PROMPT Issue 2010

literary magazinea new name for everythingissue 4, winter 2010

All content copyright © 2010 by PromPt magazine and its authors, all rights reserved.

Editor-in-ChiEf Tiffany Wong

EditorsJoanna Beer

Christina ChaeyJacob NelsonLogan Wall

AssistAnt EditorAlleliah Nuguid

ChiEf offiCEr of ExCitEmEnt (CoE)Andrés Carrasquillo

dEsignErChristopher Adamson

CovEr PhotoJoanna Beer

fACulty AdvisErEula Biss

a new name for every thing4 //

from thE EditorDear friends,

in trying to write this letter, i found myself looking back into past issues of the magazine and trying to tease out a theme to reinterpret, searching for a way to complicate the prompt in order to make this introduction meaningful. “A new name of everything,” of course, suggests change, revelation, and rechristening of things both normal and extraordinary. however, the more i struggled with articulating the notion of newness and perception, of newness of perception, i realized what i wanted to tackle was not attempting to rename the past, but reflecting on what is changing now. over this past year, i have had the immense pleasure of working with our three senior editors, Joanna Beer, Jacob Nelson, and Logan Wall. Joanna and Logan both started their involvement by submitting to our inaugural issue two years ago, and have helped shape the magazine with their discern-ing approaches to good writing. Jacob, who came to us with a recommendation from our faculty advisor, has graced us with his dedication, cleverness and deeply funny humor. despite the magazine’s newness and problems of constraint, we were able to establish ourselves as a reputable venue for quality student writing on campus. Although we will replace them with new staff this spring, the newly named editors will carry on the budding tradition Joanna, Jacob and Logan have helped create. With that, I welcome you to the Winter 2010 issue of PromPt, the fourth of our series. in this issue, Brittany Jaekel’s “october” brings new perspective to the changing season from fall to winter, while meriwether Clarke’s “Single Cell” gives narrative to the voiceless. Madeline Weinstein’s “Spying on a Stranger’s Wedding” changes the typical story-telling perspective of a wedding and Katie flanagan’s “Now i

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Lay me down to Sleep” reinterprets the idea of parental love. Andrew Greenberg “on memory” transposes us to a new-ness of place, and finally, Meriwether Clarke’s “Inheritance” weaves in themes of nature and evolution with the familial beauty of life and birth. i hope you that enjoy the pieces in this issue, and gain as much in new perspective from the selected poetry and prose as i have.

Sincerely,

Tiffany WongEditor-in-Chief


tABLE ofCoNtENtS

1. october — Brittany Jaekel, page 8

2. Single Cell — meriwether Clarke, page 9

3. Spying on a Stranger’s wedding — Madeline Weinstein, page 12

4. now i Lay me Down to Sleep — Katie flanagan, page 16

5. on memory — Andrew Greenberg, page 25

6. Inheritance — meriwether Clarke, page 27

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oCtoBEr — Brittany Jaekel

i.october is ending.on the grounda loud waste.

ii.Bare avenue,the trees only sleepbut this whole placefeels dead.

iii.Facing a grey-green cityfolding up beneath thegone-light:the trees shake down yellowed old leaves asi walk past.did my feet do that?

iV.i want nothing morethan to see snow fallin the alley, late afternoonon a Sunday when i’m alone.

V.Something barrels toward me.i fall in love every december,before the year endsin the middle of that dark.

// 9

SiNGLE CELL — Meriwether Clarke

i wished for something greater than myself. At sixty-four, standing unob-trusively, hoping for words, i wished for something greater than myself. for the rattle of the train outside to morph into strands of debussy; for

the floor to open up its mouth and spit out a garden, brimming with magnolias and the scent of wet bricks; for the heads of everyone i no longer see to pop up through the flower pots, seedlings thirsty for a cup of water. I wished for all of this as I waited, fidgeting tensely, in the New Astoria police station. “What’s your name sir?” A young woman looked at me, eyes narrowed with aggravation. I thought of how she reminded me of my wife when we first met. I was twenty and she had wind-swept hair always gathered at the nape of her neck. “Your name?” she repeated. my mouth remained sealed as i watched her, rounded shoulders sloping into her body like a pear. “He’s not gonna talk,” the arresting officer insisted as he walked over hold-ing my paperwork. “don’t even try miranda,” he repeated grabbing my arm with a rough but natural grip. “i found him squatting down beneath the bridge off the 84, won’t say a word. We’ll keep him here for a night, maybe knock some sense into him.” he laughed as his eyes shifted toward the top, undone button of her shirt. She smiled before averting her gaze. “C’mon,” the man said gruffly to me, his tone transformed to the rough and ready gravel of manhood. i felt his hands dig into me like as if i were piano keys as the voices of three detectives sitting at their desks wafting through the air. “there’s mutey,” one of them said laughing. “Crazy old guy,” he motioned towards me, “won’t speak, no matter what. he was in last September for the night, public vagrancy you know, anyway looks like he’s back.” the remaining two glanced up, staring at the frayed, muddy bottoms of my pants, the tears on my flannel shirt. One of them wore a wedding band on his left finger. Veins of sweat leaked out under his arms directly above his protruding stomach. i met his gaze, imagining what his wife must look like. i could not see her hair colour or the shade of her eyes, yet i knew she wore outdated blue jeans and sweaters during the holidays with Christmas trees emblazoned on the front. i saw a small gold cross hang from her neck, resting over the collar bone the detective must have kissed tenderly when they were young but that now remained untouched. “C’mon buddy.”

