Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica—writers from Washtenaw County and beyond expressed themselves through a variety of fonts in this year’s Poetry and Fiction Contest. While choosing a font family might have been the least of their concerns, the literary community certainly represented themselves with their carefully constructed sentences and well-placed words and wit.
Kudos to the 50+ individuals who submitted their creative writing samples in the 2010 Poetry and Fiction Contest, as well as the four diligent judges who volunteered their time and expertise to provide us with these well-deserved results. This contest is a community project, and an Ann Arbor tradition that wouldn’t be possible without your input—and a little help from your trusty typeface. It’s time to spotlight the outstanding writers of 2010. Go online to read honorable mentions at www.ecurrent.com.

Please join Current Magazine on Wednesday, June 16 at Arbor Brewing Co. (114 E. Washington St.) for our annual Poetry and Fiction Awards Ceremony. This open reception is our way of honoring the talented poets and fiction writers residing in (or around) Southeast Michigan, while also recognizing the volunteer judging panel who provided us with these word-worthy results. The party runs from 6-9 p.m. and features a formal awards presentation, followed by a finalists' reading and community open mic. For questions or more information, contact Emily at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Sincerely,
Emily Rippe
Arts and Entertainment Editor
 

Fiction - First Place Winner 

DieHard Platinum
by Rene Scheys

“I’m desperate.”
She was speaking quickly and sounded a little nervous, so naturally I took pity on her. Her voice still rushed in my ears. I said I’d help her, no problem.
“Thank you so much. Seriously,” she said. “When can I come over?”
“I’m home now, if you want.”
“Okay,” she said “Okay. Yeah. Can you wait until I’m off work?”
Of course I could. I fetched my toolbox and put it on my kitchen counter, so it’d be ready, I guess. She hadn’t called me in nearly seven months. 
Two hours later she called again and I went out to the parking lot to meet her. She waved, then pulled in, and I watched as she craned forward, stretching her neck to judge the distance between the front of her car and the parking curb.
I walked to her door, unsure but unwilling to show it. She rolled down her window and I smelled her car’s insides: a cool vanilla scent. I bent down. “Hi,” I said.
“Thank you so much. The place I got the battery said it was thirty-five dollars to install, so you’re helping me a lot.”
“No problem,” I said, and reached in through her window to pull the hood release. She was wearing shorts and her bare knee ducked away from my hand. “Had to pop the hood,” I said.
“Let me out, silly,” she said and pushed against the door. I moved to the front of the car and felt through the grille for the latch. I fiddled around until it released, and propped the hood on the thin metal rod. The radiator fan persisted briefly, then shut off. A wave of warm air rose from the tangle of the engine. I know how a motor works, but I’m no mechanic. Most of the wires and hoses I do not actually understand.
“The new battery’s in the trunk,” she said as she came around the front. She glanced at the engine only briefly. “You know what you’re doing?”
 She crossed her arms under her chest and perched on the curb in the next parking spot over. She was wearing shorts as I’ve already mentioned, and I remembered kissing her legs.
“Of course I do,” I said, then I touched the manifold and pretended that it burned my finger. She didn’t laugh of course, and I actually did somewhat burn my finger for my troubles. I was nervous suddenly. “It’s actually pretty easy to change the battery,” I said, sucking my finger. “Probably take me fifteen minutes.”
“Oh, that’d be great.” Then she touched my shoulder. “Thank you— I mean it,” she said.
Her hand on my shoulder made me want to throw up or maybe kiss her. Then she moved away and watched as I took the new battery out of the back of her car and placed it near the front tire. I removed the three screws holding the plastic cover in place over the battery in the engine bay. I pulled it loose and placed it upside down on the cement and dropped those three screws inside for safekeeping. The old battery wouldn’t hold a charge, which is why she had to replace it.
We were both silent for a while, as I started to remove the bolts that connected the negative and positive leads. At one point I looked over at her and she was watching the sky, content to relax while I worked, I suppose. Why is she here, I thought.
“Look at those birds,” she said, and I followed her eyes to the space above the electric wire high over the apartment complex. There were two of them and one was chasing the other. They flew at each other as if to join in the sky, but changed direction at the last moment. Their paths of flight formed a double-helix in the air. Then they bounced off each other, as if fighting. Or flirting. 
Because she was looking up, I could see her throat contract when she swallowed. The flesh of her neck was a familiar place. For my own sake, I abandoned the birds and her neck and got back to the battery.
As I carefully lifted the old battery from its spot, she turned her gaze back on me. “Remember when you yelled at me for running out of gas?” she said.
“Yes. You could’ve messed up your catalytic converter.”
“Oh, I remember the lecture, trust me. And I kept saying that running out of gas is not something someone does, but something that happens to them.”
“And I said that that argument is disproved by the invention of the gas gauge.”
“Such a pedant.”
Why it was pleasurable to recall our arguments I don’t know. Our ability to relish old disputes convinced me for a while that we were special. For the record I saved her a bunch of money over the years taking care of her car, which she seemed to think would work by magic or something. And, our arguments didn’t make us special.
“Have you had your oil changed recently?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. Look at the sticker on the windshield.” I did. She hadn’t. I returned to under the hood.
“We had some great times in this car,” I said. She gave me a look.
“You’re remembering all the times we fooled around.” 
Actually, I had been thinking about our road trips. She always let me drive. We listened to music and talked and did road trip things, but eventually the road always became boring, and I’d keep driving and she’d get sleepy. She usually took her pillow then and put it against my lap, stretching her body across the center console. I enjoyed this, her head resting on my lap. I’d have one hand on the wheel, and the other in the curve of her side. And I often purposely shifted my foot on the gas pedal, because the motion would travel up my leg to her warm head, and she’d move in her sleep, and it reminded me that she was alive, and beautiful, and mine.
