “will I be a Master?” I had no idea what she was talking about. She continued, “If I go here and here and here, I’ll be a Doctor?” She seemed to be referencing academic degrees.

“I really don’t know, lady.” I finally got inside and turned on the air conditioning.

The next day wasn’t as bad. She was standing out in the hallway again, but our conversation was brief.

“Where do you work?” she asked.

“At a law firm,” I said.

“You’re already out of law school?” I was surprised she even knew there was such a thing as law school.

“No, I work for the lawyers.” I got past her and went inside. I had a horrible apartment. It was one room and a small shower. The walls were uncovered brick and the carpet was a worn out brown. I was constantly tearing pictures out of magazines to cover the brick.

There wasn’t anything else I could do. The place was so small that I had started buying the smallest versions of things. I had a coffee machine that would only make two cups at a time and an ironing board with three inch legs. I used a little toothbrush and those miniature bottles of shampoo. The smallness of everything made me feel like King Kong as I walked around the place.

A few hours after talking to her there was a knock. I walked to the door and looked out the peephole. Her wrinkled face stared back at me. The radio was on, so she knew I was there. I looked through the hole for a minute. She stood and stood and stood. Finally, I went back and sat on my mattress. She knocked a few more times and I ignored her.

The next day I grabbed a bag of trash to toss out and snuck out past her. I got to work, flipped through some spreadsheets and forgot about her.

It hadn’t cooled off. It was ninety-one at 5:00 p.m. My walk home was five blocks, a little up hill. I was about halfway home when she came to mind. I turned a corner, went into the building and checked my mail. There was nothing but advertisements addressed to STUDENT/OCCUPANT. I keyed the main door and went down the hallway. My room was at the end.

I could already see her, a dark little figure with no shape. I became convinced that she was waiting specifically for me. There was no way around her.

“Sir, what does this mean?” She had the newspaper and was pointing at the legal notices. There were tiny paragraphs about people requesting zoning changes and the county was taking bids on truck equipment. “What does this mean?” she smiled as she asked again.“They’re to let people know what is going on,” I said. She pointed down to a specific section.

“Tom Crawford, owner of property located at 2218 Seminole Hwy., requests a rear yard variance to construct an addition onto his home.”

I tried to explain that someone wanted to add onto his house and needed permission.

“What does this mean?” she asked again, pointing to ‘construct and addition’.

“Make his house bigger.” I could see she didn’t understand.

“What does this mean? Where is it?” I had no choice but to turn away from her. I went inside and turned on the television and air conditioning, as usual.

This was crazy. I was her best friend in America. There were hundreds of rooms in the building and each room had one or two people in it. Still, she was the only person I ever saw. Once in a while I’d hear people shouting at each other or a dog barking, but that was it.

It was Friday and after it got dark I wanted to go get some supplies.

I checked the hallway before leaving. It was clear. I did most of my shopping at Bucky’s Corner Market. It was a little place that had one of everything in stock and was a popular even thought the prices were high. I picked up two six packs, a magazine and a $2.39 bag of pistachios. It was a few blocks from the store to home. The streets were filled with cars. Everyone was going out to the bars and clubs. I got to my building. If she tried to stop me, I would ignore her completely. I walked as quickly as possible. My paper bag was rustling. I imagined her sitting in her apartment and hearing me coming down the hall. She’d jump up, run out and start with more ridiculous questions. Maybe she would have a picture of some stranger and demand I tell her who it was.

“Who is this? Who is this? Where are they?”None of this happened. I got into my room and started my weekend.Monday morning I bagged some more trash, showered and got dressed for work. The law firm required us to be well dressed. I picked out a black and red tie and a white shirt. I opened the door to leave and she was already standing there. She was holding a bag of something as if she was moving in with me. She looked ugly and insane. It was about seven in the morning and I wasn’t fully awake yet. I thought I might be dreaming. I decided to scream.

“AHHH-AHHHH!” She just stood there. I let another scream fly, “AHHH-AHHHH!” It wasn’t a dream. I slammed and locked the door.

I looked out the peephole. she just stood there. I thought she would understand screaming. People in Cambodia must scream. She stood there and I was trapped. I couldn’t go out there and pretend like nothing had happened. Those had been loud screams. Then minutes went by. Every thirty seconds she reached up to gently knock. There wasn’t anything to do. I was going to be late for work. Another ten minutes passed. I stepped back to sit on my mattress. I called work and told them I had an emergency errand to do and I would be an hour or so late.

There was a loud knock.

“This is the Madison Police, open the door.” Someone had heard the screaming. It would be hard to explain why a twenty-four year old blonde man was afraid of a ninety pound, unarmed woman. I got up and answered the door. The cop was in full uniform, cap included.

“What happened here?” he asked. I gave him the truth but stretched it.

“This lady’s been harassing me,” I said pointing at her.“And?”

“This morning she just burst into my room and started making these sexual comments. I’ve told her to stop. This had been going on for a week, and like I said, this morning she just burst in.”

“What was the screaming for?” he asked.

“I was telling her to get out.” The cop went over and spoke to her.

He’d ask a question and she would say “yes” or “no”. We stood out in the hallway for quite some time. I hoped that my story would hold up.

The cop started lecturing her, in English. I’m not sure how much she understood. He was telling her to stay away form me.

“She’s not going to bother you anymore and you aren’t going to scream at her,” the cop said. “I could take you both in next time.” I nodded and agreed to the deal. We went back to our rooms and the cop left the building. I waited a few more minutes and went to work.

I don’t know what she did next, if she cried or if she was angry. I saw her around the building once in a while for a few weeks, and then she was gone. She either died or moved out.

Cul De Sac, by patricia fitzgerald

When I couldn’t sleep, which back in my high school days was often, I used to go for 2:00 a.m. walks down my block. I’d wait on the front steps of my parents’ split-level ranch house until the neighborhood noises gradually ceased. I would imagine them stopping one by one, like harmonizing voices dropping out of a round - TV’s turned off, garage doors grinding shut, water sprinklers not even dripping, the lawns drying in the suburban dark. Then I would start my one-block traveling, barefoot because the asphalt was finally cool enough to allow it. Sometimes I’d swipe a bottle of beer from my father’s stash in the small garage refrigerator. If he noticed the gaps in the well-stocked rows, he never said anything about it to me.

The cars in the driveway were cold to the touch, their motors only dead pistons and hoses under the hoods. No one had car alarms. I’d have bet that most of the front doors were open, too. It pleased me to think I could’ve just walked right in, looked into their pantries, rubbed the palms of my hands over their vacuumed carpets. These people slept the secure, well-fed sleep of parents, obedient children, men and women with jobs in air-conditioned buildings. Even at night, the wind on my street was warm. It was like the breath of a possessive lover, hovering suspiciously over my shoulder. It kept me walking in a slow, sneaky prowl.

The neighborhood cats were out. Not quite the same creatures who purred on the arm rests of over-stuffed couches, who preened in front of windows. They hissed and rubbed against each other, their eyes glowing and unfamiliar in the bushes. They would show up on the doorstep in the morning, bleeding from gouges, hungry, very hungry, and tired. I never tried to pet the cats at 2:00 a.m. But I enjoyed their camouflaged and crouching presence.

Big Wheels sprawled, turned over and upside down, in front yards. Empty bird baths caught the moon’s light. In the summers, sun-bathers often left their lawn chairs outside, half-full bottles of sun tan lotion, the coconut-smelling contents seeping into the grass. Grass was not green at this time of night. There were no colors, just shades, different densities of shadow. Occasionally there would be a light left on inside a house, in the hallway or an upstairs bedroom or kitchen. I would wonder if these were the signs of others not able to sleep. Men and women maybe working on crossword puzzles, watching their children twitch with dreams, souring the burnt bottoms of sauce pans. I had listened to the next door neighbor talking to my mother once. Reveling that she would wake up at night sometimes and go downstairs to the kitchen and count the silverware. Knives, forks, spoons, just to make sure that nothing was missing. That woman’s home was the one with the tree house in the front. Her kid had fallen out of it one summer and broken his back. The accident had paralyzed him from the waist down, and they had attached ramps to all their doorways. The tree house was still there, like a monument. On my sleepless walks, I would pause and touch the skid marks his wheel chair left on their driveway.

Three houses down from us lived a man whose wife had left him. She had cooked me a hot dog once at a barbecue, had asked me if I wanted relish. She had nice teeth, small and glossy like chiclets. They were both young, mid-thirties. I don’t remember how I had heard she was gone, but her leaky black pick-up had suddenly vanished form the driveway, leaving behind an oil stain. The man mowed his lawn every week after his wife’s pick-up had disappeared, his shirt off, his body and face violently red, like he was on big blood clot. He was a nice man, mostly a friendly guy, but wouldn’t say hello or even look at you when he was shoving around that mower.

My street was a cul de sac, so I never had to worry about cars coming by at that hour. The curb was lined with trees that looked like old men in the dark. No street lamps, but most people left a porch light on. I used to imagine that they kept them on form me, for my midnight wanderings. Moths and junebugs grouped inanely around the glow, struggling and searching for something their instincts told them was there. It was quiet, utterly quiet, except for the occasional bug zapper. Lizards would climb inside the cages, thinking they had found themselves a bug feast. They were electrocuted in long, sizzling bursts that no one heard but me. There was this older boy on the block who knew how to make lizards bite the end of his nose. He’d run after the little kids, screaming in mock horror, with a lizard dangling off the front of his face. I thought it was pretty funny, but then he went away to college and had forgotten to teach someone else the trick.

My best friend lived down at the end of the cul de sac. He had trouble sleeping, too. I used to climb up the stone pillars holding up his balcony, swing myself over the railing and knock on the window to his bedroom. I’d bring him one of my father’s beers, and we’d dangle our legs off the side of the balcony, watching the sun come up and the kitchen lights in the houses flicker on. We’d talk about moving away, moving either into the city where there was traffic all hours of the night, or into the absolute country where there weren’t even enough people to scare away the mountain lions. Not this in between place, this dead end where lost drivers turned their cars around and headed back out again. Around junior year of high school, my best friend fell in love, and not with me. With a girl who drove a white Volkswagen convertible. Some nights I’d walk by his house and see that car parked in his driveway. His parent were liberal that way; they listened to Joni Mitchell a lot. Eventually, I think I forgot how to climb stone pillars and sneak quietly on balconies.

There was one empty house, next door to his. The for sale sign had been stuck in the unfertilized dirt since I had moved to the street. The bright, optimistic blue lettering had faded in the brutal summers. I had heard the rumors about that house, about the old couple who lived there. The husband, a doctor or something like that, had blown his brains out one night on their front porch. Some people had suggested Alzheimer’s, but no one really knew why he did it. I imagined the sirens of the ambulance tearing through this 2:00 a.m. suburban silence, the neighbors already awake and frightened by the sound of the shotgun. I imagined sheet-wrinkled faces peering through windows, everyone’s heart beating at the same rapid, terrified pace.

Sometimes I wished I liked cigarettes, so I could leave half-smoked, crushed butts on my neighbors’ lawns. Instead, I’d set my empty beer bottle on someone’s doorstep, like an old-fashioned milkman. Crazy teenagers, they’d think when they walked out to get the morning paper. But it was just me. I wasn’t crazy. Just couldn’t sleep.

The walk would take me about thirty minutes. Longer if I stretched out in someone’s grass, staring up at the stars for a while. I’d think how it was funny, that someone in another state, maybe California or Kansas or Alaska, was seeing exactly the same stars I was. I liked the smell of freshly mowed grass, the tickle of the blades on backs of my legs. I’d bury my face deep into the stiff points of the lawn, breathing it in deeply, the essence of my neighborhood.

