RED 
CEDAR 
REVIEW


RED CEDAR REVIEW

Volume XII

Issue 2


Contents

POETRY

By Accident, Randall Roorda......................................................................... 1

Two Poems Judith McCombs....................................................................... 2

Winter, 1946, marc j. sheehan.........................................................................13

Contingencies, John Harn ....................................14

Four Poems, M. R. Doty....................................................................................15

Things of this World, Will Baker....................................................................23

Unfinished Poem, Lucky Jacobs................................ 24

Untitled, Marilyn Atlas......................................................................................25

Two Poems, Dave Kelly....................................................................................34

Beauty, Ron Mieczkowski...............................................................................37

Shelling Oysters, James Magorian..................................................................41

Dreams of the Neighbor Lady, Deborah Keenan ................... 52

The Moat, Gloria Whelan.................................................................................53

Three Landscapes, Phillip Sterling..................................................................54

FICTION

Zahir, Casey Bush............................................................................................. 4

Inverted Requiem, Renaldo Migaldi..............................................................27

Crowfoot, Texas, Andrew Schreiber...............................................................42

Contributors' Notes................................................................................................55


Steven Flegg
Steven Flegg


iii


BY ACCIDENT

a child thinks a persimmon 
is a rubber ball

she throws it down

black seeds scatter on the rug

thinking the seeds are insects 
she tramples them

they dry deep in the rug

a fever buries the child

her parents lock the room

the roof springs a leak

dust settles the rain falls

the seeds unfold

the floor opens to shoots

like candle flames in the pink nap

beams succumb to rot

and roots crawl in

young trees are thriving

when the floor collapses

on to the dining room downstairs

the restoration buffet

the parents in black at candlelit dinner 
still grieving

Randall Roorda

1


UNTITLED

What are you doing, trying to paw 
your way uphill over raw logging cuts, 
scrabbling up streambeds, breaking through alder, 
as though it mattered which way you went?

Those are hands not paws growing out of your arms

Red-faced & huffing, strapped to your shadow like a coolie 
strapped to your ripstop weatherproof pack 
strapped to romantic notions of nature — 
which by the way occurred in fields 
and meadows, i.e., on civilized land — 
you enormous kid, running loose on a tether

Your body connects to a car in a lot, below

The hawks don't want you out here, they're too ignorant 
to beg for your garbage. The bears & the clever 
mammals avoid you. The trees are just trees, 
they all look alike. The stones have no numbers 
no shapes you remember (but they seem to multiply) 
Did you come all this way to gibber with stones?

You don't belong here (did you ever, & where)

What are you proving, importing yourself 
and your gear to the wilds? Your daily calories 
exceed the environment. What you can gather 
is sour, or breaks, & besides you are queasy 
about killing

You stop on a ridge & the safe water gurgles 
out of your plastic container into your mouth 
In your left breast pocket the keys to the car 
are jingling

You can always go back

You always go back

Judith McCombs

2


ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL

As I write about nature, not knowing, 
in the attic the insistent starling

scrabbles uphill & uphill & drops, 
trying to get out to the cheeps

of its young on the eaves boards, but the hole 
is all wall, scrabbles up to the hole

in the wall, but the hole is all screen, 
scrabbles uphill & flops & again,

& I think it is squirrels on the roof, 
or my neighbor, making improvements,

or my son in his crib, half-waking, 
as the starling flops uphill & breaks

something inside, so it stops 
where I find it, limp on the steps

to the attic, black feathers, no struggle, 
but it seems to take in a little

of the water I hurriedly spill

by its beak, but it lies there, too still,

as I take it, gently, outside 
with water, & crumbs in a diaper,

it lies there, black hoods on its eyes, 
and will not wake up or climb back

to the shelter/the trap where it died.

Judith McCombs

3


THE ZAHIR

by Casey Bush

Monkey flower or monkey puzzle, a large Chinese pine tree, Charles 
thought absently. He raised his drink to the light observing the soft 
yellows spinning around the glass. The Sun had set with the shades down, 
it was a family outing that he was spending alone. Let Ethel and the kids 
go to the zoo, I'd rather sit home and drink. Caged animals. Got sick last 
time I went to the zoo. Bald eagle with the clipped wings, bear pacing nervously 
back and forth. It had been an easy eventing, he had eaten chicken, 
drank whiskey without television, peaceful. He read an article that told of 
the attempt to recreate the heavy water experiments of the Germans during 
World War Two; scientists trying to find how close the Nazis had been 
to winning the war by recreating their laboratories left over from 
blueprints. This interested him only slightly.

Charles stepped out on to the balcony which contained a pleasant 
view of the Portland area, Mount Hood and St. Helens beneath the Moon, 
a scene framed like a Japanese garden. It was there that he realized how 
drunk he was; stumbling over the leg of a chair, his fall stopped only by 
the grating, Charles swore, as was his custom, "Fuckin', son of a bitch!" 
Picking himself off the floor he examined the damage. One of the cufflinks 
had been torn from his shirt. Apparently the link had fallen into the 
bushes below making recovery impossible. Charles picked himself up and 
dusted his person. Dirt. Reminded him of how he had come into possession 
of the cufflinks. A present from the long lost Georges B. He had 
broken contact with Georges years earlier and was surprised to receive a 
package in the mail bearing no return address. Georges. What a loser. 
What a chump. He had sent the package by personal courier from Nepal 
but when Charles went to have the links assessed it turned out they were 
worthless. Who could tell? They had an exotic look about them. One side 
seemed to be the image from the back of the one dollar bill while the 
other side was that of a perched eagle. There was no date on the cufflinks 
otherwise he would have mistook them for once having the function of a 
coin. Charles remembered the courier, turbaned, barefoot with great 
swollen toes. As his memory was thus stirred he went to a closet and 
searched the bottom of it successfully producing the envelope that had 
accompanied the cufflinks. Enclosed was a bulky unopened warranty. 
Charles reread the letter carefully.

Dear C.

Hopefully my trusted manservant, Ex, has contacted you and 
delivered the cufflinks. How life has changed. My fortune has a 
way of coming and going. I was on the down and out when I left

4


Portland but have recovered slowly over the years. The mountain 
life seems to be good for my health, in a similar fashion the instability 
of provincial politics has been to my financial benefit. I 
miss the States rarely and will never return.

This note and cufflinks are but a token of appreciation with 
which I hope to heal the bonds that have been broken between 
us. Please permit me this excess, sentimentality, I'm sure you 
agree, is the most harmless of my weaknesses. Enclosed also is a 
warranty which I wish you would not open until one of the cufflinks 
is lost. It is a strange contract that may seem unreasonable 
but will explain many things. I trust you will not break this seal 
unless it is necessary.

Georges B.

This correspondence did not strike Charles as being strange by nature, he 
accepted it as a continuing quirk in the personality of Georges. When 
people go off the deep end, Charles figures, it is to respect their wishes. 
His last encounters with Georges had all been strained. Arguing until 
neither could understand the subject, involved in demonics and hate 
pouring out over sunglasses. Who knows how people separate. There is 
little that can hold them together. As far as Charles was concerned the 
cufflinks were too little, too late to account for the damage incurred. 
They could never meet face to face again.

Charles poured himself another drink. The energies that the alcohol 
gave to his system were growing as he opened the warranty. It was a 
sizable statement that was hand written so that Charles squinted his eyes 
to read the fine print; the words of a man he had not seen in years, whose 
existence he had never contemplated. The second document complimented 
the first only in its obscurity and frankness. Charles did not 
understand the implications after the initial reading but as the night wore 
on the point of Georges' words became inebriously clear.

Dear C.

Again and again, the connection, brain waves rattle in the tin 
can. An object falling into unknowing hands, chronic skeleton in 
the closet, it is the Zahir, it is coming back to me. It is making its 
way to my expectant hand. If you are reading this letter then you 
have lost one of the cufflinks.

Responsibility? You have none. That is why you were chosen to 
received this gift. Chronic, seeking the source of this cycle in 
which time can be created. An obsession haunted by the infinities 
of chance, labyrinths of reason that come back upon 
themselves. It was no present that you accepted but an unknow


5


ing trust, no doubt even you were surprised at the mode in which 
the Zahir left your possession. Its methods are blinding if followed 
too closely. It is a two faced coin. One side is always the 
same, slant eye with the pyramid, a symbol I have learned 
represents an elite group of Tibetian Masons. My initials have 
been placed in the pyramid. It is the other side that is truly two 
faced. No doubt in America it is an eagle spread beneath United 
States of America, E Pluribus Unum. No doubt.

Again and again, the connections, passing between hands, 
destroying the definition, an object that return's, that haunts 
without reason, that fills the mind slowly poison flower, carnage 
of memory replaced by the object present past future/ chant this 
dialectic, count the moments between the thoughts, time divisible, 
obsession complete, a coin, a talisman. Relentlessness. This 
is the state of life. Dry continents in my mouth, the road is pock 
full of disease, police civilization stands on a fiddle bow, the 
doctor is too thin himself for me to trust; relax, let me dispel 
tension. You have nothing to worry about.

Only in the most dream like memory can I place where I first met 
the Zahir. It was under the dim lights of a restaurant in Portland 
by the name of Armands. No class with vinyl seated chairs, 
stripes on the wall, I should have stepped out the back before my 
order was taken. I sat myself in the 'wait for your host' section, in 
the process stealing the waitress' tip, forgotten, fallen into my 
hand, the Zahir took the appearance of a quarter. I turned it over 
and found myself looking into its pale eye. I took it for a slug. So 
I tried to pass it for legal tender. The ploy would have worked but 
for the sharp waitress who noticed that I had over paid her by 
twenty five cents and the Zahir was returned. I could not argue as 
to its worth but felt mysteriously relieved as I left it as an excuse 
for my tip.