I remember one road trip when I had done all the driving and she became somewhat annoyed, because she thought I was pushing too hard. We were on our way to her parents’ in Portland, and we had about four hours more to go. She asked to drive, and I thought it might be nice to take a break. We switched places, and after a while I decided to try her favorite position myself. I arranged the seatbelt so that I could rest my head on her lap, and she began to scratch my hair. And I swear I closed my eyes for one minute and we were there. I had expected to remain half awake in order to monitor her speed and passing, but I was asleep in an instant. I woke up when she pulled into her parents’ driveway.
 “Are you almost done?” she asked.
“Almost.”
“Thank you so much for doing this.”
“My pleasure.”
“What do I do with the old battery?”
“To be honest you should take it in to the store where you bought this one. They have a special way of disposing of it.”
“Oh?”
“You can’t just throw old car batteries away. They’re toxic . You have to get rid of them properly.”
“Okay.”
“I can take it in for you,” I said. 
“You can? That would be so great.”
“My pleasure.” 
“When did you become so nice anyway?”
I ignored that. The new battery was in place, and I reconnected the bolts that held the leads in position. “Just the cover left,” I said. She nodded.
I slid the plastic cover over the battery and tightened the first two screws.  As I leaned to insert the third screw into its spot, it slipped from my hand and fell down somewhere into the engine bay.
“Whoops,” I said, and she didn’t need to ask for what because she saw the screw jump out of my hand.
“Clumsy,” she said.
I immediately went on my knees to see if the screw had fallen through to the ground. When I stood up again, she was looking down from the top, carefully leaning just far away so as not to touch anything.
“Move,” I said, and gently nudged her aside with my hip, so I could look too. She pushed back with her own hip.
“You’re not the boss of me.”
“I’m the boss of this car,” I replied.
“How do you figure?”
“I am— I know this car inside and out.”
She let herself be nudged away and slapped my arm.
“You better find your screw, then, car master.” She folded her arms under her chest again and when I placed my hands on the bumper and bent down, she leaned against me. Not to look also, but to feel me hold her up.
Okay, I thought.
I wanted to extend the moment for as long as I could, so I pushed down on the bumper lightly a few times, as if I might be able to shake the screw free. It stayed wherever it was.
“Can you get it?” I felt her cheek move against the back of my shoulder.
“I’m not sure where it is,” I replied but then I happened to see it. The screw had fallen down into the crack between the battery and the fender wall. I couldn’t reach in far enough.
“It’s there. My hands are too big. See if you can get it.”
“Yuck,” she said “I’m not putting my hands in there.” She stopped leaning against me.
“Your hands are smaller. You can probably reach it.”
“Yuck.”
“Listen,” I said “I’d try the old chewing-gum-on-the-end-of-a-piece-of-string trick, but you’re right here. Just see if you can grab it.”
“Listen,” she said back “I don’t want to get my hands all dirty and gross. I have to go somewhere after this.” She hadn’t even looked to see where the screw was.  “Can we leave it? I mean, will the engine blow up or something? Or is it just sitting there?”
She was stubborn, and of course I recalled the very last time we were in her car together.  We had eaten dinner, and afterwards I wanted to see a movie. She wanted to go to a stupid party with the people at her work, none of whom I knew. I was deeply offended by this and refused to speak to her as we drove finally to the party. She refused to speak as well. Along the highway, we happened to see fireworks over Covina, and I ignored them. I even drove faster, because I knew she loved fireworks. We kissed under a lot of them, as a matter of fact. We visited Disneyland once where they have nightly fireworks, and she came almost to tears when we missed half the show because of the line at Space Mountain. That night I didn’t turn my head or say anything about this thing she loved. And I think she was crying because her eyes shined bluely in the glow of the dashboard lights while she pretended to ignore them as well. I dropped her off at the party and didn’t go in. A week later we broke up.
“I suppose it’s all right,” I said “The cover is secure enough with two screws.”
“I hope you’re not annoyed with me.”
“It’s no big deal. Just one little screw.” I removed the metal rod that held the hood up, and let the hood fall shut.
“Thank you so much again for helping me.”
“Anytime.”
“I owe you lunch.”
“No no,” I said “You don’t owe me anything.” And saying it made me think it. She didn’t owe me anything. She opened her door and sat behind the wheel. She closed it and I put my hands on the window opening.
“Can I call you if I have any problems with it?” she asked.
“Yeah – if you think it’s a good idea.”  
“Oh... Listen, I understand.” She turned the key. Her car started quickly. I didn’t want to let go of the side of the door, because I knew that when I did, her car would be just a car to me then. Why did she come, I thought desperately. Why did she lean against me?
“I would try—I mean, we could...”
She interrupted. “I know.”
“I wanted to say it. I just think—...”
“I can’t—it’s. It’s not a good idea.” 
“Oh okay. Oh.” I let go of her door.
“Listen, I wasn’t trying to—. I really did need your help.” She stopped.
“Hey, that’s what I’m here for,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said, but I didn’t think she knew I was trying to sound sarcastic. Or maybe she just ignored it.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Okay enough,” I said, though I knew she didn’t believe me.
“I’m sorry.”
“Tell your next boyfriend you need an oil change,” I said.
She looked at me with affection, which naturally I found offensive.
“Goodbye,” she said. She put her car into Reverse, and turned towards the rear of the car to see behind. After backing out, she put it into Drive, looked at me briefly again and waved goodbye. I waved back as she drove away.
I placed my tools into my toolbox and picked up the old battery. I thought about wrapping it in newspapers so that it wouldn’t leak in my car when I took it to be recycled. On the way back to my apartment, though, I paused near the dumpster. Screw it, I thought. I heaved it in.