Then I’d walk back to my parent’s split level ranch house. It always surprised me how unfamiliar it seemed, even after six years of living there. Like a distant relative’s home I was visiting for an extended period of time. I’d check the numbers on the mailbox just to make sure this was really the place where I lived.

Ours was the house with the barren yard, even though my parents were always trying to grow something. Grape vines, damaged and dry as dirt, hung shamefully from a wooden frame my father had built specially for them. I wanted it to be different at night, with blooms and fragrances and moistness, as if sometime during my walk I had entered a secret portal that only existed when everyone else was asleep, a portal leading to an overgrown world. But the house was always the same, the grapevines withered even in the merciful dark.

That was many years ago, the cul de sac and my teenage sleeplessness. I live in a city now, a small, crowded city where I walk out of necessity instead of choice. But not at night. I stay inside at night, and keep my doors locked. It’s too dangerous. I’m no longer alone in my insomnia. I still think about moving to the absolute country, live on a farm somewhere, but the mountain lions might come for me in a territorial rage. In a way, I miss the suburbs, the trees that looked like ancient men. The overturned Big Wheels and the rotting nets of basketball hoops. I guess there were dangers there as well. Small fears that seem as heavy as a split-level ranch house to the hearts and minds of my used-to-be neighbors.

Beer & Wives, by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

The little man wanted to see, so he tugged my slacks at the ankles. I almost didn’t notice him. I wondered if he lived in constant fear of begin trod upon by somebody’s sneakers. When I did notice him, I couldn’t hear him, so I lifted him up by his little shirt. I wondered where he got a shirt that small.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ he yelled into my ear. ‘Excuse me, sir, I can’t see. Could I please sit on your shoulder?’ I let him sit there for the duration of the film. It felt awkward, like how people usually don’t broach the subject of physical deformity - Excuse me, sir, how did you lose your leg? Hey man, how long have you had that unsightly growth protruding form your forehead? (You know, I once knew a man with five penises. At this point you should My God, how did his pants fit him? Answer: Like a glove.)But you don’t just ask a midget, ‘Gosh, how did you get so short?’ This seemed all the more difficult. He’s asking to sit on my shoulder, which is some acknowledgment of physical abnormality. But do I ask how he got so small?

I didn’t, at any rate. I almost forgot about him as the film ended, when he grabbed onto my earlobe and hauled himself up to scream directly into me ear. The voice still wasn’t much more distinct than a whisper, but I could make out what he was trying to say. Excuse me, sorry to bother you again, but I have to use the restroom.

I’d taken down a large Coke during the picture, and thus I myself had to urinate. So I carried him into the men’s room with me and asked if he wanted me to put him on one of the stalls. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘That would be difficult. I might drown.’ He wanted me to just place him behind one of the trash cans. ‘And, uh,’ he asked, blushing slightly, ‘could you tear off small bit of toilet paper for me?’I tore a single sheet of toilet paper in half, but he laughed. ‘No, that would be more like a bath towel for me!’ So I ripped out the tiniest chunk imaginable and he thanked me, scurried out of sight.

After I had finished taking a leak, I went to check on him. He was finished as well and said ‘Okay, let’s go.’Go? Where? I didn’t like the way he simply assumed that since I allowed him to watch the film from my shoulder, we were now inseparable companions. I’d promised Jacob that I’d give him a call, but somehow this little guy (oh so little) did intrigue me.

‘Would you like to go out for a drink?’ he suggested, as I stepped into broad daylight, the little man nestled in the collar of my flannel overshirt. Funny how the light always hits me, after sitting in the dark theater for two hours - I expect a dusky exit, but instead we emerge in blinding daylight, cars buzzing by on Main Street and a sidewalk cramped with people discussing American cinema. The world, alas, is still in full throttle.

‘Drink?’ I asked. ‘Are you drinking age?’‘Of course I am,’ he assured me. I wasn’t, actually, but I’d gotten into the Mark Antony bar before without them carding me. It was a cool trick at the time, and now I again slipped inside. It’s not too difficult, really - just dawdling at the door and acting like I’m sort of lingering, lingering leaving and not lingering entering, then changing my mind, smiling at the people around me and walking up to the bar.‘Hey, Henry!’ the bartender, a plump man with a dark mustache, exclaimed.

‘Hey, Ted!’ the little man from my shoulder shouted right back. I wasn’t sure if Ted the barkeep could hear him; I could barely make it out over the din of clinking glasses and general laughter. I took a seat.

‘So what’ll it be?’ Ted asked, leaning over the counter, close to my face.

‘A beer. Whatever kind, doesn’t make a difference.’ Shifted in my seat. ‘Gimme and MGD Light. I saw on e of their commercials last night.’

‘The usual,’ Henry answered and with two fingers, Ted placed on the counter the tiniest mug of brew I’d ever seen, with a Bud Light insignia on the side. Henry took a huge gulp, for his size.

I got my beer and took Henry in hand, walked to a table near the back of the bar. Henry sat right on the table and we drank together. Silence.

‘Uh, how ‘bout the film?’ I asked.‘Hated it,’ he replied.

A drunk sidled up to our table, a short-haired guy wearing a trench coat with brass-rimmed glasses and an acne-pitted face. ‘Eyyy, Hank!’ he said, running an appreciative pointer finger over Henry’s hair, tapping up and down as gently as possible, as though toying with a miniature doll.‘Hey, Josh,’ Henry replied, trying to brush the finger away from his head. Josh tried to relate to us some fight he’d gotten into in Medford the other weekend, some jocks had dragged him across the parking lot and he’d hurt his knee there (he walked with a limp now) but he and Blake had beaten up the three of them in the end; they’d been driving with Rob Shapiro, you see, and they passed a hick truck cruising slowly along the street, bass pumping, and passed it and flipped off the Medfordites, then cut them off and got out, and there were three guys there to fight, but Rob wasn’t man enough to get out of the car, so two of them got on Josh while Blake took down the other one, then came over to help . . .

Eventually Josh finished his semblance of a story and staggered off. Henry asked me to carry him to the counter for another beer, and when we returned to the table, I looked at him intently. I’d really never seen anything quite like this before . . .‘So,’ I said, ‘You live here? In Ashland?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ he answered. ‘Been here mosta my life. That’s howcum I know most everyone round here. You new? I ain’t seen you before.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve been here, oh, I think I had my fourth birthday here. So fourteen years at least.’

‘Funny. Woulda thought I’d known you then.’

A country fashion couple walks in and takes seats by the bar. He’s wearing a straw hat and she’s draped in a terrible puffy red dress.

‘So, um, what’re you gonna do now?’ I asked.

‘You mean, like . . .’

‘Oh, just like when we leave the bar. You know, in the next few hours,’ I said.

‘My wife’s coming to . . .’

‘You have a wife?’

‘Oh, yeah. Yeah, I gotta wife. Oh, there she is now.’ I turned, and to my utter dismay she looked perfectly normal. Normal size, most notably. I actually found here rather attractive, wearing a black ankle-length dress, short blonde hair approximately shoulder length, a Hillary Clinton type of look.

‘Do you have, uh, kids?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yeah. Two,’ he replied, as she approached the table.

‘Oh, hi Henry,’ she enthused. ‘I missed you.’

‘I missed you, too, dear,’ he said , proffering a kiss.

She pulled a small packet from her purse and placed him inside. Flashed me a smile and swinging her purse, left the bar.

credit rating, by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Three more letters arrive in the mail today. A couple of them are Christmas cards, and then there are the bills. I don’t pay the bills. The companies think I do. I pay the electrical and phone bills by check, and I use my credit card to pay off the bank when it’s time to account for the checks. Sometimes I pay off the credit card companies with other credit cards, and sometimes I pay them with a check. At any rate, I don’t really have any money, but they don’t know that. Someday the checks will bounce and the credit card companies will send strong-arm thugs to my door, and the whole operation will collapse. But until then, I live in relative comfort.

I’m surplised they know I’m still alive, my fiiends who send Clhristmas cards.

Maybe I’m just a name on their lists-entered forever into a database, and they hastily scrawl my name and address onto an envelope, write a generic note inside the card, and leave it to the US Postal Service’s mercy. Sometimes I’m not even sure if I’m stillalive, so I usually check for a pulse. Once I didn’t find it, but the mortician told me I wasn’t dead. If you were dead,” he said, “you probably couldn’t have driven down here to tell me.”

One of my friends had his social security cancelled because the government informed him that he had passed away. The mortician didn’t think he was dead either, but if the govemment says so, Ihen it must be true. He was later cremated.

My room is littered with beercans. I don’t even drink. Someday I’ll collect them and bring them in for the refunds. The money will further confuse the bank. They don’t know about me there. I’m just another name on their databases. They even sent me a Christmas card.

Once I entered the bank because they have free coffee. I took the decaf, because I knew that catfeine’s unhealthy. It was too strong, however, and instead of actual cream they had non-dairy creamer, so it was also too hot. I blew on it and blew on it, but I suppose I blew a bit too hard because it spilled out of the cup. Coffee stained my nice white t-shirt, and it burned me. The burns weren’t too serious, fortunately, but Ihey wouldn’t accept my American Express at the laundromat. I could see some Visa guy turning my day into a fucking commercial, but I hoped not. Maybe if I was in a commercial they’d give me some money and I could pay off the creditors.

My lriend Adam has good credit. He’ll always tell me the secrets of having a decent credit rating, in that he always has his credit card payments in on time, and he never borrows more than he can pay back. I always have my credit card payments in on time, but I don’t have a particularly sparkling credit rating.

Later, they even ask me to be in a commercial. I’m a writer, you see.

Thomas Pynchon was so reclusive that when they did his GAP ad, it only showed the khakis. I don’ t even wear khakis, but I went to the GAP once. I had to leave because I was dressed too poorly; it intimidated the other customers. Kind of a vicious cycle; I went to the GAP so I could be dressed nicely, but had to leave because I wasn’t dressed well enough. Perhaps there’s an interim store where I could shop before working my way up to the GAP.

It’s probably all the better that they wouldn’t let me shop there. I wouldn’t have been able to pay for it in the first place.

Denial, by Bonnie Lescar

He stands stoically, engaged in his own universe. CNN blares from the family room, stereo surround speakers - his pride and joy, a big-screen TV worth its weight in conspicuous consumption.

Lawnmowers drone in the distance, floating in with the slight breeze. He gazes out, upon his perfectly manicured emerald lawn, sectioned off with a tall picket fence, top of the line, enclosing his in-ground swimming pool, crystal blue, 20X40, larger than most, and an extra foot deeper.

Never mind that he never uses it, he possesses it, that is everything. Gleaming black wrought iron glimmers in the sun, thanks to the extra coats of wax and paint he has laboriously applied for just this effect. Red, yellow and white geraniums hang suspended in immaculate white baskets. The weeds he cannot control are beginning to peek out along the edge of the fence. I quickly glance across the dishwasher rack at him, covertly loathing, but he is oblivious. I know that even if he were to turn and stare into my eyes, a mirror image of his own, the accusations would go unnoticed.