First impressions are not always the correct ones. A holy order. 
From who? There I was circulating in the singles bar, like a 
crowded elevator, inhale the door, everybody pushing a policy. 
"Just blew into town." Me too, I nod. I saunter over to the 
cigarette machine, feed it three coins return a pack and dime 
change. It wasn't until later I found myself volunteered to go a 
round that I consulted my change finding the eye of quandary 
staring back into my own. Owing only to my state of intoxication 
can I account for the rational bent of my behavior. Shock should 
have been upon me like hallucination. A smaller denomination 
back by the same symbol. I did not hesitate to spend it immediately. 
The bartender gave it no second look. I mention this 
night in particular because it was as the Zahir lay in my pocket 

6


that you and I had the horrible argument about the nature of 
sleep, whey the human animal needs it. I, petty as usual, argued: 
"Sleep is a hallway leading to a corridor, the cabala swinging 
back and forth on a chain, a dog consumed by the fires of the imagination!" 
Sleep, something I have not had enough of. I dared 
not talk to you months later at the grocery store. My groceries being 
packed, with horror I looked into my hand to find the Zahir. I 
found myself casting a sneer in your direction, before I could 
help it I was knee deep in black thoughts. Out in the parking lot I 
gave the bag boy a tip. It had left me none too soon. It was at the 
same time my relationship with you disintegrated that my whole 
life took on a new course.

The increasing paranoia, suspecting at every turn a new agent of 
the Zahir. I had no name for it at first. I dared not think about it 
or discuss it lest its power over me grow. But it returned to my 
hand again and again. In a phone booth once I found it waiting 
for me to make a call. There was no human factor involved in this 
but my own. The expression of its will over mine, dry bones exposed 
to the ravages of darkness. In the grocery store I tried to 
avoid you but in the phone booth I could remember no other 
number than yours. "No, I don't want to talk about sleep. Like 
superman I am lifeless in front of the liver of my friend." 
Apologies aside, I actually wanted to discuss the circular nature 
of time, the unassuring way we live, then death sets us free to 
observe millennium pass by on the merry-go-round and to realize 
what an insignificant part in its turning we have played. 
Remember what words passed between your lists? "It is as if you 
have strapped yourself to a Doomsday Machine, locomotive 
across the face of the clouds. Don't be resistant to change." 
Unneeded advice. But also unheeded. Don't ever get lonesome 
although you remain alone. The holy order of anarchy has 
motives, don't get it wrong, direct all helmeted action towards 
the podium, pandemonium. Your voice faded, the dial tone 
returned. It was not our friendship alone that was decaying but 
my entire life wrapped around the circumference of the Zahir.

Time started to move faster as if my life had been shortened. I 
became paniced by the spin of the Earth beneath my feet. The 
growing evil within me. For a while I tried to hang on to the 
Zahir, keep it out of circulation. I had hoped that this would turn 
back the hands of the clock. The opposite proved true. I was on 
my last leg. Every venture was towards failure. My mind followed 
paths unnatural. I could recognize the symptoms but could not 
alter the course of the river I was on. In my madness I marked the 
coin with my initials. For some reason this was an easy process, 

7


placing the letters in the center of the pyramid, one third of the 
way up, the point of no decay, the space created by triangular 
logic so that the pharaoh's body does not shift with the sands. I 
marked the returning coin suspecting that more than one such 
unit existed. It found me, made the connections to fall into my 
hand. There was nothing I could do about its motion. It was then, 
in desperation, that I decided to destroy it. It is only matter. It 
can be vaporized. This I found untrue as I threw it beneath the 
wheels of a train only to have risked derailment, it seems my 
initials were the only marks the coin would tolerate rising untouched 
from the tracks. I then tested it with fire, enough energy 
to send a small projectile to the Moon did not shut the eye. I 
began to think more closely into its nature. What sort of existence 
was I encountering. Was it reasonable? Was there a logic 
that was escaping me? The manner in which it passed into my 
hands I noted, was always the same, it was money, exchange. 
Perhaps if I treated it with some less deference as to its purpose it 
could learn another mode of behavior. I would treat it as chewing 
gum and throw it away downtown, lost between the grating 
of the sewer. This was an interesting proposition. Unfortunately 
the hypothesis proved incorrect. What made me sure I was on 
the right track was the time involved. It took almost a month for 
the coin to recirculate. It was returned to me by the paper boy. 
"You're all paid up for the next half year." Sure kid, I looked 
absently at my change. The Zahir gazed back. In a way I had 
missed it. But as my life was just beginning to straighten out 
again, I found my chaotic tailspin continue. A weekend trip to 
the ocean and I cast it to the water, following its progress 
beneath the waves. How it again found me I have no idea. It 
could not hide in a vault. It had been misused and bounced back 
with an unquenchable thirst. I felt as if I was just beginning to 
understand the Zahir, its complex nature exposing itself through 
many experiments. I left the Portland area hoping to lighten the 
load borne by my close friends. Most had parted ways with me. 
Don't think your experience singular. I traveled across the country 
dogged at every turn by the Zahir. Money changes hands 
quickly. Few look closely at what they spend. I slowly realized 
that the coin was to track me to the ends of the Earth. As it 
entered my hand I lost control of my will, feeling an alien 
presence ease into the driver's seat. If I took my time to discover 
by trail and error its nature, it had more ground to haunt me 
upon. Soon losing it was not enough. I had to place it in a 
carefully considered receptacle; go to the zoo to slide it on to 
the tongue of the tiger, down to the shipyards to slip it into the 
hull of an unsinkable ship, bribe city officials to include it in a 

8


time capsule that will not be opened until the next century. 
Nothing worked. The Zahir took on the image of Houdini swimming 
under the Detroit River, frozen and unbound on shore, 
back in my hand, change for any exchange. I tried to limit my 
purchases to only the most needed items. I used my charge 
account whenever I could, I made sure I maintained a limited 
cash flow. It was to no avail. The Zahir returned without mercy.

It was as I was paying for a one way ticket to Africa that I threw 
the Zahir back in the face of the young clerk at TWA. He could 
not understand my indignation. Much of my behavior is similarly 
unexplainable. Surely the Zahir could not follow me. Money is 
not passed that easily between systems. But it was a half a year 
later, after I had established a new identity in Tripoli that I realized 
my measures were not drastic enough. The afternoon Sun 
would be unbearable but for the breezes drifted off the Mediterranean. 
I had ordered a drink and almost passed out as the 
bartender handed me the Zahir with my change. I was caught 
between the heavy breath of the bar owner as he slapped my 
face, trying to get me off the floor, and the constant gaze of the 
coin. I could not move. No longer was it an American coin but 
now Libyan, later Egyptian, Persian. I circled this part of the 
world for some time, slipping into what was then French Equatorial 
Africa, seeking out a culture that had no means of exchange. I 
could not find one. The changeable side of the Zahir became 
cleverer than I, a snake twisting from one hand to the next, 
nobody receiving the same value. The Zahir wormed its way 
towards me in the jungle with a tropical speed, as though the 
constant heat was affecting its metabolism. I then noted that I 
was like a cold blooded animal and unable to control the rate of 
its activity. This supposition was to lead me to the roof of the 
world, the Himalayan Range in Chinese Tibet. I felt that if I could 
lead it to such a cold corner of the world I could force it into 
hibernation or at least slow the rate of exchange so that I would 
be able to live my life in some sort of order. I spent years slipping 
in and out of Kashmir, into Nepal, trying to slow it down. I 
climbed mountains and lived alone but just as years earlier it had 
shone up in the pockets of my freshly laundered pants, I would 
stumble across it in the snow. At every turn I was defeated. I 
could not shake it.

It was in a restaurant that I frequented near the Indian border 
that I accused the waiter of trying to pass me a worthless 
character. "This is no coin that I have ever seen." I made an angry 
display. "Give me another." I complained harshly upon finding 
the Zahir in my hand. "Oh, you are quite mistaken sir, this is legal 

9


tender." I objected emphatically. "I have never seen a coin like 
this in Tibet. Give me something I can buy goat's milk with." The 
man was patient beyond my worth and took me aside to explain 
the issue. "This is a coin known more widely in an area of 
Tsinghai Province. I have seen it only rarely. You should treasure 
it." I managed quickly to get out of the good man the location of 
the area in which it was used. By his directions I wandered the 
heights of that area across Tibet, north, leaving the Trans- 
Himalayans going into the Kunlun Range and finally descending 
into the landform known as the Tsaidam Swamp; an area in the 
midst of the mountains the size of Ohio where the north arm of 
the Brahmaeputra River is known as the Tsangpo and for five 
hundred miles in a lowland marsh. There were not cities in this 
vast area as the ground could not support the concentrated activity 
demanded. The civilization existing within was a system of 
secret societies all dedicated to the obscurity of the native 
cultural forms. Needless to say I had difficulty locating the mint 
from which the Zahir emanated. It was there that I finally learned 
to call it by such a name. "Oh, yes, the Zahir." One of the 
workman smiled at me knowingly. Evidently they had seen cases 
like mine before. He put down the casting equipment he was 
handling and led me to his foreman. I tried to observe the process 
practiced within but the friendliness of the people employed in 
the mint so contrasted the reception I had put up with elsewhere 
that my attention wandered. The foreman took me into a back 
room and treated me to an exotic tea that contained a drug I have 
never elsewhere experienced. I had complete trust in the man 
serving the liquid. "Thank you, yes, another one please." I held 
out my cup. As I watched, dazed, the man cast the Zahir into the 
form in which you possessed it and at the same time made a 
duplicate so that I left the mint with no answers, only a set of 
cufflinks and explicit instructions. "Give these to a friend who is 
distant and unknowing of your plight. Do not let him know what 
is to be his purpose." I had wandered around the Tsaidam 
Swamp long enough as I found to my horror that the Zahir had 
invaded my dreams. The night before I wrote this letter I dreamed 
of the coin for the first time, its presence sneaking its way into 
my subconscious. Was I in India and the Zahir a Rupee, or was I 
in Greece passind Drachmas? The dream was confusing. I got rid 
of the coin none too soon.

