winter 2013 issue

The Meadowland Review

Winter 2013

Cover Image

Rieki River

By Katana Leigh

Megan Duffy Poetry Editor, Photography and Art Editor

Jennifer Walkup Fiction Editor

For submission guidelines please visit www.themeadowlandreview.com Questions or comments: [email protected]

Copyright © 2013 by The Meadowland Review. All rights are one-time rights for this journal.

http://www.themeadowlandreview.com/

mailto:[email protected]

The Meadowland Review Winter 2013

Page 1

Poetry

Tim McCoy Thursday Night, March 3 Byron Beynon The Sundial 4 Lois Marie Harrod Her Quartz Contentment 5 Patrick Cabello Hansel Let Us Wait How Long For This Terror to Be

Forgiven 7

Diane Raptosh Poem 2 from Torchie's Book of Days 8 Tim Suermondt The Day I Decided to Leave the World 10

Gabriel Balente Garcia Leon Dabo 11 Libby Hart Transmigration

Vespers 12 13

Gale Acuff Mum 15 Gerald Solomon Magnanimity 16 Steve Klepetar Smokers’ Alley 17 Caridad Moro For Marlene, Who Asked 18 Susana H. Case Ornamental Horticulture 20 Laura Madeline Wiseman Frost 21 Sandra Kohler Black Dog 23 Rick Marlatt Grab Gear 24

Fiction

Robert Moulthrop To Tell You the Truth 26

Photography

Gina Williams Mantis Praying 2 Karen B. Golightly You Have My Heart

Cross Detail Flood Walls

6 22 42

Penn Stewart Chimney Rock Fargo

14 25

Contributors 43


Poetry

Mantis Praying

by Gina Williams


Page 3

Tim McCoy

Thursday Night, March

Moon, bright

coin, dead eye, cold

fullness crossed

by branch-fingers that seem

frozen

when seen but melt

in the moon—

almost gossamer the night-

objects

in moonshine, the streets

misting, the ways brambled

with dark

and berryless, almost

lost, the cold

as sacral as God

imagined

and unfelt, God

lost

in the night.

Hurt would seem

to pale in such loss-

light, but it pays

sweet the

nerves, which berry

in the mooneye.


Byron Beynon

The Sundial

This garden inhabited

with complex sounds,

unrecorded movements,

subtle shadows satisfied

by the day's generous light

measuring the life of leaves;

the apparatus of science,

a gradient of terrain

with its graduated dial

keeping check of limitless

hours engraved like everyman,

waiting now for the inexhaustible stars.


Page 5

Lois Marie Harrod

Her Quartz Contentment

Some said she should be ashamed

to have so much common stone

cluttering her chops and gobs,

and others that her content

was transparent and lacked

striations and cleavage

but how could she change

when lustrous and lusterless alike

called to her lips.

Those agates—sard, sardonyx, onyx,

yellow to brown, banded, black and white–

tongue in the cheek contentment

tongue twister, tongue wrestling

she smoothed them in her mouth,

sucked when no one was looking.

Strange perversion, but couldn’t

a collector have easily

hundreds of specimens, no two the same.

She was so patient she could feel

the crystals grow, smoky rose and leek green

between her teeth.


You Have My Heart

By Karen B. Golightly


Page 7

Patrick Cabello Hansel

Let Us Wait How Long For This Terror to Be Forgiven

There is a strangeness in our skulls, a desert

of bone we dare not touch. When a stranger

drills open the parietal bone, peels back

the dura mater, gently pulls

the hematoma free, what does he sing?

The surgeon’s hands are his compassion,

and yet he spies the worst of us, the cry

locked in wounds, the end of all

words, and their beginning. His hands

refuse to mourn that which is not dead.

The infant cannot shake the hand of his savior.

He is not awakened until the skin has been sewn up

and he is wheeled down the fluorescent hallway.

The nurses will wrap him, carry him, watch him

through the night and the day and the night.

In their daydreams, they will marry him,

a smiling boy with a bald head

stitched like a family baseball.

Long after their shift has ended, long after

their own children are fed and bathed and put to bed,

the nurses will talk to each other in the underworld

of sleep. It is an honor to have removed

his death, they will say, holding a pillow,

running their fingers along the hidden stitch.


Diane Raptosh

Poem 2 from Torchie's Book of Days

Despite the fact I can’t lay flat two fingers, this morning I walked on my hands from my house— over grass and elm shadow and across the sidewalk’s light upheavals, half the way to Sunbeam Grocery—chutes of fresh blood launched to the brain with each stride of the palm, pair of inner blue pumps pretty much off duty; spine, lats, and thyroid cartilage elongated fully. Thus do I try with the soles of my hands to cop a feel of the globe in mega-dimension, how dogs sniff voles through fronds of wild rye.


Page 9

With how much grandeur dandelions keep their minds afloat! Noble, the clover laced in industrial bug juice, Marvin a swatch of roving cumulus. The whole schmeer, by which I must now mean the full-on world, is half again as much a meanness derby as anything else. Therefore, let me lay this word in the church of your mouth, sweet and lanky as a splice of blue grass: inwit. Sit back, each of you, and taste its meat.


Tim Suermondt

The Day I Decided to Leave the World

…I undecided quickly, turned around,

ran along the busy street to the house,

grabbed my wife and we agreed

on taking a long walk in the park—

the clouds were thin like string,

bizarre in their contours as if

they had been painted, my wife said,

by Miro whom she remembered from school.

I enjoyed the crowds surging over

the lawns, enjoyed being a part not apart.

While I kissed my wife’s neck, keeping

a steady hand on her breast, I forgot

the seriousness I had let make me foolish

and gratitude returned with a vengeance—

the elegance of the swans at the boathouse

drifted over the lake like a wealthy shawl.


Page 11

Gabriel Balente Garcia

Leon Dabo

Painted as though he knew. As though the trees had spoken their great fear of man into him. As though he saw into the mirror of rivers what was to become of us, of our last wilderness. Our grave undoing. For he was haunted to capture them, the ghost of mists, the fall of clouds and the grey angels we could not see within them. He was their automatist, grounding the hue of leaves, and dipping his wand of brushes into the blood of wood- nymphs as the hills sighed their hushed, whale-cry into his ear. His son—a ghost in the paint, living over the skin of canvas. And we, standing before the book of his work which hangs subdued upon the wall, become nudes in the museum that is the World.