The difference of five feet equal to five million. My hands shake as I struggle to occupy my mind, not to have to think. I continue to lead, glass after glass, top rack. Juice glasses from jelly jars, ancient Kool-Aid cups, wide-mouthed Coca-Cola mugs, pebble rock tumblers, so many glasses, I echo, for so few people. One after another, they fell quickly. Were my mother here, she would wash each painstakingly by hand, one after another, glass soaked in scalding hot water, the steam rising from the dish tub, chapped, pale, vein bulging hands blistery red from the burning liquid, holding the glass to rinse the suds. A martyr perhaps, self imposed, a bitterness in my mouth. I avoid his gaze. I long for him to leave. The air is stale, I am suffocating. I have moved on to dishes, Cornelle cream, brown flowers marching around the edge. I must keep my hands busy. The water splashes up, droplets land, I recoil. Metal scrapes, greasy clumps of dried fried chicken skin refuse to budge. I scour, a long red fingernail weakened by water bends backwards, “Shit,” I mutter automatically as the plate clatters in the sink, fried chicken skin intact. “Watch,” he admonishes harshly. I will not meet his gaze, turn away, holding the offended nail snugly. The finger throbs, I test the nail, glance at my arm and the seventy dollar watch I demanded, the black arms chasing each other in a never-ending race to nowhere. My gaze lands on the beech table which is cluttered with junk mail and newspaper, plastic table mats out of season, boys ice skating in the nineteenth century. The alcove has shrunk, devoured by a table much too large, purchased without benefit of measurement, aesthetics overruling practicality, confining use of the bench alongside to only those of modest stature. I gather the papers into a neat pile, and deposit them in the back corner, where the table is unusable without room to place a chair. I turn back to the sink, to finish the loading. He has moved back to the TV with his glass of vinegar mixed ginger ale, another of his home preventives. I slowly exhale, relief.

I load the last dish, and reach under the sink, searching for soap. The blue-green crystals spill soundlessly. I am unprotected, uneasy. I start the dull yellow dishwasher, it lurches, awakened. I reach for a green plastic glass in the top cupboard, as the water juts and jurgles inside the dishwasher. I move to the tall freezer/refrigerator with the built-in ice and water dispenser on the door, another of his proud possessions. I thrust the glass under the dispenser and wait. I hear the ice grinding and grating, but none falls. I continue to grind and grate to no avail, repositioning my glass between chunks and chips, nothing but more grinding and grating. Finally, with sufficient frustration, I jerk the door open, unintended force slamming it against the wall. Chipped and chunked ice crashes out, covering the living room carpeting, cluttering the kitchen floor, just as he crosses into the room. Into the kitchen rushes the dog, past his feet, called by the carnage, in search of scraps. My father’s attention drawn, “Ah, now what’d you go and do? Don’t you kids know any better? How many times do I have to tell you to be careful! Now you better make sure you get all that picked up. And don’t miss any in the corner of the carpeting there,” he extends a crooked forefinger attached to a muscular forearm. This is enough to spark the explosive fuse always burning, just below. I despise him. The malfunction of the ice dispenser is common, an unnecessary vanity, purchased against her will, like so many other things, swimming pools, TVs, VCRs, furniture, rugs, boats, RVs, Cadillacs. Arguments over and over again, echoing at all hours, accusations, complications, affirmations, rage, pain unending, eating away, “oh my god, oh my god,” four in the morning, horror spreading consuming, destroying a lifetime of, of what?? Vast nothingness, searing, ripping and tearing away, used flesh, a bleeding, pussing open sore. For this, I hate him.

For staying, for enduring, for suffering, I hate her. Bottled venom boils, close to the surface, threatening to erupt. I struggle to contain, but I’ve suppressed too long. I resent. I resent clues and inklings, lipsticks, perfumes, phone calls dead at the other end, overheard conversations. “I miss you,” my ears burn, my mind denies, I ignore, overlook, I deny, I resent, I despise. I refuse to be silent, to pretend anymore. I burn, and I hate. I’ve always hated, inadequate comparisons, wanting more, I explode at the man I’ve never truly spoken with, the one who has never truly heard me, the one who has never acknowledged my prayers or pains, the one who was never present at games or plays, the one who did not know what year I graduated from high school, the one who never claimed until something was worth claiming, the one I am afraid to be alone with, the one I’ve always longed to pay attention to me, to see me, to hear me, to love me. I burst, I scream out, all my condemnations, denouncements, reproaches. I blame, I convict, I rebuke, I judge. “How could you, how could you?” I intone, my anger spent, emptiness replacing. I push past him, leaving the ice crystals to melt on his carpeting, his floor, in his house, and I go in search of something that belongs to me.

Fish Eggs, by mitch mcclain

Across the Sound, a giant basketball sat glaring orange on the Space Needle. It was for the NCAA Championships. I could see it from here, over her shoulder when she knelt down on the beach.The sand was brown and dark with water, little green sand-sized crystals glinted and gleamed near the edge. Long piles of rocks and stones stretched down the beach, marking past tide lines.

The sky was bright gray and white. A thick layer of clouds shelled over us and the city.

She collected light-colored rocks. they lay misshapen and cold in her hands. When her hands got full, she dumped her catch into the net of her pockets.

She picked up rocks of all shapes and sizes. Long, silverish-black ones worn smooth by rolling in the sand. Bleached bright pieces of coral. Chunks of granite, freckled with gray. Timeworn rocks with light streaks of crystal.

I took off my jacket. Walking and stooping and squatting had made me sweat. Beads collected above my eyes and lips. I could feel it drop from my armpits and onto my shirt.

I collected the dark ones. The flat ones. The flat and circle-shaped ones.

They are perfect for skipping.

I squatted down in the sand above a pile of rocks near sun-bleached log. I laid my jacket across the log and dug into the rocks.

I extended my fingers, making my hand flat and started to skim across the rocks, taking layers off the pile. The rocks clicked and clacked as I moved them around, looking for the right one.

She came up behind me, her shoes crunched in the sand. She put her hand on my left shoulder and leaned on me.

“Well?” I said. “Did you find anything?”

“Yeah, I found some rocks,” she said. She straightened up and put her and into her jacked pocket. “It’s cold.”

Her jacket was olive green, flat like the sky. She hated wearing it because whenever something was spilled on it, the spot would turn dark green, almost black. She only wore it when it was cold, pulling it on over a sweater and jeans.

“Anything worthwhile?” I asked.

“Yeah, I found some really pretty ones,” she said, drawing some from her pocket. “But they look so much better when they’re wet. They get real shiny and smooth.”

I wasn’t really listening, I had turned over a large rock and found three good skipping rocks. They were smooth and round and flat.

My forefinger wrapped snugly around each of them.

“Look hone, “ I said, turning towards her and opening my hand.

“Perfect for skipping . . . these ones will fly for sure.”

I looked down into my hand. The rocks were almost flawless. Circles worn smooth and flat from decades of rolling around on the bottom of the ocean, finally washing up on the beach form e to find, pick up, and throw back. They were dark and round like fish eggs. Not the cheap red ones, but the dark blue and purple eggs. The expensive ones.

“I want seafood,” she said. “Fish and chips.”

“Alright,” I said. I put my hand on the log and pushed myself up and walked to the water’s edge.

“Jeez,” she said putting her stones into her jacket.

“What?” I said.

“Jeez, are you even listening?” she said. “You weren’t even listening.”

“What? You said you wanted fish and chips,” I said. “I know, seafood.”

She turned away and looked out over the Sound. There were two ski-boats racing by, bouncing off the water. They landed with wet thumps and then swerved around each other. One of the drivers, a kid, gave his friend a high-five with a loud hoot. Behind them loomed that god-awful ball.

“Seafood,” I said.

I took a step forward and took a rock from my pocket. It felt soft against my hand as I curled my fingers around it. I whipped my arm back and threw the rock, spinning it off my forefinger. It skipped too high, almost straight up, and plunked into the water.I took out another rock, twisted around and launched the rock over the water. It skipped once and then stabbed into the water.

“Damn.” I said. “Damn rocks won’t fly.”

I turned around and looked at her. She was watching me with her hands deep in her pockets. She brought her right hand out and tucked her hair behind her ears and then put it back in her jacket.

“Did you see that?” I asked anyway. “I figure these rocks would be perfect. Let me try a couple more.”

I brought out another rock, it was smoother and flatter than that other two. I embraced it with my fingers and hand. I put my left foot forward and stretched my arm back behind my shoulder. I bent my knees and swung my arm around, snapping my wrist before it rolled off my finger. The stone stayed low and then bounced off the water into the air and shot forward bouncing again and then again.

It kept hopping across the water until it ran out of momentum and sank quietly away.

“Yes.” I said. “Honey, did you see that? It must have skipped 12 . . . 14 times.” I spun around and smiled at her.

She didn’t say anything. She pulled her hands up out of her pockets, they were full of the rocks she had collected. She held them out to me, letting them fall between her fingers until they all laid at her feet. She slowly took back her hands, one went to her hair and the other to a pocket.

“I’ll be in the car,” she said.

“What?” I said. “Honey, what was that for? I’ll just throw one more and then we’ll go. Honey?”

“Fine. Go ahead,” she said.

“Jeez!” I said. I reached into my pocket and took out the remaining rocks. Four. All perfectly round and smooth. I threw them into the water. They splashed down around each other like bullets in some war movie or another.

I turned towards her, but her back was facing me, she was almost to the car. I took a couple steps and stopped. All the rocks she had collected lay spread around her footsteps. They left little dents in the sand where they had fallen and bounced. I looked back at her, she had reached the car and gotten in. I looked down at the rocks.

I crouched down and collected her rocks. The smooth ones, the pieces of coral and crystal, all the light-colored ones. I grabbed my jacket and filled the pockets on both sides and breasts. I filled my jeans pockets. I filled my shirt pocket and my hands. I just couldn’t find room for all that she had collected.

insert: old wives’ tales

stories by janet kuypers

paint a suicide picture, by janet kuypers

to the family of Jocelyn Burn

I found these letters, you see, and I didn’t know what else to do with them. I just moved into an apartment on the lower east side, and there was a box of belongings left in a storage space in the back of my pantry. There was mostly old pots and pans in there, so I didn’t think anything of it, but then I came across these letters. I assume they are from your sister, because I liked her music (I even saw a show of hers in Phoenix), and the date of the last letter corresponds with the day she passed away.
I didn’t know what to do with these letters. They weren’t in envelopes, so there was no address, and my landlord refuses to tell me who used to live here. Security purposes, he tells me. They haven’t tried to get their belongings back, and I waited a while for them in case they did. I almost wanted to keep them for myself, they just seemed to say so much, I felt like I had almost felt these things. I didn’t want to give them up. But I know your family would have wanted to read them. They belong to you.
Let me just tell you to prepare yourself for these letters. They are from the last month of her life. She was going a few shows... I don’t know why she felt the way she did. Her band was starting to make it. The radios gave her air play in the last two months. These letters are sad to read.
I don’t know who the letters are addressed to. Maybe you do. I wish I did. I suppose it doesn’t matter now, though i would like to see the mystery revealed. I’m sure you feel more strongly about this than I do, but I would like to know why.
The fame and love she looked for she received partly because of her death. She is now revered. If only she could feel it.
I hope these letters answer some questions for you, or possibly bring you some peace. They are strong letters. I am sorry for your loss.

Joe Pagliano
New York, New York

September 23
i hate everyone and everything. why can’t i find someone that cares about me? even a best friend? even someone who claims to want to spend the rest of their life with me? even if i can’t stand them? why do i feel so worthless? why do people stab me in the back? i hate you all. i really hate the fact that you hurt me so much.
i really want to not exist for a while. i’m tired of people hurting me. i’m tired of people.
there are some times when i feel so lonely and unwanted that i want to die. i want it all to end. i just hate having to deal with the people in life that make life difficult.
when i start in this cycle i just know that i fall farther and farther down. who do i blame for this? i want to blame someone, so i can think it isn’t my fault. that i don’t have a terrible fault that brings all this pain on me.
i really need to get away from here. i need to find someone that cares.
i think i care about myself, but god, i want to know that i am not the only one. i feel so lonely, so betrayed. i have no friends.
everyone is so fucking fake. why can’t i count on anyone? why can’t i find someone to lean on, just once? Every time i try, every time i start to feel confident about myself, someone has to come along and shatter it all.
i hate feeling like this. i wish i had people i could count on, for once in my life. i hate crying. i hate feeling this way about myself. i hate it.
it’s over

October 1
i keep getting screwed over. i’m supposed to do this show. i make plans for it. then i find out though the grapevine that i’m not going. my managers couldn’t even tell me. i have to ask and pester and bother in order to find out what i’m doing.
then i’m not going. then four days before the show i find out that i am going, it’s back on. how am i supposed to prepare for this?

