Ars Poetica
by LUKE ETHAN ROGERS | Sarah Stecher Prize, student poetry contest
Poetry: is revolution.
The Innisfree boat
among the daffodils—
Hollywood, the clouds’ confinement.
The texture of persimmons,
the bee-loud glade—
Lana Turner; the thing with feathers.
Ω
Luke Ethan Rogers is a student at TCC and is studying to become an educator. He plays in the jazz band at TCC.
Dasia Bowie writes: “This is a thirty-nine-year-old chimpanzee named Morris. He was photographed through the glass of his enclosure at the Tulsa Zoo.”
The Scent of Time
by LAYLA K | 1st Place, student short prose contest
The priest had heard many confessions, but never one spoken through the sound of flies, their tiny wings humming with the weight of unseen decay. Time had begun to set over the seaside horizon, night shifting to day, when the buzzing erupted in the priest’s ears. The day had slowly begun to end, the lights dimming as the sun itself did, the pews and stained glass hearing the secrets and confessions for years longer than the priest had been listening. But despite decades of experience, none had raptured his bones quite like this one—the stench of decay sent a shiver through his spine inside the cold confessional as the humming of flies grew. It came to him as he was shifting his movement, preparing to leave the wooden confessional for the day.
“I have worn many names, Father, but the graves I’ve filled all remember me the same.”
The priest’s voice got caught in his throat, a brief hesitation before finding the means to respond: “Confession has ended for the evening.”
“You are here, are you not? And I am someone seeking a chance to confess.”
“What is it you wish to speak?” The priest said, feeling his heartbeat rise, sliding back into the seat he had been in for hours already.
“I would tell you, Father, how many names, but the time that has gone by. I’ve simply forgotten. But you can smell it… can’t you? Smell the names from the graves I’ve filled. That smell never truly fades away, it always lingers… no matter how deep or how far below the ground they may be.”
The air felt thick, almost as if the walls around him were closing in. A shiver ran down his spine again, but not from the cold. No, it was never truly from the cold, was it? Something deeper lingered beneath the surface, something the priest did not want to dig up. Not this time. The priest took a moment to gather himself, knowing he had been entrusted by countless people—some voices familiar, others new, all needing to get something off their chest. It would be the same with this figure (a man?) as it would be for all else, and he was determined to treat it just the same: without judgement, and without criticism. He was about to speak up, give a voice to the one on the other side of the wall before it picked up again—that stench as if something had just died, filling the confessional.
“Who are you?” he managed to choke out. Despite the time, despite the ample opportunity to learn more, dig deeper into this figure, this man… if the figure even was a man. He knew the confessional was meant to remain anonymous, yet in this instance, it felt as if the figure wanted the priest to lean in more to what was and what wasn’t.
“Who are all of us, really? We say things with little meaning, fading into nothingness as time moves forward, only to be forgotten as the Earth continues to spin.”
“Confession is meant to be sacred,” the priest said. “I wish to ask again who you are and what game you think you’re playing here.”
“I am everything, and nothing,” the voice buzzed. “A friend, a stranger, a shadow that lingered just out of the corner of your eye. But a name? A name is not one a person tends to come by. Not a person of my nature, and not a person of yours…in time.”
Another shiver. The priest clenched his fist as the buzzing—God, the buzzing! It was enough to drive a man mad. It grew softer at times, crescendoing as the voice spoke more. And the smell of decay intensified the longer the figure on the other side lingered inside the sacred halls of the church.
“Have… have you come to seek absolution?” the priest said, doing his best to revert back to his original task.
“No, Father. I came to be heard.”
“And I am here to listen.”
“You speak words, yet I don’t believe you mean them. Not fully, anyway.”
Then, suddenly, the air grew warm and the feeling of something crawling lingered on the priest’s hands. It pulled him to look down. A fly lay on his now-unclenched fist. Yet, despite seeing it move—despite feeling the legs crawl across his skin—it remained flat, as if having been squashed dead. Perhaps they were where the smell had been coming from? Conversation lingered on the priest’s tongue.
“You say you’ve filled the graves of many. Is this what you wish to confess?”
“No. That is known. People walk the hallowed grounds knowing that something came and took their loved ones away. I am that something, and I think you have figured that out already… haven’t you? Tell me, Father, do you think I regret?”
