2023 Truckee Meadows Community College Reno, Nevada
The Meadow is the annual literary arts journal published every spring by Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC) in Reno, Nevada. Students interested in creative writing and small press publishing are encouraged to participate on the editorial board. Visit www.tmcc.edu/meadow for information and submission guidelines or contact the Editor-in-Chief at meadow@tmcc.edu or through the English department at (775) 673-7092. The Meadow is not interested in acquiring rights to contributors’ works. All rights revert to the author upon publication, and we expect The Meadow to be acknowledged as the original publisher in any future chapbooks or books. The Meadow is indexed in The International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses. Our address is Editor-in-Chief, The Meadow, Truckee Meadows Community College, English Department, Vista B300, 7000 Dandini Blvd., Reno, Nevada, 89512. The views expressed in The Meadow are solely reflective of the authors’ perspectives. TMCC takes no responsibility for the creative expression contained herein. Cover Art: Lichen Fang by Mike Clasen II, www.tmcc.edu/meadow ISSN: 1974-7473
Poetry Editor Lindsay Wilson Prose Editor Rob Lively Associate Poetry Editors Erika Bein Sam Campbell Arian Katsimbras Associate Prose Editors Maddie Dolan Geoff Peck Editorial Board Karly Campbell Jeannie Harkema Erek Lively Jordan McGlynn Jordan Mumm Virag Nikolics Dezaree Sieben Terrell Tissychy-Ortero Nichole Zachary Technical Consultant Ron Marston Cover Art Mike Clasen II
Table of Contents Nonfiction Lori White Sunday Visits 72 Kian Razi It’s Not My Fault 93 David Stewart Waging Peace 112 Zachary Greenhill All that Glitters 125 Fiction Jason Boling Coyote and The Old Man 22 Tom Gartner The Moment 45 Poetry Joanne Mallari Suppose you’re in a meadow 8 Jeffrey Alfier Shadow Mountains Alibi Suite 9 Lily C. Nieminen A Letter to be Stuffed into an Abandoned Mailbox 10 Three Months 119 Stacy Boe Miller Geothermal 12 Creation Myth of My Father 29 That Kind of Mother 124 Cathy Allman Landscape: Out Loud and in Silence 13 Jordan Lee Mumm October in Tennessee 14
During My Third Week in Paris,I am Given a Detailed List of Sins Considering Confessing 79 To Michael 80 Mark Sanders What was once 15 Lora Robinson Aubade for August 16 Wendy Barry Aubade 17 Austin J. Arazosa Silvery Ridge 18 Susan Landgraf Notebook of Place: Fort Worden- State Park and Arts Center- Washington 19 Guadalupe Izquierdo Robles Do You Know South Wells Avenue in Reno? 20 Sandra Fees Back Then My Father Hated Trees 30 Laura Ohlmann Silence 31 Christine Kwon Laurels 33 Self Portrait as the Poet Afraid of the Sun, Children, and Regular People 63 Aleynah Lovendino Baby Blue 34 Angie Macri Latency Period 35 Emily M. Green We Have Left the Body 36 Henry Flippo There’s a Street I Try Not to Drive on Anymore 37 John Fenton Elegy to a Life Lived Apart 39 A Further Examination of Jail Birds and People 89 Paul Ilechko Judgment Call 41 Zachary Greenhill Chauffeuring Mom 42 Nathaniel J. Mojica Elegy for [Deadname] 43 Madison King baby, your blood 60 Kaitlyn Schneider Pyre for the Gutter Things 61 Kiley Smith Christmas is in 25 Days, and the Discovery Channel Said 62 Kathryn Levy The Bad Seed 65 Mirages 66 Jeffrey H. MacLachlan Razor 67
Kimberly Ann Priest Moth 69 Isabella Tucker How Could Something as Beautiful as Rain Represent Something so Ugly 70 Andrew Mercer pine-smoked quail with roasted turnips and sweet potatoes 71 Melanie Perish Returning His Things with a Note 1976 82 Love Letter to the World 84 Sami Lampe A Letter to my Tina 85 Joshua Skroch The Polaroid 87 Torrey Barnato The Difference 90 Laura Celise Lippman Personals 92 Corrina M. Angel-Baumgartner Takes One to Know One 103 JoDee Renae Finding “What’s to Love?” on a Flight Home After a Week of Corporate Bullshit 105 Nathan Granziano Patrick Swayze and Me 106 Enrique Jimenez Jr. Quarters in My Pocket 107 Thomas J. Cruz A Note from Victoria 109 Vanessa Garcia Deaf Lives in Reno 111 Kaela L. Hale Addicted to Forgetting 121 Sheree La Puma Forfeited 122 Lenny DellaRocca Simulation 123 Sean Prentiss Lost Traveler 135 Max Heinegg Permission 136 Jana Harris Beaux-Arts 137 Richard Robbins Over Greenland 139 Lori Howe Cadralor #16 “On Some Agencies of Electricity” 140 Contributor’s Notes 143
8 The Meadow and someone has hurt your heart. I’ll tell you what a therapist told me, which is that ruminating on the past breeds depression. The light will not be more lovely than it is now, on a winter morning, when all the intensity of a summer sunset fits into a few minutes before 9am. Winter welcomes a twin energy, like last night when I drew Inanna’s card from a deck of divine women. She invited me to strip down below my ego. A fortune cookie said a heart never breaks, but the ego does— pretty good advice from a mass-produced wisdom, which will turn cliché once we spill the hell out of it— for this reason, I no longer trust sayings like Everything happens for a reason or You reap what you sow. Suppose you’re in a meadow and someone has broken your ego. I’ll tell you what a yogi told me: When a lover says goodbye, the signs are subtle. You might not remember what you say in the moment, but you’ll recall the lead-up, the small motions like aftershocks in reverse. Notice how your soon-to-be ex fingers your hair the way one would fan a letter in the heat of July. Notice how they look past your ear, as though preparing to report the weather. Suppose you’re in a meadow Joanne Mallari
The Meadow 9 Shadow Mountains Alibi Suite Jeffrey Alfier Dawn breaches the black willow and yucca that pass for a shaded yard. August drifts with the pace of a hearse, the silence of a courtroom on the brink of a verdict. Postcard coyotes are ambulant scabs of hunger. Breakfast is salty radish soup. No news but the half-fiction of children you’re accused of siring —broken ledgers of vamps on lingerie nights. You consider Mojave winds off playa clay and vanished lakebeds, so many plaster Virgin Marys left bleaching in yards of brome and beardgrass. Your only neighbor owns a horse she likely stole from her ex —some saddle nag she never rides. Tonight you hear her hum the faint glow of a tune she once hummed to a fevered child.