October 3
i really don’t like tom. he doesn’t understand that i just want a little attention. he thinks i really like him. i couldn’t like that. no, i just want an ego boost if i can’t have someone real.

October 4
i just want to feel like i’m alive again. i don’t feel that way now, and i don’t know how to get that feeling back anymore. i was sitting in the hot tub yesterday evening, and it put me in the best mood ever. i was in a good mood all night, until i realized that i wasn’t going to be going out, then i just went to sleep.
I like doing the shows, i guess. i like going to different towns for shows. it was nice for a few hours to be in another city, high up in the air in my hotel room, half dressed, thinking that i owned something. myself, maybe, or maybe just some ideas. for a little while i felt alive. i miss that. i want to feel alive all the time. i want to feel alive.

October 11
i hate feeling lonely. i hate feeling alone. i can’t believe a one of the managers wanted to sleep with me last night. a part of me still doesn’t want to have to deal with it. i wouldn’t want to date him if he was single because not only do i work with him, but i also know what a woman watcher he is. it’s not as if i should think it was because i was special, though. i think it was pretty much because i have breasts. what a joke. always me.
i didn’t wait for tom to call me back yesterday, and he didn’t. i thought at least he would try to screw me. i didn’t even get that effort.
and i’m sure todd won’t ever want to call me back. i’m just sure of it.
and i’m sure jeff looks like a horror movie creature.
where is my soul mate?

maybe i have no soul. that’s why i can find no one.

i think i should just start fucking everything that moves again. at least then i had an ounce of physical satisfaction.
god, and i know my life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. the more depressed i get, the more people don’t want to be with me and then the more depressed i get.
why do i have

October 16
all of my true goals are destroyed by other people. i want someone to lean on. i want someone who doesn’t make me feel like shit. i want to achieve my goals. i want to be successful. i want to be famous. i want to be rich. i want to make everyone jealous and feel like they are worthless compared to me. i want to feel like i am above everyone else.
everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless.
people are such liars. i hate them all. why did i let myself get like this? why did i let people do this to me? i’ve just destroyed my future musically and it was all because of someone else. some one i thought i could count on. someone i thought loved me. some who i thought would always love me.
i was wrong. i was terribly wrong. no one loves me. no one loves me at all. i am not important. i am not important at all. i am worthless. i mean nothing to no one. i am worthless. i could just drop off the face of the earth and it would only matter to the people who had to prepare my remains for the funeral. and to them it would only be another client in their day.
why do i have to be so alone? why do people have to be so fake? aren’t i talented? aren’t i successful? aren’t i funny? aren’t i important?
if you’re so funny... why are you on your own tonight?
i can’t do anything. i can’t sing. i can’t perform. i’m useless. i’m worthless. i’m nothing. i wish i could be something, but i am only nothing, and i will always be nothing.
i wish i could count on someone. i can count on no one. everyone i thought was important to me, well, i was not important to them. i hate being nothing.
even the people i thought would always love me, well, i should know better, they don’t care about me either. every single person i thought was a part of my life, well, i was wrong, they aren’t. i mean nothing to them. i always thought i did things to improve myself because i care about myself. i was wrong. i still do things because i care about how other people think of me.
and i have failed.
i have no one. i have no talent. i have nothing - even in myself - to count on. i have no one.
i feel so alone and i feel so incompetent. and i feel as if no one cares.
no one does.

October 18
life is so interesting sometimes. it’s amazing how one conversation can change my whole outlook on life. i need to be reminded sometimes of what i am doing, of who i am, of what is deep down inside me. i have to be tested.
i don’t know if i will ever get to sing - and be appreciated for it.
i don’t know who i want to spend the rest of my life with. who they will be, when it will be, anything.
it is almost nice.
here i am, in another country, sitting once again in some lounge with absolutely no soul, drinking something. i figured i have $27 canadian, oh, probably $30 with my dollar coins, that i won’t be able to spend in the states. i could go window shopping, but that would require motion, besides, david might be trying to get a hold of me, and i don’t know whether or not i should wait for him.
never have enough time. when i do, i do the same things - drink, and think too much.
amaretto stone sours are particularly good.
and then i will get on the plane and... uh... mark will pick me up (yes, it really did take me that long to think of his name).
david was laughing at how i throw men around. well, none of them are good enough for me to keep.
show went okay tonight. i do like the travel. it makes me feel better for some reason to be alone in another city than in my home town.

October 20
why am i that worthless to you? am i that worthless to you? i guess i am, since you treat me the way that you do.
i came here hoping to get out of my depression. you only succeeded in sinking me deeper. i want to die.
you succeeded in your mission. i hope you’re happy. now i know that everyone hates me.
i can’t do anything tonight. tonight was supposed to be the beginning of the rest of my life. i was supposed to start anew. you’ve destroyed that for me.

you’ve used me, that’s all you’ve done. you’ve succeeded in making me feel even more worthless than i already did. are you happy? were you looking to destroy me? probably not, you were probably not even thinking about me, giving my a single thought in your head. that’s how little i mean to people, and i know it.
don’t worry, i guess you’re not the only one, but i think you were the straw that broke the camel’s back. i wanted to hear it from you because no one else would tell it to me. but you didn’t either, and now i know the truth about myself and what people think about me. i guess i should almost thank you, for showing me the light. it is a painful light, but it is the truth nonetheless.
i’ve always said i wanted the truth out of people, and now i guess i’ve got it. no one cares for me. i am useless in this world. maybe i’ll be more useful in the next. what a fucking joke. if there were a next world.
when i die, i don’t want any ceremonies done. i don’t want to be filled with any chemicals so my body can be displayed for people who claim to mourn, i don’t want to be a part of that modern-day ritual. i want to die, and i want body to decompose that way it normally would so that maybe at least my remains may benefit nature somehow.
i feel like kurt cobain, except i’ve done nothing that would make me revered. i’ve done nothing. no one appreciates what i’ve done in my life. i’ve overcome so much, and it still isn’t enough.

nothing ever works out for me. ever. i’m alone

October 22
my dreams are always just that, dreams. if i ever achieve anything, it is in a half-ass way that proves that i really can’t achieve my goals after all. i feel so lonely. lonely even when i am in a crowded room. alone.
i want someone to know me and appreciate me for my talent. i want someone to feel as if they can follow me just because of the work that i do. i want to be accepted and appreciated in that realm. when that doesn’t happen, i look for someone that appreciates me in a physical sense. then i find them and i realize that it is only temporary, that no one has any respect for me, that i have still lost. that no one really cares about me. that i am nothing. that i am worthless.
i wanted to think that you would always care for me. i should have known better. i should have known you were just like all of the others, even after all we have been through.
gone through? what the hell have we gone through? you followed me like a puppy dog. you have a small penis. i don’t know, i guess other than the harassment i felt from you after we broke up, after the bout with arthritis after dating you again, you haven’t brought me much. i want to think that i have happy memories in my life, but i can’t think of any. with you or with anyone.
life will go on without me. i just wish a lot of the time that it would end for me sooner than later.
i’ve always said that i know that i will always lead a long life because i know that with my luck, i’ll be forced to live this miserable life for the longest time possible. what i’ve never said is that that notion really depresses me. there are a lot of times when i just want to die. i just want to disappear and never have to deal with anything - never even have to live - again.
sometimes even breathing seems like a chore.
i wish i could feel alive
writing used to help me, but it doesn’t seem to anymore.
i don’t even feel like getting drunk now. usually that is my answer for anything. i don’t have the answers anymore.

October 23
when someone reads this, i will be gone. i want to die. no one loves me. i am worthless. every time i tried to reach out to someone they always failed me. i’m tired of being there for people when they are never there for me. i’m tired of being strained, i’m tired of being pushed around, i’m tired. don’t you understand? i’m tired of crying. i’m tired of hating myself anymore.
i’m never going to make anything of myself. no one will let me. let me die.
i haven’t felt like this since my father beat me. now i should be stronger, but i can’t fight the whole world.
fuck my dreams. i can’t achieve them. fuck the causes. fuck them all. i can’t beat everything in this whole world. i give up.
give me some pills.
wait. i have some.
soon it will be over for me. don’t let the world remember me. i want to die without a trace, the way i lived. i never found the answers.
why couldn’t anyone love me? was i that difficult? why did everyone destroy me? i can’t fight you.
why aren’t these pills working? i’m so tired.
by the time someone reads this, i will be dead. i will die crying. i will die knowing no one cared.
i wish someone could have loved me, once.

guilt, by Janet Kuypers

I was walking down the street one evening, it was about 10:30, I was walking from my office to my car. I had to cross over the river to get to it, and I noticed a homeless man leaning against the railing, not looking over, but looking toward the sidewalk, holding a plastic cup in his hand. A 32-ounce cup, one of the ones you get at Taco Bell across the river. Plastic. Refillable.
Normally I don’t donate anything to homeless people, because usually they just spend the money on alcohol or cigarettes or cocaine or something, and I don’t want to help them with their habit. Besides, even if they do use my money for good food, my giving them money will only help them for a few hours, and I’d have to keep giving them money all of their life in order for them to survive. Once you’ve given money, donated something to them, then you’re bound to them, in a way, and you want to see that they’ll turn out okay. Besides, he should be working for a living, like me, leaving my office in the middle of the night, and not out asking for hand outs.
I’m getting off the subject here... Oh, yes, I was walking along the sidewalk on the side of the bridge, and the homeless man was there, you see, they know to stand on the sidewalks on the bridge because once you start walking on the bridge you have to walk up to them, and the entire time you’re made to feel guilty for having money and not giving them any. They even have some sort of set-up where certain people work certain bridges.
Well, wait, I’m doing it again... Well, I was walking there, but it wasn’t like I was going to lunch, which is the time I normally see this homeless man, because during lunch there is lots of light and lots of people around and lots of cars driving by and I’m not alone and I have somewhere to go and I don’t have the time to stop my conversation and think about him.
Well, anyway, I was walking toward him, step by step getting closer, and it was so dark and there were these spotlights that seemed to just beat down on me while I was walking. I felt like the whole world was watching me, but there was no one else around, no one except for that homeless man. And I got this really strange feeling, kind of in the pit of my stomach, and my knees were feeling a little weak, like every time I was bending my leg to take a step my knee would just give out and I might fall right there, on the sidewalk. I even started to feel a little dizzy while I was on the bridge, so I figured the best thing I could do was just get across the bridge as soon as possible.
I figured it had to be being on the bridge that made me feel that way, for I get a bit queasy when I’m near water. I don’t usually have that problem during lunch when I walk over the bridge and back again, but I figured that since I was alone I was able to think about all that water. With my knees feeling the way they were I was afraid I was going to fall into the water, so I had to get myself together and just march right across the bridge, head locked forward, looking at nothing around the sidewalk, nothing on the sidewalk, until I got to the other side.
And when I crossed, the light-headed feeling just kind of went away, and I still felt funny, but I felt better. I thought that was the funniest thing.