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The officer tugged my arm briskly, forcing me to move forward. He led me to a large cell with two long benches against the walls and a pair of metal bunk beds pushed into a corner. Besides this furniture, the room was empty. “You know if you’d at least try to get into a shelter we wouldn’t have to do this, but that bridge is public property. Local gangs always fighting down there, grafitting the pillars, for all we know you could be doing it with them.” i stepped inside the cell. “it scares civilians you know. You people don’t bathe, eat right, and there are resources out there to help you. i just don’t understand it.” i met his gaze, wishing i could tell him i was a twenty four year old gradu-ate student when I first broke down. That each year since then I have talked less and less. it makes one realize how little there really is to say, especially when the people you love are no longer there. But it was easier to let him walk away, secure in himself, leaving me alone. Lying down on the bottom bunk, i closed my eyes. the train went by again, clanking louder this time. i thought of my wife walking the streets in the navy blue dress she always wore on Sundays. i bought her daisies once and she carried them in her hand bag, she was so lovely that day. But what are you to do with loveliness? it doesn’t make a person sane or well, it only makes them appear that way. “You have my heart, please don’t hurt it,” she said to me on our wedding night. She was lovely then too, but she cried when i made love to her. “It’s time for your phone call!” The officer yelled from the other side of the bars. i jilted forward, hitting my head on the bunk above me. Groaning, i laid back down, ignoring him. Who did he think I could have to phone? i was with her again, walking on the beach. it was cold and she wore the Wellington boots her mother bought her in England. She was silent, but back then i talked enough for the two of us. how stupid it seems now, telling her all the insignificant details of my day, assuming she wanted to listen. my head throbbed. Small droplets of blood appeared on my hand when i reached up to touch the cut. “I swear Professor Duffy graded my exam differently than the rest. I mean how could rogers score higher than me? rogers? Give me a break,” i remem-bered saying, kicking the wet dirt. She smiled and nodded, staring toward the springtime waves, holding down her skirt with her spare hand. “Are you cold? here, take my sweater,” i wrapped her in my cardigan be-fore pulling her to my chest. She shivered beneath my arms. i could feel her fragile bones, shoulder blades coiled beneath the skin like a bird with broken wings. it was just as when i found her, lying cold and still on

Meriwether Clarke

// 11

the sofa. That was the day. I was twenty-four years old and a graduate student. “Nora!” i called her name, rushing through the door. “i talked to him, Dean Reynolds, they’re re-grading my test.” i must have looked like a child, rushing home to tell his mother he won the spelling bee. there was a bottle of empty pills and a spilled glass of water next to her hand. the sun fanned over her like a translucent, gleaming shroud. Suddenly she was beside me, her body still as a frozen blade of grass. i moved closer to the wall, afraid any contact would make her disappear. She was so lovely, eyes open again, face white and iridescent as the moon. But she would not meet my eyes, her gaze tilted to herself, toward her chest. the train rattled once more, she did not move a muscle. i was not the man she remembered.


SpYiNG oN A STRANgER’S WEDDINg — Madeline Weinstein

You have to see this.my mother, standing at the windowin her evening dress and stocking feet,fastening (without looking) the claspof her pearls at the nape of her necksaid it. What is it?

Across the street from our hotel, outsidethe Hotel Sainte-Sulpice, the streetlamps blazelike sentries, casting a glaze on the glassof the function room: a shapely glowas if the scene were enclosed in a globeand the whole world might begin,if touched, to snow.

i don’t see what she means, and thenI see: not faces, but men, maybe ten,in tuxedoes, together too big for the roomand milling around, unmurmuring—but, not knowing how, i know no one

is speaking aloud; the room admits onlya not-unkind silence, a tender and speechlessintention—shared,like the next directionamong a school of fish.

A few brush shoulders; suit-sleeves rustlebreathless as pages of manuscripts, whisperingpast one another, some with a muteelectric shiver: recognitionone body offers another.