Libby Hart

Transmigration

It was a small death, and one of tide-burial,

but the pebbles collected him with the water’s help.

He now lies on a dry rift, spirit-still in a field of stone,

his lake-blue eyes gone, taken by insect or beast.

Each long, long dark wing splays into crucifix form—

the chamber of his chest cut deep at rib-vault

to appease any Doubting Thomas.

Exposed bone nests in plumage,

webbed feet have shrunk to black-blooming,

and despite being as dry as parchment

the flies still want him for their own.

I get busy building a cairn—

each stone the size of a saucer, flat and ladylike—

each fitting snug over the next and the next

until the weight of small offering is complete.

The world grows quiet as a cloister

when the lake whispers his name.

The sky praises his feathers.


Page 13

Libby Hart Vespers

A spell of words

then a loosening of fault line,

black miracles spill from my breast.

One hundred swallows

ravenous and open-mouthed,

each menace of wing eye-loaded apparition.

Calligraphy of wildlings,

auguries of the oldest longing,

dark lessons skimming the squat field.

Their muddled hymn

flickers past soundless heifers,

past a cluster of sheep—repeat and repeat.

Lightfall delivers its farmer’s handshake

as God calls through the trees,

as the wind rushes ahead.


Chimney Rock By Penn Stewart


Page 15

Gale Acuff Mum Father's been talking to flowers again, the pansies in the hanging basket on the patio. I'm washing coffee cups

and reading his lips: You're a pretty thing, he's saying to one. I love you so much. I'm embarrassed, but not for him--for me: I don't even tell him that I love him. I've forgotten how. I have Alzheimer's of the soul, I suppose. He's losing his mind but not, so far, his heart, while I, I have all my wits but little more to show. Still, I cook our meals and clean the house and do the shopping and laundry and drive us around and write the checks and lock the doors at night and put out the cat and we don't even have one. I dry a saucer, then walk outside. Suddenly he's mum. Talking to Nature again, I see. I'm grinning.

No, sir, he says. (He's ashamed). He won't meet eyes for eyes. No, sir. (He doesn't know who I am. Well, that makes two of us). When they talk back to you, Father, I say, let me

know what they say. You wouldn't understand anyway, he says. Zing--he's got me there. When you get to be as old as I am, he adds, flowers open up like people. Well, I say, that's mighty profound. Guess you

told me. Yes, sir, he says. I guess I did. He goes inside--he's after the cookies I made last night, which he's hoarded somewhere, in the sofa, inside his pillow-case, on his nightstand. Odds are pretty even that he'll forget what he's looking for, but I'll find them and return them to the jar or throw them away. I'm in his footsteps now--he left them behind, before the blooms

--asking, Why the hell won't you talk to me? Someday, their faces sign. Someday, we will.


Gerald Solomon Magnanimity

Yellow-Spots! Blue-Stripes! Small, hairy woubit! Welcome, happily evolved! Go loop along your footpath breakfast twig! (Callow bug soon jogged by nature. Drowsiness, and damp wings bud, or breeding wasps and busy eggs...) Progress, that progressive idea! Nature you know cold-shoulders Darwin. What's best? To be safe you hedge your hopes, and for some hope's another word for prayer. (A trusty, left to trust that unsafe jail, syntax.) Peeved, and for a jot of common sense I cuff my balding head, perchance to stun an all-too-human dread. (Awake in the dark you wait for insight. Only last night at 3.0 I got this glimpse… gone by the time to rise and brush my teeth.)

Forgive the gods, they cease to exist─ we magnanimous left behind. (By this I know there will be trouble.) Still, you look at what lies so close at hand: civil city blocks, cultured country fields, glad safaris off to hello the wildebeest… (But grace of a blade of grass curving under your shoe… Or, at your feet small seeds unrequired in a season’s fallen straw... Or, pondering, surprised in wonder at a passing girl, desire absent...) Standing at this open window looking out, tendering all that’s now and what long past.

Recalling slowly, looking back─ how my father, talked, laughed, smiled, stopped.


Page 17

Steve Klepetar

Smokers’ Alley

I have grumbled on cold

ground, when the wind

blew free.

Here in this alley, I have squeezed

between crates

and felt the rough truth of bricks.

It’s been a long walk

by the river, where smokers

gather to fill their furtive lungs with ash.

When they see me, their heads bow

slightly and hands slip quickly

behind their backs

as if my eyes were there for them:

a chain and a nail and a word.

But I have forgotten them

already,

passed beneath slender willows through a doorway

into my own song, that vehicle

of breath

and light, where dust

floats gently through the universe to settle at the foot of plants.


Caridad Moro

For Marlene, Who Asked One night at a party,

I haggled with my date

over a bottle of Pinot Noir

and a corkscrew

he refused to hand over.

He wasn’t a prick,

just a man who thought

the juice was his,

because he brought me

and that’s what guys do,

even though he didn’t have a clue

how to handle the entry

or the swivel of the screw

into the flesh of the cork

as if force

could make anything

give way

determined despite the cork

crumbling into flecks,

failure afloat the surface

of what he’d sullied.

The watchful brunette

crossed the room,

slid her body between us,

slid his hands off the wine,

slid her eyes down the bottle

and insinuated

the tip of the screw,

deeper by turns

dislodged the cork

in one motion

and poured red velvet

into my glass.

She spoke

of Portuguese cork trees

so evolved they had learned


Page 19

to ward off disaster,

impervious to drought

or fire, the chew

of termites and chainsaws,

trees capable

of renewing their skins.

I listened

beneath a canopy

of white sheets,

another bottle

breathing

beside her bed.


Susana H. Case

Ornamental Horticulture Every fall, I dig holes, drop in bulbs: hyacinths, poppies, goth-purple tulips. Every winter, animals must devour them—none issue forth in spring. There’s sweet anonymity under the earth; are the culprits moles? Voles? But, under blanket ruck, or at the hearth,

there’s you who flower, dog wheezing at your feet, heat from our bodies, merciful. I cling to you, tight as kudzu, seduced by all things, including your St. Louis barbeque— just another part of the path. You’re always sure just what to do to doo wop me, you wicked man.


Page 21

Laura Madeline Wiseman

Frost I suddenly respect the magnolia, petals

browning in the late sleet and snow, the blooms

folding into crepe paper ribbons and hanging on.

Each year the magnolia bets against cold and buds,

the cyclic pull to pollinate and try again next March.

