The Silhouette - Spring 2007

Silhouette Literary and Art Magazine Volume 29, Issue 2

Spring 2007

Silhouette, Volume 29, Issue 2, was produced by the Silhouette Staff and printed by Inove Graphics, located in Kingsport, TN. The paper is 80# Patina Text with a 100# Lustro Dull cover. The font used throughout the magazine is American Typewriter (Regular), Helvetica (Medium and Bold), Times (Italic), and Papyrus. The art on the front cover is an excerpt of “One with Nature” by Stacey Swann, featured on page 32. Silhouette Literary and Art Magazine is a division of EMCVT, Inc., a non-profit organization that fosters student media at Virginia Tech. Please send all correspondence to 344 Squires Student Center, Blacksburg, VA 24061. All Virginia Tech students who are not part of Silhouette staff are invited to submit to the magazine. All rights revert to the artists upon publication. To become a subscriber of Silhouette, send a check for $10 for each year subscription (two magazines) to Silhouette’s address above, c/o Business Manager or visit EMCVT’s e-commerce website at www.collegemedia.com/shop. For more information please visit our website at www.silhouette.collegemedia.com or call our office at 540-231-4124. Enjoy!

Hali Plourde-Rogers

Jenna Wolfe

Corinne Jeltes

Lana Tang

Laura V. Cook

Jennifer Johnson

Marisa Plescia

Danielle Downing

Erin O’Keefe

Megan McCarthy

Misono Yokoyama

Erin Snyder

Joel Riley

Naeemah McDuffey

Katherine Brumbaugh

Katherine Leonberger

Joselyn Takacs

Kalyn Saylor

Vanessa Ramos

Michelle Rivera

Editor-in-Chief

Poetry Editor

Fine Art Editor

Prose Editor

Poetry Editor

Graphic Designer

Webmaster

General Staff

General Staff

General Staff

Katie Fallon Editorial Advisor

STAFF

Business Manager

Advertising Manager

Special Events Coordinator

Alumni Relations

Public Relations

Promotions Director

Communications Director

Production and Distribution

General Staff

General Staff

Art 7 9 13 15 17 18 21 22 27 29 31 32 36 37 42 43

Ginger Peach Arlington Cemetery Holding Hand Ti Amo Moray Circles Untitled Passion Untitled Abandoned Glasses Untitled One with Nature Rope Your Path 2 Heads are Better Than 1 The Fish King

Elizabeth Pacentrilli Annabelle Ombac Shaozhuo Cui Dane Miller Annabelle Ombac Ryan Arnaudin Elizabeth Pacentrilli Ryan Arnaudin Heather McMillan Amanda Kubista Garrett Bradley Stacey Swann Annabelle Ombac Annabelle Ombac Annabelle Ombac Heather McMillan

Literature 6 8 10 12 14 16 19 20 23 24 26 28 30 33 33 34

Instead of Picking Her Up From Class Daylight Savings Time on the Graveyard Shift Playing Cards Garden Morning I Have a Scar Beside My Left Eye I’d Rather Not Die in My Sleep Going Home with the Headlights Turned Off Street Sweeper Chess Nights Solitaire A Bittersweet Twenty Degrees Starbucks Noir A Flock of Sheep Begone Untitled Crocuta Crocuta

Ryan Donnelly Rob Talbert Tara Marciniak Tara Marciniak Ryan Donnelly Ryan Donnelly Leo McLaughlin Kate Michel Tara Marciniak Will Holman Leo McLaughlin Zaki Barzinji Tara Marciniak Rana Fayez Rana Fayez Mark Settle

Instead of Picking Her Up From Class Ryan Donnelly

Instead of picking her up from class, I took the bus to Roanoke Airport to watch the planes. They wouldn’t let me near the gates because I needed a ticket, or a boarding pass or something— apparently they’re not the same thing. For a while I stood with my arms crossed at the security checkpoint, right next to the woman checking passes with a marker, watching her running over each piece of paper, wishing people a pleasant flight, glancing at me from the corner of her eye like I was standing a little too close. But I stayed there, next to her, as people in suits and trench coats dropped their bags onto a moving belt, stepped through metal detectors embarrassed as if they’d arrived late to a funeral. Some people have jobs where they have to walk like that every day. After a while, she told me that if I didn’t have a boarding pass I would have to leave, so I sat down at the floor-to-ceiling window next to the gift shop. I made sure she could still see me. Planes were still flying at three on a Wednesday afternoon, out of all five gates of the airport. Of course, the engines roared and seared across the tarmac then off into the air, gone, but I wasn’t on any of them because I wasn’t wearing a suit.

Six

My phone rang—she was wondering where I was. I told her I was at the airport and she got worried, like she thought I was going somewhere, leaving her. I hung up and bought a snow-globe with a little sunken church, plastic evergreen trees covered in glitter, snow— I took a picture of it with my camera and emailed it to her. Right then I started making plans to buy a plane ticket so that the woman at the security checkpoint had to let us near the gates. I planned to make her believe that this snow globe could leave Roanoke Airport if I wanted it to.