Words got caught on his tongue as the air around him grew warmer, almost too warm. He pulled at the collar that sat perfectly around his throat in an attempt to escape the suffocating feeling that floated around him. His senses began to overwhelm him; the feeling of sweat lingering on his forehead, the buzzing and smell of decay lingering on the flies. At least he hoped it was the flies.
“Everyone has regrets,” the priest said, choking on the air. “The extent of that regret depends on the person.”
“Do you have regrets?” the voice buzzed, deep and low.
“As I said, everyone has regrets.”
A deep, throaty chuckle bounced off the walls. “I have met all kinds of people in mankind. But priests…now they’re my favorite.”
In an attempt to switch topics, the priest spoke again: “How many?”
A pause. An exhalation of breath. “How many what, Father?”
“How many graves have you filled?”
“Hundreds…thousands. The centuries all blur into one. I have taken all kinds of people from mankind to their resting place. Mothers, sons, killers.”
“Is that so?” The shakiness of the priest’s voice gave away the fear that lingered behind it, but at this point he felt as if it didn’t matter if he hid the tone anymore. After all, it seemed this figure already knew things that perhaps the priest himself didn’t know.
The thickness, the heat swirled through the confessional. Sweat dripped down his forehead at a more rapid pace and the feeling to loosen the collar of his shirt grew with each spoken word. The buzzing grew louder, but the priest couldn’t hear the voice. A shadow encapsulated the small room that he now felt trapped in. The damned flies swirled above his head. Landing on his thighs, hands—and anywhere else they could find a proper place to land that wasn’t already occupied. The smell of death filled his senses as more and more escaped the figure on the other side and instead came to him.
“It’s always hard at first,” the voice spoke, somehow louder than before. “I always tell people to relax, let the flies come to them… but they hardly ever listen. Do you want to know why I said priests are always the most fun? Because they learn they are just people. They serve no higher power. They are neither rich nor poor. They have no ‘greater purpose’ but are just… living. Everyone is living, but eventually the living comes to an end. But you know that, don’t you? Perhaps you didn’t think it would be this way, but you’ve come to accept it faster than most.”
The priest tried to speak, but the air around him grew thicker and the flies swarmed his vision as the buzzing continued to grow. Flies filled his mouth as he attempted to breathe. A shadow escaped through the lattice, swirling around. It lingered in the air among the flies, a stronger smell of decay than the flies themselves wore. The air pressed down onto him as if the flies were in a desperate attempt to drag him down, down deep into the ground below, the flies taking him with them into the dirt. This was no confession. This soul was not searching for forgiveness.
It was searching for him.
Ω
Layla K is a student at TCC.
Connor Williams is a photographer and writer in New Jersey. When not photographing people, he’s out with his partner exploring the country, finding wondrous stories to tell about the very people and places that make life great.
Orange Morning Sky
by NICHOLAS BALDWIN
I rose before the sun,
before the alarm could croak its ritual reminder
that today will echo yesterday, more misses than hits.
I skipped the shower—
my roommate sleeps, or, more likely,
lies marinated in the soft silence
of a two-week alcoholic relapse.
The stillness from his room is a kind of mercy.
Outside, in the car, the sky offers
a palette of forgiving oranges, and
hope spread thin across the clouds.
But a patrol car hovers behind me too long—
my chest tightens,
my medication untouched in my pocket.
At work, the fluorescent lights are too white,
too clean, too awake for me.
A flock of geese
ambles across the parking lot—
one at the back drags a crooked leg,
and I feel strangely seen.
I make the coffee.
I wait.
Everything feels like waiting now.
Work once had edges,
now it’s all the same soft ache.
I watch the hours drip off the clock
like rust from a leaking pipe.
One more day
of rehearsing the same false stories:
what if, what could’ve been—
but none of it matters.
Time doesn’t rewind.
It lurches forward.
And I,
a cog dissolving
like salt on the back of a slug,
am overtaken with it.
Ω
Nicholas Baldwin is an author and artist based in Rochester, New York, and is the happiest he’s ever been writing fiction novels, poetry, short prose, and freelance for magazines. He has been featured in Avalon Anthology (Jack Wild Publishing), Cabbages & Kings, All Hallow’s Eve Anthology (Wingless Dreamer Publishing), Edible Magazine, Menu Magazine, Kings River Review, and Syncopation Literary Magazine.