brushes with greatness, by janet kuypers

Like when I was leaving the depeche mode concert and I saw the lead singer of Nitzer Ebb. I tapped his shoulder, and after I shook his hand I said, “I just wanted to say that you’re awesome.” What a stupid thing to say. His response was, “Uh, well, thanks.” But at least I shook his hand.
When we were driving down Lake Shore Drive, it was December 23rd, and I saw a limo with the license plate, “Governor 1.” I said to drive next to the limo, and there was Jim Edgar, talking on a phone in the back. It was only after we passed when I realized that I was wearing a red baseball cap with reindeer antlers and bells on it. I was so embarrassed.
Or when I met this soap opera star from Days of our Lives, he was signing autographs, his name on the show was Shane. There was this fat 40-year-old woman from Tolono, Illinois, standing in line and screaming every time she thought she saw a glimpse of him. He signed a newspaper clipping of mine, then took a picture with me. My mother thinks that in the photo we look like we’re on our honeymoon.
And in the first grade, when the weatherman Harry Volkman, from channel Two News, came to our school, and I met him because I made him a card that said, “Columbus discovered America in fourteen ninety-two, and I discovered a weatherman when I discovered you.”
Or like when I was almost in a band that opened for the Smashing Pumpkins. I sang with this band, but couldn’t work with them because I lived out of town. I guess that’s not a good one, since I didn’t meet the Pumpkins or anything. But at least I saw the show.
And I photographed the lead singer of REM. It was September, I was only wearing shorts and a t-shirt when everyone else was wearing denim jackets. Michael Stipe was walking through a forest preserve, with a flock of people around him. I couldn’t get to him, but I wanted a photo, so I looked ahead and saw an empty picnic table. I ran, sprung up on top of it, and started shooting. He looked up at me, and waved. Later, when he was about to leave, I got real close, took more pictures. I was right next to him.
Or when I talked to the lead singer of King Missile after their show at the Metro. Told him it was a good show, he thanked me, and then I said they should have played “Gary and Melissa.” “Yeah, we keep forgetting that one,” he said. Then he looked over at the t-shirt stand, pointed kind of blankly, then said, “You know, we’d make a lot of money... if we had t-shirts.” I laughed, but then I tried to walk away.
Like when Joe took me to the engineering open house and his wooden bridge won first place for holding the most weight. Or when Lorrie brought me to the darkroom and showed me how to dodge and burn a print. Or Brigit. Or Bobby. Or Pat.
And when I won the American Legion Award in the eighth grade. Or when I published my first book. Or when I sang at the coffeehouse and everyone actually applauded. Or at the end of counseling at the retreat weekend “Operation Snowball” and I got a note from a participant thanking me for caring so much. Or when I felt happy.

poetry, by janet kuypers

There are two types of poetry writing. One is writing for yourself, the type of writing that you do when your dad hits you or your girlfriend breaks up with you or you’re trying to come to grips with the fact that you think you’re gay. It’s the kind of writing that you do for you, you’re the only one meant to see it, and it eventually gets tucked in a box in the bottom of your closet to be forgotten.

The other type of writing is when you write for an audience, when you want to make a point, when you want to get published. And then your work suddenly becomes very important, because it can be interpreted in many ways. Wouldn’t want anyone to think the wrong things, so you have to be careful with your word choice. The easiest and probably best way to do this is to avoid explaining emotion. Explain everything in the scene to depict the emotion, and the reader will feel the feeling without having to be told what the emotion is. The emotion will be self-evident. It will be so self-

evident, in fact, that the reader can’t avoid it. They couldn’t escape it if they wanted to. You have to set a scene and be as concrete in your description as possible so the reader can feel the wood finish on the bench at the church, or they can smell the glass cleaner from the window they’re reading about leaning on. When the reader is forced to feel the images in the writing, then it suddenly becomes strong, it pulls them into the story, kicking and screaming.

And that’s often frightening, because it seems so real.

The easiest way to describe a scene with such vividness is to not write fiction. Study your surroundings in such detail and you’ll realize the vast amount of information your senses overlook. For instance, just think about your body right now. How do your shoulders feel? Are your fingertips cold? Are your legs crossed? Is your hair tickling your forehead? As I’m writing this, I realize that my legs are crossed, and it’s actually quite uncomfortable. In other words, I wouldn’t have even noticed that I was actually in pain unless I made this conscious effort to think about it. We neglect to notice these daily things, these things that make us feel the way we do on a daily basis. And all of these things, when described in a certain way, can portray a mood with more power and strength than ever saying, “I feel tired.” In this way you can make the reader feel like they have been sucked in by this work, that hands have come ripping out from the very fibers of the page itself and taken a stranglehold on them. That they have just lived it all.

Often, when you do that, when you put your own feelings and experiences into your work for an audience, the work begins to sound like the work you did for yourself, because then the work is about when your dad hits you or your girlfriend breaks up with you or you’re trying to come to grips with the fact that you think you’re gay. But there is another step taken, one that escapes the more general, one that uses concrete descriptions so you take the reader step by step through everything you’ve felt.

The first step toward healing from a pain is accepting the pain, accepting the problem. The second step is expressing that pain. Then it is easier to come to terms with it and move on. Writing for an audience as well as for yourself can be the way to get over those problems. And help others come to terms with the problems they share with you.

There are enough critics and professors who are telling people how to write and how not to write. But to struggle with the feeling you want to put on paper, and to succeed in doing so, is what matters. This takes work, and a lot of it, but the end result may not be as lofty as review editors would like it to be. But lofty may be exactly what it should not be in order to get to the people.

Some writers, and I should correct myself by saying the “literary” writers that are more concerned with being published in the right places, will follow the current trands, or try to sound aloof by using amazing language. But our society does not reflect these literary tides (which may or may not be a good thing, but it is the the case). Our society is fast, ever-changing, impatient, and in pain. And what the masses don’t want to listen to is metered lines they don’t understand. Poetry is art, but that doesn’t mean it shoulds only be accessible to the elite, the few. The type of work I’ve described in these pages appeals to people because it is not only easy to understand, but it is also about their lives, and they can feel something from it.

And that is what poetry is. It’s not escaping, like trash novels out today, it’s not there to pipe a story into your head. While giving you concrete details the reader is still allowed to envision their own scene, conversations and feelings, and all from a short written piece. It makes you think. And it makes you feel.

a microcosm of society, by Janet Kuypers

No one appeared in the back half of the courtroom. Thoughts raced through Steven Kohl’s mind as his eyes darted across the room. How did this happen? Was he really to blame? Will the jury members decide whether there is enough evidence against him to warrant a trial? Why are there cuts on his hands? Why can’t he remember the last three weeks of his life?

Steve thought he might wake up soon, and discover that none of this had ever happened. That he wasn’t trying to defend himself. That Erica wasn’t dead.

He shifted in his chair. The wet cotton of his shirt collar burned against his neck. Like the branches of the trees in the ravine where Erica was found, the wool of his suit scratched his legs, his hands. He wanted to wipe the sweat from his forehead, but he was afraid that he would seem too nervous to the jury if he moved. He wanted to run out of the courtroom, stand in the February snow and feel his tears freeze as they rolled down his face.

He looked over at the papers in front of his lawyer. The names Stonum, Smith and Manchester embossed the top of the page. Steve couldn’t bring himself to look at Stonum’s face. Stonum’s face was chiseled and sharp. There was no room for emotion, unless closing remarks in a case called for a strong emotional appeal. The same thought kept going through Stonum’s head: this boy couldn’t remember who he was, much less where he was, for the last three weeks of his life. When Stonum suggested that Steve go to Dr. Litmann for a psychological examination, Steve broke down. He told Stonum that his cocaine use became daily about six weeks ago, and he started mixing drugs shortly before he lost his memory.

It was the beginning of the fourth day. The prosecutor stood.

“I would like to call to the stand a Miss Kathleen O’Connor.”

Stonum jumped. “We have testimony from a Doctor Litmann, with whom she has been seeking therapy, that Miss O’Connor should not be able to testify in this case. I submit his report to you, your Honor, which outlines the fact that Miss O’Connor has been known to compulsively lie and that her perception of the truth is often distorted. We believe that it would be inappropriate and possibly detrimental if Miss O’Connor testified.”

The testimony for the case was beginning to rely on character witnesses, and because no specific reason was mentioned for having Kathleen O’Connor testify, the judge said he would review the report and decide whether or not to allow her to testify the next day.

Kathleen looked at Doctor Litmann seated next to her, then bowed her head. Her letters to him were in a pile on his lap. She stood up, adjusted her dress and solemnly walked away.

Dr. Litmann stared at the chair where she had sat. When he gained the strength, he looked at the letter at the top of the pile.

Dear Doctor Litmann: I just had a session with you, and you asked me to start writing letters to a friend every day so that I could start to open myself up and understand myself more. Well, I don’t have any friends. I don’t know if I’ll ever let you see these letters, but I’ll write them to you.

You were asking me about my childhood in session today. Do all doctors ask about a person’s childhood? I guess you must figure that any patient of theirs must have been abused by their father or wanted to kill their mother or something. No, I wasn’t beaten, or starved, and I didn’t even know what the word “incest” was until I was checking the spelling of “insect” in the dictionary.

I know, I know, I’m avoiding the subject. Open up, you said. Open up, God-damnit.

Fine.

As a child I wasn’t liked by other kids. I was too smart, you see, and I had been taught at an early age to respect authority. Actually, I don’t think I was ever taught that, because my parents didn’t seem to teach me much of anything. I just knew I had to listen to them when they yelled at me.

All of my life I was afraid of my father. He never really was a father to me, for he wasn’t home often, but when he was home, all he seemed to do was yell at me. I always figured that I must have done something wrong, because he was never happy with me. Hence the self-esteem problem, I guess. I think that’s why I got messed up with all those other men, too, doc. But you said we’d get to that in a later session.

The thing is, they always told me that I had to act a certain way, and that I had to do all of these things, but I never knew why I had to do them. If it was to be a good person, then I wanted to know who the hell decided what was good. From what I understood, good wasn’t fun. It wasn’t even self-fulfilling.

But I was going to do what they wanted. I got into a good school, and decided to study in a field that I didn’t like. But, you see, that would get me a job with good pay - even if I didn’t like it - and would make everyone in society think that everything was good in my life. If I just went through the motions, people would think I was happy, and then they might leave me alone.

But that didn’t work.

Doc, I’m tired. The medication you make me take at night really knocks me out. I’ll write later

She never signed her letters, and she always typed them so that they could never be traced to her. She made sure she covered all of her bases.

Litmann pressed his right hand over his eyes, almost in an effort to hold his face together.

Dear Doctor-

Hi. I’m back. It’s night again. I like writing at night. I write at the desk in my room by two candles. I could turn on the lights, but the candles make shadows on the walls. I like the shadows. They make me think of everything out there that I’m not supposed to do.

In our session today you wanted me to tell you about the turning point of my life. You figured out that there was some sort of event in my life that made me want to rebel against all the empty values my parents tried to shove down my throat. That event was a man.

You see, he was a boyfriend of mine - a boring one that fit into my plan of having a boring future. I’d get a boring job, and I’d marry that boring man and we’d live in a boring house with boring children and act happy. I thought it would all be simple enough - I mean, the man seemed harmless and all. But he wasn’t.

He went away to school with me, and at the first chance he got, he got me drunk. And he raped me.

It occurred to me then that my boring life wasn’t going to happen. Doc, I thought I could just float by life, going through the motions without feeling anything, whether it be pain or happiness. The rape tore me apart inside. This man was supposed to be the security in life, and he killed any security I thought I could ever feel. I knew that what he did wasn’t right, but I also knew that there was nothing I could really do about it, because society seemed to ignore things like rape. Nothing seemed right anymore.

I looked into different religions. I read the new testament, and I tried to go through the old one, but the reading was just too dry. God just seemed like a joke to me. I deduced that religion was just a means to keep the masses in their place. But it wouldn’t hold me down.

I wonder why I don’t tell you all of these things while I’m in session with you. Maybe it’s because you’re trying to make me “normal” again - normal in the eyes of society. Well, their rules don’t make sense.