And daffodils that open yellow throats in February

between drift and melt, nodding with hope. I respect

the grotesque growth of roaches, their tenacity

against poisoning, the staff resistant bacteria in hospitals.

Suddenly I respect fathers who abandon their families

their cocks stiffening again for others, these women

who leave and don’t return their calls. Look at that one

in old blue jeans and a college hoodie, elbows on knees

at his son’s hockey game, and though he cheers

and shakes his fist high at each score, his sound is lost

and the clear blue eyes of his son never once look his way.


Cross Detail By Karen B. Golightly


Page 23

Sandra Kohler

Black Dog

The black dog of morning barks, turned

loose in the white world of the first snow,

winter’s announcement. Where I went and

who I was in dream is close and alien as the

neighbor’s dog: I’m furious, desperate over

loss, a stolen suitcase I won’t leave without,

refusing to get back on the bus, keep travelling.

Intrigue, violence: pursuing a criminal, I am

pursued. Awake, the details are lost in snow.

Dream and dog both speak of poverty:

limits, constriction. To bark to be let back

into a cozy prison is poverty. I am afraid

of the narrowing of the world I take in,

the self taking it in. Cold, fear, pain constrict.

Age brings present loneliness, dread of

the future. My husband’s shovelling snow.

I imagine the scent of his body, an urgency

we secrete now like our body’s fluids.

Four children go down the alley – two

pulling sleds, one sitting on one sled, a fourth

following with a shovel – the only figures in

the white landscape. No birds, not even geese

scoring the sky. What bank or cornfield have

they chosen to hunker down in, nest in a fuss

of their own feathers? A black scatter belies

me: grackle, crows. Now a door scrapes, the

sounds of my husband down in the kitchen.

I want to go down and be with him, I want

to stay here writing, I want to know that

he’s there as I sit here, that he will be there

when I go down. He’s making a cup of coffee,

slicing a banana into two bowls, unfolding

the newspaper – his actions common and

miraculous as the snow mounded like a

dune on the deck outside my window,

or the neighbor’s black dog barking.


Rick Marlatt

Grab Gear

Hotel showers are always a mite tricky.

Today is no exception. When I finally find

the good balance of heat and pressure

the water comes at me like a thousand gongs

which is strange because this is downtown Omaha,

the farthest place on earth from a monastery.

The soap dish below the groaning shower head

bears the inscription caution: not to be used as grab gear.

I’m alone and sturdy, so not particularly concerned.

I do however consider the litany of times

this friendly disclaimer would have come in handy:

The electric fence I grabbed when I was 4

while the cow chewed methodically in the mist

as I screamed. The radiator hose that scalded my thumb,

my kindergarten teacher’s talking necklace,

her mountainous chest underneath. The poison ivy

behind my grandmother’s house, her deceptive skillet.

The theatre’s isle railing that was strictly for show.

Here, with the hot water losing stamina, giving way

to a rush of arctic fury, I realize we’re always reaching

for the mysteries, catching ourselves from falling.

It’s our burden, this standing upright in a world

governed by gravity, this land-bound desire for altitude.

Like the masses, I’ll ride the elevator to the kiosk

where the escalator will usher me to security,

where I be cleared to ascend the morning skies,

to feel the sun’s warmth against my cheek.

To revel for a moment in that God-like perception,

to pry apart the stubborn floorboards under Heaven,

to peak inside with a big astonished eye.


Page 25

Fiction

Fargo By Penn Stewart


Robert Moulthrop

To Tell You the Truth

When I heard Maureen had left, I have to admit, I was surprised, but not overmuch. I’m a

woman, a wife, a mother. Not too much that’s going to be a real surprise, you know?

First thing, her conversation had changed. Where before she was always going on about

something or other – politics, usually – lately it was just information: a sale over at the furniture

store on Route 17; her mother’s colitis. But all flat, like everything was all the same and it didn’t

matter what she talked about. I had suspicioned something, but I wouldn’t have been able to say

what.

Before, Maureen had loved long talks, she called them ‘chats.’ “Come over for a chat,” she’d

say over the phone. I’d be ironing, hunching my shoulder up against my ear to hold the phone,

testing the iron with a bit of spit on my finger to see if it would sizzle. “Mom,” Carolyn would say,

“don’t do that, you’re gonna burn your finger.” It was just one of those things you wind up

carrying through life: Your mother teaches you how to iron, you iron your clothes in college,

you’re good at ironing, most of the time you like it, find it soothing, you get married, your

husband likes his shirts a certain way, and so you iron, no big deal, until someone says “Why are

you chained to that ironing board?” Maureen said it, actually. She was the one who first made the

iron into a something I couldn’t ignore. Well, I did ignore it. But it was like that old trick, you

know, someone says to you, “Don’t think about pineapples,” and the next thing, all you can think

about is pineapples. So with ironing, after what Maureen had said, I had to work very hard not to

think of it as a chain. Because it wasn’t, you see. I like ironing. It’s soothing.

So I’d say to her, on the phone, my shoulder hunched, “I can’t just now.” I wouldn’t tell her

I was ironing. She must have known, though, because she never asked, never said, “Why not?”

She’d only say, “Well, okay, then, let’s chat now.” And then, without even stopping for breath,


Page 27

she’d start. “Did you hear about what happened in Japan,” she’d say. Or Egypt. Or Washington.

Other friends were always wanting to talk about things we knew, about the PTA or the soccer or

getting ready for the prom. Or gossip, you know, about this one or that. For Maureen, though,

the world was gossip. Yassir Arafat could have belonged to the country club, the way Maureen

talked about him. But then, it was suddenly like she was wearing blinders. She was the one talking

about colitis.

So, I wasn’t too much surprised when I heard she left. I’ll admit I was a little put

out. I mean, I’d thought we were friends, and there she was, leaving, and here I am, hearing the

news from, of all people, Fred, my husband.

“Really something,” he said. “Garth’s really busted up. Any more beer?”

“Probably down the cellar,” I said. “I didn’t get any more, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I saw him down at Lan-Dor’s,” he said. “Just standing by the screws. Hey, that’s

something, huh? He’s standing by the screws and he’s the one that’s screwed.”

Fred fancies himself a card.

“Is that where you found out?” I said. “Bring me some potatoes if you’re going down the

basement for more beer.”

“I don’t need beer now,” he said. “Carolyn can get it.”

“I’m in the middle of homework,” said Carolyn. “Who was your slave this time last year?”

“You watch your mouth, young lady,” said Fred. “Nobody’s elected you president yet.”