Editor’s Pick

Ginger Peach Elizabeth Pacentrilli

Editor’s Pick

Seven

Daylight Savings Time on the Graveyard Shift Graveyard shifts are easier in the company of street sweepers. We’ve been given another hour to live our lives. This, a duration better spent calling someone when I’m not drunk for a change, or building homes in the kitchen out of glue and popsicle sticks. Until then, I’ll keep fiddling with my watch and wait for the sun to come up early. Instead of only an hour, we should be allowed to go back as far as we need to. Return to when lovers left, or when Christ walked the earth, or when the harvest moon lit paths for species now long extinct. We could go back to our own births and watch, touch, burn our skin while our understandings manifested through pokes and pressures. If a baby is born every few seconds, I think it’s important that we tell the ones born tonight that the moment they were real their hearts were already ahead of schedule. They should know that the second they existed they were getting younger, and while they could almost reach themselves in a former life the rest of us were working late into the dawn. Trying to keep up with the planet, while all our faith and watches went the other way with a silence that grows between the branches.

Rob Talbert

Eight

Arlington Cemetery Annabelle Ombac

Nine

Playing Cards Tara Marciniak “Not so fast there baby,” he said slowly, “lemme fetch you my business card.” He was a rather plain looking black man, just a bit taller than I was and round in the belly. He had something though; the way an old jukebox has something that a CD player doesn’t. “Hang on now, it’s somewhere.” He said, looking down to the cafeterialike floor. “It’s alright,” I offered, “I’ll be back tomorrow, I can just get it. . .” “Huh-uh, no way, I sure as hell know this isn’t important to you and I know even better that I’ll forget by tomorrow. It’s either now or never.” His hands came out of his front pockets with a wad of chewing gum wrappers, mini golf pencils, rubber bands. . . “Could you just,” he glanced at me as he handed me the junk in his hands, “thanks.” He handed me more and more seemingly useless trash as his search continued. I noticed three guys in a corner fiddling with a puzzle. Each one took a turn to look up and see how I was reacting to the chaos before me. But when their eyes met mine, they quickly adverted their glances back to the table. “Here we go.” He said as he opened his wallet. “You want two of them? You can have more than one you know.” He handed me the ace of clubs and the seven of diamonds. “Wait!” Billy jumped up from the table next to me, “Give her my card too!” “You damned fool,” my new pal responded, “I ain’t got yours, you aughta have yours.” I wondered if I could slip away. Neither of them was able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. And this time it was playing cards, or business cards rather. My own thoughts clouded out the steady hum of their bickering voices. I drifted to the outside, longing for fresh air. These guys hadn’t been outside for weeks. All they were granted of the natural world was a five foot by ten foot court yard, a mere splinter of light entering the building. It wasn’t even used, unless you were one of the crew, armed with three sets of keys and a watering can for the small pyramid of flowers in the middle of the yard. I didn’t ask that day why either one was in there. I never wanted to know. The next day my father and I came back at the same time; my mother liked schedules. I’d sit with them at first. Stare at the flowers I had brought her. Run my fingers over the coarseness of her bed sheets. And she’d complain, about the food, about her roommate, about the woman who wailed at night for attention. “Well, you shouldn’t a done what you did.” My dad would say. But then he’d talk with the crew and convince them to let him bring her food and switch her roommate and anything else he could still do for her. They were lost, driving around an unfamiliar city looking at a pad of sheet music instead of a road map. Reading notes as boulders and treble clefs as tornadoes, they steered themselves away and away from symbols they thought they understood. The same conversation happened between the two of them each day and each day I wandered out to the common room. By day three I had learned to bring a pencil and pad of paper with me. The more I drew, the bigger I became. I became a part of everything my pencil created and I was bigger than the mental hospital and my parents and the ace of clubs. Then Billy came. He’d sit next to me and not say a word. He alternated between two flannel long sleeved shirts each day and he’d hum his own song quietly while he sat. Then one day he brought his own pencil with him. I drew a mountain range. He drew two birds. I drew a cloud. He drew a pine tree. It went on like that until there was nothing left to fit inside that picture. There was no need for conversation, the graphite spoke for us. My friend, the ace of clubs, was not out that day. Then Billy reached over me to get a clean sheet of paper. He drew another pine tree. I drew a snow man. Twenty minutes later we had a world with its own people, its own smells, and it’s own traditions. “I’m not crazy you know.” He looked me in the face for the first time. He had distant, icy blue eyes. I