10 The Meadow A Letter to be Stuffed into an Abandoned Mailbox Lily C. Nieminen I’m writing to you because there are sirens wailing outside my window tonight. They’ve been going for hours, and in the whine, I hear your voice telling me how much you hate Reno, how we’ve got to get out. I found myself halfway down our street, barefoot on the sidewalk outside your house— and I know you don’t live there anymore, but I haven’t been inside since you left, and the cricket song was just the same as when we were ten, so I shouted up to your window that we can leave now, disappear into the tan hills and become sagebrush, and when the July fires come we will float away as white smoke, turn the sky red, and watch how the casino lights glow through us. Yesterday, while sitting at the bus stop, I watched a coyote pick at what remained of a cat, tire treads zig-zagged through calico fur. I thought of when we would walk to school together, huddled close on the skinny sidewalk as cars raced by, the morning sun casting exhausted shadows, the day tired before it had even awoken. The rabbits would always find their way into the road, and we would find them, dead, a few feet from the sidewalk— I know how you feel about them, but I don’t think they’re stupid, just punished by the place they wound up in
The Meadow 11 while desperately trying to escape. That cat didn’t mean to wander into the road and neither did the coyote. The only difference between them is that one stays hungry as the other goes cold. I walked home when the crickets went quiet to find that the sirens had moved on, and my silent room aches like the goathead in my sole. I hope that you will pull me from that shimmering asphalt if I don’t quite make it across— or, at least, eat what is left of me and let the sun bake away the stain.
12 The Meadow Geothermal Stacy Boe Miller Once we lived on the bottom half of the world. It was summer there, and we were falling apart. We were happy when drinking and our children happy in the water heated by the veins of a volcano. Their bodies in the refraction, magnified like my love for the things they adore: a meringue on the tongue, small dogs in sweaters, bites of steak still red in the middle. You didn’t know I wanted to leave you, and they didn’t know. It was so quiet under the steaming water. I kept going down to listen to nothing. Soon everyone waiting on shore. I came up to breathe and beg, Please, just one more time.
The Meadow 13 Landscape: Out Loud and in Silence Cathy Allman Daylight smashes my chimeras like ocean waves smash shell. Being was once inside those sharp carcasses that make sand painful to walk on. I lift myself in slow motion. The mind over matter doctor says that this pain in my lower back is to distract me from my repressed emotions— my suppressed unconscious ocean all stirred and muddy. Some of the restless water is rain, some poisoned runoff, some high water table in this time of saturation. Most of it just melted glacier. I say, I love you. Again. Out loud and in silence. The atmosphere of our long marriage floods, burns whole towns. Out our high-rise window, I see the empty lot that waits. In the meantime, geese dot the grass and weeds. Cicadas shriek. I can’t hear the sirens or church bells. My ears ring. My only number is a cell phone, I can’t remember the word to end my thought, then, I can’t remember the thought, but I can remember my childhood phone number memorized like my prayers in case I let go of my mother’s hand, and she couldn’t find me.
14 The Meadow October in Tennessee Jordan Lee Mumm The damp air crawls its way through my skin, Wrapping its frost around my bones. So, I shiver All day long, through morning prayer, community lunch, My teeth chatter, even as I walk in the afternoon sun, Carrying a broom and dustpan down the gravel path To the laundry room. The heat is hardly ever on in here, but the yellow Glow at night, the slight warmth of rusted Dryers running draws bugs in. Today, it’s my chore to clean The little shack, so that I and other young missionaries Don’t get stinkbugs stuck in the tread of our shoes, Or track too many false ladybugs into the cold chapel. Light streams in through the window, trapped In dust that floats stagnant in the air. Beetles line The windowsill, scatter themselves, half-dead, across The peeling linoleum floor. There is a sound like windchimes Twinkling as I sweep hundreds of exoskeletons into a pile. I watch as some of their legs begin to twitch. The shiny little hill I’ve made climbs over itself In creeping undulation. Most of them wake up. Their melody bounces off rotting walls As I sweep them from floor, to pan, to trash bin.