So you have the complete story, except of course for the part you 
are to play. The transference of the coin, hand to hand, around 
the world, I cannot avoid it but perhaps you have brought me 
some relief; I can never be sure.

10


I will never live in complete peace. Thank you for your service. I 
am forever indebted.

Yours truly,

Georges B.

The implications buzzed around in the back of Charles' medulla 
oblongata for some time afterwards. The cufflink had literally jumped off 
his sleeve, leaving the shirt untorn but the coin gone. It was not long 
before he was outside on his hands and knees searching for the link. The 
dim street light only cast confusing shadows but after covering the area 
twice he finally came up with the Zahir. Why was he so frantic? He was 
not sure what he believed. Had the tone of the letter captured him? He 
had owned the cufflinks for almost a year and nothing in terms of 
catastrophe had entered his life. Perhaps it was not a contagious disease. 
Perhaps Georges was the only being to be so affected. He would not have 
to worry about the coin ruling his life.

With these statements made clear Charles went back into his apartment. 
For the first time he noticed the initials planted in the eye of the 
pyramid. C.B. Why he had dirtied his knees was not questioned but hinged 
on if he really believed the strained words of Georges. Charles calmly 
replaced the cufflink and proceeded to clean up the house before the 
spouse returned. Tibet. He thought absently of the endless mountain 
ranges, emptiness, as he scraped garbage down the disposal, its sound filling 
his ears. The cold water running to keep the unit from over heating, the 
sound of lettuce and celery from his salad making its way down the throat 
of the machine, coffee grounds and chicken bones, all quietly digested, a 
cacophony of leftovers. It was as he started to turn the water off that he 
noticed the roar of steel, the works in a drawer gone haywire, the noise 
thus produced confusing him, afraid it would spit back some limited projectile, 
it was in vain that he shut off the machine and ground it to a stop, 
realizing the Zahir had again sneaked off his wrist, into the drain, making 
its escape down the disposal unit. Soon to be found, unburied in a sewage 
dump, traded for a worthless item, mistaken as a coin, time and time 
again, worming its way across America, transported over the Atlantic and 
through the Burasian land mass finally reaching the reluctantly expectant 
hand of Georges B.

Charles sank to the kitchen stool. He did not want to be awake. He 
could not face the fluorescent light. Another whiskey passed through his 
hand. The Zahir was out of his reach but relief, yes sleep was not. It was as 
he fell off into a semi-conscious reverie that he remembered his half of 
the argument concerning the nature of sleep. "Sleep has two heads, one is 
dream and the other rest. Both are equal functions but dream should be 
avoided, it is too upsetting to the system. Rest is the polar opposite, it 

11


must be seeked out, a land where the imagination is outlawed." Sleep, 
rest from the waking hours, no footsteps down the hall, vision exposed to 
total darkness, chronic, seeking the end of a cycle; the dreams Charles 
would experience would not haunt him. The other cufflink would be 
thrown away. Soon the letters/

would be forgotten.

12


WINTER 1946

after Andrew Wyeth

in an army coat

& boots 
an aviator cap 
civilian pants 
an AWOL soldier 
runs in the brown 
stubble of a field 
along the fence row. 
there is only snow 
by the rotting posts, 
a pick-up's tire tracks 
can be seen 
from when a farmer 
checked for 
trespassers, 
the soldier does not know 
that the war 
is over, winter 
is only beginning 
& he has no 
surplus of clothes 
or food 
but is content 
to be running & 
casting a shadow 
on the bare field.

marc j. sheehan

13


CONTINGENCIES

A woman rises early to see five small birds in the yard.

The woman is intelligent

and admires the severity of the scene:

The tall figure standing in the break of drapes,

hand drawn to breast

eyes near closed.

The personal clouds.

The birds prodding each other for position.

This woman, motionless, 
insists on the perfect nature of wood, its interests sacred.

A man wakes in the next room, 
finds her leaning hard and naked against the glass.

A small rain makes them notice the sounds of each other 
and turn.

He claims the attraction of water and air

to be the cause of their longing.

The people move together, 
speak of farm girls who meet in the dreams of their mothers

of girls who discuss the beauty in the mouth of the male 
and how to interpret it.

They open the window to the rain of day, 
to the wood standing firm in its midst, 
make no decisions 
nothing reconciled 
letting the day drape itself in neat long pieces 
over this portion 
of their lives.

John Harn

14


THE MAN WHOSE BLOOD TILTED

THE EARTH

They made him dance 
in a circle of peas 
he didn't want to 
but it was all they had 
and he knew it 
so he danced

When he was so tired 
that he could no longer stand 
on his red feet

he asked

will you help me

Not if you stop dancing 
before midnight 
they said nor if you 
step on a pea

But my mother is sewing 
the red coat for Elizabeth 
he said and I must 
be there to see her 
try it on

Elizabeth is dead 
they answered 
dance on jig

But my mother is cooking 
the gray goose from the fair

I must be there to help 
carve it

The gray goose is waiting 
to eat the peas stupid 
dance

15


The boats came in 
from the sea 
the lights went out 
in the stores 
still he could not stop 
they threw water 
on him then ashes 
then whiskey then wheat

He looked like a wide white 
asphodel bobbing 
in a circle of peas

You are our 
cloud-late-in-the-year 
they screamed 
you will save us 
from the winter storms 
and the blight in the spring

I'm just a little dancer 
he tried to say 
who got left by 
a one eyed medicine man 
I can't tilt the earth for you

Tilt the earth for us 
they panted as they 
threw broken glass in his circle

At midnight they lifted his body 
from the glass and the wheat 
and as their last moon 
fell into their last sea 
one of them said 
he had so much blood 
in him surely it 
will tilt the earth

M R. Doty

16


MOTHER

The child stands in the window of an upstairs apartment 
waiting for her return 
the light behind him 
rings his face and hands

At last she comes back 
down the long street 
for wherever it is she's been 
carry me mother he calls 
through the glass 
down to the docks 
set me down beside the boats 
and let me breathe in the dark 
thrashing air

But she is too tired to carry him anywhere 
she is still young but when she combs 
her hair she shakes out stars dead from exhaustion 
she gives the boy a coat 
to keep him warm 
gloves to keep the frost away 
a suitcase to pack the prayerbooks in

You she says are my son

and because of this you will never be able to stop 
you will go on searching the lake bottoms 
for whatever might save you 
come now

bring your right hand the prodigal 
your left hand the star

She leads him past the streetlamps 
ringed with frost 
through the empty square 
still except for the sleep 
cries of a drunk and the murmurs 
of drowsing pigeons 
toward the river 
where the bridge vanishes halfway 
across the water

17


She leaves him sitting on a curb

and carrying a suitcase a saint carried once

and gloves full of frost

and a coat somehow threaded with hail

she crosses the impossibly delicate bridge

He takes his time

about getting up he

learns to take care of himself

M. R. Doty

18


Wayne Rottman
Wayne Rottman


19


FATHER

1

Let's see who can touch bottom first 
you said and we dived 
to the center of the pond

I came up

I waited for years 
knowing you were still swimming 
down that dark shaft of water 
and someday you would touch bottom 
and turn around

After years you come up 
dripping on the other side of the pond 
and walk away across the field

I shout and wave




but you do not turn around

2




You are standing in the field 
beside everything you have buried 
you stand in the same place for days

When I come back to look again

you are gone 
nobody saw you 
you could be anywhere

3




Someone is holding the hand of my shadow 
it could be you

4




Women are digging in the earth 
with hoes

sometimes they find potatoes 
sometimes the burrows of animals 
they come across men who are asleep 
the men awake 
and they dig too

I am digging

we would like to think

we will find you

M. R. Doty

20


AN INTRODUCTION TO THE

GEOGRAPHY OF IOWA

1




The evening like a train

crosses the fields and the river

it is never on time so

no one expects it 
when it comes it comes

bringing us a few strangers 
who stare at the clock 
on the courthouse 
stopped forever at eleven 
and ask where are we

This we say is where the trees

wait for you and wave their dark hands

in the wind

2




Studying geography is

like drinking a glass of cold water

but there is something in this well

which makes men and women sleep

If you are awake when you finish reading this poem 
you have finished the lesson

if you are sleeping

there is still time

3

We gather on the porch at night 
with our sons and daughters 
watching the thin dark blue line of the horizon 
together we think of the luminous country 
under the earth where the grains of light sleep

Messengers run down our street 
shouting out some news 
that we never quite hear 
we'll read it we say later when the crumpled 
newspapers blow across the field

21


The stars appear

like the tiny lights

that crown the iron antlers of the elk 
on the Elks' Hall in Webster City

4




Alone at night open your book

to the chapter entitled 
maps they are nocturnal like moonflowers 
the states yellow and pale blue in the dark 
will rush out into your hands like water

I have shut maps in drawers 
listened to them cry softly all night 
beneath a pillow 
locked them in closets 
until I realized their strange longevity 
their peculiar gentleness

They know

that each map is only part

of a great diagrammatical community 
that even our shadows carry maps with them 
that a map can be changed but it cannot die

5




If you remember the clock frozen on the courthouse tower 
the use of geography as a cure for insomnia 
the stars on the elk's crown in Webster City 
the durability of maps

you have completed your introduction 
to the geography of Iowa

Its history will be discussed tomorrow 
there

beside that line of trees 
linked only by their transparency

M. R. Doty

22


THINGS OF THIS WORLD

My neighbors have a grip on life, drive it 
Like their shabby pickup, foot on the floor. 
Through my window, laced with new red buds, 
I catch a flag of dust, an engine's roar — 
They're gone for nails, or paint, or jamjar lids.