Clarissa Cervantes is a researcher-photographer. Her photo gallery includes images from all over the world. She invites the viewer to question the present, look closer, explore more the array of emotions, and follow the sunlight towards a brighter future.
The Roots Still Rise
by MARLEE WATTS | 2nd Place, student poetry contest
On a sun-drenched patch of southern grass,
Beneath old oaks with time-stained bark,
The folding chairs began to fill—
This sacred circle, strong and still
Aunties hum with tinfoil trays,
Mac and cheese and yams ablaze,
Fried chicken stacked like golden praise
Collard greens in smoky sways.
Uncles throw bones in domino heat,
Laughing like drums with stomp in their feet,
Wearing sandals and socks, talking loud,
Each word proud, a cloud in the crowd
The grill hisses like a sermon song,
As cousins run, a braided throng
Tagging dreams on grassy fields
Joy too deep for time to steal.
Big mama sits with folded hands
Eyes like wells from ancient lands
She don’t speak much—but when she do
Whole generations lean in true.
Stories rise from mouths like prayer
Of marching feet, of black despair,
Of joy wrung out of struggle’s cloth.
Of names they fought not to be lost.
The babies dance with jelly stains
Swaddled in love they cannot name.
The elders nod—they see the signs
The roots still hold, the trees still climb
And in that moment, you understand
This isn’t just some weekend plan.
It’s church, it’s tribe, it’s a family bond
It’s knowing exactly where you belong
Ω
Marlee Watts is a concurrent student enrolled at TCC to pursue her associate’s degree while still in high school. Outside of school, her hobbies include reading, writing, and creating. She wants to pursue a degree in psychiatry while also pursuing her love for writing.
Joshua Blevins writes: “A digital drawing made to go along with a short horror poem about a man plagued by pests in his bedroom. Behind his wall, the Vermin King chitters and releases parasites that crawl under his skin, triggering a psychosis as the foul thing gathers enough strength to tear through his moldy wall. The Vermin King then instructs the man to remove and eat his own skin, after which he is beckoned inside, reborn in filth...”
I thought my classmates would burn
by NATHANAEL O’REILLY
in the Lake of Fire. I thought billions of people
couldn’t see the truth that was revealed to me.
I thought eating pork, ham and bacon was a sin,
avoided meat from animals without cloven hooves,
fish without scales, bottom-feeding crabs and yabbies.
I thought following the commandments and Old Testament
laws would save me, that all the kids at school
knew I was a weirdo, a freak, an outsider
who would never have a girlfriend. I thought my BMX
was the coolest on the block. I thought carob, muesli
and Ryvita were normal foods, that white bread
and white sugar were evil. I thought Satan watched me
through my bedroom window, that my guardian angel
protected me from demons and kept me safe
while playing barefoot lunchtime rugby. I thought
being spanked by my father with a wooden paddle
was normal. I thought Christmas, Easter and birthdays
were pagan, sat outside classrooms while my classmates
sang Christmas carols and created decorations.
I thought I lived during the End Times,
that World War Three would begin before I reached
adulthood, that God would save me and my brethren
from Armageddon and take us to the Place of Safety
at Petra where we’d live for three years in the desert
until Christ’s return and The Resurrection.
I thought Miranda Burnett was the most beautiful girl
in grade six, the sweetest, kindest most arse-kicking
handball player, was sure God made a big mistake
when Miranda’s younger sister died of leukemia.
I thought my mates’ teenage sisters were goddesses
when they wore white bikinis at Surfers Paradise.
I thought the performance of Handel’s Messiah
my parents took me to hear at Brisbane Town Hall
divinely inspired, especially the Hallelujah Chorus.
I thought my Catholic relatives were well-meaning,
but unknowingly attended a false church. I thought
it normal to go barefoot everywhere, to hold spitting
competitions at school. I thought my parents were strict
but fair, that I was Mum’s favorite. I thought that after
Christ’s return I would be converted into a spirit
being and receive eternal life as my reward
for a lifetime of obedience. I thought my transformation
would occur before I was old enough to marry
and have sex. I thought I was one of the chosen.
Ω
Nathanael O’Reilly is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Terminals, Separation Blues: Poems 1994-2024, Dublin Wandering, Landmarks, Boulevard, and (Un)belonging. His poetry appears in journals and anthologies published in fifteen countries. He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at The University of Texas at Arlington.