 

Fiction - Second Place Winner 

The Woods
By Colleen Bednar
The police detective knocked on the door of the house.  The two officers who stood behind him were younger, nervous.  One scowled at his notepad while the other picked at the stitching in his belt.
The door opened and a couple stood there.  The man was tall with a neatly trimmed mustache and delicate, wire-framed glasses.  The woman had small, grey eyes and a thin mouth.  Her nose and forehead shone with the oil of old makeup.
“Mr. and Mrs. Clark?”
The father nodded that, yes, he was Mr. Clark, and this was his wife, although she hadn’t looked so old a week ago and if he couldn’t recognize her now, that was to be expected surely, he thought, considering the circumstances.
He led the policemen to a beige couch in the living room where they sat and politely took the mugs of coffee that the mother carried from the kitchen.  The detective cleared his throat and rubbed a thick, slow hand along the sparse hair of his eyebrows.  The mother waited for what he would say.
“We found a body in the woods on the east side of Langley Park.  We think it may be your daughter’s,” he said.  The two officers held their coffee mugs but didn’t drink.  The detective held his cup halfway between his lap and his mouth, as though he might take a sip, or as though he might set it down, but couldn’t quite decide or had forgotten about his arm and the coffee and would wonder in the morning why his hand was so stiff from the grasp and weight of holding.
How strange, the mother thought, to be told that your daughter’s body had been found.  Not your daughter exactly, but your daughter’s body, as though it were something which had belonged to her once, like a camera or an expensive pair of earrings. 
“In the woods?” the mother said, confused, pleading now for the sense of it, and still the detective’s arm hadn’t moved.  The mother reached across the coffee table and slapped the mug to the floor.  It shattered and lay in dull shards.
The detective sat, eyeing the ceramic pieces, feeling tired.  He needed the parents to confirm that the body was that of their daughter, Ashley.  Slowly, he took a pen and notepad from his pocket.  Did the daughter have any unusual scars or tattoos?
The mother watched the pen in the detective’s hand, poised in the awkward moment before writing, and wanted to smack it also, wished that it would shatter like the mug; a whole collection of broken things.  Instead she closed her eyes, spoke quietly.  “Yes, she has a star tattoo on the back of her neck.  And a scar on her forehead.”