The boys hunt squirrels and ride like thunder. 
They love blades, climbing over, and hiding under. 
At school they pick, dream of fire, and yawn.

The scent of washed hair makes them shy. 
Something rolls there, like the sea, and is gone.

Their sister wants to drive a bus and bake, 
And another thing —she cannot yet say —

But like hot jam, and lamb's wool, and the ache 
Of fingers for dough, in the heat of the day.

Will Baker

23


UNFINISHED POEM

After the fourth beer,

you quit untangling Christmas lights, 
their pastels bent to rainbows.

The fireplace gains weight, 
covering an entire wall, 
merging with the blue of candles.

Your son's snow 
melts back to the door.

He tells you 
there are two Santas, 
one with a longer beard

You say you have a nose bleed, 
avoiding further discussion.

The minutes crawl around, 
looking for a contact lens.

At midnight you check the mail.

There is an apologetic rejection 
and ten acceptances, each one saying 
"hard, clean, significant."

You fall asleep in the mailbox, 
fingering your beard.

The rest of your life is gravy.

Your typewriter is in the Football

Hall of Fame.

The National Endowment provides 
a lifetime fellowship in exchange 
for annual readings at the Library of Congress. 
Politely, you decline.

Lucky Jacobs

24


UNTITLED

Night clicks on. 
A cat spits out 
its caresses 
and an old man 
yowls in harmony. 
Motors churn over 
sizzling cement.

I stretch out 
my hand 
milking the curtain 
shut

trading glaring 
lights

for greying 
shadow.

Marilyn J. Atlas

25


Wayne Rottman
Wayne Rottman


26


INVERTED REQUIUM

by Renaldo Migaldi

just call me angel of the morning, the plastic statue angel yup that's 
me.

one hour of sleep is not so bad you say it is better tha nothing you say 
well i guess it was enough for me to get my suit and tie on and drive here 
alone after the rest of them had already left, here i come into the parlor 
the creaking of metal chairs they are turning to see me okay so i am late 
what's it to you oh here it goes, oh i'm so sorry george your aunt and i are 
so sorry george how's your mother taking it george. one hour of sleep is 
enough so that i can get it together i guess to answer something but this 
suit and tie feels more like yessir i want a job sir i admire your firm sir.

there are chairs and an aisle in this room an aisle with a box at the 
end of it and here i go falling forward my leg joints clicking along to the 
front of the room and yes i remember i was here last night for five hours 
before i left to get some sleep so i went home locked myself up in my 
room sanctus sanctus sanctus six hours staring at the ceiling one hour 
maybe sleep and here i am again, everything at the front of the room is the 
same, same Black Walnut outside, Beige (Beige?) silk inside same flowers 
same ma same dad same same same same oh same, now i must kneel in 
front of joey and say my prayer it will be a short one that is for sure:

hum hum hum hum hum hum.

mmble mmble mmble mm hum

hum um mm da mmble hum

mm hm mmble humm hum. Amen

and here's mama still look at her eyes two red wet pools of something 
infected her face is all wet and runny and here is dad oh boy the dear suffering 
servant oh yes certainly the holy almighty patriarch shaky with 
sweat from the business the business the business the store the back office 
the apt houses he rents, the slow and painful climb to the immigrant 
american dream of shutting out all pain with high brick walls and a 
wrought iron gate estate yes the immigrant american dream, dad's hands 
are sweaty-shiny and his eyes are a solid shit brown staring staring at me. 
(you are the only one i got left george the only one i got left you must you 
must you must)

now ma is standing next to me and she's clawing my suitcoat pocket 
and not saying anything just sniffling up and clawing at me like i was her 
goddam teddy bear or maybe she wants me to raise joey from the dead ha 
ha ha. oh what is she thinking her eyes are rolling around the room from 
flowers to the floor to dad to my grandparents to the flowers to the chairs 
to the flowers and everywhere else except at me and finally she looks at 
joey.

aw, ma.

27


clawing tighter at my suitcoat she sobs, (hey look ma he can't hear 
you ma he can't clean up his room anymore, in the first place he can't get 
out of the box and in the second place he's DEAD, ma.)

oh now she lets go of me and staggers up to the kneeler

she stops

drops to her knees

reaches over to touch joey's hair

her sobs fade away

* * *

walking up up the long narrow stairwell in the afternoon twilight 
coming in through the little windows i always trip over joey's shoes on the 
stairs, his room is down at the end of the dark hallway and as i open the 
door i know i will find him poured out on top of his bed reading about the 
stars planets asteroids and the bright galaxies far away.

hey squirt, i say.

what? (him looking up from behind his book, his shadowy young face 
shows none of the stresses and strains of interstellar travel.)

here are your shoes, keep em in here before i break my neck on the 
stairs, what are you reading about anyway?

supernovas.

stars that blow up, right?

uh-huh. they shrink and shrink until they explode and fade away.

oh. that sounds interesting.

(ma is calling him again from downstairs more work to do. she says 
he's too lazy all he ever does is read all the time he should do some work 
around here.) JOEY!! COME DOWNSTAIRS AND SET THE TABLE!!

(Joey does not move.)

JOEY!!

coming! (he does not move.)

* * *

here comes old great-uncle giovanni from toronto god he looks so 
white and withered and his eyes are cloudy gray.

hello, george, he says, (his hand on my arm.)

hello uncle how are you.

(his sad quiet eyes.) i'm sorry george. you know how i feel.

sure, uncle.

we just get here this morning, we leave last night after your cousin 
marie call and tell us the news, (patting my arm.)

i'm glad you could come, uncle.

well i think you know how i feel, (yes it's all there in his sad smoky 
eyes, his lips quiver with age.)

i'm just glad you're here uncle.

28


i reach around him and give him a hug. his lusty years, white in 
the air around him, white in the dry smell of his clothes, he pats my arm 
one last time and shuffles softly up to the casket, i can see a cloud of 
white dust spilling out from beneath his black suit coat.

* * *

cars parked all down the curb in the driveway and on the front lawn, 
what in the world, i head up the walk and before i reach the front door my 
mother's sister aunt gina opens the door for me and inside voices are 
whispering:

george is here.

aunt gina is looking at me funny her eyes are red and wet. something 
happened something happened what happened.

she says flat and low: come in, george.

inside there are my grandparents aunts on both sides cousins cousins 
a couple of my dad's employees some neighbors a couple of joey's friends 
sitting on the floor everybody else crowded together in the living room 
sofas and chairs white cigarette smoke sifting up near the ceiling floating 
over people's heads, everyone is looking at me one grandmother starts 
crying that's my ma's mother she don't speak english. nobody saying 
anything here comes ole grampa georgio smoking a salem puts his arm 
around me. i'm afraid.

what happened gampa X where's my folks?

let's go up to your room george.

(upstairs we sit on my bed.)

where's joey grampa? where's my folks?

(takes a drag off his cigarette looking at the floor.) your mamma and 
papa they went to the hospital. they had an accident.

they had an accident?

joey, he had an accident.

what kind of accident grampa?

(another long draw, white smoke everywhere.) well he was playing 
out over across the street, your neighbors across the street.

the wilsons, across the street?

yeah, across the street.

what happened, gampa?

he looks away he turns his face toward the window he does not want 
me to see his face but i can hear his Italian farmer's voice breaking.

they had some junk behind the garage, george. they weren't home 
and he was playing back there.

what happened, grampa! (i bite my lip.)

they had an old refrigerator back there behind the garage, (his voice 
squeaking on the word "garage.")

* * *

29


JOEY!! (now i can hear ma coming up the stairs and her feet are 
heavy and loud pounding and joey sits up and i look into his eyes and they 
are bright and picking into the air and i know what he hears he hears the 
wooden spoon in ma's hand.)

joey, you better go down there before it's too late, i say.

(but he knows it is already too late so he sits there on his bed which is 
all he has for the next few seconds until ma comes in through the doorway)


i called you fifteen times! what is the matter with you!

(if i try to stick my neck into his mess it will only make things worse 
for everybody, joey looks at ma, afraid no words, ma lunges at him with 
the wooden spoon and whacks him hard five times on the ass and once on 
the neck with joey's bloody screams slicing through my guts and i have my 
hands buried deep down in my pockets so's i can just maintain, oh you 
bloody bitch that's my brother he's just a little kid. i stand like an ass while 
they go screaming downstairs, ma dragging him down by the hair on his 
neck.)

* * *

ma is quieter now she embarrassed me earlier today when she started 
crying real hard over the casket and leaned over joey and laid her head on 
his suitcoated chest and started crying loud and i looked at dad and i 
knew he was gonna lose it too if somebody didn't do something so i went 
up there and pulled her up and uncle vito got on the other side of her and 
we sat her down and she cried on uncle vito's shoulder he's her brother 
and he sat there with her for awhile but then we went home and aunt gina 
cooked dinner for us and ma and dad washed up and now we're back and 
it's about seven thirty and the priest is here and i don't know his name, but 
she's quieter now.

hail mary full of grace the 
lord is with thee blessed 
art thou among women and 
blessed is the fruit of 
thy womb jesus

holy mary mother of god 
pray for us sinners now 
and at the hour of our death amen

glory be to the father and 
to the son and to the holy 
spirit

as it was in the beginning 
is now and ever shall be 
world without end amen

30


eternal rest grant unto

him oh lord

and let perpetual light 
shine upon him.

(well she's quieter now.)