Dear Doc - I can’t love unconditionally

I think everyone thinks I’m just very cold. But it’s just that I can’t love someone that I can’t respect or admire. I don’t think I love my family, because I can’t respect their values, and I can’t love other people because I can’t trust them. That’s where my value system comes in. I decided that the only person I could trust and love is myself. So my goals should be to make myself happy, right? If I do that, what more could I want? Why should I want to please others?

And I liked having those one night stands. I liked the power I felt when I could make a man want me so much and I had the power to do with him whatever I wanted. You could say that I wanted to get back at the man who raped me, you could say that I was looking for someone to care for me the way I wanted my father to when I was a child - but I wanted the power. I wanted the control of others - and it was an emotional control, which was even stronger than a physical control. I felt an emotional high from making them weak. I don’t know which high was stronger.

Dear Doc- I’m not afraid to tell you the next part, for even if I do give you these letters, you can’t tell anyone about them. I’ve checked into the laws, and because of the nature of the case and client confidentiality privileges, you couldn’t utter a word.

Now, I never got into drugs. I drank a lot, which I guess I get from my father, but I never touched drugs. But I had ways of getting a hold of them, and cheap. So I started selling stuff to some of the college students - particularly the good looking men. If my plan was going to work, I had to pick the right kinds of people. I’d go to the men in the elite fraternity houses - the ones that you needed not only good looks, but also a lot of money and a lot of connections to get in to. Then I found the man. Steve. Gullable bastard, isn’t he? Then I found the woman. A typical bitch - bleach blond, sorority, stupid as all hell. The type that makes me look like something is wrong with me for not wearing designer clothes. I knew I could make Steve do something he normally wouldn’t - and maybe this would be my little way of destroying a microcosm of the society. It’s destroying Steve. And it destroyed Erica.

Litmann looked up. He pulled his glasses from his face. He didn’t know if the steam on the glass was from his sweat or his tears. He got up, clenching the letters. He left the room.

stalker, by Janet Kuypers

And she got out of her car, walked across her driveway, and walked up the stairs to her porch, trying to enjoy her solitude, trying not to remember that he followed her once again. She thought she was free of him; she thought he moved on with his life and that she would not have to see his face again.

Why did he have to call her, on this one particular day, years later, while she was at work? Maybe if she could have been suspecting it, she might have been braced for it. But then again, she didn’t want to think about it: she was happy that she was finally starting to feel as if she had control of her life again.

It had been so many years, why would she have expected him to follow her again? Didn’t she make it clear years ago that she didn’t want him waiting outside her house in his car anymore, that she didn’t want to receive the hang-up calls at three in the morning anymore? Or the calls in the middle of the night, when he’d stay on the line, when she could tell that he was high, and he’d profess his love to her? Or the letters, or the threats? No, the police couldn’t do anything until he took action, when it was too late. Why did he come back? Why couldn’t he leave her alone? Why couldn’t it be illegal for someone to fill her with fear for years, to make her dread being in her house alone, to make her wonder if her feeling that she was being followed wasn’t real?

All these thoughts rushed through her head as she sat on her front porch swing, opening her mail. One bill, one piece of junk mail, one survey.

It was only a phone call, she had to keep thinking to herself. He may never call again. She had no idea where he was even calling from. For all she knew, he could have been on the other side of the country. It was only a phone call.

And then everything started to go wrong in her mind again, the bushes around the corner of her house were rustling a little too loud, there were too many cars that sounded like they were stopping near her house. Her own breathing even scared her.

I could go into the house, she thought, but she knew that she could be filled with fear there, too. Would the phone ring? Would there be a knock on the door? Or would he even bother with a knock, would he just break a window, let himself in, cut the phone lines so she wouldn’t stand a chance?

No, she knew better. She knew she had to stay outside, that she couldn’t let this fear take a hold of her again. And so she sat.

She looked at her phone bill again.

She heard the creak of the porch swing.

She swore she heard someone else breathing.

No, she wouldn’t look up from her bill, because she knew no one was there.

Then he spoke.

“Hi.”

She looked up. He was standing right at the base of her stairs, not six feet away from her.

“What are you doing on my property?”

“Oh, come on, you used to not hate me so much.” He lit a cigarette, a marlboro red, with a match. “So, why wouldn’t you take my call today?”

“Why would I? What do I have to say to you?”

“You’re really making a bigger deal out of this than it is,” he said, then took a drag. She watched the smoke come out of his mouth as he spoke. “We used to have it good.”

She got up, and walked toward him. She was surprised; in her own mind she never thought she’d actually be able to walk closer to him, she always thought she’d be running away. She stood at the top of the stairs.

“Can I have a smoke?”

“Sure,” he said, and he reached up to hand her the fire stick. She reached out for the matches.

“I’ll light it.”

She put the match to the end of the paper and leaves, watched it turn orange. She didn’t want this cigarette. She needed to look more calm. Calm. Be calm.

She remained at the top of the stairs, and he stood only six stairs below her. She sat at the top stair.

“You really think we ever got along?”

“Sure. I mean, I don’t know how you got in your head -”

“Do you think I enjoyed finding your car outside my house all the time? Did I enjoy seeing you at the same bars I was at, watching me and my friends, like you were recording their faces into your memory forever? Do you think I liked you coming to bother me when I was working at the store? Do you -”

“I was.”

She paused. “You were what?”

“I was logging everyone you were with into my head.”

She sat silent.

“At the bars - I remember every face. I remember every one of them. I had to, you see, I had to know who was trying to take you away. I needed to know who they were.”

She sat still, she couldn’t blink, she stared at him, it was just as she was afraid it would be.

And all these years she begged him to stop, but nothing changed.

She couldn’t take it all anymore.

She put out her right hand, not knowing exactly what she’d do if she held his hand. He put his left hand in hers.

“You know,” she said, then paused for a drag of the red fire, “This state would consider what you did to me years ago stalking.”

She held his hand tighter, holding his fingers together. She could feel her lungs moving her up and down. He didn’t even hear her; he was fixated on looking at his hand in hers, until she caught his eyes with her own and then they stared, past the iris, the pupil, until they burned holes into each other’s heads with their stare.

“And you know,” she said, as she lifted her cigarette, “I do too.”

Then she quickly moved the cigarette toward their hands together, and put it out in the top of his hand.

He screamed. Grabbed his hand. Bent over. Pressed harder. Swore. Yelled.

She stood. Her voice suddenly changed.

“Now, I’m going to say this once, and I won’t say it again. I want you off my property. I want you out of my life. I swear to God, if you come within fifty feet of me or anything related to me or anything the belongs to me, I’ll get a court order, I’ll get a gun, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you away forever.”

“Now go.”

He held his left hand with his right, the fingers on his right hand purple from the pressure he was using on the open sore. He moaned while she spoke. She stood at the top of the stairs looking down on him. He slowly walked away.

She thought for a moment she had truly taken her life back. She looked down. Clenched in the fist in her left hand was the cigarette she just put out.

fish, by Janet Kuypers

It’s a pretty miraculous thing, I suppose, making the transition from being a fish to being a human being. The first thing I should do is go about explaining how I made the transition, the second thing, attempting to explain why. It has been so long since I made the decision to change and since I have actually assumed the role of a human that it may be hard to explain.
Before my role in human civilization, I was a beta — otherwise known as a Japanese fighting fish. Although we generally have a beautiful purple-blue hue, most people familiar with different species of fish thought of us as more expensive goldfish. I was kept in a round bowl, about eight inches wide at it’s longest point (in human terms, that would be living in quarters about 25 feet at the widest point). It may seem large enough to live, but keep in mind that as humans, you not only have the choice of a larger home, but you are also able to leave your living quarters at any point in time. I did not have that luxury. In fact, what I had was a very small glass apartment, not well kept by my owners (and I at that point was unable to care for it myself). I had a view of the outside world, but it was a distorted view. And I thought I could never experience that world first-hand.
Previous to living anywhere else, before I was purchased, I resided in a very small bowl - no longer than three inches at the widest point. Living in what humans would consider an eight foot square, I had difficulty moving. I even had a hard time breathing. Needless to say from then on I felt I needed more space, I needed to be on my own. No matter what, that was what I needed.
I lived in the said bowl alone. There was one plastic tree in the center of my quarters — some algae grew on it, but that was all I had for plant life in my space. The bottom of my quarters was filled with small rocks and clear marbles. It was uneventful.
Once they put another beta in my quarters with me — wait, I must correct myself. I thought the put another beta there with me. I must explain, but please do not laugh: I only came to learn at a later point, a point after I was a human, that my owner had actually placed my quarters next to a mirror. I thought another fish was there with me, following my every motion, getting angry when I got angry, never leaving me alone, always taking the same moves as I did. I raced back and forth across my quarters, always staring at the “other” fish, always prepared to fight it. But I never did.
Once I was kept in an aquarium for a short period of time. It was a ten-gallon tank, and I was placed in there with other fish of varying species, mostly smaller. I was the only beta there. There were different colored rocks, and there were more plastic plants. And one of the outside walls was colored a bright shade of blue - I later came to discover that it was paper behind the glass wall. Beyond the other fish, there was no substantial difference in my quarters.
But my interactions with the other fish is what made the time there more interesting. I wanted to be alone most of the time — that is the way I felt the most comfortable. I felt the other fish didn’t look like me, and I often felt that they were specifically out to hamper me from any happiness. You have to understand that we are by nature very predatorial — we want our space, we want dominance over others, we want others to fear us. It is survival of the fittest when it comes to our lives. Eat or be eaten.
I stayed to myself most of the time in the aquarium; I occasionally made shows of strength to gain respect from the other fish. It made getting food from the top of the tank easier when no one tempted to fight me for the food. It was lonely, I suppose, but I survived — and I did so with better luck than most of the others there.
Then one day it appeared. First closed off to the rest of us by some sort of plastic for a while, then eventually the plastic walls were taken away and it was there. Another beta was suddenly in my space. My space. This was my home, I had proven myself there. I was the only fish of my kind there, and now there was this other fish I would have to prove myself to. Eat or be eaten. I had to make sure — and make sure right away — that this other fish would never be a problem for me.
But the thing was, I knew that the other fish had no right to be there. I didn’t know how they got there, what those plastic walls were, or why they were there. But I had to stop them. This fish was suddenly my worst enemy.
It didn’t take long before we fought. It was a difficult battle, all of the other fish got out of the way, and we darted from one end of the aquarium to the other. It wasn’t long until I was given the opportunity to strike. I killed the other beta, its blood flowing into my air. Everyone there was breathing the blood of my victory.
Almost immediately I was removed from the aquarium and placed in my other dwelling — the bowl. From then on I knew there had to be a way to get out of those quarters, no matter what I had to do.
I looked around at the owner; I saw them walking around the tank. I knew that they did not breathe water, and this confused me, but I learned that the first thing I had to do was learn to breathe what they did.
It didn’t take much time before I was constantly trying to lift my head up out of the bowl for as long as I could. I would manage to stay there usually because I was holding my breath. But then, one time, I went up to the top in the morning, they way I usually did, and without even thinking about it, I just started to breathe. I was able to keep my full head up out of the water for as long as I wanted and listen to what was going on outside my living quarters.
Everything sounded so different. There were so many sharp noises. They hurt me to listen to them. Looking back, I now understand that the water in my tank muffled any outside noises. But beyond that, no one in my living quarters made noise — no one bumped into things, no one screamed or made noises. But at the time, all these noises were extremely loud.
I then knew I had to keep my head above water as much as possible and try to make sense of the sounds I continually heard. I came to discover what humans refer to as language only through listening to the repeated use of these loud sounds.
When I learned I had to breathe, I did. When I understood that I had to figure out their language, I did. It took so long, but I began to understand what they said. Then I had to learn to speak. I tried to practice under the water, in my dwelling, but it was so hard to hear in my quarters that I never knew if I was doing it correctly. Furthermore, I had become so accustomed to breathing air instead of water that I began to have difficulty breathing in my old home. This filled me with an intense fear. If I continue on with this experiment, I thought, will my own home become uninhabitable to me? Will I die here because I learned too much?
I decided that I had no choice and that I had to ask my owner for help. I had to hope that my ability to produce sounds — and the correct ones, at that - would be enough to let them know that I am in trouble. Furthermore, I had to hope that my owner would actually want to help me. Maybe they wouldn’t want me invading their space. Eat or be eaten.
But I had to take the chance. One morning, before I received my daily food, I pulled the upper half of my body from the tank. My owner wasn’t coming yet, so I went back down and jumped up again. Still nothing. I kept jumping, until I jumped out of the tank completely. I landed on the table, fell to the floor, coughing. I screamed.
The next thing I remember (and you have to forgive me, because my memory is weak here, and this was seven years ago) is being in a hospital. I didn’t know what it was then, of course, and it frightened me. Doctors kept me in place and began to study me. They sent me to schools. And to this day I am still learning.