“I’ll get the potatoes, Carol,” I said. “You just focus on your homework. A few brains

around here wouldn’t hurt.”

“What am I, stupid?” asked Fred.

I just went down the stairs into the basement, got the potatoes and the beer, then came

back up.

“Did you talk to him there?” I asked.


“Nope,” said Fred. “I could tell he didn’t want to see me. So I just went after the electric

cord I went for. Decided not to say anything. They didn’t have the right length for the blower, so

I got two, wasn’t that much more. I’ll run into him again sooner or later, say something then.”

“So, how’d you hear?” I asked. I was peeling potatoes for mashed at the sink, letting the

water run so I could wash them while I peeled them. Saves time; cold water feels nice on your

hands, too.

“Ginny, at the bank,” he said. “She was the one waiting when Maureen came in and took

out all her money.”

“She shouldn’t have told you that,” I said.

“Well, she didn’t really tell me. Besides, I used to date her in high school, and I’m a big

enough depositor, not as if it made any difference. I was just saying as how I needed change for

bowling, nobody ever has enough quarters for playing Quarters after, then we wind up with

dollars and they get all soggy and it costs too damn much. Anyway, Ginny said I’d just missed

Maureen and I said, ‘Where?’ and she said, ‘Came and went. Needed a suitcase.’ And the way she

said it, I kind of knew what she meant,” he said.

“What was she wearing?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know?” said Fred. “Is that meatloaf again with the mashed

potatoes?”

“It’s a new recipe,” I said. “Veal.”

Carolyn started to make a face, so I told her to get upstairs and wash up.

*

I finally called Maureen. I thought about it. A lot. Well, there’s time to think, you know,

especially in the morning, when the dishwasher’s making its noises and the laundry’s started and

the beds are made. Especially if you turn off the television and decide not to turn on the radio and

then stand awhile listening to the quiet in the kitchen, and then decide you don’t need to look for

coupons in the Sunday paper you’ve been keeping around. Just coffee and the birdbath, out the


Page 29

window. No birds yet. I hadn’t even put out the feeder. It was just getting into spring then, about

six weeks since I’d heard the news from Fred. He hadn’t said anything more that I noticed. I’d

thought he might have said something about running into Garth again. Fred’s at the plant and

Garth’s a teacher, but you know the way it is, you run into people all the time, town this size, the

supermarket or the cleaners or whatever.

Paxton, Ohio’s not the center of the universe or anything, but we do all right; there ’s the

plant and some farms and a Wal-Mart that’s turned Main Street into a desert. But we get

by. Over at the plant is where they do television assembly for some of the top brands. Fred’s chief

assistant on planning. He’s done real well, I’m so proud of him.

I thought of asking Fred if he knew anything about Maureen, he’d dated her, too, in high

school, not the same as Ginny at the bank, and, of course not the same as me, but then I thought

the better of it and just let things alone, until I ran into Garth one day at the other supermarket

where they still get the good beef. He was in the freezer section just standing and staring at some

frozen meat pies.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to start, but I thought he might say something, so I

just stayed there. When he finally looked up, he said, “Well, hi, Dot”.

“Hi, back,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“About what?” he said.

That made it awkward. I’d said I’m sorry because I thought everyone knew, but then when

he said what he did, I thought maybe everyone didn’t know or maybe he didn’t want everyone to

know, so I just kind of raised my eyebrows and made a little face and said, “Well, you know . . .”

and let it trail off so it could have been anything then, like Maureen’s mother’s colitis or what we

all knew was going on at school with the union negotiations. But then he looked at me real hard

and I could tell he understood, and then he pushed his cart over closer, so I knew he knew I knew.

“It’s been hard,” he said. “Real hard.”

“Umm,” I said. I couldn’t quite think what he was getting at.


“She just, you know, left,” he said.

I nodded. I still couldn’t think of anything to say, except, of course, to ask the question to

find out what I really wanted to know.

“Where’d she go?” I said finally. “I haven’t seen her around.”

“She, um,” he said. “Uh, er.”

I thought it best if I just let him get on with it at his own pace. “Is she at her mother’s?” I

asked.

“No,” he said. “I think . . .”

“Don’t you know?” I asked.

“Well, yes and no,” he said. “What it is, she’s at the Holiday Inn out by the Interstate, only

please don’t say anything to anyone, I don’t like to say it, people get funny ideas, you know, about

a woman alone in a motel, and you know Maureen, it isn’t like that at all.” He paused and looked at

me earnestly. “You won’t say anything, will you?”

“Well, no,” I said. “Of course not. Especially since you don’t want me to. But . . .”

“But what?” he said. “Oh, please, Dot, this is so terrible. I don’t know what I’d do if Casey

were home.”

“Have you told him?” I asked. Casey, their son, had just gone off to OSU.

“Well, not exactly,” he said.

“Not exactly because why?” I said, as gently as I could. I could tell he wanted to get away

from me, but I could also tell he wanted me to stay. I suspected he hadn’t talked with anyone much

except to say “Thank you” when he got change at the market or of course to his students about

algebra and such, but I didn’t think that counted for much. I decided just to wait, you know, the

way you do when you hear the washer go into the last spin cycle and you don’t want to start

anything new because you’ll just have to stop it, so you just, maybe, stand in the middle of the

living room and watch the dust and listen to the sounds from outside, the cars passing on the road

or, in the summer, someone’s lawn mower or a leaf blower if it’s the fall, especially on a Saturday


Page 31

or Sunday when the men are home. You just learn to wait and listen, because sometimes it’s the

only thing you can do.

“Because, well, because . . .” he said. And then he stopped, and just stood, opening and

closing the freezer door.

I could have helped him. I knew where he was. He was waiting for hope, waiting, wanting

something he was afraid to talk about. Sometimes, when you know you really want something,

you’re afraid to put it into words, afraid that if you let it out, you’ll never see it again, because it

will vanish like a soap bubble, plink, and then you’d never have the hope any more, so you think

the best thing to do is keep it to yourself. And wait. But I knew this was was something he needed

to talk about, to ask for help with. And there I was, in the frozen foods, the first person to come

along right after he’d allowed hope to bubble up in his chest.

“You think she . . .?”

I didn’t want to say it either. First off, it wasn’t mine to say; it was his hope. And second, I

wasn’t really sure I wanted to do what I knew he was going to ask me to do. I mean, you spend

your life doing what you know best, right? For instance, I didn’t set out to iron. I just, you know,

picked it up. And found out I was good at it. The same way some people are good at bookkeeping

or running up fancy dresses on a sewing machine. I’m that good at ironing. What I’m not good at

is being in between people, and I’m terrible if things get out of control.