And then the ladies drift infrom an unseen source like incense,in pearlescent dresses, slickas the inside rim of an oysterfreshly split in half.they sway and bristle,

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petals in a night-wind.No one touches.

my mother turns away slowly, smoothingher skirt as if brushing the momentout of her clothes. Come on,she says, we have a table,meaning dinner. But they will go in,i think, as if to say, without us!

get your purse, she says. Your shoes.i do. i rush back to the window, and the room isempty. Completely, already.What could justify this senseof loss, as if the scene had been

a nautilus swept by the tide—iridescencecurled around dark secrecy,a promise that, if held up closeto the ear, it might whisperthe sea?

But then, from the far corner, two figuresenter. Impossible as the newly-dead when they appear for the first timesince their death in dreams,they seem

so certain they must be illusions,or the moment prior to illusion: all intention,like a skilled magician’s preparation, facesclarified with all the certaintyof disappearance.

he must be her father,with his bald, dark head; creased cheeks;the weight of his hand on her back; and his facewhen he feels her grasp his wristto anchor her astonishment.

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And i can tell from the nape of her neck,from where her dark skin meets the whiteedge of her dress, that she is beautiful.he looks inside her eyes, as ifto ascertain his face amid inscriptions ofanother love—

But all that i can see of her is herback: infuriating, perfect. Her bright spineis fastened with innumerable pearls,a hundred hidden buttons. And becausei see her through

the ghost my face casts on the pane,i place my mind’s great range of faceson her: Juliet, Jane Eyre, the bridewhose face is closedinside my parents’ wedding album, avertingher eyes,

ecstatic, embarrassed, unknowinglyholding my future inside her,a stranger...then, my mother’s voice,and the hand insistent on my shoulder:We should go.

i can’t. i know, when i go to the momentagain, to retrieve it, I will find it coldin my coat-pocket, dead as the moneyfrom that other country, which i could not spendbut will not change.

But now—they stepacross the threshold,

their two bodies(source and reference)

madeline weinstein

// 15

incised with brightness—now they look

most real to us,most lost.

We watch her body harden toa symbol,

as a moment hardensinto words,

the way that wax solidifiesinto something

worth burning,and burns.


NOW I LAy ME DOWN TO SLEEP — Katie Flanagan

P urgatory is worse than hell, i think as i sit. i have been waiting for the past year, and these last few minutes are the worst of all. my foot is bouncing to burn my nervous energy, and my hands are so sweaty i

have to wipe them on my slacks. my waiting companions seem calm in con-trast to me. The woman a few seats over is flipping through a fashion magazine as if she is waiting in a dentist’s office, and the college student across the room is working his way through war and Peace. I glance up as the clock ticks off another minute of my life. of my baby’s life. i think back to the last time i was in a hospital waiting room. it was seven-and-a-half years ago, in a hospital much less endowed than the one I am condemned in now. i remember seeing specks of blood on the buckled tile floor as I waited to be invited to meet my newborn baby. She hadn’t wanted me in the room during the delivery, my baby’s mother. She hadn’t wanted anything else to do with me after I had gotten her pregnant. When I was finally allowed into the hospital room, the bed was covered in blood and other liquids that i didn’t want to think about. A nurse handed me a bundle wrapped in soft pink blankets, and I held my baby for the first time. her face pinched into a wail as she transferred from the warm embrace of the nurse to my awkward arms. her soft pale skin was blotched with red from the hard work of being born, her fingertips peeking out from the tip of the blanket to give me a shy wave. She was warm and heavy in my arms, and i was afraid that if i breathed on her too hard she would break. After a few minutes, the nurse took my baby back and carried her to the nursery. i was also taken out of the room as my baby’s mother demanded that i get out of her sight. She discharged herself from the hospital two days later. I never heard from her again, but it didn’t bother me. She had been a fleeting fancy, a presence i missed only because it meant my baby had no mother. i named my baby Bridget and took her back to my old apartment. i lived in a crumbling old building whose floorboards creaked and windowpanes cracked. When I brought Bridget home, I had to pay a neighbor to run out and buy me diapers and baby food and baby clothes. All i had gotten before-hand was an old crib. i tried to be both mother and father to Bridget while slowly working my way up the ladder of a respectable insurance company. When she began to crawl and walk and experiment with holding things she shouldn’t have been holding, I decided to move out of my less-than-child-safe apartment. I pur-chased a three-bedroom house in a suburb that had a good school system and enrolled Bridget in the best daycare I could find. Now I sit in a different hospital waiting room, hoping a doctor will wake