The Meadow 15 What was once Mark Sanders a horse, there—on the circle of clay near dewberries and clumps of rye; a spot eroded where mesquite has sprung, limbs limp with summer heat—what he was that fell and broke like a wooden bridge has leapt the last fence. See him graze the high plain above the river, wind through sagebrush and bunchgrass, spruce and ash belling like a man who would whistle him in. No need to turn and join, he obeys instead the cadence along a switchback laid through stone, his hooves had carved it deep— he has trod the means so long. No cause to run, what is the point? See. How lush the scrubby pasture of sky is, let rain douse or snow slant the scree-slid world—as if this is just another day, he sets his face. He goes. —for Rusty
16 The Meadow Aubade for August Lora Robinson This morning I woke clinging to your collar before the veil lifted and you were gone again, melting crystalline, a broken fever. Once, (though you forced my hand) I thought to reach through the veil and snatch a soul from raw oblivion and into some kind of warmer hollow. I woke again fuller, multitudinous carrying petals and pomegranates to your feet. When I watched you wither the fruit and crush every flower between the threshers of your fists, I knew I had to send it back. Back to ash, rain, some ruin of earth you could not salt. There is nothing left to touch or remember now. The asters droop in the shadow. The smoke left my hands many years ago. Still, on this side, I search for you, though I find only glittering stars of bone, dry lightning, the misnamed phenomena of our marriage. And on this morning I wake again, under sheets evacuating wreckage and memory. I smooth the duvet and tuck you back in: a formless future, the heaviest ghost.
The Meadow 17 Aubade Wendy Barry Ah, love, there is change upon my dresser for your parking. The kid needs a lunch packed today, and a check for guitar lessons. There’s sliced chicken in the deli drawer, but the cheese is somewhat iffy. I will get more yellow mustard, too. The dogs have been fed, despite what they tell you. Do not listen to their blandishments. The pibble has taken her thyroid medication. I found those socks you were looking for, and have put them on your nightstand. We will need to renew our flood insurance. It has gone up—surprise—like sea levels and the cost of parking on the darkling plain. Though the sea was calm last night, the water will rise, so let me know if you go surfing. You will need more change for parking. Your eyes are nothing like the sun—boon companion— which is hot and brutal and a busy old fool, unruly and ignorant of how much we sweat under a weary life. Yours are brown and green like the earth and the leaves. I will be late tonight. A dumb meeting. People will ask questions that don’t need to be asked. I think some of them don’t have homes to go to. I did not watch the news this morning, so do not tell me what fresh hell is up. Ignorant armies clash. Somewhere it is always night.
18 The Meadow Silvery Ridge Austin J. Arazosa Over the summer / I worked / with drivers / Out of state / drivers / looking for work / See I’ve lived here / Nevada / my home / Spent a lot of time looking at / mountains / Those who look / long / and hard enough / Can picture Rose / the way Her range spreads / Head / laying south / feet / pointing north / Those drivers think / I’m crazy / how I’ve Tried to draw Her / they don’t take the time to See the picture / appreciate the land they are Driving on / they come for the riches / Yet lose it / to screens with bright lights / Those true to the land / see Her riches / White silk in the cold months / that drape Her body / shielding her children / Of the valley / yet warding off all / Those who don’t respect Her / Drivers Not ready for the cold / unable to handle Her icy tears / carpeting the land / Early morning breath / fogs over the city / Rose / leaving kisses of pogonip
The Meadow 19 Notebook of Place: Fort Worden – State Park and Arts Center–Washington Susan Landgraf 1. Five days of rain, Richard Hugo had written David Wagoner, and I love it. 2. Weather report: Rain and fog all week. It’s July in the low 60s and Marilyn from the Bronx shivers in her summer clothes. Alice Walker borrows socks. 3. Half the window in my barrack room lets in the fort’s parade ground and a ring of maples. The other half clouds. One summer a woman was so filled with clouds she threatened to jump off the barrack’s balcony. 4. Swallows lace the air, a threadless weaving. When the world is shapeless, there are swallows. 5. The tribes rowed their long boats to shore yesterday in the old tradition. Today they leave, rowing the grey sea again under a grey sky. 6. Crow caws more insistent, more grating than accusations. 7. I caw as I put pen to page asking for a few good words. 8. A year ago today my husband called just before midnight ...fast-growing... inoperable... Don’t drive tonight. Come in the morning. And I told him in the hospital after I drove out of the fog: Don’t be afraid. You can leave. You can go. I’ll be okay. I learned we build fogs in our brains, during the new normal times that aren’t normal, and hope for a lighthouse. 9. Now another day of fog carrying on its secret conversation with the rain. Four pens’ worth of words, and Chris Abani is writing about a watch ticking in a coffin. 10. Clever watches.
20 The Meadow Do You Know South Wells Avenue in Reno? Guadalupe Izquierdo Robles Querido South Wells Avenue? Not Wells Avenue, but south of that. Crossing over the Truckee River, the border Of the North and South of it. You’ll know You reached it when you see Mundo Latino store. You would have then reached the neighborhood. A barrio in which Latino culture shines, With all the many shops littered on the street— Boutiques, venues, dance classes, taqueria, Clothing, and salons. Our marks Were left on the walls, our art being the first To scream our presence on the street. Murals with El Chavo del Ocho, reminisce of an icon Of our childhood. The many depictions of La Catrina On the walls of the businesses. Her looks may change but her jewelry and expensive taste Stays on each graffitied wall. She was meant to mock the expensive taste But now, we aspire to have at least half of what she is adorned with. Then we wanted to be able to reach that American Dream, And now we want to be able to get the Latino Dream. The American Dream was never ours, never Meant to be ours since we are not American. Nosotros Somos the ones who must make it big, if not us then who? The stores on that street are owned by people who saw a chance ¿Y dijieron por qué no?