looked at them, back and forth, skimming his words, trying to find the meaning behind them. I didn’t like it. “I shouldn’t be in here.” He said as he looked around the ceiling and then straight at the glass where the crew sat. “They know it, they know I don’t belong here. It’s a money thing.” I remember that I didn’t ask anything. I let his story spill out of him as he had probably rehearsed it day after day until it was just right. “I was mowing the lawn behind my mom’s house, right. And it’s a nice house, I mean one of those community things. The trees planted in certain spots and the man made lakes and all that. Well, there was some kind of nest in the ground, I mean a bee hive. Well, I chopped the shit outa it. Not on purpose of course. And those little bastards were stingin’ me and stingin’ me, so you know what I did? I ran towards one of those lakes. But I didn’t wanna get my clothes wet. So, quick as a cat, I tear my clothes off ‘n jump in the lake.” He smiled at me, proud of his little story, thinking it sounded as real as can be. “Well, I’m scared as shit, right, stung all over and I ain’t coming out. Awhile later the police show up. Talkin’ ‘bout they got a call that some naked madman was swimmin’ around in a lake. I was the naked madman you know. And they cuffed me and brought me here.” This was bad. I didn’t want to think about why he had told me that story; why he felt it important to convince me he was sane. And as awkward as I felt at that time, I enjoyed the story. For the first time in my life I had said to myself, “I am going to file this one away. This will be one of the things I remember until I’m eighty.” Concentrating on how to remember this story, I barely noticed him place his small hand on my knee. I stopped filing and looked down. Then I looked at him. He wasn’t looking at me. He was prepared to hear that it was wrong of him to touch my leg, to get the hell off, to get a smack in the face. “Ace!” I shouted as I stood up, allowing his dainty white hand to curl back into his body. “Oh, hey honey, how long you been here? I’m just about woke up now.” Ace said as he scratched the back of his head. He looked over at Billy and must have seen something he didn’t like about his face or his energy or his embarrassment. “You, go on ‘n get outa here a minute. I wanna have time alone with the girl you see.” He said quietly over to Billy, not needing to shout, knowing it wouldn’t take much. I didn’t even see him get up or cross the room to the hallway. I guess he never seemed there with me in the first place. “Baby doll,” he said to me, bowing his head a bit but still looking me in the eyes, “our friend Billy there told me something yesterday, it had to do with you. You know he ain’t all bad. He. . .” “I already know.” I cut him off. “Well, I figured you might. Just don’t think he aught to be lookin’ at you that way.” I saw my dad coming down the hallway, coming to tell me that he was sick of this place, that he didn’t want to come back, that I should say goodbye to mom. But he’d be back the next day, and the day after that. I didn’t tell him anything about Billy. I just told him I didn’t want to go back for awhile. He didn’t question it, and I don’t think mom even noticed. Maybe it was a week later, maybe it was two or three weeks later when I decided to visit again. I stayed with my parents this time. Admiring the wilted flowers, listening to her voice, picking at a thread in my shirt. We didn’t stay long, dad had enough earlier and earlier each visit. He did what he was obligated to do, in his mind. He fed her cantaloupe and a half a sandwich. He fluffed her pillows. He kissed her cheek. My dad left the room. He was walking down the hall to the car. He had grown accustomed to coming alone, forgetting to wait for me. I told something to my mom, ‘It will get better,’ or some little tid bit that I may as well have found in a fortune cookie, and I hugged her. This would be my last time coming until her trial. In the hallway, I saw Ace headed my way. “Hey baby,” he said to me, “take this. Don’t worry nothin’ ‘bout anything. We’re all fine here ‘aight?” I didn’t look into my hand. I knew what it was but I didn’t know why I needed another one of them. I stuffed it into my pocket. I shook Ace’s hand and I ran to catch up with my father. The four of hearts. ‘Billy’s Business Card’ was sloppily written along one side and turned down the other. Billy wrote his mother’s number in the middle with a smiley face.

Garden Morning

I

feel you most in the thin air of the 7:00 am morning; when the satin breeze

folds the scents of garden bay leaves together with wild moss and

fresh shampoo from my waking shower. If I could stir from bed earlier I would; you’ve been up breathing the air for hours now and I so wish to be like you. All of those dark orange mornings I stumbled to the porch to find you sipping tea from the pink flowery cup your daughter gave you. I missed you in bed but knew I would enjoy you more on the patio’s wicker chair. You cloaked me with protective arms and breathed cinnamon into my hair. We had stopped wearing the layers of calendar months separating us, and you were you, and I was I.

Tara Marciniak

Twelve

Holding Hand

Shaozhuo Cui

Thirteen

I Have a Scar Beside My Left Eye Ryan Donnelly

I have a scar beside my left eye, and I don’t know how it got there. I would hope I’d notice a blow to the side of my head, especially one that would leave a scar. I noticed it when I was driving home from the liquor store: my rear-view was angled poorly because she’d just taken the car to go visit her mom up in Harrisburg. Anyway, I couldn’t see what was behind me, but I saw this tiny, flesh-toned line running down my face from the edge of my eyebrow. I straightened the mirror at a stoplight, but nothing was behind me. She took the car from me yesterday, to go visit her parents. She has a scar below her chin that she remembered to ask her folks about while she was there. Her mom said chicken-pox. Her dad said nothing. When she came home early, she hugged me like that night we stayed up late watching horror movies. We both hate horror movies. She hugged me for a while, then poured herself some wine and sat with me on the sofa. Driving up to the house, I started wondering why I never drink like she does, why under the chin hurts more than next to the eye. She didn’t need any more wine tonight. She was already asleep on the couch when I came in, eyes half closed, thinking I’m still gone.