But I was the one standing in the frozen foods on the other side of his shopping cart that

morning, so I was the one he asked. And when he asked me, I only hesitated a little, because I had

to think a little about it, about how, if things were reversed, and if Fred had left me and I had come

to a place with a little hope and I was across a shopping cart from Garth and had worked up some

nerve, what would I want him to say? So when Garth said, real fast with one breath like if he

stopped he’d never start up again, “Could you go out to the motel and see her and tell her I’d do

anything to get her back?” I said, “Yes.”

*


I’ve been in one or two motels before. To me, they’ve all got that smell. Not a bad smell,

just, you know, that smell from cleaning chemicals or whatever they use, where it smells a little

too sweet and you know there hasn’t been a window open in years. Fred and I, we don’t do

vacations all that much – Disney once when Carolyn was little, and another time down to Branson

– but then his sister, mostly, they have a place in Kentucky we go sometimes.

But there was Maureen, paying I don’t know how much for that room, and ready, when I

called, to have me come by. I said we could meet in the Waffle House, that’s out there by the

Interstate, too. But she didn’t want to. I could tell by her voice that even though it was out of

town, it still was too public for her. When I’d suggested it, she’d said, “I’d prefer it if we met

somewhere else, Dot. You could come by my room.” The way she said it, I could tell that was what

she wanted. So I said, “Okay,” and then we set a time while Carolyn was in school and Fred was at

the plant, in the afternoon, so I could get everything done around the house needed doing,

including getting a stew going in the crock pot, didn’t want to hear anything from anyone about

dinner being late, even if Fred doesn’t like stew, he could stand it this once, and it didn’t matter to

Carolyn what I made, she was in one of those I-hate-this-food-this-house-these-parents things that

I’d given up paying any attention, except to make sure she was eating something and that what

she was eating she wasn’t throwing up later. I mean, TV’s good for something, right?

So, Maureen. Room 217 was up some concrete stairs and along an outside hallway

overlooking the parking lot, with a diner, on the other side. I wondered why she didn’t want to

meet me there.

And then I knocked at the door. And then she opened it. And then there she was, same

Maureen, dark hair pulled back and that long braid put up in the back, eyes all done, just a little

other make-up, that dark purple pants suit she’d worn to the library dinner. I don’t know what I’d

expected—some kind of change, I guess. Something more, maybe. Gold earrings and a jangly

necklace. Or something less, like maybe an old house dress and her hair all let go and flying and a

wild look in her eyes. But there she was, just the same. And I thought, Well, there it is. You can


Page 33

change and not change at the same time. But seeing her like that, pretty much the same but now in

this motel room, made me wonder about how much of whatever had changed her had been there

before. I looked at her and thought back to things like the library dinner or the bake sale. But I

couldn’t see anything.

“Come on in, Dot,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. I was nervous, I’ll admit it.

“I can put your coat in the closet,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “The room’s nice.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said. “It’s small and ugly.”

I couldn’t stop myself, but then I did. “So why . . .” I said.

Maureen shut the closet door. “Here, let’s sit,” she said, ignoring my words, pointing over

at two chairs on either side of a wood table by the window. She’d pulled the blinds so we wouldn’t

have to look out at the corridor and the parking lot; or maybe it was so that people wouldn’t be

able to look in. There was a thermos on the table and some milk in little plastic cups with lids and

packets of sugar and packages of pink and yellow sweetener.

“I couldn’t remember how you . . .” she said.

“Just black,” I said, probably too quickly. “They keep it nice.”

Maureen looked around the room, then unscrewed the top to the thermos and poured

coffee into first one cup, then the other. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “It’s been lonely here.”

“I’m glad I could come,” I said. “I wondered about that. I mean, first you were there, and

then you weren’t, and we all just wondered, and I thought you’d probably gone away, I thought I

remembered your mother was in Denver, or your aunt or someone . . .”

“My sister,” she said. “In Omaha.”

“Well,” I said, “out that way. But then you were here.”

“I was hoping . . .” she started, then stopped and sipped her coffee.

“Yes?” I said.


“Hoping that people would think I’d left. Less gossip.”

“Well, they did,” I said. “But that didn’t stop the . . . I mean, there really wasn’t all that

much, any, really.” I looked up at her and was surprised to find her eyes were bright, looking

directly at me.

“Really,” she said, echoing my word in a way I couldn’t tell whether or not she was

disappointed.

“So, Dot,” she said, “how are you?” She was looking away, so I didn’t take it for a real

question, just a way of filling the space until we moved on to something else. I was glad she didn’t

really want to know, because since pulling up in the car I’d had a series of feelings I didn’t know

anything about. I’d sat there looking at the diner, looking out past it to the soybean field, just new

planted, nothing there but mounds of dirt and the occasional green shoot, and I’d felt strange and

different. I mean, truth to tell, you don’t ever think of yourself as being the kind of person who’ll

go visiting a friend, not a friend really, more of an acquaintance, well, anyone for that matter, in a

motel near your town, out on the Interstate, someone you know, someone who used to be

someplace, have a kitchen like yours and a family room, who knew how to make lasagna for the

pot luck from the same recipe as the one you used, only now you know her kitchen’s empty, that if

you went by the house in the afternoon and rang the bell, there wouldn’t be anyone there, and not

just because she’d gone to Columbus for the day to see the King Tut exhibit, or whatever. Looking

out that car window I’d thought about Garth and how he must have felt to come home to a house

where when he said, “Hey, I’m home,” there wasn’t anyone there to hear him. And I’d thought of

Fred saying that with no one there. Or Carolyn saying it. Or me.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m fine. You look fine, too.”

“I am,” she said. “All in all. I’m pretty good.”

That, of course, answered some of my questions, and some of the questions that Garth

would want answered, even if he hadn’t said anything about it. Then I was stumped. I wanted to

ask her, oh, well, everything. But I couldn’t. I was afraid she’d look at me the way she always had


Page 35

about the ironing, and, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t feeling all that strong inside and thought that

if she did start looking at me, I might just get up and leave. So I just picked up a plastic spoon and

stirred my coffee like I had to get every little bit of sweetener dissolved before I could take another

sip. I looked up a little at one point and it seemed like Maureen was smiling.