Amber MV is an ecopsych-focused writer, artist, therapist, and life coach in California. Her work has been published in Ruminate Magazine, Glass Mountain Literary Journal, Brickplight, Illuminations Literary Magazine, Stonecoast Review Literary Arts Journal, and Ragazine. Connect with her at www.wellintheworld.com.
Herself on the Stainless-Steel Table
by JAMIE O’BRIEN | 2nd Place, student short prose contest
A dead body was nothing. The stench of decomposition, a cracked cranium, hair caked with viscera. Did you know that eyes deflated like grapes after death? Eden had become insensitive to the characteristics of rot, learned to pocket these feelings at the back of her mind. Naturally, these things must be familiar to her. The mortuary was a place of work, not a graveyard.
Out of respect for the deceased and mourning, her clothes were black beneath the scrubs. The air was dry with cold and sterility as she snapped her gloves on, peeling the sheet from her third project of that day. Isla Sampson, aspirin poisoning. Her parents requested an embalming.
“Could you make her look perky?” the father had asked.
“Supple,”the mother had said. “That’s the wordyou’re looking for.”
“She needs to look good for the pictures,” he insisted.
“You look a bit like her, actually.” She leaned over the table, her necklace swinging across her chest like a pendulum. “Do you see it, hon? She looks just like her.”
Eden supposed she could see it. Birthmarks, a hooked nose with freckles stippling the bridge, slightly longer middle toes. On the table was a woman she had never seen before but recognized in every mirror. She tried to avoid looking for more similarities. Steeling herself, she unclasped the dog-tag necklace from around Isla’s neck and shoved it into her breast pocket. The engraving was faded beyond legibility, and the chain was this ridiculous plastic beaded thing. Nobody would miss it.
Eden stole most of her clothes from dead people. Rarely full outfits, of course. Families typically wanted something to remember, to bury their noses into or fold back into their drawers untouched. So, she stuck to forgettable things: scarves, jewelry, gloves. She dissected these curiosities into perfect little categories: outfits that reminded her of people she knew, strangers distinct enough to make an impression, personalities she had made up or read in books. Her closet was littered with crumbs of mortality.
Every day, she would part the racks like two Broadway curtains. Every day was a stage dependent on who she wanted to be. On Friday, it was the angsty protagonist of a TV show she had seen recently. Saturday, the barista downtown. Sunday, Molly Montgomery, death by asphyxiation. Today, she would have to endure being herself for a few hours.
Eden could only remember one time an embalming unsettled her this much. It was quite a sad memory; the boy had been beaten to death walking home from school. Her mother wanted an open casket to set an example. Gang violence, she said. His face had been concave, and she ran out of the room to vomit. That night, she went home with his class ring, an ugly, bulky band with the school mascot on proud display. Hard to tell which animal it was meant to represent. No matter.
It was almost out-of-body, the act of restoring this Eden-like woman. The overhead lights hummed to interrupt the silence as she sponged the geometries and caverns of her limbs. Pumped her with embalming fluid, blinked away tears she hadn’t noticed budding. The illusion of life laid before her wearing a face that was hers.
***
The same night, she googled several variations of Isla Sampson’s name and palmed the necklace in her pocket until she finally found some semblance of a digital footprint. An Instagram page she had probably forgotten the password to, forced to live with the evidence of her digital footprint after trying so, so hard to remember her 10th grade email address. The whiteness of the classroom illuminated her room, her silhouette a projection on the ceiling. She lassoed the necklace around her neck and played a video of Isla and her high school friends until she could mouth the words by memory.
Stop touching my desk, Isla said. Dude, you’re so unfunny. The camera flipped and her freckled face, distinctly younger, stuck her tongue at someone beyond the screen. I’m ending now. You can stop being annoying. Bye, vlog!
A dark, gross part of Eden slinked into the bathroom like a maggot. A grosser part dotted freckles across her face in front of the mirror. She put on a lower cut shirt, so Isla’s necklace was visible. Her mother had probably begged her to get rid of this thing for years. You’re too old for this, she might have said. Why don’t you wear something more becoming? Eden scoffed like a teenager and drank up how natural it looked with the desperation of a drain. She thumbed creases into her cheeks to make herself smile and tried to wipe away the acne scars Isla didn’t have.