Fourteen

Ti Amo Dane Miller

Fifteen

I’d Rather Not Die in My Sleep Ryan Donnelly I’d rather not die in my sleep. When you have a month to complete a project, you always wait till the last day, and your boss yells at you for not starting earlier, so I’d rather be awake for a long while, maybe even die right as I’m about to fall asleep— I’d just woken up when my cousin goaded me into a game of chess. When he asked if I wanted to play, I said no, but he quickly offered me both his fists, so I tapped his left one, and his fingers uncurled around a black pawn. I was black, at nine-thirty in the morning. By nine that night, we had two boards running side-by-side. My dad kept having my little sister refill his scotch glass, and each time I grabbed her to make sure it was well watered, but each time she’d already taken care of it— she’ll be the one to arrange Dad’s flowers by his casket. She turned thirteen a few weeks ago. I bought her a CD player and a Joni Mitchell album. She says that she wants it played when she dies. I don’t know what I want played at my funeral, but I want to hear it at my wedding first. So essentially the lucky girl I marry must embody my death. When she looks at me, I must feel cold and awake, I must feel that I’m capable of playing chess for twelve hours, or however long death takes, I must quickly rub my eyes as she shuffles the pieces behind her back and offers me the choice between her left and her right hand, I must stay awake the entire time, regardless of how late she likes to play, or how dark those eyes become.

Sixteen

Moray Circles Annabelle Ombac

Seventeen

Untitled Ryan Arnaudin

Eighteen

Going Home with the Headlights Turned Off

Leo McLaughlin

I’m tired like the meaning of distance. Who else in this old city is awake tonight, and comforted

POEM sleep in theRather absence ofnot shadows, “I’d die in my sleep” by the stadium of darkness? Defying florescent hours opening their arms

to those who turn their backs on the sun. Does the grass reach for the moon because they were once lovers? They probably never were considering the distance between them. That is the excuse you give me.

Nineteen

Street Sweeper Kate Michel To see this body, this city, built and rebuilt by many men; this city, forced to clean her streets and sidewalks, having seen the litter piled in her ears and waking eyes. To see her built with slabs of stone at a time when eyes were bright, when we were clean. Waking now with the pollution of a year’s worth of words in the brain of her, My city.

Twenty

Passion Elizabeth Pacentrilli

Twenty - One

n rnaudi A n a y R ed Untitl

Editor’s Pick

Twenty - Two

Chess Nights Tara Marciniak

That chess set was the only thing parting us; the everything parting us. At night, those shapes moved between incense clouds and thumbs and fingernails. Shadows stretched like taffy in the dark, away from dollar store candles and towards me. So gorgeous, they became long, bending fingers grabbing at the table, reaching to pull me in, claws and all. You sipped red wine from a blue goblet, never smudging the glass with dirty fingers. You told me we would buy cheese next time to bring out the flavor of the wine. You told me your ex-wife would stay up with you in the kitchen after the children were asleep; you had cheese then. I wanted to ask you if it was strange, staying up with me now instead but I knew I didn’t need the answer. I wanted to leave right then and get you what you were asking for but the game was still alive, and the shadows still. . . I wanted to slide all of it off of that table, hear each ‘clack’ as pieces fell to the floor but I couldn’t because Benny Mardones played and a bead of sweat dripped from your forehead.

Twenty - Three

Editor’s Pick

Solitaire Will Holman

Our writing professor had us meet in the fourthfloor student lounge in the English department. It was not a classroom; people were laid out there, napping, noodling, drinking coffee with a novel or last-minute homework. Betsy went up and gently shooed them off, all apologetic smile and gentle voice, and they fled, earphones and spiral notebooks dragging. Then she turned, with a bright vicious face, and opened her arms like a minister, indicating the seats. There were never enough spots on the couch and elsewhere; students eager to not so much as brush elbows and so they spaced themselves out and out and out until half of us were on the floor. An adolescent awkwardness seemed to hound our seminar, writers being such a neurotic bunch, laying lives down on the page for other people to read, analyze, dissect, and judge. All this shyness manifested in little gestures: bouncing knee, downcast eyes, picked-over hangnails, studious aversion to eye contact, fringing notebook paper in doodles or tiny tears. I climbed aboard the windowsill and leaned back. This was my favorite time in this class, besides leaving, because everyone was caught with a faint trace of their newest story or poem in their face, apprehensive to read it aloud. Outside, the lawn mowers skittered sideways like crabs, red and smoking in the sunlight. The leaves had just started to attain real size, and the sycamore looked so close I thought I could touch it. The windows didn’t open. After settling down, there was much ahemming and shuffling of notebooks. Betsy straightened out the shattered mess of papers, paperclips, staples, tape, manila folders, pocket folders, printouts, newspaper clippings, book reviews, and other colonies of clutter that lived in the bottom of her shoulder bag. She was short, rounded, with a preference for unbleached linen this time of year. There was a symmetrical band of fat around her belly, under huge sagging breasts, and the linen smock looked like a burlap sack on her lumpy frame. Her hair was dark brown, pulled tight to the back of her head as if she hoped it might help pull up her chins. Betsy very proud of being a poetess, dripping with beads, loose papers, and gentle smiles, perpetually feeling and emoting and writing it all down. She didn’t like harsh criticism; unlike critiques across the quad in architecture or art that left students in tears, she believed far more in the carrot than the stick. “Alright, attention ladies and gentlemen.” Her voice was preternaturally low and masculine, sounding like a boy of ten or twelve. “Today, instead of work shopping on work completed since our last session, I thought we’d do some exercises.” Betsy’s voice hit hard on exercise, as if this was a special privilege bestowed upon us by the queen poetess. The