“You go ahead,” she said finally, after I’d stopped stirring and had licked the spoon and put

it back on the saucer. “Ask me anything. Good Lord, Dot, we’ve known each other since fourth

grade. You don’t have to look at me like I grew a second head.”

I breathed a little easier then, because I knew she really meant it. So I took a breath, and I

said, “Why?”

“Why?” she said. “Because I’m tired of not talking to anybody, because I’m tired to death of

just being here with nothing but that diner and the television.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, “but I did want to know about that. Why here?”

“Oh, that,” she said. “Because my sister won’t have me, because she thinks what I’m doing

is a sin, and because I don’t know what I’m doing next, and because I needed some time to myself,

and because the manager’s hard up for cash and is giving me a good rate because I’m doing the

books for him and his wife to make the money that’s mine last a little longer.”

“That’s . . . wonderful,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” she said. “You’re so polite, Dot. So sweet. I could always count on you to be .

. . nice. It’s a virtue. Really it is. I wish I had more of it. But I don’t.”

“Thanks, I guess,” I said. “But . . .”

“I know, I know,” she said. “The truth is, I didn’t plan this, but when it happened, well,

there I was, and I knew that if I thought about it any more, I wouldn’t . . .”

And there we were. The Why.

“ . . . so I did,” she finished, then took another sip of coffee. She put her cup down on the

saucer then sat quietly with her hands in her lap.

“Did what?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.


“Left,” she said, still sitting quietly, her hands folded in her lap, as if leaving someone you’d

been married to for twenty-two years was just something you did, like picking up your clothes at

the dry cleaners or cooking a plate of lasagna for the PTA fund-raiser.

“But why?” I said again. She looked up.

“If I tell you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me, so maybe I’d better tell you something

else, make it more believable. Then you can go back to Garth and the others and it’ll put things to

rest for once and for all.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Oh, like I’m waiting here for my lover, he’s a big television producer up in Columbus, does

all those political shows on Sundays, I’m just waiting on him until he ditches his current

girlfriend, she does the weather on the morning news, then he and I are going to New York City.”

“Really?” I said. I could picture Maureen in New York City, her hand raised to get a taxi,

going off to a museum or somewhere where they drink white wine and eat cheese and don’t have

to cook lasagna to raise money.

“No,” she said.

“But,” I said.

“That’s just because I saw one of those documentaries on cable and I liked the name,

Brendt Mernahaghan, sounded like a man with a cute smile, and the weather girl in the morning is

a drip. I have too much time on my hands,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “I thought . . .”

“Right,” she said. “Easier to believe than the truth.” She looked at me. “What’s truth,

anyway?” she said. “Especially these days. Reality TV, people supposed to look like they’re living

with a camera up their nose without noticing anything, except you know they’re doing what

they’re doing for the camera, like those poor people on Jerry Springer or those other shows,

hollering at each other and running around, making fools of themselves because someone’s told

them to.”


Page 37

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I mean, I’ve never seen them, but I think I know.”

“But this now, this is real,” she said, picking up a plastic spoon , giving her coffee another

stir, then taking the spoon and licking it. “I like this,” she said. “I can throw it away and not feel

guilty. Did I tell you they asked me to help write the menus over at the diner?”

“No,” I said.

“It’s a start,” she said. “It’s something.”

“Yes,” I said. And then I waited.

“To tell you the truth,” she said, “it was because I was thinking.”

“Because Casey had left and you had an empty nest?” I said, trying to be helpful.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Way before that. A long, long time ago. Since he was nine.” I looked

over and she was suddenly biting her lip, looking away. “I’m fine,” she said, then got up and went

to the bathroom. I heard the sound of tissues being pulled from a box, then the sound of her

blowing her nose. Then the toilet flushed and she came back in and sat down.

“The truth, Dot, the awful truth, the real truth is that I just couldn’t stand it any more. Not

one more day. I stood it for Casey, until he left, that was my plan. Well, not really. I didn’t have a

plan. I actually thought, when I saw them drive away, Garth and Casey, off to OSU, how nice

things would be, could be, me and Garth. I could get some kind of job, you know, and we would

take vacations, and I started to, well, make some plans. And then we visited Casey in the fall,

Homecoming Weekend, all the parents, all those chrysanthemums, it all seemed so normal, and

then Thanksgiving, and Casey home, and things still the same, and then Christmas, of course, you

can’t forget Christmas, have to stay for Christmas, make things . . . Christmassy.”

She looked like she was about to cry again, and I was reaching for my bag to get another

tissue, but she waved me away.

“Don’t stop me,” she said. “I don’t want to cry any more. I want to talk. You have to listen.”

I was worried, a little, about whether she might be, you know, having a breakdown or

needing a doctor or something. But except for the crying, she seemed all right.


“It was when I was putting the ornaments away that it came to me,” she said. “The house

was so quiet. There I was in the upstairs closet, and the house was quiet, and I thought I would

die.” She stopped and looked at me. “You heard me,” she said. “I thought I would die. So instead,

just up there on the ladder, I started dropping the ornaments. First I dropped just one, a red one,

and watched it shatter in a million pieces on the floor. And then another. Then I threw one down,

just threw it, and it really smashed. Then I was screaming . . .”

I looked away, afraid she was going to show me by screaming, afraid that if she screamed it

might be a sound I wouldn’t be able to get out of my head. But it was only words that kept

coming.

“Screaming,” she said, “so loud I thought my neighbors might come over. But they didn’t.

Maybe they weren’t home. Maybe they didn’t care. I didn’t care. I just screamed and screamed.

And threw ornaments down on the floor, one after the other. Three whole boxes. And then I

stopped.”

“Good,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s what I thought, too. ‘Good,’ I said to myself. ‘Got that over with.

That felt great. Have to remember that. Stand on a ladder and scream and break three boxes of

ornaments every time you feel like you want to die. Guess I’ll have to get some more ornaments

for that.’ The problem was it didn’t even last until I finished cleaning up the mess with the broom

and the DustBuster. By the time the closet floor was clean, I felt like shit again.”

I was so surprised to hear her use that word. I mean, we all know that word and I know the

kids use it all the time, and Fred at work and sometimes at home. But it’s just not a word I use or

that my friends use or that I’d ever heard Maureen use. I didn’t want to show her I was shocked,

but she saw anyway.

“Come on, Dot,” she said, “we’re good enough friends by now, at least since today. A few

shits could help clear the air. You ought to try it.”