The Meadow 21 Behind those official ones are the self-made ones in homes, Ice creams for the dessert heat and tamales in the cold that keeps Us inside with La Abuelita hot chocolate. Bought from El Marketon, The store that had every child pointing at the piñatas Of the childhood characters flying above their heads. From las princesas to la Chilindrina to the Luchadores To Quico are admired from below. Looking up at the paper mâché, That holds many treasures. All that is soon to be seen after Taking a beating, en la vida nada se viene de fácil. Our successes Do not come easy. They come after hechandole ganas. That’s what is seen on these streets, those who Have put in El esfuerzo. South Wells Avenue, has people Who come with a goal and the idea of greatness. Hope To be dressed the same as La Catrina, with success Draped across her neck and pride adorned on her wrist.
22 The Meadow Coyote and The Old Man Jason Boling The old man made a wish and, true to his nature, the coyote answered. Down the trail he snuffed the grasses and the briar. He edged close to town. Out of the trees he crossed the street, tail down. The coyote was not undernourished, but his scrag of red hair made him seem so. He moved the way a hangman delivers a joke at the gallows. The road empty and quiet. A quiet thick and blurry enough to fool around with the town’s boundaries. Only the relays clicking in the traffic lights hinted at distance. His nails scratched on the asphalt. To pave the earth is the devil’s dream. At the shop the old man was preparing to open. Polishing fingerprints from the display case like he was cleaning up after a war. A single lamp in the front room put off a low, warm light. The old man adjusted his glasses. The coffeepot hissed and gurgled in the back room. Coyote found the door and scratched. The old man let him in. Their eyes met as he passed. He shook his coat from head to tail and stood up with a careful dignity. “So you did it?” “I did it,” the coyote said, looking around. The room smelled like cigarette smoke and baby powder. He sat down in a chair and crossed his legs. Next to him the glass case piled full of broken-hearted treasures. Watches unwound and stopped. Jewelry boxes pin cushioned full of wedding bands. An antique black pistol still capable of anything. Coyote scanned the cases, marveling at the mortgaged bounty of mankind. In a few thousand years, these will be the artifacts they dust off and catalog.
The Meadow 23 The old man went away and came clinking back with a tray of coffees and sugar. “Well, I guess that’s that,” he said, sprinkling sugar into one of the cups and passing it over. The old man tried a smile in his skeletal way. Wet shining at the corners of his lips. The coyote blew across his cup and looked at the man. Outside people began to fill the sidewalk, shuffling off to whatever cage the gods had decided they fit. People who didn’t know what was coming. No one ever knows. The old man sat across from the coyote and rubbed his hands down his trousers. Tapped his foot. He put his elbows on his knees and looked at his folded hands. His face long and bent like a cigarette ash. “When?” he said. The coyote yawned with a set of teeth designed for the true nature of the world. He clattered his coffee cup down on the tray. “Sooner than you think. This afternoon, if the wind stays. You should pack up, if you have anything worth saving, and go.” He let out a breath, and the coyote could smell his breakfast and liquor. The old man had tired eyes like old army blankets, his white hair combed straight back. “I think I’ll stay,” the old man said. After a moment he went to the door and rolled the lock. “And I could use some company while we all go to heaven.” He stood looking out the window. His hand fell from the knob. The coyote rose quietly and crept down the hall behind the counter and into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. A flat tube of toothpaste sat on the sink with the old man’s comb and water glass. Pill bottles toppled here and there like a board game after an argument. Signs of the man’s living. His hackles rose for a moment at the incomprehensible magic of his reflection in the mirror. The coyote hopped to the back of the toilet, then stood on
24 The Meadow the window ledge with his tail up and alert. His heart leapt at the thought of killing the man. Saw the quick snap at his neck. Imagined the iron taste of blood as he nosed open the window, took one look back, then scrabbled out into the world. Back on the trail he went to see. To marvel at his work. He would settle with the old man later. He moved in a lope, ignoring the smell of a rabbit nest. The coffee had taken his appetite and hidden it somewhere safe and away. Above him little gray birds skittled up and dissolved into the clouds. He thought he caught a whiff of woodsmoke. His mind drifted as he passed among the trees. And it was this drifting that caused him to mistake the boy for something else. Mistake him for nothing at all or anything, like an ice cream truck or a mermaid, but as he drew closer the shape resolved, and the angles of his bicycle could no longer be mistaken for anything occurring in nature. He slowed to a trot and stopped next to the boy sitting on his mountain bike in the middle of the trail. “Excuse me,” the coyote said, and the boy screamed like he was being skinned by a cannibal. He tried to get his feet onto the pedals but could not look away from the thing before him that, first of all, should not be standing naturally on its hind legs and, least of all, speaking perfect English. When he told the story throughout his life, he would always mention that the coyote sounded a little like he was from southern California. “Calm down,” the coyote said. “I know this may seem a little unconventional, but I’m going to need your bicycle. I have an emergency to attend to.” “My what?” His eyes began to well up. He fumbled and dropped the granola bar he was unwrapping. The boy was blond and portly and inconsolable. He had a birthmark on his cheek the color of a Band-Aid. The coyote did not hold this terror against him. The child had
The Meadow 25 no way of understanding. But, also, he felt no pity for the boy. When he thought of killing and eating the fattier parts of him, he did not act. That was enough. Coming very close, the coyote looked into the boy’s eyes and slowly pried his fingers from the handlebars. His knuckles had gone white as concrete. “I need you to get off the bike,” he said, baring his teeth. “Now.” He had seen many of man’s inventions. Highways screaming with noise that he dared not cross. Logging machines grinding forests extinct with an industrial cruelty that only the God of Hell could have dreamt up. He had seen rivers dammed to a trickle. He had watched the butterflies flutter and migrate away, never to return. But of all man’s inventions, second only to fire, the bicycle was his most diabolical. He flew down the trail now, skinny coyote legs pumping the pedals, wind in his fur, mouth hanging wide, laughing like an imbecile. Back in the shop the old man wiped his eyes and turned from the window. “Coyote?” he said to the empty room. In the bathroom he pulled the window down and straightened up his things. Put the pill bottles away and picked up the towel and clothes from the soggy floor, embarrassed by the coyote having seen his conditions. In the front room he pulled the blinds almost closed. He poured a strong drink, sat down, and closed his eyes. He saw his wife’s green summer dress. Her very last dress. The small sunflower print tracing her on his memory like constellation lines connecting stars. There was a last time the wind was in her hair. You never know which time is the last time for anything. He finished his drink and said out loud to no one at all: Shit.