* * *

i get home and look in the TV room the lights are off and the TV is on 
and dad is in front of the TV and so is ma ma is in her chair watching the 
TV and dad is asleep on the sofa the light from the TV flickering bright 
then dark then bright then dark on his inert face, ma looks up at me as i 
start to walk away and i head for the kitchen and hear her following me.

what time is it, i ask.

are you looking for something to eat?

don't worry i'll find something myself, (the stove clock says it is ten 
thirty.) where's joey?

upstairs, (pushing past me to reach into the refrigerator.) here, i'll 
warm up some of this eggplant.

i don't want any eggplant.

well, what do you want?

look, ma, let just look in here, all right? i don't know if i want 
anything, yet.

oh, you're so touchy!

she drifts back to the TV room and i crouch in the cold white light of 
the refrigerator inspecting cold cuts leftover pasta imported cheese and 
finally i choose a carrot, a low rumble from the TV room tells me it is dad 
dad dad must be she woke him up. well okay i got my shit together maybe 
he's just going upstairs to bed.

hello george.

hi, dad.

he goes over to the sink gets a glass of water, he looks pretty mellow 
so i guess there will be no shit tonight he looks out the window into the 
darkness.

george, i want to talk to you.

(oh shit here we go.) about what?

come in the front room and sit down.

what do you want to talk about?

(turning around to look at me.) just come on and sit down!

look i've got a lot of work to do. i've got a paper due day after 
tomorrow.

that's a good excuse isn't it.

dad! come on, will ya?

when are you gonna get a haircut, anyway?

i don't know.

when are you gonna shave that goddam beard off?

i'm not shaving off my beard! i like it.

31


you look like hell.

good night, (i head upstairs i see the light is on in joey's room so i 
knock on the door.)

come in.

(i see him as usual with his head behind a book i gave him for his 
birthday called All About The Stars.) hey squirt.

what?

reading about them supernovas again? 
yeah! wow, how did you know?

oh, i don't know, it sounded like it might be interesting and i was 
thinking about it today.

(joey smiles and sits up on the bed.) do you want to see it? 
sure, (i sit down on the bed with him and he hands me the book open 
to page 120 as i read it he is there behind my shoulder.)

You remember that the bigger a star is, the faster it uses up 
its hydrogen? Well, a nova is one of those spendthrift giants that 
has got to the end of its hydrogen. It used up its resources and 
had to shrink. It shrank and shrank, and the more it shrank, the 
faster it had to rotate. Finally it got going so fast that it started 
to break up. It shot off its whole outer atmosphere and sent it 
racing out into space like a brilliant bubble.

That is what makes a star appear 10,000 times brighter than 
before. At the time of the explosion, its much hotter insides 
become exposed. After a while —generally a few months —the 
star settles back to normal. Then a few years later it is quite apt 
to go off the same way again.

Well, that's an ordinary nova. A supernova is something 
even more violent. A supernova has experienced the most 
violent thing that can ever happen anywhere in the whole 
universe. If you exploded a million million million million 
hydrogen bombs all at one time, it would make one supernova 
explosion. For a supernova doesn't fritter away its energy by 
shooting off bits of its surface now and again. It saves 
everything for one grand bang. When it happens, the explosion 
is over in about a minute. But in that minute perhaps nine-tenths 
of the star shoots off into space.

* * *

oy, joey, you look so pale, i'm sorry, i'm sorry they did this to you but 
i guess you don't care anymore.

they got a little rosary i knew they would it fits right around your 
fingers yes yes.

maybe sometime we can talk about this . . .

oh pardon me.

32


i asked mrs. wilson across the street how they found you back there 
and she was still white when she told me she said that when she got home 
from shopping in the afternoon the dog was barking and barking and she 
followed the dog around back of the house and he was barking at the old 
refrigerator and she opened the door and out you fell and her face was 
still white when she told me. they say accidents happen but i think maybe 
you were playing spaceship in there come on squirt come on outa there 
and tell me.

33


UNTITLED

An actor (every hair in place) is led away from his own house 
in handcuffs. He is put into the back seat of his own car.

He is driven down his own driveway and around a corner that 
is not his. Here, in front of the drugstore's tinted glass, 
is where he is released, brought out from the car and allowed 
to speak. Now, between the small red fire hydrant and the curb, 
he is allowed to walk, up and down, up and down, until the 
people emerge through all the doors, picking their teeth, the 
curious and the overweight.

Sometimes a poem like this is interrupted because a small, black 
and white spider is crawling slowly across the wood table and 
towards the typewriter.

An actor (every hair in place) is led away from his own house 
in handcuffs. He is put into the back seat of his own car.

He is driven down his own driveway and around a corner that 
is not his.

Dave Kelly

34


LAMENT OF THE FIRED MAN

Tomorrow, when you go out by that front porch 
where the sparrows are kept, when you crawl forward 
to labor, run your right hand over something wood 
at least twice before turning anything 
that is made of iron, that groans before it starts, 
that smells of oil. Tomorrow in the fear that is dawn, 
always fail to say goodbye to anyone 
if you haven't kicked both of your heels against 
a house's walls first; never refuse a second cup 
before working if you haven't heard mass 
in the trees yet, among those leaves that apologize 
before and after coughing, those feathers that whistle.

My own father used to talk to himself over coffee 
at least three hours before he would touch a mop 
and I have seen the fathers of other boys 
scratch themselves and spit longer than it takes 
to paint a house red. Now if we have learned anything 
from those men who bore us in their wombs 
it must be to hate the hands that pull a checkbook 
from the breast pocket of a suit, the hands 
that remove the firing pins before sending us out hunting, 
that make fists around the small bodies of birds.

Because, listen, today I spent the morning 
putting tape along the broken wing of a colorless moth 
and for that I was fired, my job was removed 
from my side, my dollar bill amputated at the waist! 
And now I'll have to feed the moth to my children 
because, in paradise, there is very little else to do.

Dave Kelly

35


Wayne Rottman
Wayne Rottman


36


BEAUTY

On the kitchen table 
the accumulating bills 
avalanche over each other.

They chill the room 
with repossession threats.

Promises to sue, sue, sue.

I ignore them as I shuffle

to make tea,

third time for this wilted bag.

As it steeps

I open the cupboard

and find ants 
have reclaimed the honey.

Though weak, the tea

warms me

while I brood on the bill mountain.

How I haven't written anything 
for the past three months.

Haven't seen

a trace of a lover

for twice as long.

How the money is running out

like a stream into a hole in the earth, 
and no dope at all.

And I remember

what my good friend Jane says,

that "Life Is Rough When You're Beautiful." 
I realize that I must be gorgeous.

A regular sugar lovin' baby.

I go upstairs to brush my teeth 
and notice that the mirror 
tells me I'm beautiful.

I've always believed in mirrors, 
so I put on my last clean shirt 
and step out, 
my beauty just sizzling.

37


I walk,

know that people are looking at me, 
pointing at my loveliness.

I stand a little straighter, 
walk more brisquely, 
throw off dashing glances, 
a sparkly tooth smile.

I ramble along, notice 
that two people are following me. 
Soon there are 5, and 12, 
and before I know it a small mob 
is behind me, 
raving on my beauty.

While I know I'm beautiful

I'm not fond of crowds, 
so I walk faster 
quickening my step, 
but the ever-growing crowd 
quickens faster.

Soon I am running, 
tearing through the streets.

The crowd calling,

"Beautiful . . . Beautiful . . . Beautiful"

In a minute they are on me, 
clamoring, 
pulling at my last clean shirt.

I'm hoisted up 
on their shoulders 
while they cheer, 
"Beauty . . . Beauty . . . Beauty" 
and the whole town has come out.

The mayor tearfully presents me with 
a jeweled crown and scepter.

Soon everyone is dancing, singing, 
as poets come to write odes 
while a mustached Italian 
fills helium balloons 
with my picture on them.

38


Other people are selling hotdogs 
and sweet Greek pastries and white wine.

People laugh, dance, drink 
with each other, 
occasionally someone 
fainting in the crowd 
exhausted by my beauty.

I decide now, in the midst

of this party,

I can escape.

But a child spots me 
at the edge of the crowd, 
and cries, "There goes the beautiful person."

Everybody is after me again, 
after my hot loveliness.

And after loosing my crown and sceptre, 
having half my last clean shirt torn off, 
jumping three fences

and going down I don't know how many alleys

I make it home, 
collapsing on the patched gray chair 
in the living room.

Now I realize that Jane was right, 
that my life is going to be rough now, 
a real pain in the ass.

What with all my ravaging fans, 
the personal appearances, 
the commercials for everything 
from shoelaces to motorcycles.

After all, being beautiful does have responsibilities.

I begin to sob, 
begin to weep horribly, 
wailing over my lost ugliness.

The faint sounds of marching 
interrupt my cries.

I get up, dry my tears,

and cautiously peer out my curtained window.

But see nothing —

the streets deserted.

39


And there is the muffled sound 
of a brass band with the marching. 
I turn around

and there on the living room floor 
are the ants from the cupboard. 
Bodies still sweet with honey, 
each one playing a tiny instrument, 
marching in formation 
that spells one word:

BEAUTIFUL.

Ron Mieczkowski

40


SHELLING OYSTERS

The mallet 
ecstatically 
strikes the chisel, 
and the hole 
is the knife's 
geography lesson, 
quick, final, 
like dealings in 
a dark alley; 
once inside, you 
inhale mirrors 
and die slowly, 
the pearl is 
your skull, 
a shelf-destined 
souvenir that is 
glad to be rid 
of your flesh.

James Magorian

41


from CROWFOOT, TEXAS

by Andrew Schreiber

(The boy is running. Down the lane a dusty breath rises beneath his 
heels.

He keeps to the center of the path, between the rutted depressions 
where passing caterpillars have shaped the dried mud into studded tracks 
that look like strips of tenderized beef. The dust floats upward and 
dissipates, a brown exhalation the color of the parched prairie grass that 
rises to either side of the road.