There was no way of knowing who had killed the girl.  Often at night, the killer himself was unsure.  Had it been him?  A skinny man with limp, dark-blonde hair, and teeth which were small and square like kernels of corn.  A quiet man with a stutter and strong hands.
When it was light outside he could sometimes believe, yes, it had been his hands.  He would lock them around his own neck and the smooth pulse of skin was the same.  He had seen her in the mall parking lot, walking with her head down, not beautiful, but almost – her cheekbones too sharp, and her hips slender like a child’s.  She stumbled slightly and her purse fell open on the ground.  He watched the strange spreading of loose change around her, and he saw her Chapstick roll to a stop against the back wheel of a blue Volkswagen.  She bent over to gather the things back into her purse, and he thought he would take the Chapstick to her; he would pick it up in his hand, so strong from unloading boxes behind Cardinal’s Grocery & Liquor Mart, and he’d try not to think about her face when she saw the thick calluses where his fingers joined, rough and white like bone.  And not about his tongue, useless and heavy as a wet blanket.
You’re pretty, he thought in his head, and the words sounded smooth and good, but she had finished picking things up and was leaving now.  She hadn’t even looked at him.  His tongue jittered along with the racing thoughts in his head and the anger came quickly.  A simple change in the temperature of his blood.  He walked towards her casually and threw his jean jacket over her head before hitting the back of her skull with his fist.  You are nothing.  The voice in his head was his own and the thought repeated itself until he was in his car with her body slumped across the back seat.  Then he bit down on his jumping tongue to calm it and watched in the rearview mirror as he drove, hoping she would be still.
And yet, after they found her, at night when it was dark he would stare, unsure, at the creases in his palms and thought if only there was blood or dirt there; if only he could remember the rage he felt when he thought of how she would laugh at him when he spoke.  How she would smile at his stupid tongue – the words all rough and wrong.  No, in the dark he couldn’t believe it.  Not a killer.  A quiet man who had trouble sleeping.  A nervous man who often stood with hips pressed against the bathroom sink, face close to the mirror, watching the corners of his eyes for the things that sometimes moved there.

The mother started sleeping in the daughter’s room while the father remained in the master bed forgetting the pattern of heat from a wife no longer there.  He slept curled in upon himself, body like a nest of bone.
At night, the mother strained her eyes staring at old pictures, waiting for something familiar.  In the morning she often woke tasting dirt, having dreamt that her legs were stiff in death and rubbed raw from brambles in the woods where she lay.  Just a dream.  But more real than the pictures she found of her daughter.  No sign of a bruised ring around her neck or the strange stretch of death across her skin.  The girl in the pictures wasn’t someone the mother remembered.  How strange, she thought, to forget the way your daughter once moved, once spoke.
The phone rang, as it often did now, with relatives and friends expressing condolences, or the police checking in.  The father answered it, but quickly handed the phone to the mother, a strange expression on his face.
“Hello?” she said.
The caller was a boy, asking for Ashley.
“Who is this?” the mother said.  Her voice was sharp.  Who would call for the daughter now?  After the woods, who could not know?
“It’s Ian, I don’t know if you remember me...”
She felt shock like a fat eel moving in the deep tangle of her insides.  The mother remembered, of course, and couldn’t think of anything to say...
   she’s not home, she lost her body
...and so she took the boy’s number and promised to tell the daughter that he had called.
When the mother hung up the father reached out for her shoulder, almost touched the fragile curve of it in wonder.  “Why would you say something like that?  She can’t call him back....and of all people, my God!  Why didn’t you tell him?”
The parents stood still then.  The father didn’t dare touch the mother.  They watched each other’s eyes where there was a strange, flat, shine.  No irises, just something alien and empty.