“My name is Isla,” she parroted to herself.
It was so ridiculous and so perfect that she could cry. And she did, the tears creating a constellation of dew in the sink, the makeup parting her cheeks like a marionette mask. Isla’s video played on repeat behind her, her phone face-up on the bed. Bye, vlog! Bye, vlog!
***
At work, she paid closer attention to her reflection on the stainless-steel table than the intricacies of making a body look loved. A cry was enveloped behind her teeth, the sound of a name notched in her throat. Isla Sampson. Eden Eliot. Isla Sampson. Later, a receptionist caught her leaving with a coat and a wristwatch that didn’t belong to her.
***
Eden, drinking apple juice and nourishing herself with a breakfast sandwich, watched the casket recede into the ground. She was dressed like a celebrity this time, umbrellaed by a wide-brimmed hat and an old blazer. Her legs were crossed beneath the bench top in practiced elegance. She had seen this ensemble in a magazine about Hollywood adultery once, the latest scoop, something to dampen feeling like an intruder in her own body.
It was typical: Isla’s mother crumpled over the edge of the hole as if she dropped something there. Isla’s father kneeled next to her, stroking her back. If this was her stage, Isla’s funeral was theirs. Eden imagined herself in that box, felt the cushion of soil blanket her, the air let go of her lungs, the acidity of a pain killer on her tongue. The muffled sobs of a mother who loved her like a prized show pony. And as her parents turned their backs to take photos of themselves next to the grave, Isla’s mother a regal, expensively distraught sort of thing, Eden kind of understood why she did it.
When she drove home that day, she stopped by the pharmacy.
***
Aspirin tasted distinctly of bile. Growing up, Eden had never swallowed fast enough to avoid its aftertaste, and it would usually end up splattered on the bathroom floor with whatever else she had eaten that day. She would rather endure the pain. Isla couldn’t.
Emptying the second bottle was like packing baking soda into her mouth. And when she lost patience and emptied the rest with harsh, trembling chews, she pictured Isla as the one chewing. That while Eden went through the motions, Isla was the one being filled. She allowed Isla to look through her like a soul in a vessel. Eden receded deep into her mind.
Eden closed her eyes; Isla opened them.
When they refocused onto the blistering light of the hospital, her head a pounding mess, she sunk into the bed. God, she thought, rubbing life into her face. What a waste.
Ω
Beginning from the first time she read Bill Wallace’s Buffalo Gal in elementary school, Jamie O’Brien has always known her love for writing. Outside of the literary world, she loves music and fashion and is often seen wearing long skirts and different variations of Mary Jane shoes.
Mickey Bertram Jeppesen Jensen is a Danish furniture designer and trained cabinetmaker. His work blends Nordic heritage with a modern sculptural language, inspired by generations of craftsmanship in his family. Through MadeBySatelite—Rooted in Legacy, he creates expressive wooden pieces that bridge design, art, and storytelling. His work has been featured in international magazines and selected for multiple art and design publications worldwide.
A Small Spot of Blood
by GARY DUEHR
You look down. There’s a small spot of blood, unmistakable, a crimson stain the size of a quarter on the front of your shirt. It’s sinking into the weave of the black-and-white plaid.
You have no idea where it came from. The stain is fresh, still damp. You touch a finger to it and bring it to your lips. The taste is metallic, like rusty iron. You examine your forearms, their hairy expanse, feel around the bumpy geography of your face. Nothing, no scrapes, no oozing indentations.
Instinctively, you look up. You’re on a train. Overhead, your carry-on appears intact, no suspicious drips. The nozzle in the ceiling sprays chilly air.
Outside the outskirts of some town in Ohio rushes past, self-storage and superstores and used car lots. A parade of mundanity.
You wonder if some hurt squirrel or possum has stowed itself on board and clambered up onto the luggage rack to bleed down onto you. You listen for the clatter of claws, a plaintive squeal. Nothing.
You remember watching “Man Vs. Beast” on Animal Planet. How bison weigh up to two-thousand pounds and can run thirty-five miles per hour, faster than an Olympian sprinter. How there are wild pigs in New Mexico that have fatally bitten hikers. You worry how dangerous the world is, how easy it is to slip into a canal in Florida and have an alligator’s jaw clamp onto your thigh. On the six o’clock news, the alligator victim in a hospital bed said simply, “So that’s how that feels.”