Twenty - Four

sun fell through the milky windows, casting a white light on her face. It glistened with sweat, small lips smiling, fat cheeks compressing her eyes into tiny pockets. Papers shuffled back into bags all around the room, everyone whispering, wondering. I had taken nothing out; I had nothing to put away, just sitting with my foot against the window, notebook limp in my lap. “Here’s how it works: I’m going to write up this sentence with some blanks in it. You complete it, ‘MadLib’ it if you will,” she crinkled up her nose and made airquotes with her stubby fingers, “and then that sentence will become the title of your piece.” She never said poem, story, or essay, because piece was packed with more writerly ambition and worldliness. “I’ll give you a halfhour, and then we’ll share.” Pleased with herself, she shifted the mass of crap still in her lap to the floor and stood unsteadily to weave her way through the crowd. There was a scrap of chalk on the ledge on top of the blackboard, requiring her to stand on her toes and expose a white mass of belly flesh, soft as a ball of bread dough. Then she wrote her sentence and disappeared into the stairwell, footsteps echoing for a long time. It read like this: After ____, _____begins to _____. People gradually clotted up or spread apart, secreting themselves in corners, knees up, staring intently at ballpoints as if that would help. I sat very still on the windowsill and tried to think of something funny, a throwaway haiku or limerick that would just piss Betsy off. Every other week I brought a new piece that touched a new low, daring, maybe even begging, for someone to tell me it was terrible. Classmates sat in the circle, politely averting their eyes as they muttered mild comments: Yeah, Coleman, that was interesting, it was really cool, your dialogue was very, umm, colorful. Betsy would give her serene Earth-Goddess smile and bestow similar thin guidance. But now Betsy and the rest of them had wandered into dangerous territory – an exercise, especially one with that stupid brief. I felt around for a punch line that I knew must have been hidden in that insipid phrase, but got nothing. Instead, I left my notebook where it lay and watched the mowers. Men worked two levers back and forth, swinging in tight pivots, smooth as Indy drivers around trees and flower beds. The thirty minutes hardly touched down long enough for me to get my hands around the thing. When the mowers began to bore, I eyed the writers spread on the carpet. Some were actually quite good, those who could fathom their own truths without relying on Betsy’s poor advice. One of them, Julia, was a shy grad student who always sat against the back of the sofa, knees pulled to her chest, notebook folded in her arms like a secret.

She was beautiful, with big, crescent eyes and clear skin like cold water. As the class coalesced again, she pulled her notebook tighter to expansive chest, auburn hair doming around her face like a closed curtain. I watched that hair, shining in the filtered light, thinking how it must look fanned out on a white pillow, new sun through blue curtains. Betsy showed with a single sheet of paper and a cup of tea. She settled in her chair, bringing her legs up to the side, curling into the chair like a cat. Someone want to go first? One pushy person or another always volunteered, and then we were off. The chain of excerpts and poems drifted from one mumbler to another. People ran through their words fast and toneless, eager to be done. Eventually that chain got around to me. “Coleman, what do you have for us?” Betsy’s near-permanent enthusiasm creased the skin around her mouth, cracking heavy makeup like a root buckles sidewalk. “Umm, nothing.” I felt the eyes pivot up to me on the windowsill, at a remove that might seem haughty to some. “Why’s that?” “I just feel like that question, the brief,” I gestured incoherently in the direction of the blackboard, “has so much complexity in such a short space that I only got a few possible titles but never got into their text.” “Well, just read whatever you’ve got.” I cleared my throat. “Um, actually my paper is blank.” I held up my notebook to her, brought back to my lap, shot my eyes out the window. “Alright, then, Coleman, I’ll expect to see something on Monday.” Betsy must have practiced sternness somewhere in the mirror, because she looked like a sitcom actor. We both knew I would have nothing on Monday, and we also both knew that it wouldn’t matter. “Next?” The room resumed its chatter. I resumed following the lawn mowers sidestepping across the grass. Eventually the apparent end of the circle came around, but Betsy was never satisfied to let it end there; some shy student was always holed up in the corner, sitting behind the sofa, fingers crossed. “Julia? Have you shared yet?” “Ummm, no, but this piece is kinda personal.” She had shifted from my view, retreating further into the couch, if that was even possible. All I could make out from my perch was one blue-jeaned ankle ending in knock-off sneakers, aping something popular amongst the undergrads. “Julia, all writing is personal. It wouldn’t have any real emotion if it wasn’t grounded in the personal.” A beatific, cheek-crinkling smile appeared on Betsy’s little