No more mother, no more father.  Just Mr. and Mrs. Clark.  A man and a woman; a small fraction of body heat from each; silence, and a house to keep it in.

Mrs. Clark sat on the daughter’s bed and dialed the number the boy had given her.  A New York area code, all the way across the country.  She remembered two years ago when the boy had moved to New York and the daughter couldn’t eat or sleep.  The boy said he didn’t love her, not enough to cover three thousand miles, but his voice broke over the words and neither of them believed, not really.  The daughter had waited a whole year for him to call, and after that she still waited, but quietly, and it became like breathing.
The phone was ringing.  Finally, the boy answered.
“Is this Ian?  This is Mrs. Clark...Ashley’s mom.”

Mr. Clark stood by the closed door of the room where the daughter had slept.  He didn’t care to listen, but was drawn to the stir in the silence.  He could hear his wife on the phone, her words becoming rapid, anxious.  How long had she been talking to the boy?  He stood there with his fingers spread, feeling the air for the decayed pitches of her voice, the slow creep of madness.  I’ve been looking at old pictures and I just...I can’t remember.  Can you see her in your head?  No, wait...Ian, please ...if you can, what does it look like she like when she smiles?


 

Fiction - Third Place Winner

Illusions of Air
By Laurel Starkey

    “So it was 1979, we’d been married seven years, Kip still wasn’t going to buy a house.  My dream of that white picket fence was sinking into the jimson weed.  Wasn’t just his nickel, you know, I had my VA benefits.  And been scrimping from my pet store and laundrymat jobs.  But that summer cooked along and we still didn’t have a house.”
    My Down’s sister Suzy didn’t blink.  She’d never met Kip, she hardly knew me, she and I were getting re-acquainted after a lifetime apart, on account she was put here in Angel House when she was two and I was eight.  I wasn’t allowed to visit until I was 16, then I grew up and joined the Air Force and married Kip and now was telling Suzy all about it because she can’t talk.  No secret escapes her.  I can tell her anything. 
    “Every time we found a house I loved, Kip’d wake me up in the middle of the night and whisper Claude honey, I think we should keep looking.  I’d struggle up bed-
raggled, squint at him and hiss Why?  He always had a reason, Suze:  We might as well
wait until we have kids, or That house is so far out we’d need a second car, or If we wait
another year, interest rates might drop.  I’d squinch my face, just like our mama does, you know, that gangster face she has, and Kip’d beg Truth is, I was hoping for a fixer-upper, make the house our own, something I could make beautiful with my own hands.
    “That was the excuse he strung me along with.  But one night thrumming darkly with crickets, I looked him square in the eye and said Your mother’s right, the Good Lord Himself couldn’t squeeze a dime out of you.”
    Suzy pulled off her shoe and poked her little hand inside and began spinning the shoe like a whirligig.  She was fifty now, but forever a child.
    “It was humiliating, Suzy, to keep telling our friends We changed our minds, about this house or that.  It became a joke, but I wasn’t laughing.”
    Suzy’s shoe spun off her hand and I leaned grunting off the couch, my rolls like flesh pudding.  I picked up her shoe and handed it back, and she went back to spinning.     
“After seven blissful years of marriage, cracks started forming.  Then something happened.  Two somethings:  remember my landlady Nellie Filly I told you about, had that grown pregnant daughter, Nina?  The one always leaving her husband?  She had her baby and started pestering her mother about letting her have our attic apartment.  Nellie told her Claude and Kip are the best tenants I’ve ever had, you only want me for your live-in babysitter, go back to your husband.”
    Suzy spun and spun.  Her shoes had those soles with special support springs, like
knobs, on account of her scoliosis.  “I took that to be a sign it was time to get our own
place.  Remember me telling you I believe in signs?”
    Suzy spun, but her eyes were getting droopy.  Yet roamed out the window.  Her
good eye hovered in the silver maple.  First time I’d come here, back in January, I saw that silver maple covered in diamond dust.  Silver tree in the silver snow.  Back then as now, Suzy acted as if I was barely here.  And maybe I wasn’t.  I’d been coming here for six months now, and Suzy still hadn’t let me into her bubble.  Was I really here?  Was I breathing?  Was I breathing air?  Or was air an optical illusion these days?  And me?  Was I really Claude Clawson who left her rattlesnakes in California’s high desert to come back to Michigan and deal with Mama, at 82, riding in January and getting dumped by her horse so I had to leave my life and tend to her?  Leave my lovely desert and rattlers?  Their venom?  Who was collecting their beautiful poison now?  Who?