26 The Meadow In the clearing he leaned the bike against a smoking stump. The flames had done their work. A black river of hell was headed directly toward the town. The coyote kept his thoughts simple. The old man made his wish, and he granted it. The old man longed for something lost. The fire was something. Gas cans are something. Road flares are something. If something swallowed the world, left would be a space for something new. A gallon of gas and a road flare. That one be made whole, many be broken. He would settle with the old man later. Satisfied, he mounted the bicycle and pedaled hard down the trail toward town. No sign of the boy on the path. He skirted the fire’s line at a distance, but the smoke was thicker every moment. He finally gave up on the bike and ran low and fast. Purpose filled him. His nails pulling in the earth. The old man was pacing by the window and opened the door quickly when he saw the coyote coming across the street. A wall of smoke towered behind him like a city of charcoal roses. Inside the old man continued to pace. The coyote watched his shoes move back and forth. Time has an appetite for details. No one will remember the creak of the floor. How one of the laces dragged the rug, untied. How he wrung his long, bony hands, polishing his regrets into an invisible ball so heavy and bright that even angels wouldn’t dare look at it. Pine embers Roman-candled across the street. Drifting in arcs like cigarettes thumped into the wind. Sirens dopplered away in the distance, growing smaller and smaller, like comets flung away from the sun. “You think we should call it off?” The old man’s cheeks looked dry as palm tree husk. “Call it off?” The coyote laughed his high, chittering laugh. He stood and walked over to the man. His wild eyes flashed
The Meadow 27 like museum amber. He said, “Listen to me, old man. Even the gods are at war with boredom. Your wish is a delight.” He motioned for the man to look out the window. The flames lapping in the tree line. “As you shrink, the world grows.” The coyote made a quiet, thoughtful circle of the room, then sat and crossed his arms. “Can’t you see? Mankind’s suicide is nature’s first honor killing.” “She worked at the beauty shop for years,” the old man said. He had brought the bottle of scotch from the back room and was pouring them tall. “Until she couldn’t anymore. At the end they caught her talking to those Styrofoam heads they use to hold the wigs. Had names for all of them…” The coyote drummed his fingers on his knee. He could smell the onions and foil from the old man’s TV dinner. He sensed the faint pulse in the old man’s neck. “I kept her home after that. After a while, it got cruel for her, and that lasted a long time. Then one day it was over, just like that. Then I bought this place, and now, well, I guess that’s that.” The coyote yawned. “Do you have any cigarettes?” “I think, somewhere, let me look.” The old man came back with an old, crumpled pack of Parliaments and shook one out. “I quit a long time ago but keep these around. You never know,” he said. “If you don’t mind…” the coyote said, holding up his forepaws. “Oh yes, of course,” the old man stammered and popped a match. The coyote drew deeply and looked at the man. His shabby sweater. Bad teeth. Bad bones. Bad luck. This thing before him. The final product of every scientific advancement of his species.
28 The Meadow A living war trophy to their victory over nature. He could smell the skid marks in the old man’s underpants. “I think it’s time we settle up,” the coyote said, finishing his cigarette and snuffing it out. “Are you ready?” he said, baring his teeth a little. His honey-colored eyes. The hackles on his neck standing up in anticipation. “I guess so.” The old man stood and picked up his scotch, took a long swallow, and put down his glass. He dug in his pockets and gingerly produced the keys. The coyote was on his feet, tail wagging like some lesser servile canine. “Just take care of her. She meant a great deal to me.” Handing over the car keys, the old man was saying, “You know, in fifty years I never missed an oil change…” But the coyote was already out the door, never mind the witnesses. He darted to the old man’s Buick on his hind legs, threw open the door. Key in the ignition. He put the top down first, then jammed it into gear, popped the clutch, and was gone. In the street, embers from the fire danced circles in the sky and fell, creating a carnival world, live and alight.
The Meadow 29 Creation Myth of My Father Stacy Boe Miller He cracks his elbows on his mother’s young death. At the funeral, adults say, Stay out of the way. His calves grow stone hitchhiking gravel. He lights a driver’s cigarette, and also his beard. Blows from bar fights across his chest. And a woman latched to his back defending her boyfriend. His face, boxing-glove leather. He’s skinning a deer. Just one rodeo. His fingers and knees—concrete trucks grind sunrise. He sets a teenage wife down among cactus, antelope, and twenty below. There’s a broken baby who can be fixed for $30,000, three too early to live, and two outside putting pennies on the train track. He’s a forest so big, we hide and seek through him. A map we check so often, we never learn the direction of the trails. He’s a bridge I’ve crossed so many times, I don’t know how I’ll swim.