mouth. “I mean, this seminar has and will always be a safe place.” She leaned forward, intent as a therapist, trying to pierce that auburn veil. One or two ass-kissers in the crowd joined the chorus, egging Julia on. She finally caved. The room fell silent except for the hum of the air conditioning, the faint buzz of the lawn mowers outside, distant traffic mewling across campus. Julia stayed where she was. She raised her head enough that I could see the top of it, hair swept back with a consciously casual gesture. She began in a small voice. “This is about my husband, Tim.” I hadn’t known she was married, but it made sense, twenty-eight, linked up to a man in a salmon polo shirt and square jaw. She cleared her throat again, and saw her head rocking slightly back-and-forth, back-and-forth. “After sex, Tim begins to play solitaire.” The room, if it was possible, got even more quiet; no sniffles, no sliding in chairs, shuffling of paper, crossing and uncrossing of legs. Betsy looked astonished, and her face finally drew down until featureless. I don’t recall the precise text of her poem, but I do remember it was one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever heard – Julia naked and damp in bed, huddled under sheets, Tim at the end of the long hallway that leads from their bedroom door to the computer niche, sitting there, naked and damp, hugging one knee, illuminated only by flickering computer blue, playing Solitaire. Julia reached for a pillow and rolled over onto her belly, sobbing. Tim clicked on and on, glum and still in the dimness, the simple game more numbing than drinking, more quieting than exercise, more satisfying than holding his wife. He waited until she went to sleep and crawled in beside, pajamas back on, alarm set, no words, no touches, just rigid loathing sleep. The room shook with silence. Betsy’s face got whiter and whiter in the harsh sun through the windows, and a red blush began to bloom from her double chin. She seemed to be in a trance, staring into the middle distance, face glazed over. Suddenly, she snapped to, took a long swig of tea and cleared her throat. “Ahem, umm, Julia, that was wonderful.” That was also the precise worst word for Betsy to use; it was a wonderful piece of writing, yes, but Betsy made it sound as though Julia’s disintegrating marriage and self-hate were wonderful. No one else spoke up. I wanted to help, reach a hand out to Julia across the room, but I couldn’t speak up. No one took me seriously – I had cried wolf too many times with crappy poems and ragged jokes. I’d tell her that her poem cut me through, hot and cauterizing. I would tell her tomorrow, Monday after class, in two weeks at the next seminar; I would tell her sometime, but for now I slipped away from class, notebook blank and swinging in my hands.

Twenty - Five

A Bittersweet Twenty Degrees Leo McLaughin We were knee-deep in snow but waist-deep in each other. Out of ourselves and in the forest with a silence that grows between the branches. Silence last heard by Apache ears pierced with Elk horn. Elk still roam these parts though no longer hunted by empty stomachs and those in need of a blanket or wedding dress. You took my arm and we crossed the frozen lake Disputing whether or not the fish confused the ice for the ground; flipping over after bumping their heads. There’s mysticism in fire, and I fought the urge to dance around it when we got back to the cabin. The heat from burning logs stung our faces, reminding us of runny noses, and I missed not seeing my own breath pass over cracked lips. That night, everyone fell asleep under the weight of a full moon. And silence was a new gesture for us. Drinking tea with our eyes, and each other with our mouths, on opposite ends of the room. We listened to the pipes freeze overnight.

Twenty - Six

Abandoned Heather McMillan

Twenty - Seven

Starbucks Noir Zaki Barzinji

“What do you want?” “Make it an iced latte.” Iced, like his heart. Couldn’t call it decaf because that lusty cliché keeps it pumping like Mozart done by Slipknot. Muddied mocha brown by the complications, strains, lies, curdled milk of boiled blood. Never seen him before but I know his type; his feelings swing with his legs from the barstool. The barista brings the drink as he brings the money from his pocket. The walls, counter top, and floors are scrubbed hidden pearl. Stevie Wonder wails, muffled. Sobs are drowned by coffee; he’s a perfect actor. “Faker!” His brain yells at his heart, then buries a cool silenced .45 into his nervous system. Aftermath: coffee spills on the snowscape. Barista grunts at this human stain in his Shangri-la. Synthetic towel mops the mess, his natural problems remain. Like an orgasm, his body shudders rhythmically in time with fishy gasps, despair playing ecstasy’s understudy. Makes you wonder, who was she? Just the whip cream of life, delicately placed on top of the mud of necessity to look nice, exquisite, exotic, but when the drink’s done, she’s still there, seductively out of straw’s reach at the bottom of it all. I observe no longer, place the newspaper on the table, rise, and walk the golden mile to the pathetic sop. My hand, a dancing butterfly lands on his shoulder, then moves to caress and turn his face towards mine. Slowly, his frown’s in a dryer, tossed upside down. I radiate megawatts back. Then I left-hook that son of a bitch in the face. Like a sack of American St. Patrick’s day, the imposter of love learns what it means to speed-date with the floor, his caffeinated mahogany blood making love to the asylum white floor. Tears mix with milk. I can’t stand the hypocrisy of iced lattes. Give me a fucking green tea.