I was not breathing as I should be.  Daddy once told me that we breathed with every part of our body, even our pores and eyes.  He’d been a shop teacher, knew how the world ticked.
    “But then, my best friend, LaFonda.”  LaFonda Withers.  Oh wild and beautiful girl of the sass pecan skin greeny eyes.  “Girl who was later murdered, remember I told you, by Floyd Punk?  But I took care of him, didn’t I?”  Me and LaFonda’s brother Chester, rolling Floyd hogtied into the Detroit River.  Scumbag was one pulse away from being a goner anyway.  Talk about signs!  Us finding him already hogtied on the floor of his boarding house room.  We hauled him downstairs, thump thump thump, and out back and rolled him easy as you please into the greasy water.  Floyd blinked that once, maybe, and drifted away forever.  That maybe kept me out of prison.  “I lost a year for what I’d done, in that mental hospital, but lost my baby boy for good, my maternal rights of, on account of I left him alone on top of a Dumpster while Chester and I were hauling Floyd down to the river.  Chester, he got five years, I never saw my boy again, and that’s the story of my life.” 
From outside, a bluejay threw a jeer from the silver maple. 
“Anyway, LaFonda told me she’d seen Kip hanging around a real estate office way out in Wilburville.  Said Well, Clod, maybe that pissant you married is going to buy you a house after all.
“So that night I whipped up meatloaf mashed potatoes green beans chocolate
milk.  Kip asked Am I on death row?  We laughed, although for once in my life I could care less about food.  Waited for him to spring his surprise.  While stuffing himself he blabbed about his day at work and a gun he thought about buying, but diddley about buying a house.”
    Suzy spun sleepily.  I was just this blubbery stranger to her.
    “Remember, baby sister, I told you how I believe we are each a soul, and not just a system of hearts bones warts and moods?  That we are more than falling leaves and falling stars? And that I have always believed in signs?
    Suzy sighed, let her shoe drop.  Her good eye closed and her bad one roamed in
my direction, but what did it see in my space?  Nothing at all?  Negative-space Claude? 
    “I began to disappear.  Inside, I mean.  Autumn sniffed around, and Kip strung me
along.  LaFonda didn’t hardly call anymore, slumming with scumbag Floyd.  Felt like an amputation.  Then and now.  Well, Halloween came, I was so blue I didn’t even hand out candy.”  Suzy flickered to life.  “Sorry, baby sister, you can’t have any right now.”  Her bad eye wandered away.  “Couldn’t bear the sight of those little kids climbing up our stairwell, chiming all excited to the door.  Thankfully, it ended, and here came November and our wedding anniversary.  That very day, I woke up heaving. 
“You’re pregnant! LaFonda shrieked into the phone when I called her.  Home for
once.  A miracle.  And her old self, no less:  You having a baby, and you still married to that pissant!  Like she should talk.
    “Anyway, Mama was coming down by bus to spend Thanksgiving with Kip and me, I couldn’t WAIT to spring my news on her.  Kip, well.  But Suzy, that very day, he walked into the kitchen and handed me a business card:  There’s No Place Like Home Realty.  Wilburville, Missouri.  I said I have something for you, too:  I’m pregnant.”
    Suzy’s eyes fluttered all the way shut, and her lips parted, drinking in little sips
of that illusiony air.
    “Kip, he sagged against the sink edge, all color draining from his face.  Even from his mustache.  His khaki wilted.  He broke out in a cold sweat, even his little eyeballs behind those boxy Air Force glasses.  When he finally whispered When? I told him the middle of August.
    “Suzy, life twists on us.  Like you being Down’s.  And me and Chester finding Floyd Punk that day, already hogtied, by other scumbags, just waiting to be rolled into the river.  And that teacher woman from Daddy’s school, that Teal Nightwatch, she was always a strange one, the day of his funeral buffet at our house, her climbing up our ash tree in her black dress and heels and feeding her dinner plate and grief to the birds.  Why?  Because three days after she married the school principal, Daddy keeled over and died.  I couldn’t figure that out until I found all those love poems he’d written to her.  Notebooks of them in the basement, hidden in his workbench.  I never told Mama.  I burned them in the trash barrel.  Twist, twist, twist.  I tell you all this because Kip snapped out of it, but the real estate woman he got for us was DeEtta Peel.”
    Suzy began to snore, creating golden swirls of dust motes.
    “Thing was, we knew each other, DeEtta and me.  From the Air Force.  Started as flight sisters, in basic training, in Texas, along with LaFonda.  We were all nineteen then, and all too big for our britches.  LaFonda and I hated DeEtta, loudmouth know-it-all Georgia shrimp.  If I was a cursing woman, I’d call her worser names.  Anyway, when she showed up at our door, she let out a squeal as if I’d stepped on her foot.  Pipsqueak blonde in maroon polyester suit.  Her haircut probably cost eight dollars.  1979 dollars.  She slapped her briefcase down and shouted to my husband, Clod here and Ah were in the wawr together!  Mah God, she had the biggest feet in ahr flight.  That’s why we called her Clod.  She ever tell you that?