// 17

me up from the nightmare that has been the past year. the clock ticks away another minute. i’m considering running around the waiting room to burn energy when the doctor emerges from a swinging gray door. our eyes meet and i hurry over to his side. i notice his skin is hardening, as if preparing to wrinkle, and it makes his bright blue eyes stand out awk-wardly on his face. i am strangely comforted by the fact that he doesn’t wear glasses. He leads me to his office, attempting to fill the silence with simple chatter about the weather this month. my nervousness increases as i sit down in the chair next to his desk. it is dark leather as doctor’s chairs should be, and his office is filled with medical books, as I expected. Once again, I find myself slipping into comfort. Perhaps even hope. He finishes his conversation about the weather reluctantly, folding his hands into his lap. my heart is launched into a state of limbo as i wait for his news. his voice delivers the harsh words in a soft, apologetic tone. the allergenic stem cell transplantation didn’t work, he says. the new bone marrow didn’t help. there’s nothing more we can do. he’s sorry, he says. The words bounce off the iron armor I have built for myself over the last year, but they sink into my heart like knife wounds at the same time. i ask a few questions, mostly to make sure that he’s not just trying to get the day done and go home to his happy family who never get sick and never force him to feel this way. there really is nothing else to be done, he assures me regret-fully. the cancer has spread to her heart and brain, he explains in words not so simple. i ask him how long she has. how long i have. three months at most, he half-whispers. I nod. It’s the number I expected. I request that he discharge her from the hospital. his bushy white eyebrows pull together in a frown for a second before he slowly nods. I stand, letting the conversation drip off me, and slowly make my way into the hospital hallway. my feet feel as if they are weighed down with iron chains. A few people glance at me as I zombie-walk down the corridor, but I don’t remove my eyes from the wall ahead of me. deep down, i had expected the news. in my head, i had expected the news. in my heart, i hadn’t allowed myself to think of it. She is staying in a standard hospital room. mounted in the upper corner is a television, against one wall sits an uncomfortable couch, and beeping machines surround a metal bed. i let my eyes sweep the room i have seen a hundred times before allowing them to settle on the person in the bed. my iron armor falls off when I see her. Bridget is lying in the bed, the light cotton blanket pulled up to her stom-

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ach, her hands curled around its edges. the gray hospital gown seems to swal-low her torso and arms, leaving only her head and thin neck for my viewing. Her beautiful face reflects the green and gray tint of the room, making her look sickly. I run my fingers over her bald head, pretending that her golden hair still flows down past her shoulders to the middle of her back. Her eyelids flutter, and I manage to smile down at her curious brown eyes. “What did the docor say, Daddy?” She has yet to manage to say the “t” in “doctor.” “he said i get to take you home.” her face brightens, her thin lips pulling apart to show her nearly toothless smile. “Am i better?” i freeze, searching for the right response. “do you feel better?” She frowns slightly as she takes stock of herself. “Not really.” i don’t know what to say to that so i stay silent, resting the gym bag i have brought on the bed. She gazes at it with a smile, a hand weakly reaching out to touch it. Unzipping the top, i give her a grin and reach my hand into the bag. “Give me a guess.” Bridget beams at the prospect of a game and presses her lips together in thought. She giggles at her idea. “A rabbit!” how can i refuse her beaming face? i stick my second hand in the bag as well and play around with the cloth until it resembles a monster. Giving Bridget another smile, i pull my creation out of the bag. “A rabbit!” She giggles again, leaning back against the pillows weakly. i nudge her cheek with the monster a few times before un-bunching the cloth to reveal its true form: her favorite shirt. The faces of four Disney Princesses are featured on the bright pink T-shirt. Her face becomes more lively at the prospect of removing the drab hospital gown, and she grabs the shirt out of my hands. i rummage out her purple linen skirt that she wore for two straight weeks in pre-school. She had grown out of it by the time she reached kindergarten, but i know that she is small enough for it again. I help her out of the bed and take off her hospital gown as she holds onto the railing of the bed to keep her balance. After stepping into the skirt by her-self, Bridget holds her arms up in the air so i can pull the shirt over her head. i place her carefully on the bed before returning to the bag for socks and shoes. once she is dressed, i push Bridget through the hospital in her wheelchair. She considers riding in the wheelchair to be a game, and she beams proudly at everyone we pass. the nurses smile indulgingly at her before letting their expressions slip into pity as they look at me. We move into the parking lot, and Bridget relishes the bumps that come