He slows, catching his breath, and squints behind, into the sunset. 
Black skyscraper skeletons jut up from the fields, red and orange bursts of 
light streaming through their hollow insides. There are huddled shapes 
too: pumps squat as kneeling animals dot the plain, their black, spindly 
arms bobbing in inexorable synchrony above the dust-choked weeds.

The boy has turned and is running agin, towards the dark farmhouse 
that broods at the end of the lane. The tractor ruts are shallower now. The 
lane divides; swaths of fresh tracks veer off from it across the trampled 
fields. The boy heads straight, along the original path, to where it narrows 
through a collapsed gateway. He pauses here, at the edge of the yard, his 
eyes glancing down the stretch of bobwire. The fence is badly rusted and 
clotted with brush. An old gate, unhinged and brittle as aged bark, lies on 
it face just inside the yard. The boy steps across it, the grey wood cracking 
beneath his sneakers, and approaches the darkened farmhouse.

The dusty windows glimmer dully with reflections of pink and 
orange. The porch overhang has begun to collapse on one side, drawing a 
dark lid of shadow down across the ragged screen door. The house itself 
seems oddly imbalanced by the drooping porch roof; it looks like the face 
of a man who has died with only one eye closed. The boy steps softly up 
the stoop and crosses to the doorway.

He squints in through the tattered screen, through the crusted glass 
of the padlocked storm door. Inside, carefully stacked crates huddle in 
the darkness, their creosote panels visible where the shadow of his palm 
has blocked the sunset's pink reflection on the glass. The boxes are 
stamped HANDLE WITH CARE. Below that bold legend is a line of smaller 
print, a cluster of dark letters interrupted by hyphens, which the boy does 
not bother to read.

He walks to the window, the one not obscured by the dangling porch 
eave. "Doggie," he whispers. His finger traces the word on the dusty 
surface of the glass. He draws his hand back. Reds and oranges shimmer 
in the letters where the dirt has been wiped away. The boy looks at it, 
pleased.

He sits on the stoop now, the lip of the collapsed porch eave hanging 
vaguely above him. His breath comes in short, truncated gasps as he sits 

42


and faces the fiery implosion of color receding across the western sky. The 
paling sun is swollen and red, larger than life, and the boy scowls at its 
half-swallowed disc. His eyes peer outward, as if through a darkened 
glass, across the russet-tipped fields, where the metallic forms of the 
pumps and oil derricks now wink with faint stirrings of pink and orange.)

1.

There's nothing else like it in the world. First there comes a rumbling, 
like the gathering roll of a thunderclap, except it seems to come from 
deep inside you; you feel it in the beginning as kind of a flutter in your 
stomach, but before you know it the feeling has spread to your hips and 
legs, coming on stronger and stronger, and worked its way down until the 
ground itself is trembling. The derrick will pop and squeal, as if every 
beam and joint is about to burst, and if you're standing close enough, 
where you can hear the drill-shaft whine and the whistle of steam rise 
from the chugging boiler, you just might have to put your hand up against 
your thigh to damp the rattling of coins in your pocket. There is something 
else besides the trembling itself, something that coils up inside you like a 
wound watch-spring until you can't stand it any longer, and you leap into 
the air just as the thunder gathers to a roar in your ears and the earth 
underneath you kind of heaves, black jism spurting up the derrick and into 
the sky. The men gathered around jump and whoop, turning black in the 
shower that spreads like a tornado above their heads, and the stuff just 
comes and comes and comes like you can't believe. There's no telling how 
long it will keep up like that if left to itself; the great Spindletop strike 
roared for nine days before they finally capped the well, and according to 
my Grandad there was such partying in the streets of Beaumont that no 
one even thought of closing the shaft until the liquor gave out.

My Dad was just a baby when Grandad brought him and his mother 
up to Oklahoma (it was still Indian Territory then) after Spindletop dried 
up in 1902, and had begun working in the oil fields when he was still a boy. 
Grandad had been a wildcat prospector and driller; in his day he had 
made and lost a half-dozen small fortunes in oil, and had moved his 
family up to Tulsa to have still another go at it. But Oklahoma was a company 
state from the beginning, owned by the Mellons and the 
Rockefellers, and Grandad, a prideful man, retired rather than go to work 
for the monopolies.

But he wasn't too proud to keep his boy from doing the same. In fact, 
he sent him to work —an act that cost Grandad his marriage and cheated 
his son —my father —out of half his childhood. Dad was thirteen when he 
went to work for Galway, the company that ran the local fields, and had 
been an oilman for a dozen years by the time I was born. It was hard for 
me to imagine him as a child or as anything but the oily hulk, the huge 
grey fleshy machine, that came wandering in from the drill-site every 

43


night. Most of the time he came home plain dirty and tired, smelling of the 
grease and oil the boiler steam had baked into his skin. He didn't talk 
much, and in fact I think I came to know the smell of him before I even 
knew his voice. He would always stop at the front stoop and take off his 
shiny, soot-caked boots and bib overalls before he came into the house; 
he'd gotten into the habit of undressing outside to make my mother 
happy, but that was before she ran off with some damn clean-shaven 
threshing-machine salesman, and according to Grandad he kept it up in 
case she ever came back. She had gone before I was old enough to know 
her really, and since I took my Dad's looks and smell for granted, it never 
was clear to me why she chose that drummer over him.

His hair was always black and shiny as a greased cable, and there was 
a dull, measly greyness to his skin, especially his cheeks and forehead, 
where the oil and steamy sweat dried in the hollow pores and in the stubble 
of his beard. Even undressed he smelled like the dark, gritty sludge and 
limestone sand that the biIing pumps sucked out of the drill-shaft, and his 
sleeveless undershirt was always covered with damp grey patches that 
looked and smelled like he had been sweating oil. Once he had his boots 
and overalls off he would step into the front room and lie down on the 
floor, and I'd run over and kiss him. His lips were like moist ridges of black 
oily film, and I'd get up, wiping the taste off on my shirtsleeve. Then he'd 
look up at me and smile, and his barrel chest would rise and fall in a fumy 
burble of breath.

I know it was just plain stupid, but I couldn't help it. It just scared me 
when it happened, and no matter how many times I heard it I just couldn't 
get used to it. It would start with that rumble, low and distant like an echo 
from deep down in your belly, and get louder and louder until the sound 
was everywhere. When it finally blew, the roar would rattle the walls of 
the tin-plate houses, and afterwards if it was close enough, you could hear 
the soft, far-off spatter of the spewing oil as it rained down into the corn. 
Babies would be bawling, and more often than not I would be too, even 
though I was five years old and should have known better. Grandad would 
get up from where he had his feet propped in front of the stove and tell me 
it was all right, it wasn't nothing but another well coming in. Then he'd 
take me out to the stoop, and we'd watch the black geyser rising above 
the grey huddle of crackerbox houses. The streets would be full of women 
and children, all of them with their fingers pointing out beyond the town 
to the gushing shaft of oil. A cheer would begin at the far end of the street, 
and the women and children would be hurrying towards it as the sound 
got closer and closer. The crowd would swell the street and come cheering 
and hollering down through the town. If it had been dry out, which it 
usually was in those years, they would bring the dust with them, a thin 
grey fog of dust that smelled like oil and seemed to get through every 
crack and pinhole in the tin-plate walls of our house. When they got a few 
buildings down from ours we could see a kind of black hollow at the 

44


center of them, and the hollow would be full of men drenched in oil. 
They'd be shouting and dancing and covered from head to foot with the 
stuff so that even with clothes on they looked like a bunch of naked, pracing 
Negroes. One of them would be my Dad, and seeing us he would break 
loose from the crowd and run up to the porch, his teeth and eyeballs white 
against the sheen of oil, and shout: "Look at her, ain't she a beauty! Lord, 
what a sight! Would you look at her blow!" Then he would disappear back 
into the howling rush of people. Grandad would smile weakly as they 
passed on by, his bucket jaw setting like cement. "More oil," he'd mutter. 
"More oil for the goddamn Rockefellers."

We had moved to Corning when Galway first opened the field there, 
and the folks in that town hadn't figured out yet that they weren't going to 
get a penny out of the oil that was being pumped off their land. Grandad 
knew, and I reckon my Dad did too, but Dad didn't seem to care whether 
the oil belonged to the Rockefellers or the Mellons or whoever. Maybe he 
was just boom-crazy like Grandad said, or maybe he'd seen the companies 
wrestle it out from under Grandad's nose so many times he'd gotten used 
to the idea that it was theirs. But there was one thing for sure —there was 
nothing prettier to my Dad than the sight of a tall black gusher heaving its 
payload skyward. As time went on he got to be the best (Grandad said the 
luckiest) drill chief in Corning; it seemed like every hole he sunk came up 
a header, and each time one came in he would stagger home black from 
head to foot and his mouth shaped white like some minstrel-man's smile, 
laughing as the jubilant crowd pressed past our door.

One night just at sunset Dad drove me down to where they were 
building the bridge across the river for the new highway. The water lapped 
and foamed against the concrete abutments, filmy rainbows of color 
swirling on top of it, and all along the banks the beached fish lay like so 
much driftwood left by the tide, their silvery scales glinting orange in the 
setting sun. Dad drew a deep breath, his grey hands rubbing against his 
puffed-out chest. "Smell that?" he said. I nodded, and his grin cracked 
underneath his shiny stubble of beard. It was something that smelled like 
oil, only cleaner, more airy. At first I thought it was the dead fish, but Dad 
was pointing away from the river, towards where the new highway cleared 
the trees and split through the yellow stand of corn. A white shape rose up 
from the field, like a giant tin of chewing tobacco, and next to it was a tall 
stove-pipe chimney. At the top of the stack burned a clear blue-white 
flame. It flickered star-like against the evening sky.