    “But I was having no truck with her chitchat.  She was there to find us a house,  period.”
Suzy tucked her head under her wing and I draped my size 2X American flag cut-off shirtvest over her. 
    “DeEtta drove us all over town, I threw up three times, once almost in her car.  Brand new Cadillac, I think, Coupe Deville?  Something.  DeEtta swung hard to the curb, almost took out a mailbox.  I flung my door open just in time.  I was in the back seat alone, just me and my misery, Kip riding shotgun.  She yelped Ah had three kids and
never once did Ah get sick like that.  Kip’s big ears blazed red, but what could he do?
    “While we drove, DeEtta dumped her dreams on us.  Said Ah’m not gonna do real
estate forever.  Oh no.  Imports.  That’s what pays.  Cahrs, lawn ornaments, ahrtwork, whatever.  She stared boldeyed at my husband, said Whatever it takes to make mah million.
    “By her talk, I learned that DeEtta was divorced.  And she worshipped money.” 
    Suzy snicked in her sleep.
“But, we found a house!  White bungalow fruit trees corner lot moat of a lawn.  Up the street was a school.  Even as we stood there the bell rang, a sweet dusty sound in the November air.  DeEtta crowed Buy this house now, you could be in by Christmas!  So we put in an offer.
    “Back at the apartment, I collapsed with a damp washrag draped across my forehead.  At dinnertime Kip tiptoed in, whispered Claude honey, I’m walking up to Udder Delight, let you rest.  I could barely whisper Bring me back a plain vanilla cone, please, no nuts or sprinkles, my stomach can’t take it, but make it a double.  He pushed his glasses up, said Sure.”
    Suzy dozed, sadly ignorant of a long-ago ice cream parlor.
    “Udder Delight wasn’t a ten-minute walk from Nellie Filly’s house.  Nellie out of town for Thanksgiving.  It was the most beautiful night, Suzy, fragile and glittery.  I lay with my hands cupped over where my baby incubated, and pictured Kip as he walked under the streetlights, pushing up his glasses.  I heard a car, the only sound.  A familiar car.  Not ours.  Didn’t think much about it.  Well, I lay there and waited.  And waited.  Finally got up and fixed myself mint tea and sipped it all night long.  At seven, I called the police, who said Kip was a grown man, I had to wait 48 hours.  Nellie was gone, LaFonda where?  The hours swam by, unreal.  I finally called Kip’s boss, who said Kip had taken two week’s leave, didn’t I know?  Then, something told me to call DeEtta’s office.  I did, real shaky, and was told she’d left town for the holiday.  Gone to Atlanta.
    “But her secretary, hearing my voice all trembly, gave me DeEtta’s home phone,
and I hated to call, hated it when a little girl answered.  I asked Is your mommy home? The little girl said No, she’d gone to Lanta.  I asked By herself ? and she said No, with some man in big glasses.”
    Suzy stirred, her little hands playing in a dream place. 
    “I knew, then, why that car I’d heard sounded familiar.  I sat there how long? dazed and wrapped in our wedding quilt in our dead apartment, when downstairs a horn tooted.  My clodhoppers trapped in the quilt, I fell to the door, out to the stairwell, hung there, and below was Mama, sitting all mad in a taxi.  I just stood there wrapped in the morning cold.  Cried out Mama, what’re YOU doing here?
    “She rolled down her window, her breath pluming out.  It’s Thanksgiving Day,
Claude, why’d you leave me setting at the bus station with all those Kansas City crazies?”
    “I blinked.  It’s Thanksgiving already?
    “For pity’s sake, Claude Bernadette!  She shoved open her door, looked up at me
with her gangster squint, turned to the driver and said Stay put.  Shouted at me Are you
pregnant?  Yes, I bawled.  Well, where’s your no-account husband?  I cried like a child. 
He went out for ice cream, Mama, and never came back.  I think he ran off with DeEtta Peel.
    “Was Mama one bit surprised?  Not even.  Sighed Well, pack what you can, you’re coming home with me.  And that, baby sister, was the end of my marriage.  And I never did get my house.”
    Suzy dozed in June’s blue light, exact color of the sky the day I left the desert to come back here.  I sat not breathing on the edge of that illusionary air, California rolling into my head:  the quiet bliss of driving, nights, along desert roads looking for snakes.  Mojaves, Western Diamondbacks.  Sometimes I could smell them before spotting them, a smell like hot tin, the smell of the air just before a storm.  Real air, breathable air.  Breathing, cruising under a full moon hooked to the sky, faraway galaxies like thumbprints of stardust pressed into the inky black matte, what was I doing here? 