Katie flanagan

// 19

with the asphalt. it is the closest she will ever come to a roller coaster. “Can i sit in the front seat today, daddy? Am i old enough yet?” she bubbles on our way to the car. i decide not to disappoint her today, even though the sticker in the car says a child should be twelve years old before riding up front. “I think that seven-and-five-eighths years old is old enough.” She squeals with delight. i can’t help but notice that her squeal is a full degree quieter than it would have been a year before. i am about to reach out to ruffle her hair when I remember that she has no hair. For the first few minutes of the ride home, Bridget chatters brightly. Then her speech slows, and when i glance over at her at a stoplight, i see she has fallen asleep. i can’t help but smile, she looks so peaceful. Guiltily, i am glad that her mother is not around. i don’t want to share Bridget with anybody, not that her mother would have spent time with her. her mother was a woman of her profession who barely had time for even herself. the few dinners we had in the month we were together had been scheduled around her meetings and trial dates. i remember that when she told me she didn’t want to keep Bridget, a baby still growing in her stomach, i felt a sudden sense of relief that the child wouldn’t have to grow up in her over-scheduled shadow. i carry Bridget in my arms to the living room. She is so light i feel as if i am carrying a large rag doll. i sink onto the lumpy blue couch and cradle her in my arms, rocking back and forth as if she were a wailing baby. Giggling, she curls in my lap and rests her cheek on my chest. “What do you want to do, sweetheart?” I ask. It is her first night in our home for over two weeks. She presses her lips together into her thinking expression. then she smiles with excitement. “make cookies!” “Make cookies! Don’t you think we should eat dinner first?” I press my forehead against hers. She shakes her head with a mischievous smile. “No! Just make cookies! Lots and lots of cookies.” “Lots and lots? What kind? Should we make them out of cotton?” I pull at the blanket crumpled on the corner of the sofa. Bridget laughs at my silliness. “No! Not cotton!” “Should we make them out of Barbies?” “No, Daddy! Chocolate chip cookies! With lots and lots of chocolate chips.” “Oh, I see. We’ll make chocolate chip cookies.” Keeping her locked in my arms, i make my way to the kitchen. it is separated from the living room by

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a counter. I set Bridget down on the fake-granite surface so that she can lean against the yellow wall easily. She lets her legs dangle off the edge, her jelly shoes still a good two feet from the linoleum floor. I consider making her eat an apple before i decide that it doesn’t really matter anymore. Bridget watches me as I find the mixing bowl and search through the cupboards for the ingredients. it has been a long time since we’ve made cook-ies together, though it used to be a weekly event. i remember when Saturday afternoons had been reserved for baking. Bridget used to wake me up before the sun on Saturday mornings to beg me to make the cookies right away, but I always told her to be patient. Then as soon as the clock displayed 12:01, Bridget would jump up from whatever she was doing and clang around in the kitchen until i joined her. that was before she was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. After that, most Saturdays were spent in the hospital as we tried every sort of treatment available: medicinal drugs, chemotherapy, and allergenic stem cell transplantation. the doctors assured me that most children survive the disease and there was nothing to worry about. And i believed them, because i spent the hours i wasn’t with Bridget reading up on the disease, and the statistics were in our favor. “What’s wrong, Daddy?” Bridget asks. Her face is pulled into a frown, and I realize that my face must have betrayed my thoughts. i quickly put on a smile. “Nothing, baby.” i can’t think up a good lie so i stay quiet, heaving the tools and ingredients onto the counter next to her. Bridget’s face is animated as she watches me begin the ritual. i am surprised that i remember the recipe so well. it seems like ages ago that we last made cookies. Bridget leans against the wall after a few minutes. i glance up at her while continuing to cream the butter and sugar. her face is slacker than before, and i realize that she is getting tired just by sitting up. i wonder how much worse she’ll get in the next three months. her last three months. “daddy,” she starts. her brown eyes are round and mournful. “have you made cookies without me?” i stop creaming for a moment to smile at her. “No, sweetheart. i never make cookies without you.” She smiles widely at my answer, showing off the gaps in her mouth where teeth should have been. For a moment she looks like a normal eight-year-old. “Can we dance?” “right now?” She nods eagerly. i decide not to worry about what will happen to the cookie dough if i leave it and pick her up in my arms. Each of her feet rests