Twenty - Eight

Glasses Amanda Kubista

Twenty - Nine

A Flock Of Sheep A river of pulsating wool flows down a hill, dripping into the grass, and murmuring as it devours the land. It gurgles and effortlessly sways to a rhythm known by heart from church organs and men who can still hum tunes inside acres of enclosed pastures and flooded towns. I hum no tune. I have been swallowed up by a sea of white foam while my children stand on my shoulders, looking for a way out, a way to float above this rising plague.

Tara Marciniak

Thirty

Untitled Garrett Bradley

Thirty - One

One with Nature Stacey Swann

Thirty - Two

Begone What seemed to be water proved to be acid as you took a sip it dissolved your insides until there was no tissue left until there was only the residue of a pride once embraced but now stolen, off guard

Rana Fayez

Untitled They raise us to be soldiers of the corporate political world armed with razor sharp wallets and words we cannot afford When all we want to be are protectors of lambs meandering fields of rye with honey-suckle sweet words singing that we’ll never die

Thirty - Three

Crocuta Crocuta Mark Settle

“The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.” – James Madison High in the rise of wind squeals creak And grind in fervor –

Into stubble with foulest breath In a scent of raw, red-handed

Hoarse groans of cackling laughter

Death. Oh yes,

Stilt the hair upright

Sought with glee.

And firm on the neck Bristling quill-like in silence For devilish halloos to curdle

But none too much – out snap sharp snarls Tirades of discontent

The blood in expectation

Among the grave diggers,

Of answer.

Bellies like a half full morgue While mouths run over the brim

And whooping and lowing and growling Drivels like saliva To a morbid chime Of teeth grinding – a mill Churning bone splinters, muscling Marrow with spittle

In discord, “The little shit! Nothing worth The chew; his hair runs in my gums, Askew between my teeth. And none for meat! Lions! Mighty! Mighty! Killed a jackal. Left it to rot in our devil play.

In the joints of the wheel

How I starve! I miss

The jaws crunching, bunching incessant

Blood on my lips!”

Grunts into prattle, like the speech Of babes.

Snout first then he shovels his maw Into the mangled carcass

This riles discord in arid airs – The Serengeti dry in the lowlands

Pinching the jackal pelt with lusty Vice-like grip while another heckles

Where snickering scavengers gather

And halloos in return

In devilish bivouac

Wheezing, grinning between jests,

To dig trenches, carve channels

“Blood is a fresh steal

In the ribs, the spine, the skull

Or a trying match. I’ll have none,

Of a jackal – corpse stripped, Mawed with miry chops

But wait in the shadow of grass And on vultures watch!

Splayed with vagrant mud, tufts

They lead the way to lion prey

Of hair, graveled marrow

Which we and they

And shrinking sinews.

Together may fall on In mass

Hyena! Hyena! Hunches of lurching hunger Choke, muzzle, and flay The echo of desperate gluttons

“To eat! Then we’ll roam elsewhere – Piss on the nothing

Insatiable of stomach

We leave behind in our wake!”

To roam like speckled imps colored

Said one in his slouching, sniveling, snatching.

Like an ugly outcropping of the plain’s

Vagrant beasts! A chuckling chorus

Wearied, stained carpet.

Rises and another, she slavers out speech,

Cry, pummel sweet vapor

Thirty - Four

“The meat of mongrels, these jackals!

Fire in my belly rages yet.

Even if in violence, I like it better

Lions’ work! At least, gone

Than thirst!”

Is some pest who searched Our dens, our spawn! Merciless! Vile! Better let us hide

O dire, o lustful ravenous shrieks Splinter like a satanic choir

In the great rifts while they plague

As they fall off North jeering

The plain like murderous

Like jesters at court

Disease!”

When on dark dusk-dipped clouds before The great fallen African sun they spot

Up, up ripples a shrill coughing yelp Like a cloven tongue

A hellish halo encircling A site like harpies. Vultures hover over lions. Fresh

A voice against itself, a feud civil and foreign

Must the kill be

Echoing in heckles

As the heinous hyena horde lunges towards

Vain, fruitless, but virulent

Their gliding guides – gluttons all!