Poetry - First Place Winner 

My Sister is Dying in the Room to the Left
By Colleen Bednar

I. Skeleton in the Closet
Not in the closet.  She sleeps on the gray couch in the living room, and does not sleep so much as stares, from eyes black and ragged--buckshot pupils; sulfur lashes.  This is the dining room, this is the bathroom.  My sister is dying in the room to the left where her bones hang from the TV like something living.  Die, I want to say, and watch my voice shift her like a dusty wind chime.  She rolls over and offers me the knobbed rope of her spine.  Die, I want to say to it, and to the sharp white pebbles of her heels.  In a dream, I hold a pillow over her face so that the thin pull of skin is covered.  When she breathes the feathers in, it looks like eating.

II. Dinner
Sometimes there is still cooking in the house and my sister cries at my mother who does not understand that the onions are not onions, but bulbs of glass.

III. Pet Store
They scream at each other--mother, sister--it sounds like retching.  My sister purging breath.  Not even air stays down.  She walks to the pet store every afternoon to burn calories, to burn see-through skin.  Three miles.  It takes her all day, carrying her skeleton through the sun.

Poetry - Second Place Winner  

visiting hours
By Laurel Starkey

(for dad)

alone at last
on the stairwell
in the sweet blood
weight of june.

now i can’t bring you a thing.
no wind-up birds to chase
dark mornings,
no trembling librettos
of wild rivers,
no two-dollar moon
to hang
in the lemon tree.

and look:  the lobelia are dying,
their petals
thunderous pink percussions

Poetry - Third Place Winner 

How to Cross
the Park and
End Up at Home
by Diane M. Laboda

If you want to make your way back home
from wherever you are, face north, walk
six miles, make a left at the old birch tree
in old man Leader’s yard, cross his best wheat field,
go through the Evangelical Church parking lot
and pray.

You should at all times remember these directions
or keep them in your shoe, except if your feet sweat,
you’ll have to write them out again on an old envelope,
except if no one comes to visit
or sends you mail, you may have to have
the nurses write it for you.

Sometimes they will help with maps they “Google”
from somewhere in cyberspace, though I don’t
know an alien who could follow directions,
except maybe ET, but he was specially trained
by a human boy. But your son doesn’t seem
to want to talk to you.

On Sundays all families are invited to lunch,
but no one comes to sit at your table,
not even when they have turkey, your favorite,
with smashed potatoes and smooth gravy and that bread mush
you hate. No one can make dinner like your Mama,
but she’s got St. Peter to cook for her now.
Tomorrow, let’s go out the back door and take our
shoes off and romp in Memorial Park across the street.
I know we’re not supposed to cross the street without
an adult, but no one knows how good the dandelions taste
in the early spring or how cool the new grass feels on
your best Sunday feet.

Cancel your plans for dinner, ’cause we’ll steal some
leftover subs from behind the deli and filch a beer or two
from the back room of the party store, maybe bum
a cigarette or two from the Chicas on Packard, ’cause
they know we are ladies with class, except you forgot
to take off your robe and slippers.