Katie flanagan

// 21

on one of mine as I begin to waltz across the beige linoleum floor to unheard music. Her hands are wrapped around my index fingers the way she used to wrap them when she was a toddler. She is beaming with each step i take, and i let my heart soak up her happiness. After a few minutes, i lift her at the waist and swing her in the air. She giggles, but when i rest her back on the counter she looks fragile, and i am afraid i might have tired her out. Bridget leans her head against the wall again and closes her eyes. i return to the batter, making sure it is creamy before removing the eggs from the re-frigerator. As i crack an egg on the side of the mixing bowl, i remember when Bridget first learned that chicks came from eggs. She had examined the white oval with a studious frown before asking me if she had ever been an egg. her eyes open again and watch as i stir the egg into the creamy mixture. “our cookies are the best, daddy. the ones at the hostipal are too hard. they don’t break softly.” She still can’t say “hospital” correctly. “that’s because i have a secret ingredient,” i whisper. Bridget leans towards me, her eyes wide with expectation. “What is it?” i pause dramatically. “my sweat.” She pulls back and wrinkles her nose. “daddy! that’s gross!” Grinning, i return to the mixing bowl. Bridget watches me carefully to make sure that i don’t actually include my sweat. By the time i have turned the batter into a sticky dough, flour has floated all across the kitchen. I wipe some off Bridget’s cheek before distributing spoonfuls of dough across three cookie sheets. She sits up excitedly. her role in the baking is coming up, the part that she always enjoys the most. the adding and mixing bores her, but the responsibility of putting the cookies in the oven and taking them out has been hers since the very beginning. i set Bridget down on the ground carefully, and i am about to reach for the cookie tray when she stomps her foot softly. “Let me do it, daddy. it’s my job.” I back away. She reaches her hands above her head and curls her fingers around the sides of the cookie tray. She pulls the tray with her as she backs up, freeing it from the counter. her arms tremble in the second that she struggles to hold the cookie tray, and then it clatters to the floor with a dull crash. i rush forward, momentarily grateful that the cookie dough did not splat-ter across the floor. Bridget stands motionless in front of the fallen tray. I pick it up and put it back on the counter before i realize that her lips are quivering. A plump tear rolls down her cheek as i fall anxiously to my knees in front of her. “it’s okay, baby. Nothing broke. Everything’s okay!” i rest my hands on her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her.

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She stares up at me as more tears escape from her troubled eyes. “i used to be able to do it!” i freeze. my heart feels as if it is being slowly shredded as i watch Bridget realize that she is not better. her eyes are glued on mine, waiting for me to comfort her, to tell her everything will be all right, that she will get better. i wonder how many times i will be able to tell her that in the next three months before she stops believing me. i wonder how much weaker and how much sicker she will get before she is finally freed from this disease. i pull her into a hug, stroking her scalp where there should be hair, decid-ing not to say anything at all. her hands weakly clutch the collar of my shirt, and she buries her face in my shoulder. i run my hand back and forth across her back as her wet cheek rubs against my neck. i wait to pull away until her breathing has calmed and her hands relaxed. i give her an apologetic grin and pick her up. “how about bedtime now, huh?” Wrapping her arm around my neck, she nods. I walk down the narrow hall-way towards her room. the walls are lined with family pictures, most featuring Bridget. Against the pictures, it is easy to see how much weight Bridget has lost. her skin hangs limply on her face, and the muscles on her arms and legs have all but disappeared. We enter her dark bedroom. I place Bridget in the white metal bed without switching on the light, slipping her under the pink covers and tuck-ing them around her body. She looks up at me questioningly. “don’t i have to change into my pajamas and brush my teeth?” Shaking my head, i wink conspiratorially. “Not tonight. All we have to do tonight is say our prayers.” Bridget smiles with the thrill of breaking rules. i know that she especially hates brushing her teeth. When she was younger, I would let her get away with just running the brush over her baby teeth briefly before going to bed. the leukemia changed everything. the doctor warned me that during chemo-therapy she had to brush her teeth carefully to prevent infection. Every night afterwards, we brushed our teeth together with a three-and-a-half minute song playing. She sits up against her feather pillow and folds her hands, squeezing her eyes closed to show that she is ready to pray. i kneel down at the side of her bed and rest my forearms on the covers next to her body. We start out together, her thin voice against my deep baritone. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to thee my soul to keep. If I should die-” i haven’t allowed myself to consider the word “die” for months. A wave of panic overcomes me, and my voice breaks. Bridget’s continues, strong and

