STANDARDS: Fiction V7 N2

Featuring New Works by...

Kim Jensen

David Lawlor

Ellen Orleans

Linda Spiegler

John Young

Canéla Analucinda Jaramillo

Original Graphic, "Unchained Melody" c 2001 by Emmanuela Copal de León

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Pools

by Canéla Analucinda Jaramillo

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The phone rings. I almost don't answer, but pick it up, finally. It's Ángela. Miss Angie, who disappears for months on end, then turns up when you least expect it. And who says tonight that she got a "vibe" from me and thought she should call. Seriously.

She tells me she's been talking to her angels this morning (this is how Ángela -- appropriately named -- thinks and talks), and has asked for heavenly guidance in understanding her work as a filmmaker. She says she feels that she can only produce works about what she knows well, but all she really seems to know is about being used and treated like an object. The angels tell her that she has more to learn, to infuse her work with meaning, because she doesn't need to be making films about women being used in imbalances of power with men.

"I've been playing the Mexican maid and the Mexican whore too long," she finishes. And who can argue with that.

Promises of the Storm

by Kim Jensen

History is what we write down so we can afford to forget -- what really happened. There are promises and then the desolation -- all the discarded lifeless things flow bloodied through gutters and streets. And behind every image of rubble -- bodies; and everywhere you see bodies everywhere you remember the sound of gunfire and crying.

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If I Were to Tell the Story

by Kim Jensen

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You're spoiled...I should take you to the refugee camp where I lived, so you can see what suffering is.

I felt transparent. From the beginning it was clear that he was the smarter of the two. He had honed his spirit and senses on some rough moments. She liked this for a change -- someone who hadn't been reduced to a series of vapid reactions.

Being with Richard

by David Lawlor

All that remains now are the weary tasks of brushing Richard's teeth, washing his face, and putting on his pajamas. The last thing is to lay him in bed, turn him on his stomach, and pull the covers up to his shoulders. It is always satisfying to see his amphibian shaped body stretched out on the waterbed, his muscles finally able to extend comfortably. Without his wheelchair or drool-soaked shirt getting in the way, you can slide your arms underneath his thin chest and hug him, which delights Richard and makes him shake with a muffled laughter. Turn off the lights and lie down next to him in the glare of the moon. Answer his questions about where you are going after work and whom you will see. They are the same questions he asked earlier, but you don't care.

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excerpt from "The Replacement Daughter"

by Ellen Orleans

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Mrs. Gleichenstein's her mouth turned into a frown. "That is something every family has to decide for themselves."

"Oh." She hadn't answered my question at all. She never did. Last month, Glenn Applegate asked her what Jewish heaven was like. He'd heard detailed descriptions of the Catholic one and wanted to know if he could visit his friend Paul who would be going there after he died.

"Heaven?" Mrs. Gleichenstein had said. "Do you think there's a step-stool in your grave and that you just walk on up? Jews are focused on this life."

Dams

by Linda Spiegler

The undoing: again and again she pitched into the mossclumped mound, the heavy organic earthstew of silted quartz, feldspar, sandstone, shale, claystone; the gnawed and mudpacked aspen trunks, pine and fir branches set in layers crossways and at angles to one another. Droplets of her sweat mixed with the first slow trickle of creek water over the top of the dam. Suddenly she'd felt so light she let go her legs and fell back slowly, sinking in, euphoric, emptying her breath into waves of gurgling water and the clacking of crickets. She had just lain there, soaked under the bright October sky, sobbing.

Later, from a large rock outcropping above the valley, she'd watched the lake man as he examined the creek below. He walked it casually, stopping at several places along the bank where small logs, clumps of muddy moss and piles of twigs were strewn, not entirely haphazardly. All right, then, everything in order, maybe he'd thought. The rain had begun again, the man squinted at the sky as he turned to leave. She let out her breath slowly, but knew he would return. As she would.

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Mame Loshn

by Linda Spiegler

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Absentmindedly I handle a rock I have brought from my garden in Denver to place on Gramma's headstone. I had been tempted to bring daisies, to leave her something fresh and surprising, though it would defy the Jewish custom against flowers for the dead. Would she have been offended? I am not sure. She is, after all, buried next to her husband and kinsfolk, the members and families of the Workmen's Circle, "an early Jewish immigrant cultural organization," my mother once tells me. "Leftists." They had questioned their religious rootsseemingly outdated rules and customs, even the existence of god. They had escaped the smallmindedness and persecution of eastern Europe and tried to become enlightened "free thinkers" in the New World. And my mother, Gramma's youngest, had rejected religion entirely, and encouraged me to do the same.

Still, there is something that lingers among the congregation of granite stones chiseled with menorahs and stars of Davida nagging hum: a prayer, a lullaby. If not religion, then tradition. Or memory, a stubborn root that tugs at my heart. I place the rock carefully on Gramma's headstone, not wishing to offend. Enough of that was done in life.

Sob

by John Young

Odds are this is not the place it once was and there'll be
hard looks, no looks, loot at that would yous, for heavens
sake are there no decencies.

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Making Do

by John Young

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...I shot the ground again by his head, I shot at nothing in the distance, I saw him roll away, crawl away,limp away, I shot the other way until out of ammo, then, and then I saw the yellow man collapsing, saw a Big Man coming toward him firing, saw the Big Man missing his target, saw the yellow man raising his rifle, firing, hitting, bursting the front of the Big Man, what am I seeing I think I thought, is that my father dying, my brother shotgunning my father, in rage, in horror at my daddy beating my momma, screaming don't daddy, don't do that daddy, he
yelled, firing both barrels, my daddy coming apart, mid-section chopped guts, torso divorced from groundstanders.

Hands

by John Young

OB sober looked ghost-stricken in buglight. Hello son he waved his hat at my stern warnoff through the screen door.

He sat on the motel bed, lit a Camel as if in wind. That flicker, those cracked hands cupped, the light up smell and I couldn't stand, had to crouch, a boy in wonder at a flyaway story of a woman and a man, Bea and OB.

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Day Two

by John Young

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Solidifying morale takes more than portland, it takes to water as if gilled.

A speck of sand, in a whirring u-joint, is no less than the loss of a nail in olden time warbanging.

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