What if you have dozed off on the train, and, while it’s stopped at a station, a bird of prey, a vulture or raven, flew in through the open door and delivered a surgical puncture? Or what if another passenger pierced you with a sharpened umbrella like the KGB assassination on a London street?
You survey the train car. A bald guy asleep with his soft hands curled up on his tray. A lady smoothing back her thick black hair while she checks her texts. Two college girls chattering away head-to-head. No obvious candidates.
The train jolts around a bend.
The blood stain has begun to spread. It’s ragged on the right side like the state of Missouri. You slide your fingers between the buttons and feel around the bristly flesh. If there’s an incision, it has somehow sealed itself up.
You’re on the train back home to Chicago to bury your mother’s remains. Your sister Pam has shipped the ashes north from Texas, where your mother passed ten days ago while watching Jeopardy, leaning on Pam’s shoulder. She made it to ninety-three and managed to avoid a nursing home. But nothing could save her, eventually, as she lost her short-term memory and lived smilingly in the present, with Pam reminding her when to get up, have a bowl of Grape-Nuts, swallow her handful of pills, take her turn in Scrabble, go to bed. Her heart muscle just stopped; it had had enough.
You couldn’t save her. You can’t save yourself. You’re an orphan now. The world is a frightening place, and buffalo can outrun the fastest human.
Ω
Based in Boston, Gary Duehr has an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. In 2001, he received an NEA Fellowship, and he has also received grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. His books include Point Blank (In Case of Emergency), Winter Light (Four Way Books), and Where Everyone Is Going To (St. Andrews College Press).
Reporter, visual artist, and photographer Guilherme Bergamini is Brazilian and graduated with a degree in Journalism. For more than two decades, he has developed projects with photography and the various narrative possibilities that art offers. The works of the artist dialogue between memory and social political criticism. He believes in photography as the aesthetic potential and transforming agent of society. Awarded in national and international competitions, he has participated in collective exhibitions in fifty-three countries.
The Rest Cure
by JAMIE O’BRIEN | 3rd Place, student poetry contest
Like a newborn calf, I am force-fed milk
And massaged daily to prevent atrophy
A stain on the ceiling resembles a silhouette
“You’re spoiled rotten,” the nurse says, funneling milk down my throat
I am too absent to respond
Accustomed to stillness, a plump belly, the click of a locked door
My thoughts and opinions crammed behind my molars
But in my dreams, I am awake:
It is a crisp spring day, an open window combing my hair, the breeze cupping my face
And the mark on the ceiling is my soul waiting to be caught
Click—I reach out to touch it
Ω
Beginning from the first time she read Bill Wallace’s Buffalo Gal in elementary school, Jamie O’Brien has always known her love for writing. Outside of the literary world, she loves music and fashion and is often seen wearing long skirts and different variations of Mary Jane shoes.
LeAnn Lucero writes: “In this photo we see the beauty of slowing down in life, looking at every aspect in a simple life. Let us find beauty in the small things of life. From walking through the park, to ordering coffee, to simple reading a novel. How beautiful are the small things in life.”
The Parchment Destination
by BENJAMIN KIRBY
Your hand was arrayed against the starch white sheet
brittle thin, like old paper
delicate and true
And the thump of a machine I could not explain
against the draw of your rushing breath, like the wind at sea
and now cutting through the water to some strange destination,
a place you would never tell me, never tell us
Not exotic, maybe a beach, under a wide umbrella, faded cornflower and white
with the kids in the blinding sun, next to you, soaked from the unforgiving surf, building castles and moats to stave their exhaustion
while we bicker about who might carry the cooler back to the room
Not a city
Never the city
with the noise of traffic and people, the sirens, the tires on flooded streets and music on the corners and people talking under awnings
not a city, where a bus might run, or children play in a green park
you hated the city
More likely a pine trail in the fall, with water
a crystal lake nearby
the kids could fish, we can skip rocks
and a fire pit where we would sit and gaze at the flames jumping to their extinguished death into the dark of night
a night sky filled with starlight and quiet
and only the crunch of yellowed grass under our feet, and autumn leaves, brittle thin, like old paper
Ω
Benjamin J. Kirby is a writer and father of three living in St. Petersburg, Florida. His poetry can be found in more than a dozen literary magazines and journals. For eight years, he produced the award-winning political blog The Spencerian. Short stories, poetry, and more can be found at BenjaminJKirby.com.