Katie flanagan

// 23

brave, “-before I wake, I pray to thee my soul to take. Amen.” i open my eyes with a haggard breath and try vainly to smile. Bridget peeks at me from under her eyelids. “daddy, can i have a cup of warm vanilla milk?” her voice is more timid now as she ventures to break yet another rule. i muster up a grin. “Sure, sweetheart. i’ll go get you some.” in the kitchen, i put the cookie trays in the oven to cook, noting the time. i pour milk, vanilla, and three teaspoons of sugar into a mug. placing it in the microwave, I set the timer to forty-five seconds. As i watch the mug rotate on the glass microwave plate, i remember when Bridget was three years old and discovered the microwave. Every afternoon for weeks, she would run to the microwave as soon as we came home from pre-school. Standing on her bare tiptoes, the end of her golden braid in her mouth, she would watch the plate go round and round in circles. thinking about my daughter in bed now, i know things will only get worse. Now that none of the treatments have worked and the cancer has spread, she will be sick all the time. her last three months will barely be worth living. She will be in more pain now, and there is nothing i can do about it. i remember the days when all i had to do was kiss her bruise to stop her crying. my baby is slowly dying, and a kiss won’t help her. All i can do is sit back and watch. The microwave beeps to signal that it has finished warming the milk. opening the door to stop the sound, i notice the glass plate is still stubbornly rotating. i reach out and touch it to end its movement. If I should die before I wake. it dawns on me that there is a way to help Bridget. there is something i can do to stop the cancer from eliminating her healthy cells one by one. i have the power to end her pain. hurrying into my bedroom bathroom, i rummage through the medicine cabinet in search of the right pillbox. After a few frantic moments, I find it. i pull out a knife and cutting board when i return to the kitchen. pour-ing all the sleeping pills onto the wooden board, i chop them into tiny pieces before turning the knife on its side and pressing the pieces into a fine powder. Carefully removing the warm vanilla milk from the microwave, i set it down on the fake-granite counter next to the cutting board. Bridget painted the mug in preschool as a father’s day present. in wobbly red letters she had spelled, “DADDDy!” That mug has held my coffee every morning since. i hesitate. i try to think what my life would be like without Bridget. Just imagining it makes me feel as if there is a huge hole in my body that can’t be filled. I can’t picture a life where I wouldn’t see Bridget’s toothless smile every day, or hear her giggle, or watch her discover something new about the world.

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i remind myself that she is dying, no matter what. i have read all there is to read, and i know that there is no cure. the doctors have done all they could do. Bridget will leave my life anyway. i try to accept that, but i feel something rising inside me, shouting against reason that there must be a way, that my daughter can’t die. maybe if i just wait it out, they will find a cure that will save her. the smell of freshly baked cookies is wafting across the kitchen, and i think back to the cookie trays. tonight the strain of this disease was written across her face. Bridget is only starting to die, and now she knows it. All that is left for her is three months of deterioration. i have no way of comforting her, of protecting her. i don’t want her to have to live through her own death. The kitchen is filled with the aroma of vanilla and chocolate chip cook-ies as i take a measured breath and brush the powder into the milk. Using a plastic spoon to thoroughly stir the mixture, i carefully carry the concoction to my baby. Bridget is sitting patiently in her bed. She smiles up at me as i deliver the mug to her hands. “thank you, daddy. i love you.” i force a smile, my heart aching. “i love you too, Baby.” i lean in and steal one last goodnight kiss. her lips are warm and soft. She sips the drink, her eyes lighting up. “this is good!” i resist the urge to pull the mug away from her, to stop her, to keep her alive for me. i remind myself of her tears and sit quietly. She gulps the milk down quickly, and i worry that the hot liquid will burn her throat. Soon the mug is empty. She rests it on the bedside table before nestling down in her bed. i pull the covers up to her chin, and she moves her hands so that her fingertips are peeking out from the pink blanket in a shy wave goodbye. her eyes close, and i lay down in the space beside her to watch my baby sleep.

Katie flanagan

// 25

oN mEmorY — Andrew greenberg

t he memories came swiftly and settled in for weeks. i was in Cairo when it first happened, had been there for over a month when I be-gan remembering places and people i had not thought about in years,

had not even known i had remembered. A gravel driveway across from a patch of mustard flowers, high school girls with eyes framed in black, conversa-tions i had in cafes, in parks, in parked cars, the kinds of discussions that that had once seemed important but now seemed worn and dry. this was not the substance of repressed memory or anything relevant, but rather the everyday of my past resurfaced, and a painful nostalgia took hold while i tried to get by in Egypt. With California on my mind, I did not connect with Cairo, could not enter into its collective memory the way one must do when living someplace new. I wondered how many different people had lived there and died there, had suffered there and thrived there, had walked across those Nile bridges, driven across them in cars, ridden across them in carriages, if anyone had weighed their pockets with stone and stepped right off one because the golden gate was too far. i did not know the history and the folklore and only had a hazy idea of what came before. i could have looked this all up but instead i ached for home as more memories slid forward. i remembered faces i hadn’t thought about in years, whom i had no reason to be thinking about other than because i was remembering them. my mind kept dragging me back even though i knew that there would be no answer in rediscovering that the 56 goes east and that the desert isn’t so bad after all. there would be no meaning in reimagining San Diego, in finding comfort in tract homes and bottles of wine, in languish-ing on parking lot pavement and tired cafes, in going south in search of thrift stores and used book stores and cheap mexican food until we reached the border and had to turn back. i became trapped in a logic that made me write not one but two postcards to an old friend until i told her i still loved her. i signed my name as neatly as I could (to let her know I had grown up) and sat at my desk trying not to my cry as my roommate did his homework. A week later I tied the postcards with a rubber band, took them to the post office, but I’m still not sure if they ever reached her. She reminded me of a time when I drank my coffee black because I thought it made me seem more masculine—another detail of the past I had forgotten until I settled into Cairo (or Cairo settled into me). I thought of her again when the anniversary came: November 1st. It had been four years since she drove me home where i sat my parents down and told them i was gay; now there i was in the closet of Arab culture. i spent the night in search of an art gallery in the backstreets of Coptic Cairo with a man whose name meant smile