Page 39

I smiled, but shook my head. “I can’t,” I said. “Just one of those things. Can’t do it. Never

could.”

“Well,” she said, “think about it. Might do you some good.”

“Well. . .” I said. But then I looked at her. “But I still don’t see where . . .”

“Where all that gets me here?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “What’s the connection?”

“Like I told you,” she said. “It’s about thinking. When you’re there, in the middle of the

day, the house is quiet, you can hear the dust fall, in the winter you can hear the furnace ticking, or

in the summer, the air conditioning beginning to come on, and you think, “Is this it? Is this all?”

“Well,” I said, “everyone gets thoughts like that, every now and then. That’s just human.

You’ve got to freshen up, you know, find a new recipe or change the furniture . . .”

“I did that,” she said. “I did that and did that and . . . I did that. And I think I wouldn’t have

minded if Garth had been . . .”

Her voice trailed off and she looked past my shoulder at a picture on the wall. I looked over

my shoulder and saw this was a picture of a field of yellow flowers.

“That’s an interesting picture,” I said.

“What?” she said.

“There,” I said. “That field with those flowers.”

“No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s terrible. If I weren’t me right now, so glad to be here, I’d hate

that picture.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you were looking . . .” I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted

to say something, anything, because I was afraid she was going to start talking about her and

Garth’s sex life and how Garth wasn’t a good enough lover, which made me think about the diner,

her and those menus and all, that maybe the cook over there or the manager, she was maybe

having an affair with one of them.


But then I stopped myself from thinking those things and decided just to wait and see.

Sometimes waiting is the only thing you can do. Finally Maureen moved her eyes away from the

picture and looked straight at me.

“It’s not what you think,” she said. “We had sex.” For a minute I thought she was talking

about the man at the diner. But then she went on. “Garth and I, we did all right in bed. Especially

for people married as long as we were. Twenty-two years. I guess that’s something, these days

especially. No, it wasn’t that. It was so simple. But it scared me to death.” Her hand opened and

closed, squeezing the tissue into a ball. “I finally decided I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to

scream, and I didn’t want to break things. But I knew I couldn’t stay.”

I looked across the table at her. I thought about all the times we were together, across

other tables—at the pot-luck, at the free cheese spread at the supermarket, getting hot dogs at a

basketball game—and I wondered whether any of what I’d seen then, any of what she said or how

she looked, whether any part of her had been true. I mean, if this were true, this Maureen in a

motel room, then who was the other Maureen? If it wasn’t true back then, then who was she then?

Who was she now? And then I started to think about me standing there, looking at her in the

school gymnasium, and looking at her now, if what I had thought was true wasn’t true and I

hadn’t been able to see it, then was there something wrong with my seeing? Or was there

something I should have been thinking about, but hadn’t.

But I didn’t want to think about that, so I stopped. “So what now?” I asked.

She ignored my question. “Doesn’t seem like much of a reason, does it? Seems like if that

were a good enough reason to leave a marriage there wouldn’t be any marriages left. Because if I

tell you I loved him, and I really did, and that I love my son, and I do, I adore him, but I can’t go

back.”

“So what now?” I asked again.

“Divorce,” she said. “Sell the house. I’ll get some money. I’ll go somewhere, find a job I

guess. But I won’t be dead.”


Page 41

I finally remembered why I’d come. “What should I tell Garth?” I asked.

“Tell him the truth, I guess,” she said. “I did. I told him months ago. He said something

like ‘I’ll work on that.’ But then he had another committee at school and things just stayed the

same. I’d say tell him there was somebody else, except that would screw up the divorce. Just tell

him the truth.”

*

But I couldn’t. I tried to call Garth, but hung up the phone before he answered. And, a few

days later, when I ran into him over at school, he looked so pale that I just said, “She’s okay. She

misses you and Casey, she says. But I don’t think she’s coming back. She was talking about

divorce.”

“Did she say why?” he asked me quietly.

“If she did,” I said, “it wasn’t something I could understand too well.” And I left it at that. I

wanted to be truthful, but this was something I didn’t want to get too close to now. So I didn’t tell

Fred I’d seen her or that I knew anything, which was okay, because he didn’t ask. And then, of

course, things went on, the way they do. Carolyn and I have taken up an interest in basketball; she

likes a boy on the team; gives us something we can do together, go to the games and cheer, and we

can talk with Fred about it when we have dinner, or I can watch the basketball on TV and he and I

can have a conversation. And now I have new shelf paper in the kitchen and some of those new

plastic bins in the basement for the potatoes and the onions and the beer, they look real nice.


Flood Walls By Karen B. Golightly


Page 43

Contributors

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Ottawa

Arts Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review,

Arkansas Review, Carolina Quarterly, Poem, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, Sequential

Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. She has authored three books of poetry:

Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story

of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008).

Byron Beynon lives in Swansea, Wales. His work has appeared in many

publications including The Independent (UK), London Magazine, Poetry

Wales, Quadrant (Australia), The Summerset Review (USA) and The Wolf.

Recent collections include Human Shores (Lapwing Publications, Belfast

2012) and Hear Time Echo (Camel Saloon, Books on Blog USA, 2012).

Susana H. Case, professor at the New York Institute of Technology, has recent work in many

journals, including Hawai’i Pacific Review, Portland Review, Potomac Review and Saranac Review.

She is the author of the chapbooks The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press),Anthropologist In Ohio

(Main Street Rag Publishing Company), The Cost Of Heat (Pecan Grove Press), and Manual of

Practical Sexual Advice(Kattywompus Press). An English-Polish reprint of The Scottish Café,

Kawiarnia Szkocka, was published by Opole University Press in Poland. Her book, Salem In Séance

(WordTech Editions) will be released in 2013. Please visit her online at:

http://iris.nyit.edu/~shcase/.

Katana Leigh DuFour is a Cree-Canadian artist who lives on a mountain in Southern California

with her husband Jeremy, watching the moon, writing art love light, and sending Reiki on

airwaves.

Gabriel Balente Garcia is a writer of poetry, short fiction and short plays, as well a photographer

and painter. His work has appeared in Carcinogenic Poetry, Obsession Lit Mag, The Acentos Review,

Fickle Muses, Ascent Aspirations Magazine; and is forthcoming in The Whistling Fire, in Black Lantern

Publishing, Abramelin, The Meadowland Review, and in Two Hawks Quarterly. Under the name

Gabriel Garcia his play “Picnic For One” premiered at The Roy Arias Theater in N.Y.C., and his

poetry appeared in the zine entitled Vice. As Gabriel "G" Garcia, his work has appeared in Burning

Word, in Willows Wept Review, in Creations Magazine, in Danse Macabre du Jour, and in Crosstimbers.