30 The Meadow Back Then My Father Hated Trees Sandra Fees A useless thing Daddy said and worse the way each young summer the brittle tree heaved bucket loads of flecked pears unyielding as tiny gourds only once in secret not believing I tried to bite through skin the year he brought the chainsaw I was inconsolable by the time the three apple trees out back were felled like an ancient civilization I knew their bitter taste too now that he’s gone I think of our last morning at the nursing home in the courtyard the ornamental cherry danced fruitless Daddy smiled I can’t be sure that he was wrong I can’t be sure a tree knows better knows the right season to shrug or forgive or when to pink.
The Meadow 31 It doesn’t matter that my father and I don’t talk for weeks, days gone by where I wonder if the sheet over his body still rises with breath. I often think about that house, the boxes stacked soon to topple in the dining room, shelves collecting dust, extra fridges kept in my childhood bedroom, and the porcelain doll that looks like me, smiling from beside his bed. Maybe the carpet still smells like milk rotting within its fibers, or I can find a shirt of my mother’s preserved in a plastic bag, the scent of her perfume and shreds of skin reminding me her shadow once crossed paths with mine too. But these days, I do what I can to forget about my father, how he sits on the rear porch late to look for meteors, back hunched in a plastic chair while the wind hangs around his shoulders. Everything around him broken, the wooden swing we all used to fit on together, the screened deck, televisions with the wires cut out of the back, collected albums with nothing to play them, and his neuropathic legs unable to push the pedals of his Dodge Charger. I can’t take care of him, or sleep with 2 a.m. intercom calls, Silence Laura Ohlman
32 The Meadow or understand how I insist on overcooking his scrambled eggs, or listen when he tells me about his sexy nurse, who is like a daughter to him, and it’s cruel to abandon an old man in bed, skin peeling off his arms from where they touch the bedspread, and the days pass by where I wait imagining the last time I saw him, tears fogging the inside of his glasses, and he asked, You’re leaving? Who will take care of me now? And I told him I didn’t care, the house so still I could clap a palm to the air, and I hugged him goodbye, and said I love you as I walked away months ago . . . Both of us knowing I could never turn back.
The Meadow 33 Laurels Christine Kwon I When mother passes the door I pretend to be dead Flowers growing from my eyes Or I cover my face with a book Complaints seeping from my body And dripping moss II I lie down in my hole And say here I’m ready But she just stands there With this look III Mother and I go down the stairs together. She is dead. We hold the rail, the wooden steps soft and slit open as parted lips. It’s cold where we walk. I remember she was bitter like a fawn frozen in a blue slab of ice, bitter melting in the spring. And I imagine she had fear, nights of intense longing. Now she cries. Munching on metal, on flowers and blood. Is she cold or am I? This is love, she says.
34 The Meadow Baby Blue Aleynah Lovendino They still keep your cotton blanket in their top drawer, remembering the soft skin of your hands, clean from the world. They still feel your weight on their chests, when your six pounds broke their hearts the moment they held you. All they had was twenty-seven hours before endless days of mourning. The morning you left their arms they echoed your fragile cries and begged, begged for your clothes to be filled with small hands and small feet. Six months later they still have the room with a cradle and a ceiling of stars, but the flash of the supernova shatters every moment they longed for.
The Meadow 35 Latency Period Angie Macri Then they moved into a house the color of doves, not the kind a magician used or those in the good book but mourning doves, river bluffs come alive and in flight with a song that followed her all her life although she couldn’t know that then, young as she was. Small they seemed to say when startled into sudden rise by her, by her dog, by something she couldn’t see. After the first winter, her parents sided the house with white aluminum. The gray asphalt siding still hung underneath, couldn’t be removed because of asbestos backing, thin fibers that could enter their lungs if they made dust so they didn’t. Fire resistant, rot resistant, made to look like stone, yet not, it had been rough like stone when she would touch. Crystals would not come off no matter how often she tried.
36 The Meadow We Have Left the Body Emily M. Green All day on the phone, I wait through the same recorded pitch to sell wings: bone in, bone out, or traditional. When the live voice answers, I ask, Do you take checks? Put down on paper, it’s all symbols. My mother, in shorts, sported legs chewed through by fleas. Through God’s grace, they sent us an able man to fumigate. Save for the foundation, the Temple went unfinished. Gold and silver were desired. Under the burden of August humidity, Grandma said, Cold hands; warm heart. If what connects us is pennies, waste, and water. And I must ask, and I must ask, and I must ask. With her last child, Mom’s calves swelled, her craggy toenails went uncut. My baby brother crawled late. The incoming calls are always a question of debt. As a child, I left my body at night and climbed the tree that called upon my bedroom window. Climbing was forbidden by the adults, and all the lower branches were sawed off. Only with wings could anyone disobey their order. The string is left attached, the frayed end dangles reminders. This is the list of clans who have been in exile. Grandma died, and we left the body in the hospital room, IV still in her arm. At the viewing, no one could distinguish between the woman and her velvet suit, crushed and blue.
The Meadow 37 There’s a Street I Try Not to Drive on Anymore Henry Flippo Every so often when I’m driving along the road that passes by my old home where we used to play as kids, I pass by a corner that my mother used to warn me against— where no one would see me in the morning, the sun in their eyes, when the clouds burn away and leave fiery remains. When the day is most like this I see him—my once-neighbor, my erstwhile friend; a boisterous boy who was nothing like me but kept me company all the same, and he’s lying in the road. There’s dust on his shoes, dried rubber and tar marring his Sketchers. His t-shirt— cherry red, Pokémon on his chest— hangs loosely over ripped jeans— blond hair covers his face; he catches the light pouring from above and scatters it, colors awash amidst a sea of asphalt. Breath rises slowly in his chest.