I have discovered one thing about humans during my life as one. With all the new space I have available to me, with all of the other opportunities I have, I see that people still fight each other for their space. They kill. They steal. They do not breathe in the blood, but it is all around them. And I still find myself doing it as well, fighting others to stay alive.

short story

A SUMMER AT HOME, by Katherine Miller

“Oh, I’m just so depressed,” I said in mock whine. An uncontrolled sigh belayed the humor I tried to relate. I hoped Mike wouldn’t be more concerned than he already was.
“So, Di, your stint as domestic goddess is going that well, huh?” I could just see his goateed frown on the other end of the phone. It was strange hearing from him during the summer. We see a lot of each other while on campus, but I never thought of keeping in touch over the summer. We have an odd friendship anyway. Mike is eight years older than I; a returning student after that long of a lapse. We’ve had some pretty deep conversations over lunches and biology labs, but both of us were always too busy to see each other away from classes. I figured Mike had called, like many of my other friends who I never hear from, to check up on me. To make sure I hadn’t done anything drastic.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” I sighed again. It’s an annoying habit. “I’ve been keeping this place from falling apart.” The house was spotless. “In fact, right now, I’m getting ready to make dinner.” And I was too. I juggled the cordless phone as I wrestled the pressure cooker from it’s bottom cabinet.
“Really?” Mike’s voice perked at the mention of food. “What are you making?”
“Spaghetti. You want some? You could jump in your car right now and make it in time to finish off the last of it.” Mike lived only an hour away in Lincoln. I set the cooker on the front burner of the stove and collected the partially defrosted hamburger from microwave and onions from the fridge. I was glad the subject had deviated from myself, and it suddenly occurred to me that it might be nice to see Mike.
“Don’t I wish,” he said. “I have to be at work in about an hour.”
“I’m sorry.” Mike was a Psychology major who worked part time as a counselor for the juvenile branch of the state corrections board. I knew he hated the job sometimes. Mike is a sympathetic sort and hates not being able to really help people. I had tried my best-unsuccessfully-not to unload on Mike.
I broke up the hamburger as best I could and turned the burner to high. I cleaned two onions and started to cut them up; the garden hadn’t yielded any fresh green peppers yet.
“Actually, I do have a reason for calling...”
“Oh, really?” I said in mock surprise. I knew there had to be some ulterior motive.
“You know I told you last fall about my sister’s house on the lake?”
I nodded-another annoying habit especially when one is on the phone-I did remember, vaguely. “You spent your vacation last summer there. Some family get-together?”
“Yeah, well, this summer I’m spending my vacation taking Abnormal Psych during the second session-”
“Oooh, fun.”
“Yeah, and my sister and her family aren’t going to make it out there because of some business Bob has to take care of. Bob’s her husband,” Mike said without taking a breath. I nodded again with total nonunderstanding as to what all of this had to do with me. “Well, she doesn’t want to leave the place unoccupied all summer. The last time she did they had to spend about five hundred dollars fixing damages. We seem to be safe if someone spends at least a couple weeks there.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. So, we were looking for someone to look after the place, and I thought of you.” There was certain tone of victory in Mike’s voice like he’d just found the perfect solution to everyone’s problems.
“Ah.” I wasn’t sure what else to say yet. The onions were browning nicely with the ground beef. I dragged one of the kitchen chairs into the pantry so I could reach the cans of tomato sauce and paste on the top shelf. I balanced the phone between my ear and shoulder.
“Diane? Are you still there?” I really hadn’t meant for there to be such a long pause; it just sort of happened. I was trying desperately to think of excuses to turn the offer down. “Yeah, I’m still here I was just working on my sauce.”
“I thought you might want to get away from everything for a while,” his voice quieter now. He was only trying to help. My family had fallen to pieces during my sophomore year in college. This would be the first extended stay in a household that had no parents. My father had left without leaving behind a cause, and my mother, well, she had just changed.
“I don’t know, Mike. You know, I’d love to, but I should stick around here, for my little brother’s sake anyway,” I said trying to convince myself that was the only reason I was here. Right now, my brother Tom was “vacationing” with my grandparents in Minnesota. I envied him; even though he’d have to attend the huge Johnson family reunion, he could at least leave all this behind for a month.
“I thought he was going to Minnesota with your grandparents?” The man’s a mind-reader!
“He is, but that’s not for a few weeks yet,” I lied. Actually, they’d be back in a few weeks. I’d totally forgotten I had mentioned the trip to Mike when last lamenting my situation. Luckily for me, he’d forgotten when the trip had been planned.
“Well, come down when he leaves,” said Mike.
“How am I going to get food and stuff when I’m there? I still don’t have a car. And I’d be all alone out there with nothing to do,” I said. This was my last-chance out.
“There’s a Mom-and-Pop market about two blocks and around the corner, I’d be only twenty minutes away, and it would be a great chance for you to catch up on your reading,” Mike replied to my points as quickly as I had presented them. I was impressed; he’d thought out all the excuses I’d use before I had even heard the question. I sighed again. This time it was mixed with a chuckle. When Mike resigns himself to helping a friend, he goes all out. The offer was tempting, but there was really no way I could go. I was needed here. Maybe I could straighten things out...
“Your being at home isn’t going to change anything,” his voice was low and sensible. It made me want to cry because I knew he was right. Or maybe it was just the vapors off the simmering onion.<
“I know,” I whispered. There was more to that smell than just onions... “ACK! The meat’s burning.” I grabbed the pressure cooker by the handle and moved it to a cold burner. “Listen, Mike, I better go or we’ll be eating out again. I’ll think about staying at the lake while my brother’s gone and give you a call then.”<
“Do you have my number?”
“Um,” I tried to think, “I did, but I lost my address book moving home.”
“Okay, I’ll give it to you again.”
“Wait a minute, let me grab a pen. There’s never one by the phone.” I picked a felt tip out of the kitchen utility drawer. Mike gave me his number, along with an assurance he’d accept charges if I’d call collect. I wrote it down on the post-a-note pad by the phone’s cradle.<
“Remember, call me.”
“I will,” I said as I hung up.
“Who was on the phone?”
I whirled around, startled, like I had been caught in the illegal act of conspiracy. My mother had just come in the sliding patio door and was standing at the kitchen table. I don’t think she noticed the odd look on my face, so I recovered before she saw it. She was still dressed from work in black jeans and a country-looking shirt complete with fringe; overdressed, in my opinion, for telemarketing. She had a strange glassy eyed smile on her face. I wondered how many drinks she’d had before she came home. I dug the electric can opener out of the cupboard beside me and went on with my cooking, my back to her, before I answered.
“Oh, it was just Mike,” I said as nonchalantly as I could.
“Mike? Mike? Do I know any Mikes?” I withheld a sigh for once. She was in a spacy mood.
“No, he’s my friend. You know, the old guy,” I said. Mike has always been “the old guy” because Mom can never keep the people I know from school straight. I had met Mike during my Freshman year, when my mother was still over-protective of me, before her own separation She had nearly flipped when she thought I was actually dating someone eight years older then myself; none of my assurances that Mike was “just a friend” had ever sunk in. But that was before. Now, I’m sure she wouldn’t care less if I was sleeping with him. I wondered if I should bring up his proposal of a summer away.
“Oh, him,” she said, understanding dawning on her. “Gee, maybe I should meet him. We might get along well together.” I was still turned around adding the tomato products to my meat and onions (it wasn’t as badly burnt as I thought-a little garlic salt would cover the taste) and gathering seasonings from the cabinets above me. She didn’t see me cringe. I hoped she was kidding and knew she probably wasn’t.<
“Do you need me to season that for you?” she asked as I liberally shook oregano into the pot.
“Nope. I can do it myself.”
“See, you really don’t need your old mother any-”
“Are you eating with me tonight?” I interrupted. I did not want to hear another one of her little spiels about how it was all right for her to act like a rebellious teen-ager
while I was “doing just fine”. I snapped down the lid of the pressure cooker and put it back on the hot burner. I turned around to see her answer.
She had seated herself at the far end of the kitchen table. The cordless phone was in front of her as well as her electronic address book. She had no intention of staying and eating with her eldest child. My mother, the socialite, always had plans to be somewhere other than home.
“You’d better put your noodles on,” she said without looking up at me.
I shook my head and made no secret of my fourth sigh of the day. I made a lot of noise getting the spaghetti cooker out. It was a big castiron thing and made a satisfying amount of racket.
“Oh, alright,” my mother gave in as though I had been arguing with her. “I’ll stay home tonight if that’s what you want.”
“Don’t do me any favors,” I muttered. She either didn’t hear me or simply ignored it. I kept my focus on filling the spaghetti pot with water.
We had been going on like this, to a greater or lesser extent, since September. I wanted her-all of us-to get counseling; we needed it, really. But she countered that with a lack-of-money plea. It was strange how she had money for everything except what was good for her family. It wasn’t that I wanted everything to be the way it used to be. My father had been unhappy in the marriage. Even though my mother hadn’t started drinking until after he left, I tried not to blame him. All I wanted was my mother back. I wanted her to care enough not to even joke about hitting on my friends. I wanted her to remember what classes I was taking next semester like she used to. I wanted her to do little things like staying home to eat the dinner I had made. But my mom had changed so much, more than seemed reasonable to me.
Maybe I was just being selfish. I had tried everything really. I had talked until I was blue in the face: to her, to Dad, to anyone who’d listen, even Mike. Guilt trips and rebellions didn’t work anymore because she had this new Enlightened Philosophy that no longer required her to care. “The only person I have to answer for is myself.” It was what my father had said when he left, and she had done her best to live up to that ideal from then on. I wished sometimes I could buy into it, too. I had even cried; at twenty years old I had cried like a helpless child.
The spaghetti pot was overflowing. I shut the water off and dumped out a fourth of it. I added salt and put it on the other large stove burner, cranking it up to high. I had to wait now for everything to come to a boil.
It was as I set the timer for the spaghetti that the phone rang. Mom and I had been sitting at opposite ends of the table in silence. She was fiddling with her check book, trying to find money where there was none. I didn’t even get up once in a while to check if the water was boiling. I just gave it a good ten minutes before I added the raw, stiff noodles.
The first ring was nearly drowned out by a combination of beeping from the digital timer and the hiss and sputters of the pressure cooker. Mom caught it on the second ring before the answering machine kicked in.
“Oh, hi, Gene.” Gene was one of her latest best friends. I tried not to listen in, even as I strained to hear over all the kitchen noise. I had my back to her again, stirring the noodles to keep them from sticking.
“That sounds like fun,” my mother smiled. “When are you two going? Hmmm.” I wonder if she looked up to check my reaction.
I knew whatever Gene’s plans were they began now, would continue through dinner time (probably until the bars closed), and would be irresistible to my mother. I threw her a poisonous look over my shoulder; she didn’t see it. She was writing something on the pad she’d nabbed from beside the phone. I turned back to the stove. I felt paralyzed. I wanted to stop her to force her to stay here and eat dinner with me, but I couldn’t move.
She hung up the phone. She walked up and stood behind me. I didn’t turn around.
“Gene and Dawn are going out to celebrate Dawn’s birthday at the Winchester Bar. I’ve never been there before. Dawn had to give me the address,” she explained. “I’ll only be gone an hour or so, and I won’t drink anything but Diet Pepsi.”
I managed a shrug. They were all promises I’d heard before. She didn’t say anything more because there was nothing more to say. She grabbed her purse from the table where she had set it when she came home and left through the patio door. The timer on the spaghetti hadn’t even rang yet.
“Fine,” I muttered. I couldn’t hear myself, the pressure cooker had settled into it’s chug-chug rhythm. Dinner was almost ready. I could see, out of the corner of my eye, through the kitchen window, her car back down the driveway.
“FINE!” I screamed. I grabbed the pressure cooker from the stove and threw it down. It’s amazing it didn’t put a hole in the floor. All I can think now, looking back, is pressure cookers must not have safety devices for occasions when people slam them into the ground. Upon impact, it nearly exploded. The lid burst off and hot, very hot, tomato sauce splattered on to everything including my ankles. I didn’t notice any pain.
My violence seemed to be cured, though. I stood there for many minutes staring at the mess I made, but left the boiling pot of noodles where it was. I even reached over and calmly turn the burners, both of them, off. My brain finally registered a hot sensation from the lower part of my legs, but it wasn’t unbearable. For a while, I contemplated cleaning it up.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said out loud to myself. It took a few minutes more to realize what I meant by that. It didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to be here to clean it up. I was going to be gone. I was going to a house by a lake where I could cook spaghetti without interruptions. I only ended up eating alone anyway. My ankles were burning now, but I had no time. I had to leave now.
I ran down stairs to my basement bedroom and grabbed the suitcase out of the closet. I dumped the winter clothes stored in it into a messy heap on the floor. My mind was reeling as I tried to think of everything I should take. I shoveled clothes and underwear from my dresser drawers into the suitcase, not worrying if the case would close later. I’d take one of the boxes of books I hadn’t unpacked when I came home from school this summer. I had to remember to get stuff from the bathroom upstairs: toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, my headache pills...
“I have to get out of here,” I explained to no one. “I have to leave now.” I glanced at the clock. “I have to call Mike before he leaves for work, before I run out of time.”
I dashed back up stairs to the telephone in the kitchen despite the disabling pain in my ankles. I picked up the phone before I realized I didn’t know the number. Where was the notepad? On the table. I spun around, phone receiver in hand. The pad was on the table where Mom left it. It was totally blank. I blinked. It was still blank. It slowly sank in. My mother had written the address for the Winchester Bar on the same sheet of paper I had written Mike’s number. It wasn’t here. I didn’t have it.
All the energy I had drained out of me. I knew it wouldn’t work. I could look through my boxes again for my address book, but it wouldn’t be there. It was too late anyway, even if I called information for Mike’s number. He would be at work by now. He wouldn’t be able to take me out to the lake house until tomorrow. And tomorrow, Mom would be back. She might even stay for a while...
I went back down stairs and slowly unpacked the suitcase. I folded each garment of clothing to perfection. I put the suitcase back in the closet, and forgot all about the books and the necessities in the bathroom upstairs. My ankles were red even after I wiped the sauce off. Several blisters were forming, but I really didn’t feel any pain now.
I went back up stairs to clean up the mess on the kitchen floor. The sauce was still hot.