"Gus," he said. "That's how your daddy finds the oil." He made a 
hocking noise deep in his throat, imitating the roar of a gusher, and he 
laughed, his hands slowly spreading apart. I stared up at him in horror, 
and he stopped grinning. He bent down beside me, his grey, filmy hand 
running through my hair. "It ain't nothing to be scared of," he said, softly. 
"It's what makes the oil come —why, that's why it's there, Web. Those 
booms —they ain't nothing but the gas trying to let the oil out."

45


He lifted me into the truck and we drove back to town. Our old Ford 
rattled along the unfinished road. Behind us the oil derricks jutted up 
from the dark land into the reddish-purple of the fading sunset; boilers 
were still pumping here and there across the field, and as the steam from 
them spread up into the night it looked like a shadow of some gigantic, 
ghostly wings opening across the sky. A little further on we came up 
behind some old Negro walking with a fish-pole slung over his shoulder 
and his pouch hanging loose and empty at his side. He was heading away 
from the river, back towards town, and Dad shook his head as we passed 
him. "Sharecropper no doubt," he said. "Ain't nobody else dumb enough 
to try and fish that river now." I knelt up on the seat and looked behind us 
as the bowed shape of the Negro shrank away into the dark. The unfinished 
highway stretched back into the distance, a dark ribbon of shadow 
against the purpling horizon. Across the river the blue-white flame of the 
burning gas shone through the trees like winding starlight. The whole land 
looked and smelled like black oily smoke. The smell was strong, and it was 
everywhere; it felt like something big coming on, and for a minute I wasn't 
afraid. I felt like I was part of it, whatever it was, and it was stronger and 
bigger than any man, more than even the river and the land itself, so there 
wasn't any point in being scared any longer. There was nothing to do but 
go on being part of it and see what happened.

After that, I could see it feeding itself and getting bigger all the time. 
There were more cars and more machines every week, and pretty soon 
they were jamming the narrow streets that led into town. It seemed like 
the oil drew the machines —just like a carcass draws buzzards, Grandad 
said. Except after awhile a few buzzards can pick a carcass clean, and this 
thing just got bigger and bigger. The more machines came to feed on it, 
the more it grew. They tore down the corn to make room for more wells, 
and it finally got so there wasn't any field any more, just derricks 
spreading out from town all the way to the river, and a few withered stalks 
that had been choked where they stood by the mucky run-off from the 
sludge pools. There were derricks in town now too, sticking up between 
houses and in front yards. The drill-bits whined and sludge-buckets 
clanked and rattled right up beside the tin-plate houses so it seemed like 
babies cried all the time now. They dug trenches along the streets to carry 
off the water and runny grey muck that came out of the well-shafts, but it 
wouldn't seep down like any normal liquid, so it overflowed into the 
streets and mixed with the dirt and occasional rain to make a black, 
swampy mire. The machines and cars bogged down in it, and sometimes it 
seemed like everything was coming to a stop and the town was sinking 
down in its own slime; but still the thing kept on going, as if it could even 
feed on its own waste, and it grew and grew and grew.

They were drilling all day and all night now. Men trudged up and 
down the streets at all hours, grey and bent in the yellow haze of the arc 
lamps. Pumps creaked and hissed through the darkness like chittering 

46


locusts, and every once in a while your sleep would be broken by the 
shuddering boom of one of the drills hitting a gas pocket. There was no 
more celebrating in the streets; the people had finally figured out that the 
oil wasn't going to do anything for their town except keep their men tired 
and dirty. The company needed every man it could get, twenty-four hours 
a day, to drill for the stuff and pump it out; they kept hitting more and 
more of it, all along the river, and at sunset a black mist would gather over 
the cooling water, a long, skinny cloud that seemed to stretch downstream 
for miles and miles.

They capped the wells as soon as they blew now, so as not to waste a 
drop of the precious oil; but that was just as well, since the ground probably 
could not have taken much more without the whole town floating 
away on some giant slough of oil. It seemed that the more they pumped, 
the more precious it got. The whole thing had suddenly gotten awful big 
and deadly serious. Dad was out in the fields almost all the time; we 
wouldn't see him for days on end sometimes, and when he finally did 
come home he was more silent than usual, and Grandad would speak to 
him in an angry whisper about how Oklahoma was no longer any place for 
a red-blooded oilman with a speck of pride in himself.

It was about this time Boomer Clement came to Corning. I heard 
about him from Dad at first. He came in from the fields one afternoon, 
more talkative than he had been in weeks, and told Grandad and me how 
this Texan had blown into town, and was flashing big money around all 
the stores and allowing as how he'd just snared the drilling rights to a surefire 
piece of land down in Rusk County. He was looking for a crew, Dad 
said, and had the biggest wad of green anyone in Corning had seen since 
the Depression got started and all.

Boomer showed up at our shack a couple nights later, and what impressed 
me most when I finally saw him was not his money or his shiny 
black leather boots or even his big brown ten-gallon hat, which had a 
leather sweatband with a turquoise-studded border and was bigger than 
any headpiece I'd ever seen. What I remember most about my first sight 
of Boomer was that he smoked. It wasn't that oilmen didn't use tobacco, 
or that they couldn't afford it, though that may have been true in some 
cases; but around an oil town, folks get to be pretty circumspect about 
matches and lit fags and such, and I had never seen a man as casual and 
downright careless with a light as Boomer Clement.

He was tall and skinny and nervous and had these restless hands that 
would wave and point and jab all the while he was talking. There was a lit 
cigar in one of them, a big black stogie that smelled like burning peat, and 
with every flick of Boomer's hand I could see the glowing ash getting 
closer and closer to Dad, who had just finished a triple shift and was 
sitting there with twenty-six hours' worth of black shale dust and oil tar 
standing on his skin. I don't believe Boomer had that cigar in his mouth all 
night long except to light it, and that was the worst part, because when it 

47


went out on him he'd reach in his pocket and pull out these long pine-stem 
matches that he had to strike on the tabletop to get them lit. The flame 
would jump up, green sulphur sparks dancing across the table, and when 
he was done with the match he'd throw it still lit to the floor and grind it 
out with his boot heel. Then he'd be talking again, shaking that stogie 
across the table at Dad until I thought for sure Boomer was going to light 
him on fire with it.

They —or Boomer rather —talked for the better part of an hour. The 
upshot of it was that Boomer wanted Dad to quit Galway and come down 
to Texas and be his drill chief. Dad just sat and listened mostly, the line of 
his eyebrows lowered like a black crag over the narrowed whites of his 
eyes. Grandad hung back by the doorway. He kept inching back the 
tarpaper blind and squinting out the window as if maybe he was expecting 
somebody else, which I couldn't understand since Boomer was the 
first visitor I could ever remember us having. But Grandad kept on looking, 
peeking up and down the long line of machines that were jammed 
along the muddy street outside, and all of a sudden he glanced away, 
snapping the blind shut. "They're coming," he said. "Two houses down."

Dad stood up, his tar-crusted fingers clutching the edge of the table. 
"You better go," he said to Boomer.

"Who's coming?" I asked.

Boomer snorted, rolling his cigar between his fingers. It had gone out 
again. "If it's them boys from the company force," he said, "I wouldn't 
worry none. They been follering me around for three days now. Ain't 
nothing come of it yet--"

"You dumb cowpuncher," Grandad hissed, "don't you know nothing? 
You mean you let them tail you here?"

Boomer got up from his chair. He was laughing, innocent-like, as his 
hands wiggled stupidly in the air. "I didn't sneak around like some old 
coyote, if that's what you mean. After all, it's a free country, ain't it?"

"Come on," Dad said, pushing him towards the back door. "I can't 
risk no trouble. I got my boy here, you know--"

"All right, all right," Boomer said, finally. He stuck the cold stogie in 
his mouth and held his hand out for Dad to shake. "Think about that offer 
now, will you?"

"For Christ sakes go," Dad snapped, unbolting the door and shoving 
him through it. I could hear the squishing sound of boots hurrying up the 
muddy walkway to the front porch. Boomer trotted down the back steps, 
letting the door bang shut behind him, and just then two men I'd never 
seen before came busting in through the front, knocking Grandad sideways 
and pointing across the room to where Dad was standing. "Out there!" I 
heard one of them shout, and they both took off, dark pipestems flashing 
in their grip. Dad stood in the doorway, trying to slow them down, but 
they just shoved him aside and were out the back before any of us had a 
chance to even blink.

48


"Goddamn fool cowboy," Grandad muttered.

It didn't take them long to catch up to Boomer. He must have noticed 
his cigar had gone out, because he had stopped about ten paces from the 
back stoop. He had the stogie in one hand and the other in his pocket 
where he kept the matches, and when he saw the men coming at him he 
just kind of glanced up, surprised, not even trying to make a run for it. 
"He's got a gun!" one of them screamed, and he swung and drove the 
black, flashing pipe-stem hard against Boomer's dangling wrist. Boomer 
howled and doubled forward, the dark barrel of the cigar flying off into 
the darkness. He drew his other hand out of his pocket and clutched his 
smashed wrist against his side. The other man ran up behind Boomer and 
pulled his hat down over his eyes. Boomer was wobbling now, swaying 
from side to side, his polished cowboy boots crunching over the matchsticks 
that had spilled from his pocket. "My arm," he moaned. "You broke 
my arm."

I couldn't see any of their faces. They were standing in a dim pool of 
light that fell from the arc-lamp in front of the house, but the yard was still 
too dark for me to make out colors or features, especially the oil- 
blackened faces of the two company men. They were circling Boomer as 
he staggered blindly from side to side. One of them picked up Boomer's 
cigar and pointed it at his partner. "Bang," he said, and they both 
laughed.

Dad stood at the screen door watching. His face was a black, shiny 
scowl. I kept wishing he would do something. I wished it so bad I felt sick 
to my stomach, but he just stood and watched while Grandad hung back 
from the doorway and shook his head. "Damn fool cowboy," Grandad 
said. I could hear him grinding his back teeth.