38 The Meadow He lies still— eyes closed— peaceful, hands folded over his chest, underneath a sky that was gray— that wanted to be gray— and will be again, but for now burns in a pained motley of visual noise. I cannot know what he thinks he wants. I cannot know if he knows that no one can save him, that it will be too late before anyone realizes. And I do not see him get up like I know he did. I do not see him walk, sullen, back into my front yard as though nothing had happened, as if the grit he dusted off his back didn’t exist. The corner is blind, so blind, it cannot see that the boy lying in the middle of the road does not crave for death, and when I do pass that road I see only that— he who has decided that he is finished— and not he who decided to stand up thirty seconds later. He lies there for as long as it takes, as if this moment is all there is, and I drive over him.
The Meadow 39 Elegy to a Life Lived Apart John Fenton You are like the model of a son I had in a dream years ago, Then stumbling upon it in the boxes, covered in dust, I stand at the edges unable to grasp The life I missed. The clamoring. The dead. The Living. Screaming through my mind, With every un-ordained thought pulling at me, To carrying your lifeless mother down the steps. I wanted to change my life in that moment, But my only weapons were lies and half-truths, Surrounded by A body-armor of fears in a desperate attempt And wasted. I didn’t stop running that day. I missed feeding you. I missed diaper changes. I missed late night issues with your G-tube. Trips to the hospital. I missed every first. Now, on the other side of 13 years, We are like those old veterans Who stand around each other. Both having shared a terrible experience, Wanting to be near, Knowing nothing can be spoken. I don’t know you
40 The Meadow And I don’t know how to know you. I stand around and suffer the cost of our present, Each less deserved than the next. Hoping my effort will be recompense for the harms, And my presence will suffice. Where all that I am and anything I may be could suffice The day you enter the world Because it transported me, To the swirling chaos of combat, Where blood trades for life and all its petty consequences. Stricken by the screams as the sound from the report of a rifle, Breaking a dam in my chest To send the oozing pain of choices into action Some sort of muscle memory I prayed I’d been able To have forgotten.
The Meadow 41 Judgment Call Paul Ilechko The next time I took off the bandages I walked all the way to the bridge against the better judgment of the both of us this was mostly because I wanted to see the swallows to see their brilliant flashes of color as they skimmed above the fast moving river before soaring upwards into the sky this theme is a constant in life a pushing beyond the safe beyond the static until the richness of what is possible becomes inevitable and I try to trace this pattern back to certain events in childhood feeling a surety that all origin stories are discoverable that with sufficient effort you can get close enough to touch it to trace your fingers across the yellowing paper on which the story is written because all events in a life will eventually give something back even to a broken body its wounds wrapped in bandages fastened in place for your own protection lights flashing on the machines that surround you while you sleep dreaming of swallows that live under the bridge.
42 The Meadow Chauffeuring Mom Zachary Greenhill As I take a screwdriver to the plastic trim of my new car I do so to invoke some memory of our weekly trips to the hospital. And I’m sorry that all I was able to provide was a 1990 Dodge Neon Whose heat didn’t work and whose radio was permanently Tuned to the only station we both disliked. So we made fun Of Garth Brooks while bundled in our puffy winter coats, And you always called me a gentleman for getting the door For you, even though we both knew it didn’t open from the inside. I never told you how your wheelchair gouged my car each time It was taken out, or how you left my passenger seat smelling Like incontinence, or that I hadn’t paid my insurance in a year, So I shouldered those burdens as long as they lasted, And once I was able to take the bus, I sold that car To the scrapyard on the edge of town for $300, because caring For an aging car isn’t cheap, and it served its purpose.
The Meadow 43 Elegy for [Deadname] Nathaniel J. Mojica I hope you were happy in life. Even though mommy and daddy slept in different beds, Or when daddy would help you with your science projects That were required every year. How you would both wing them the night before, Boys vs. Girls, comparing reflexes, Because neither of you cared. You would jump on the neighbor’s trampoline Pretending to be a superhero with ice powers, Then go inside to play Pokémon But you’d only ever choose Ninetales Cause you thought it was cute. You would play with toy cars in the dirt, Then watch Ben 10, While your sister would cradle dolls. I don’t blame you for not knowing. It would have been a lot easier if you did though. Puberty hit you in 3rd grade. I still remember you crying in the aisle As mommy picked out the pads for you, Then having to go to class late Red-faced, from tears and embarrassment. Would it be easier if you were still here? I don’t think any of us would be happy. I wouldn’t say I’m glad you died, But I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. I get to carry the memories of you with me:
44 The Meadow The ocean of undiagnosed anxiety, And crying sessions holding yourself close As the hot water hits your skin. The day you died We stood in the elevator of the clinic Headed away from our sweet doctor Who had just handed you my prescription. As mommy started crying, She hugged you for the last time, And me for the first.