Peppering across the tall grass in violence

Steady, steady and in revelry

As ruinous as tendrils of vagrant brush fire

Ready mischief in fiendish marching procession. Silent

Biting ashes to dirt – smoke to chafe the brow

In yawning scarlet light

Of paradise. Flame does flame

Pupils dilate in excitement

Conceive destruction on destruction, avarice

Where mane and maneless cats of might

On avarice –

Wrench and wrestle about the throat

So too with naked tongues.

Of a water

Spine-rattling another and another eat words Again to words regurgitate in form More raw, distorted, more fluid Than origin.

Buffalo. Hushed now the brutish jesters Wait and watch, And Chance delivers the weak over Into the hands of hell. Hid in the height of grass,

“Curs! Ha! I fear these tsestes not, But feed on their bowels

Lion cubs lie low. Until two and three and twelve shadows

Snaking inside them like mambas!

Of hunches drive in

I speed. You wait weary with slow waltzing

The cradled perimeter and teeth grin white

On buzzard trails.

But a moment ere murder

The greater the maw, the greater pursuit,

Pulls limb from live lion limb

And I am Goliath!

While the unwary elders break the buffalo’s body.

Easy prey is not in the East rifts

The cubs yelp late as their skins are jerked

But in this West we shall feed on loins

Away and legs snapped between teeth

For mouths strong and legs swift!

Shrill, as sever live bodies

Dare we flee this plain where water and corpses rest? Water will you find in the rifts? Jackals without? Fools, fools!

Piece by mauled piece In an ecstasy of blood letting – orgy! orgy! A frenzy of hoarse chuckles christens the new night.

Nears the dry season, and all things gather

O night is for the devils!

By water – together.

Happy, happy lot!

Thirty - Five

Rope

Annabelle Ombac

Thirty - Six

Your Path

Annabelle Ombac

Thirty - Seven

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Staff Quotes Katherine Leonberger

“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.” -Ella Fitzgerald Laura V. Cook “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” -Henry Ford Corinne Jeltes “A cloudy day is no match for a sunny disposition.” -William Arthur Ward Katherine Brumbaugh “Inasmuch as nothing human is eternal but death, and death is the one thing about which human beings can’t know anything, humans know nothing.” -from Don Quixote by Kathy Acker Misono Yokoyama “Simplicity and repose are qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.” -Frank Lloyd Wright

Contributor’s Quotes Tara Marciniak

“Face value is very important but, unfortunately, you must also weigh the motive of a person in an instant.” -Ricky McGuire Rana Fayez “You shouldn’t let poets lie to you.” -Björk Elizabeth Pacentrilli “Blaze with the fire that is never extinguished.” -Luisa Sigea Ryan Donnelly “I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater then this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.” -James Baldwin Leo McLaughlin “I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos-especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom...rather then starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical.” -Jim Morisson Kate Michel “Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.” -D.H. Lawrence

Forty - One

From the Business Manager When it comes to everything and bagels, it gets scary. The first time I saw “2 Heads are Better than 1” I had a debate with Hali about whether or not this photo was of a Siamese llama or simply just a photo of two llamas standing next to each other. After our debate, we decided to go to the photographer herself and find out the truth once and for all. Typically, I was wrong, and two llamas it is. However, this accurately sums up what a great experience I’ve had while working with Silhouette. I would like to thank Hali for being a great person to work with. There is never a dull moment with you. Thanks for the laughs. “Wait, it looks like a party.” Indeed, it does. I would also like to thank every member of the Silhouette staff. The work and passion that you have showed for the magazine this semester has been remarkable, and I am proud to be a part of this with all of you. Thank you to all of the EMCVT student leaders and advisors for helping me become a part of EMCVT and guiding me through the semester. Finally, of course many thanks and love to my family and friends. You make me happy. -Jenna

2 Heads are Better Than 1 Annabelle Ombac

Forty - Two

From the Editor-in-Chief First of all I would like to thank Molly Bernhart and Kelly Furnas for convincing me that I could be the Editor-in-Chief. If it wasn’t for them I would not be writing this little editor’s note. So, thank you Molly and Kelly because this semester has been amazing. I feel like I have never learned so much in one semester. Second of all I would like to thank Jenna. If it wasn’t for Jenna I wouldn’t say things like probs or typs. So, thanks for the abreves! No, really Jenna you have been awesome. I could not have done such a good and thorough job without you. Annabelle Ombac is right “2 Heads are Better Than 1.” Between the two of us we have at least one good brain that seems to work under extreme office temperature conditions! Whether it is 5 billion degrees like that one day or arctic like every other day we seem to have come up with some pretty brilliant ideas, obvi. I would also like to thank my staff. You have all done such a good job. If it wasn’t for you this magazine would not look the way it does. Thank you for sticking to my deadlines and doing a good job with your spreads! Also, thank you to all the EMCVT student leaders and advisors. You have all been extremely helpful in guiding me. I have learned a lot form each and every one of you. I would like to thank those of you who support me behind the scenes. To my friends and my family without you life would be a lot more difficult. -Hali

The King Fish Heather McMillan

Forty - Three

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