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when just four years before i had watched my mom cry as my dad told me it would be okay. i tried to realize the disconnect between those two moments, how anniversaries not only remind us of past events but also of how far we have come or fallen, perhaps how little has changed. the milestones get dates but the rest are left to us, dormant until they heave themselves forward. they are the glaze of daydreams that debilitate us momentarily, and they were the memories that flooded me in Cairo. But i don’t know where they came from, didn’t know my mind hat thought them significant enough to keep. It is strange when the mind digs deeper than usual, through crawlspaces you didn’t know existed, past the memories you normally retreat to, toward dustier ones, the kind that creak when opened. We think we forget things, but perhaps we really do shelve everything inside. per-haps recall, not storage, is the problem. And this must be evolutionary: the bad memories are warnings, and the good ones are the mind’s way of leading us to-ward someplace similar to better times, our past steering us forward. But this tactic is flawed. you can go back to the cafes and parking lots, but you can’t go back to the moments. You’ll revisit an old friend’s house but instead the gravel driveway will have been paved over, and instead of mustard flowers you will see houses or condos or a field of mud because you went the wrong time of year. You can try to create memories through phone calls and reunions, but it’s never like you remember it, not with the knowledge and loss you acquire over time. I tell people I spent four months in Cairo, but it was closer to three-and-a-half. i have been back in the states just a few weeks, yet i am already starting to forget. the details of Egypt toss themselves together now, and most of the memories that kept playing when i was there have again returned back-stage. i am not yet sure how i will remember Egypt, which people will fade behind images of oases, souqs, and the Nile. An al-Azhar student who couldn’t pronounce my name, a Kuwaiti who bought me orange soda at a soccer game, a thirty-something U.N. employee from Austria who told me about his room at the Marriot—(I’m still not sure if I led him on for fun that night. Too many cans of Sakara I can’t even remember if my morals stood up straight). All those faces and inconsequential instances, the conversations i had in fellucas, trains, and taxis, with men serving kushary and journalists I’ll never see again—they will revive themselves next summer in a litany of recollection on the anniversa-ry of the day I flew out there, and next fall when I think of where I was a year before. But August is far away, so I remember a window-well collecting snow, and i step in.

andrew greenberg

// 27

iNhEritANCE — Meriwether Clarke

Here is shadow—

Light streaming on damp bricksStars buttoned underneath thick clouds,The blurry shapes of fishA crowded sea. Behind my lidsBetween blue veinsthese swelling steps,Look to rise from groundi will not stomp them down,or trip on tricks of night. i am brave enough to breathe.

There is a moon—

the chapel on the mountWe look to still,once leaving lives have leftin clouds of earthbound dusty stars.the moon that was the samefor all the hours leading up untilmy breath met with the sterile sky,

delivered into beingWithin white walls,held like a gemin hands of glass,Nurses gazing smiling atthe pinkness of my skin.

As mama, always ready, »


Looked beyond herSweat rimmed eyes,At papa smiling,Just too proud,Unaware of how her skin had stretched,tearing, beating drums of pain

All to give a lifeGrim felt blood,Afterbirth,tomorrow and the next.

Meriwether Clarke

// 29


submission guidElinEs

our magazine comes out twice a year, with each issue focus-ing on a certain prompt, or theme, chosen by the editors. A portion of the magazine will be devoted to this prompt, but the rest of each issue will be open to all submissions, so feel free to send us any non-prompt inspired works as well.

* fiction * Creative Non-fiction * poetry * Experimental

lEngththere are no set limits on submission length, but due to space limitations, pieces over 10 pages are less likely to be accepted.

formAtWe accept only electronic submissions. Please format your document like so: * 12 pt font * 1" margins all around * double spaced * pages numbered.oNLY include your title on the manuscript. Your name should Not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Your name should oNLY appear on your cover letter.

CovEr lEttErPlease include a cover letter with: * your name * contact information * any previous publications * a very brief bio, and * the title and genre of your piece.Also, if you are submitting a piece based on the prompt, just give us a one- or two-sentence explanation of how your work pertains to the prompt. this explanation does not have to be extravagant; we just want to see how you think.

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PROMPT Issue 2010