Boomer was down on his knees now. The men had cuffed his hands 
behind his back. His hat was still down over his eyes, and he had his head 
tilted way back like he was trying to see their faces. I could see the knot of 
his Adam's apple bobbing as he choked and swallowed his breath. "You 
broke it," he was saying. "You broke my goddamn arm." There seemed to 
be more disbelief than actual pain in his voice.

"Come on," one of the men said, pulling Boomer up by his hurt arm. 
Boomer groaned and swore as they dragged him up the steps and back 
into the house. Dad and Grandad glowered at the men, whose oil-stained 
faces were creased with childish yellow grins. One of them grabbed 
Boomer's collar and jerked him upright, pulling his hat up out of his eyes. 
There was a red streak across Boomer's forehead where the band had been 
pressing against it. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bulging out 
above his clenched collar. His eyes narrowed against the light.

"You just bound to make trouble for folks ain't you?" said the man 
who had hold of Boomer. Boomer gulped as his collar drew even tighter. 
"What kind of offer did you make old Bill here?"

49


"He didn't make no offer/' Dad spoke up. He was so cool and 
righteous I almost believed him myself. "We was just talking."

"Talking?" the man shot back. He cocked his head and squinted one 
eye like a dog smelling shit sideways. "Talking about what?"

"You got it wrong," Boomer said. "They was just throwing me out. 
They wouldn't hear none of it."

"Real smart," the other company man said. He was dancing on tiptoe, 
trying to draw himself up to Boomer's height. "Covering each other's 
asses like that. I swear, you Reds is all the same — "

"Reds?" Boomer howled, indignantly. "You boys got me wrong - 
dead wrong —I'll have you know I'm a firm believer in the free enterprise 
system — "

"We'll see about that," the first man growled. He reached into 
Boomer's pocket and pulled out an old, crinkled cowhide wallet. He 
flipped it open, and the bills in the money clip fanned out like a spray of 
fresh ferns. "How about it?" he said, dangling the open clip in front of 
Boomer. "You gonna fight for it? Or don't it mean nothing to you after 
all?" There was a hint of laughter in his yellow, cur-like eyes.

"Go on, take it," Boomer sighed. "You'll never see no more in one 
place again."

Dad must have seen it coming, because he was off his heels and moving 
towards them before Dog-Eye's stick was all the way up, but he was 
still too late to stop it. All I saw was the sudden red flash of anger in the 
company man's eyes and the rush of the descending pipe-stem as it caught 
the link-chain of the cuffs and yanked it down, sending Boomer howling 
and sprawling to the floor. The other man whipped out his pipe, waving 
Dad off, and the two of them grabbed Boomer by the armpits and started 
pulling. He twisted and hollered in their grip as they dragged him across 
the splintery shantyboard and out the front door. Once they had him outside 
they lifted him to his feet and gave him a headlong shove off the 
porch. He fell, jerking and twisting against the cuffs, and landed face first 
in the slick, oily mud of the front yard. Other men peeked out of the cabs 
of the passing machines, their craning faces grey in the arc lamps and 
smiles showing yellow, moonlike crescents of teeth as they watched 
Boomer jerk and flop like a beached fish in the swampy mud.

"Oh, by the way Bill," the dog-eyed man said, turning and pressing his 
tarry nose against the front door screen, "you're fired. You got till morning 
to clear out."

"I knew it," Grandad spat, when they had gone. "I knew that dumb 
cowpuncher wasn't nothing but trouble."

"Aw shutup will you?" Dad said, kicking open the screen door. "You 
was the one wanted to leave Oklahoma. Now come on and help me get 
Boomer up out of that mess."

50


Wayne Rottman
Wayne Rottman


51


DREAMS OF THE NEIGHBOR LADY

when her children sleep she enters the t.v. 
she wants gary cooper's hand to hold 
she wants to ride joel mccrea's horse 
legs touching leather together 
she wants cary grant to say her name three times 
she wants to free-fall from an airplane with charles bronson 
locked in some final embrace

she wakes in the morning next to her husband 
his hands have soiled her flowered sheets

she watches quiz shows trades her life for a weekend in vegas

in autumn i watch as she waits for his dark hello

in winter even he can feel her loneliness stroke him 
fingertip wind across his face

in spring no gentle rebirth just a wilder flowering of passion 
she turns away unable to watch us hang 
laundry together

in summer she visits

her casual manner betrayed by her reasons

a recipe i've never had a question i would not know 
the answer to

we deal with the weather the kids the neighbors

her hands grip the coffee cup

the pulse in her wrist interrupts our conversation

i cannot but she manages to lift her eyes from the blue vein 
to search out my husband's bending body

she struggles to refocus her gaze speaks 
righteous bone-pale about a divorced friend 
"fool" she shudders and i offer a sweater 
although we both know how hot it is

Deborah Kenan

52


THE MOAT

We see the water from every window; 
when we step outside, 
it surrounds us.

If you send letters 
we conceal the wounds 
of your unanswered words 
in white envelopes.

If we try to write 
shadows of numerous birds 
fall across the page.

By remaining awake at night, 
we have named five kinds of silence. 
Afternoons are spent staring down the cold 
translucence of wet stones.

Sometimes we hear swords 
clashing in the distance.

We would take sides but the birds 
who bring us news of the battles 
are untrustworthy.

Each morning we watch the dragons 
on the opposite shore 
lumber into the shallow water.

They are clumsy and poorly disciplined. 
When they have learned to swim, 
we will move on.

Gloria Whelan

53


THREE LANDSCAPES

1.




The red-orange of a not-quite-ripe tomato, 
the walnut-brown of dark farm buildings 
and the black mis-shape of an old tree in the foreground: 
a barn, coming into color, reddens like an opening 
wound; Ohio, early morning, perhaps 
a jogger and his dog-

one bird on the wire, two break from the field — 
the first fast breath of a good run.

2.




The yellow niece-coloring of a moonscape: 
sand, a few tired hills, heat waving the loose 
highway like poor tv reception; dry throat, 
back sweat-glued to vinyl, plenty of gas. 
Nevada, just after noon maybe, 
or maybe a snake skin flat as an egg 
fried near the centerline.

3.

White; a familiar storm,

the saltfog mist rolling in off the Atlantic, 
foghorn dull as old love; a luffing sail — 
becalmed sleep:

a FOG horn, a FOG horn, a FOG horn

Phillip Sterling

54


CONTRIBUTOR' NOTES

Marilyn J. Atlas is working on a Ph.D. at MSU. She has been 
published in Seed and Stamen.

Will Baker's chapbook is Dawn Stone, published in 1975. He 
teaches at the University of California at Davis. He has 
published short fiction, poetry, and translations in several 
little magazines.

Casey Bush lives in Portland, Oregon. He says, "George's letter 
is just a document fallen into unsuspecting hands (yours 
included)."

M. R. Doty has been published in Kayak, Iowa Review, Chelsea, 
Chicago Review, New Orleans Review, and others.

Steven Flegg is an undergraduate at MSU. This is his first 
publication.

John Harn is a Dayton, Ohio farmboy by spirit working as an 
underemployed photographer in Galveston, TX. He has 
been published in Invitation Artworks #7.

Lucky Jacobs has appeared in Confrontation, The Falcon, and 
others.

Deborah Keenan has been published in Dacotah Territory, 
Wind, and others.

Dave Kelly's latest collection of poetry is Poems in Season. He is 
director of the creative writing program at SUNY, Geneseo.

James Magorian writes poetry and children's books. He has 
been published in Kansas Quarterly, Wind, Northwest, and 
others.

Judith McCombs has published widely in little and feminist 
magazines. Her first book Sisters and Other Selves, 
appeared in 1976. She was the final judge for the RCR's 
creative writing contest in 1978.

Ron Mieczkowski is an English major at MSU. His poetry won 
first prize in the RCR's creative writing contest. He has been 
published in Descant, Invitation, RCR, and others.

Renaldo Migaldi is an undergraduate at Michigan State University.


Randall Roorda is a former editor of the RCR. He is currently 
working on an MFA in Eugene, Oregon. He has been 
published in Happiness Holding Tank.

Wayne Rottman is an undergraduate art major in sculpture and 
photography at MSU.

55


Andrew Schreiber is a graduate student at MSU and three-time 
winner of first prize in fiction in the RCR creative writing 
contest.

marc j. sheehan is working on a master's degree at Central 
Michigan University. He can be found every Wednesday 
drinking at The Bird.

Philip Sterling has been published in RCR, Wormwood Review, 
International Poetry Review, Green River Review, and 
others.

Gloria Whelan has been published in The Ontario Review, 
Kansas Quarterly, Literary Review, and others.

56


RED CEDAR REVIEW STAFF

EDITORS — Lynn Domina

Janet Flegg

Susan L. Lockhart

Greg H. Merriman 
Chris Messing

Ron Mieczkowski 
Ann Shanabrook 
Bonnie W. Stynes 
Brenda Swope

EDITOR — Sam Mills

GRAPHIC ART — Steven Flegg

Wayne Rottman

RED CEDAR REVIEW is a biannual magazine of the literary arts 
published at Michigan State University. Manuscripts may be submitted 
to 325 Morrill Hall, Department of English, Michigan State University, 
East Lansing, Michigan 48824. Please include return postage.

SUBSCRIPTIONS — one year (two copies): $3.50.

Single copies: $2.00.

OUR THANKS to the MSU College of Arts and Letters, English Department, 
Student Media Appropriations Board, George Kooistra and 
University Publications, Albert Drake, and other friends.

COLOPHON — The text is set in 11 pt. optima, heads in 18 pt. optima.

Copyright © Red Cedar Review June 1978.

Michigan State University Printing

57


Volume XII

Issue 2