Nick DiSpoldo, Small Press Review (on “Children, Churches and Daddies,& #148; April 1997) Kuypers is the widely-published poet of particular perspectives and not a little existential rage, but she does not impose her personal or artistic agenda on her magazine. CC+D is a provocative potpourri of news stories, poetry, humor, art and the “dirty underwear& #148; of politics. One piece in this issue is “Crazy,& #148; an interview Kuypers conducted with “Madeline,& #148; a murderess who was found insane, and is confined to West Virginia’s Arronsville Correctional Center. Madeline, whose elevator definitely doesn’t go to the top, killed her boyfriend during sex with an ice pick and a chef’s knife, far surpassing the butchery of Elena Bobbitt. Madeline, herself covered with blood, sat beside her lover’s remains for three days, talking to herself, and that is how the police found her. For effect, Kuypers publishes Madeline’s monologue in different-sized type, and the result is something between a sense of Dali’s surrealism and Kafka-like craziness.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada
I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer’s styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.

Ed Hamilton, writer #85 (of Children, Churches and Daddies) turned out well. I really enjoyed the humor section, especially the test score answers. And, the cup-holder story is hilarious. I’m not a big fan of poetry - since much of it is so hard to decipher - but I was impressed by the work here, which tends toward the straightforward and unpretentious. As for the fiction, the piece by Anderson is quite perceptive: I liked the way the self-deluding situation of the character is gradually, subtly revealed. (Kuypers’) story is good too: the way it switches narrative perspective via the letter device is a nice touch.

Children, Churches and Daddies.
It speaks for itself.
Write to Scars Publications to submit poetry, prose and artwork to Children, Churches and Daddies literary magazine, or to inquire about having your own chapbook, and maybe a few reviews like these.

Jim Maddocks, GLASGOW, via the Internet I’ll be totally honest, of the material in Issue (either 83 or 86 of Children, Churches and Daddies) the only ones I really took to were Kuypers’. TRYING was so simple but most truths are, aren’t they?

what is veganism?
A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don’t consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

why veganism?
This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

so what is vegan action?
We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

vegan action
po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353
510/704-4444

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies) CC&D is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist. I really like (“Writing Your Name& #148;). It’s one of those kind of things where your eye isn’t exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked “knowledge& #148; for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film.

Children, Churches and Daddies no longer distributes free contributor’s copies of issues. In order to receive issues of Children, Churches and Daddies, contact Janet Kuypers at the cc&d e-mail addres. Free electronic subscriptions are available via email. All you need to do is email ccandd@scars.tv... and ask to be added to the free cc+d electronic subscription mailing list. And you can still see issues every month at the Children, Churches and Daddies website, located at http://scars.tv

Mark Blickley, writer The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars& #148; is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town (on the Children, Churches and Daddies Web Site) I just checked out the site. It looks great.

Dusty Dog Reviews: These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding.

John Sweet, writer (on chapbook designs) Visuals were awesome. They’ve got a nice enigmatic quality to them. Front cover reminds me of the Roman sculptures of angels from way back when. Loved the staggered tire lettering, too. Way cool. (on “Hope Chest in the Attic& #148;) Some excellent writing in “Hope Chest in the Attic.& #148; I thought “Children, Churches and Daddies& #148; and “The Room of the Rape& #148; were particularly powerful pieces.

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review: CC&D is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist.

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus (on Children, Churches and Daddies) The new CC&D looks absolutely amazing. It’s a wonderful lay-out, looks really professional - all you need is the glossy pages. Truly impressive AND the calendar, too. Can’t wait to actually start reading all the stuff inside.. Wanted to just say, it looks good so far!!!

Dusty Dog Reviews: She opens with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.& #148; Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.

Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA
Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Mark Blickley, writer
The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars& #148; is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.

Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book or chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers. We’re only an e-mail away. Write to us.

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST’s three principal projects are to provide:
* on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
* on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST’s SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
* on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
The CREST staff also does “on the road& #148; presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
“Hope Chest in the Attic& #148; captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family.
“Chain Smoking& #148; depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape& #148; is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

want a review like this? contact scars about getting your own book published.

Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!

The magazine Children Churches and Daddies is Copyright © through Scars Publications and Design. The rights of the individual pieces remain with the authors. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Okay, nilla wafer. Listen up and listen good. How to save your life. Submit, or I’ll have to kill you.
Okay, it’s this simple: send me published or unpublished poetry, prose or art work (do not send originals), along with a bio, to us - then sit around and wait... Pretty soon you’ll hear from the happy people at cc&d that says (a) Your work sucks, or (b) This is fancy crap, and we’re gonna print it. It’s that simple!

Okay, butt-munch. Tough guy. This is how to win the editors over.
Hope Chest in the Attic is a 200 page, perfect-bound book of 13 years of poetry, prose and art by Janet Kuypers. It’s a really classy thing, if you know what I mean. We also have a few extra sopies of the 1999 book “Rinse and Repeat& #148;, the 2001 book “Survive and Thrive& #148;, the 2001 books “Torture and Triumph& #148; and “(no so) Warm and Fuzzy& #148;, which all have issues of cc&d crammed into one book. And you can have either one of these things at just five bucks a pop if you just contact us and tell us you saw this ad space. It’s an offer you can’t refuse...

Carlton Press, New York, NY: HOPE CHEST IN THE ATTIC is a collection of well-fashioned, often elegant poems and short prose that deals in many instances, with the most mysterious and awesome of human experiences: love... Janet Kuypers draws from a vast range of experiences and transforms thoughts into lyrical and succinct verse... Recommended as poetic fare that will titillate the palate in its imagery and imaginative creations.
Mark Blickley, writer: The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars& #148; is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing the book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.
Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book and chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers - you can write for yourself or you can write for an audience. It’s your call...

Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA: “Hope Chest in the Attic& #148; captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family. “Chain Smoking& #148; depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape& #148; is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Dusty Dog Reviews (on Without You): She open with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.& #148; Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.
Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada (on Children, Churches and Daddies): I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer’s styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.
Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA: Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Children, Churches and Daddies the unreligious, non-family oriented literary and art magazine Scars Publications and Design ccandd96@scars.tv http://scars.tv Publishers/Designers Of Children, Churches and Daddies magazine cc+d Ezines The Burning mini poem books God Eyes mini poem books The Poetry Wall Calendar The Poetry Box The Poetry Sampler Mom’s Favorite Vase Newsletters Reverberate Music Magazine Down In The Dirt magazine Freedom and Strength Press forum plus assorted chapbooks and books music, poery compact discs live performances of songs and readings Sponsors Of past editions: Poetry Chapbook Contest, Poetry Book Contest Prose Chapbook Contest, Prose Book Contest Poetry Calendar Contest current editions: Editor’s Choice Award (writing and web sites) Collection Volumes Children, Churches and Daddies (founded 1993) has been written and researched by political groups and writers from the United States, Canada, England, India, Italy, Malta, Norway and Turkey. Regular features provide coverage of environmental, political and social issues (via news and philosophy) as well as fiction and poetry, and act as an information and education source. Children, Churches and Daddies is the leading magazine for this combination of information, education and entertainment. Children, Churches and Daddies (ISSN 1068-5154) is published quarterly by Scars Publications and Design. Contact us via e-mail (ccandd96@scars.tv) for subscription rates or prices for annual collection books. To contributors: No racist, sexist or blatantly homophobic material. No originals; if mailed, include SASE & bio. Work sent on disks or through e-mail preferred. Previously published work accepted. Authors always retain rights to their own work. All magazine rights reserved. Reproduction of Children, Churches and Daddies without publisher permission is forbidden. Children, Churches and Daddies copyright through Scars Publications and Design, Children, Churches and Daddies, Janet Kuypers. All rights remain with the authors of the individual pieces. No material may be reprinted without express permission.