Roman Kosh is a street photographer based in South Asia. See more at flickr.com/photos/romankosh/
The Devil in the Detail
by MARC MATNEY | 3rd Place, student short prose contest
One detail from the shooting of my stepfather has stuck with me above all. After the first shot, striking his abdomen, the two gunmen made him look up at them. This small detail, amidst all the violence, belies inhumanity that goes beyond ending a life. Slouched against the wall in the backroom of a Radio Shack, where he worked alone as day shift manager, he followed instructions. Their eyes locked, then came a second explosion from the barrel, and a burning in his right shoulder. They made him look at them ahead of the third and fourth shots, too, which struck him in the left shoulder, and another in the abdomen. It was then, however, knowing they intended to end his life and had undoubtedly succeeded, that my stepfather took from them the pleasure of requesting that added cruelty. He reclaimed what power he could and did not look away. While they may have ended his life, he would ensure that they remember his defiance for the rest of theirs. The next shot bore into the wall beside him. The assailants turned to leave, but one of them turned back, leveled the handgun, and shot him in the chest, a fifth and final wound. My stepfather would code upon arrival at the hospital, but would be revived, later claiming to remember the moment of death—describing it sincerely as the most wonderful feeling, akin to sinking into a warm bath. A victim’s survival, though, is sometimes treated in true crime as a happy ending, leaving the viewer a sense that life returned to something resembling normal. For my stepfather, the shooting itself took ninety seconds, but the violence remained long after. Violence has permanent fallout for victims and their families and indelibly alters their perceptions of crime and justice.
Violent traumas like these elicit varying reactions in those affected. Some feel reborn, rebuilding their life with emphasis on joy, knowing keenly how fragile life is. My stepfather, however, did not. After months in the hospital, he returned home with a veritable buffet of pills; those amber bottles lined side-by-side spanned the length of the bathroom vanity. He supplemented the pills with alcohol. He then asserted that residual violence against the most vulnerable person in his orbit, his stepson, who endured the wrath from a crime that occurred while he was far away, in a third-grade classroom. This lasted for years, until one day when I grew strong enough to fight back, surprising us both. As he had to his attackers, I did not look away, watching a wave of something approximating fear pass over his face, before he turned and left.
Contrasting my stepfather’s response to trauma, I chose the path of activism. I volunteered for a gun violence survivor group, befriending remarkable people who have transformed a portion of their pain into a beautiful tribute to their loved one, working to prevent other families from joining this club of survivors none of us thought we would ever be a part of. On a trip to Washington, D.C., with this group, my travel companion was a man who served as Chief of Tulsa Police for years, including when my stepfather’s shooting occurred. He cared deeply about Tulsans and took an unsolved case to heart. Throughout the trip, I felt a pull deep within me to ask him about the case, believing it was high-profile enough at the time that he might remember something that would be new to me, or that he would just remember it. That would have been enough, too. Ultimately, however, I did not ask, out of fear that he would not remember, that what had dominated my life for my most formative years was, for him, despite his compassion for families, just a dot on a map of Tulsa full of too many dots.
Ultimately, where this leaves me, in terms of how it has shaded the way I see the world, and crime and justice, is hard to know. I have witnessed the aftermath of violence, the perpetuation of violence, and the rejection of violence. I have felt frustration over an unsolved case and have seen the devotion of officers. I have felt the relief of a loved one returning home and have experienced the inner anguish of wishing that he had not. The best I can do is acknowledge that I am transformed by these events, that I am the sum of my experiences.
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Marc Matney is a graduate of Charles Page High School in Sand Springs, and dreams of becoming a novelist. He is in his second semester at TCC. This essay is his first contest submission, and his first submission for publication.
jack bord’s interests are to create artistic, meaningful works of art that can be enjoyed by all peoples and cultures. Being a designer and sculptor has allowed him to share his professional experiences in a beneficial way for both business and community projects. He has been a successful designer and has over twenty years of experience in design, fabrication, and installation. He is an Industrial Design/Sculptor graduate of Pratt Institute in New York.