Dr. Karen B. Golightly is an associate professor of English at Christian Brothers University in

Memphis, Tennessee. She has an MFA in fiction and a PhD in 19th century British and Irish

literature. When not teaching creative writing and Victorian literature, she takes photos of graffiti

both locally and nationally.

Patrick Cabello Hansel has published poetry in Turtle Quarterly, Main Channel Voices, The Cresset,

Fire Ring Voices, Parachute, Alalitcom, Sojourners, Painted Bride Quarterly, Passager (forthcoming) and

Philly ’99, the celebration of Philadelphia area poets by The American Poetry Review. His poem

“Quitting Time” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Patrick was one of four poets selected for

http://iris.nyit.edu/~shcase/


the 2008-2009 Mentor Series at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and was a 2011 recipient

of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. His novella “Searching” was serialized in

33 issues of The Alley News.

Lois Marie Harrod won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook (Iowa State University) contest with her

manuscript Cosmogony and her 11th book Brief Term, a collection of poems about teachers and

teaching, was published by Black Buzzard in March 2011. Her chapbook Furniture won the 2008.

Grayson Press Poetry Prize, and she is a three-time recipient of a fellowship from the New Jersey

State Council on the Arts. She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey.

www.loismarieharrod.com

Libby Hart’s most recent collection of poetry, This Floating World (2011), was shortlisted for the

Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Age Book of the Year Awards. Her first collection,

Fresh News from the Arctic (2006), received the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Mary

Gilmore Prize.

Steve Klepetar teaches literature and creative writing at Saint Cloud State University in

Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the

Net. Flutter press has recently published his chapbook, “My Father Teaches Me a Magic

Word.” Another chapbook, “My Father Had Another Eye” is forthcoming from Flutter Press.

Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music, appeared in May, 2011 from Word

Press. Her second collection, The Ceremonies of Longing, winner of the 2002 AWP Award Series in

Poetry, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in November, 2003. An earlier

volume, The Country of Women, was published in 1995 by Calyx Books. My poems have appeared

over the past thirty-five years in journals including The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, The

New Republic, Beloit Poetry Journal, APR, Natural Bridge, The Missouri Review, The Gettysburg

Review, The Southern Review, and The Colorado Review.

Rick Marlatt’s first book, How We Fall Apart, was the winner of the Seven Circle Press Poetry

Award. Marlatt’s work has appeared widely in print and online publications including The Ratting

Wall, New York Quarterly, and Rattle.

Tim McCoy is originally from Illinois but traveled east to attend Syracuse University, from

which he received his MFA in 2006. Tim still lives in the Syracuse area with his wife and two

daughters, surviving as a lowly adjunct professor at a number of local colleges. He has had a

poem published in Ekphrasis (and that same piece nominated for a Pushcart), and other pieces in

The Comstock Review and Stone Canoe.

Caridad Moro’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The

Comstock Review, The Crab Orchard Review, MiPoesias, The Seattle Review, Slipstream, Spillway,

CALYX, The Pedestal, Fifth Wednesday Review, The Lavender Review and others. She is the

recipient of a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry, and her poems have been thrice

nominated for a Pushcart prize. Caridad’s award winning chapbook Visionware is available from

Finishing Line Press (WWW.Finishinglinepress.com). She is an English professor at Miami Dade

College in Miami, FL, where I reside.

http://www.loismarieharrod.com/

http://www.finishinglinepress.com/


Page 45

Robert Moulthrop’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Berkeley

Fiction Review, Confrontation, Eclipse, The Griffin, Harpur Palate, The MacGuffin, Old Hickory Review,

Portland Review, Prime Number (a one-act play), Quaker Life (non-fiction), San Jose Studies,

Sou’Wester, twenty-four hours (e-zine), Reed Magazine, Rio Grande Review, River Oak Review, and

Willard & Maple.

Diane Raptosh's fourth book of poems, American Amnesiac, will be published by Etruscan Press in

spring 2013.

Gerald Solomon was born in London and studied English Literature at Cambridge University.

After a short spell as sales assistant at a bookshop in London's Charing Cross Road he worked as

a producer at the BBC. Subsequently becoming engaged in education, he helped found General

Studies courses at Hornsey College of Art, and this led eventually to an enjoyable period teaching

poetry courses at Middlesex University. He retired early in order to paint and write. His poems

have appeared in numerous magazines in the USA and UK as he prepares his first collection. He is

married, with four children, and lives in Manhattan.

Penn Stewart writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and has been an avid photographer for two

decades. He studied film at the University of New Orleans, worked as a graphic artist in Lincoln,

Nebraska, and his creative writing has appeared in Word Riot, Dogzplot, 4'33", Pure Slush and

elsewhere. He is currently teaching writing at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois.

Tim Suermondt is the author of Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance (The

Backwaters Press, 2007) and Just Beautiful from NYQ Books, 2010.

He has published work in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Able Muse, Prairie Schooner, Bellevue

Literary Review, Stand Magazine (U.K.) and has poems forthcoming in The James Dickey Review,

Gargoyle and Hamilton Stone Review, among others. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet

Pui Ying Wong.

Gina Williams lives and creates in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys poetry, fiction and

photography. Her work has been featured in the Houston Literary Review, Third Wednesday, Marco

Polo, Great Weather For Media, 40-Ounce-Bachelors, Great Weather For Media, Fried Chicken & Coffee,

the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival, and Feather Lit, and the upcoming Mount Hope Literary Magazine

spring 2013 edition. Writing and art, she has found, makes it possible for her to breathe. Learn

more about her at http://tastethesky.zenfolio.com/blog/

Laura Madeline Wiseman has a doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she

teaches English. She is the author of six collections of poetry including the full-length book,

Sprung (San Francisco Bay Press, 2012) and the chapbooks Farm Hands (Gold Quoin Press, 2012)

and She who Loves Her Father(Dancing Girl Press, 2012). She is also the editor of the forthcoming

anthology Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Blue Light Press,

2013).www.lauramadelinewiseman.com

http://tastethesky.zenfolio.com/blog/

http://www.lauramadelinewiseman.com/


The Meadowland Review

www.themeadowlandreview.com

winter 2013 issue

Documents