The Meadow 45 The Moment Tom Gartner We all agreed that someone from the company should go to Darcy’s memorial service. We just had different ideas about who it should be. The obvious thing was for Wade and Caroline to go. Wind River Outfitters was their business, and Darcy had been their operations manager for the first two years. Caroline was willing, it seemed to me, but Wade flat out refused: “Twin Falls—with the drive, that’s a full day. I’m too fucking far behind as it is. And so are you, Caroline.” I could read the subtext easily enough, or I thought I could. The memorial was on my day off, but they’d give me comp time. “I’ll go,” I said. “Not a problem.” I’d only overlapped with Darcy for a few months, but I’d liked her well enough: hard worker, team player, talented climber, relentless drinker. I’d admired her sense of adventure even if I’d had a feeling it might end up this way. Wade nodded. Caroline didn’t. He blinked at her. “What?” “Remember the time I got so stoned at Ross’s party that she had to walk me home?” “Sure. She was more stoned than you were.” “But she did it anyway. Right?” “Right.” Reluctantly, but he wasn’t going to argue it. “So, I’m going.” That was Caroline: pathologically loyal to friends, family, co-workers, ex-boyfriends, stuffed animals she’d had as a child. “Rob, you don’t need to, it’s your day off.” I glanced at Wade to see if he’d cave, because I figured she was counting on that. But as so often with them, I was being too cynical. Because he did give in—sighed, looked down at his calendar, then up at her with a wry smile—and she waved him off. “No, it’s fine.” They went back and forth a couple of times, but he seemed
46 The Meadow happy enough not to go. “Same for you, Rob,” she said. “I’ll be fine by myself.” I looked at Wade again. If she went by herself, he was going to be carless all day, and there would be messy logistics around getting Shari, their four-year-old, to and from daycare. So this was an easy read. I’d known him for fifteen years, and more often than not he’d been the one helping me. If he wanted me to go, I was going. The drive north into Idaho, the service, the reception, the drive back: Wade wasn’t wrong that it was a big chunk of time. To be honest, I was nervous about spending most of a day with Caroline. Not that she and I had any problem with each other, but I’d only known her for the year I’d been working for their company, and this was different from sharing workspaces, even going out with her and Wade for drinks or dinner. If anything, I liked her too much, and I wasn’t sure I could make intelligent conversation for that long. But of course, there was Darcy to talk about, and the business: a shopfront in a mall outside Salt Lake City, a warehouse out by the airport, ten employees including the three of us. The name was Wade’s little play on words, as “Wind” and “River” suggested the elements we sold protection against, but the Wind Rivers are a Wyoming mountain range and climbing gear was our specialty. Wade and I climbed when we could—no shortage of opportunities in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado—but Darcy had been more ambitious. When she left the company, it had been to live in Chamonix and climb in the Alps. “I won’t say there weren’t any hard feelings.” Caroline rolled her window all the way down as we headed out of Salt Lake City toward the Idaho line. She could never get enough fresh air. For all the time she spent outdoors, though, her cheeks never showed more than the faintest bloom of tan. “It was complicated. But you can’t hold people back.”
The Meadow 47 Complicated, I assumed, was her way of saying she didn’t want to talk about it. So I was curious, but I didn’t push. “Right. There’s no way she was going to stay with Wind River forever.” “It’s ironic, I was glad when she came back from Europe. I was sure she was going to get herself killed in the Alps. Then this.” Darcy had signed on as a seasonal firefighter with the Forest Service, a foot-in-the-door gig. She’d died when a bulldozer overturned on a backcountry ridge. “We would have taken her back,” Caroline said. “At least I would have. But she never asked.” At least I would have. I pondered that phrase as a few more miles of highway unwound: sweeping curves up a brushy canyon, rounded buttresses of cinnamon-colored rock all along one side. Eventually Caroline went on: “She was always so idealistic about everything.” There was an unspoken fault line there, one it had taken me months to understand. When Wade had offered me the job, he’d described the company as a baby REI, and that had been good enough. I’d been in San Francisco, still unmoored after a bad breakup, working at a bike shop for minimum wage, fighting with my landlord, piling up credit card debt. But Wind River meant one thing for Wade—top-drawer gear for people who could afford it and knew what to do with it— while for Darcy, who’d worked at Patagonia and North Face, it meant, or at least she wanted it to mean, caring more about the environment than the bottom line. Caroline, I thought, had been torn. I’d just been clueless. My role, the way I saw it, was just to do whatever I could to help Wade and Caroline, and I still thought that could be uncomplicated. About fifty miles into Idaho, we drove through a burn zone, a valley full of blackened trees and scrub, the ground pale grey with ash, the crumpled hulk of a box truck in a roadside trench.
48 The Meadow “Jesus Christ,” I said as it went on for mile after mile. “When did this happen?” “Last month,” Caroline said. “Don’t you remember? We had all that smoke for a couple of days.” “O.K., right.” I remembered now, hearing about the highway being closed. “But this isn’t the same one...” “No. That was way up by the Tetons. Much smaller fire, out in the middle of nowhere. They’ve got no business trying to snuff out every lightning strike. All it does is let the fuel load get bigger. Darcy hated that. So there’s some more irony for you.” Where I grew up, a small ranch on the Lost Coast in northern California, we sure as hell did stomp on every spark. But I knew it was different in these huge tracts of open country. Darcy had been vocal enough about it. “Never quite understood why she took the job, then.” “She wanted to change it from the inside.” Caroline shook her head, the same way she always did when Wade and I started planning expeditions that were too hard and too expensive to ever happen. “The Forest Service. Change. From the inside.” “Not likely?” “My father worked for the Forest Service for twenty years. He said she might as well have gone to DC and impaled herself on the fence around the White House.” The service was in a Catholic church, which didn’t seem like Darcy, but apparently it was the church her family went to, and she’d at least stayed in touch. We got there at the last minute and slipped into a pew near the back. An older woman in tears, shaking and stumbling, was being helped out by two young men. The priest had taken the stage but didn’t seem sure if he should start. I counted heads—the place was nearly full. Two hundred? Surprisingly many older people, mostly in conservative dark suits or dresses; a few restless teenagers; half a dozen very quiet children, Darcy’s nieces and nephews,
www.tmcc.eduRkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODQ3NA==