/pər s̍pɛkt ɪ v/

Volume 33 | Issue 1

Cover Art: Alejandra Lujan, Amelia. Acrylic on canvasInside Cover: Rayna Kunzman, Thailand Woman Appears Depressed before Jumping into Crocodile Pit. Graphic design

Bryan Higgins Find your Own Way. Digital photography

perspective

noun: The choice of a single angle or point of view from which to sense, categorize, measure, present or codify experience.

Back Cover: Kristen Morrison, Pill Popper. Graphic design

Editor-in-Chief Laura De La Cruz

Executive Editor Amanda Berg

Features Editor Carlos Escamilla

Photography Eric Tsao

Design Laura De La CruzJiří KarnošMegan Duffy

IllustrationBrianna Thorsen

Copy Editing Amanda BergCarlos EscamillaMario SanelliTobias KrauseSteve Haigh

WritersCarlos EscamillaBrandyn FedericoRuby Onofre

MarketingLindsay Ragsdale

Web LeadDevin Strauch

Met MediaSteve Haigh, DirectorJennifer Thome, Assistant DirectorKathleen Jewby, Production ManagerElizabeth Norberg, Office Admin.

Guest Editor and ConsultantJ. Eric Miller

Met MediaP.O. Box 173362, CB57Denver, CO 80217-3362

Printed by Signature Offset

Special Thanks to Erik Hall and Pat Muterspaughat Signature Offset, Sal Christ and the production, administration, and advertising staff of Met Media.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission of Met Media, except in context of reviews.

© 2014. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

Spotlight

Emerging Artist Gallery

Whitney Dean

Martin Mendelsberg

Intersection

Ratha Sok

Submissions

Cedric Chambers

Connie Mobley Johns

Sadie Young

Christina L. Schmidt

Angel Lopez

Thomas Mclaughlin

Colleen Kellog

Mario Rex Ferrara

David Clark

Patrick Cosner

Ben Patterson

Alba L. Garcia

Carolyn Buechner

Jacob S. Garcia

Anthony Bearzi

Sal Christ

Katie Scofield

David Ebel

Georges Loewenguth

Kristen Morrison

Lindsey Ernst

Kristina Spargo

John Grupe II

Liam Clarke

Micaela Haluko

Sarah Beabout

Sierra Schwartz

4

6

26

51

54

14

16

17

18

22

23

24

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

40

41

42

43

44

45

48

49

50

4

Spotlight

metrosphere

EMERGING ARTISTS GALLERY

One of the artist’s most valuable tools for connecting with audiences is the gal-lery. Despite the difficulty of navigating

the bureaucracy often associated with the art world, the gallery is a sacred space for art makers and art lovers. The curator is the high priest/ess who invites us into the space and works diligently to create unique experiences for its visitors. Students at MSU Denver have recently acquired a temple of their own – the Emerging Artist Gallery – and have two high priestesses to thank for it: Madeliene Kattman and Sarah Knutson. In August, they opened their

first student-curated exhibit in the Emerging Artist Gallery – a space at the rear of the Center for Visual Art on Santa Fe Drive.

The show was “Activate,” and it was based around the various political and social issues import-ant to MSU Denver students. It coincided with the CVA’s “In Lak’Ech San Diego to Denver: You Are My Other Self,” and effectively complemented the main space’s message of activism through art. “One of the major pushes for us doing this show is that there are so many issues in society right now and in the news and in the community and our country, that

STUDENTS ADVOCATING FOR STUDENTS

by Carlos Escamilla

Emerging Artist Gallery

© Erik Tsao - Metrosphere

5

Spotlight

it’s kind of hard to not make work that talks about [them],” said Knutson. “I think as artists, we’re really drawn to what we believe that we can make the strongest statement about, and that ends up being activist work.”

Kattman and Knutson revealed that it wasn’t the smoothest experience putting the show together – the call for entry had to go out twice and both were out of state at one point with Kattman coming back after the show had opened. But both are grateful for the trials and learning experiences they gained. Knutson said it reinforces “the CVA’s mission of professional development and giving students this unique experience and work. I would never have known how to hang and install a show before.”

Despite its panel that helps with judging entries, the EA Gallery is the baby of Kattman and Knutson. “I’m really grateful in this experience and being able to say, ‘I helped this artist do this thing and in the process I learned how to put something together that was bigger than what I can do on my own.’ I can curate larger sets and hopefully be able to give Metro a good voice for the Santa Fe com-munity,” said Kattman. For the exhibit director Knutson, “I pride myself in my organization skills and my leadership abilities, and that contributes a lot to this small community that we have here that is working on building this gallery into an essential part of Metro and the Denver and Auraria community.”

“Activate” had the possibility of starting some poignant conversations about the role of activism in art for a student, and it especially influenced Knutson’s Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis project. “[For my thesis,] I’m addressing a social issue that I didn’t really acknowledge or didn’t really realize existed – there’s a societal, cultural belief that people with an illness or a disability or a disorder that you can’t see the symptoms of, that it doesn’t exist. ArtAbility is really kind of addressing the same issue and bring-ing that to light and saying, ‘Hey, we’re here and we’re all the same.’”

“ArtAbility” opened in October, displayed not far from Knutson’s own work in the “Tangle & Hammer BFA Thesis Exhibition.” The show gave various artists on the Auraria Campus the chance to showcase their work while allowing their personal disabilities to have voices. It was a strong second show that allowed the work to successfully stand

on its own, yet gained resonance by having written statements from the artists on how their work is or isn’t made with the disabilities in mind. The show also seemed to accomplish the goal that Kattman and Knutson had of inviting all of the institutions on campus to be involved. “[The EA Gallery] is focusing on Metro students, but we really invite everyone who is an emerging artist to have a voice here. We want everyone to know that that’s a possibility,” said Kattman.

“I think this could be really helpful for Metro students. [T]o go to grad school, to do anything else outside of school, you need to have experience. We want to provide that in an appropriate manner, which is exhibiting,” said Kattman.

Their third (and Knutson’s final) show, “Ah- Sem- Blahj,” will accompany the CVA’s main “Greater Than the Sum” show. That exhibit will run November 21 – January 24, 2015. ¶

© Erik Tsao - Metrosphere

Spotlight

metrosphere6© Erik Tsao - Metrosphere

Spotlight

7

WHITNEY DEANArtist & Activist

Americans love a “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” anecdote, but we generally need an ending to the story – to know that something tragic happened, and then the author had an epiphany and lived happily ever after. For Whitney Dean, that journey doesn’t have such a perfect ending. “I struggle with thinking I’ve come a long way,” Dean said, “only because I feel like I’m always just a drink away from being a drunk again.”

Eight years ago, Dean did have her epiphany. “I think I realized [drinking] was a slow death, psychologically, emotionally, and physically,” she said. “I guess things had been rock bottom for a while, but I have a really high pain tolerance. So I was just suffering and suffering and I woke up that morning and thought, ‘I’m either going to die like this or I’m going to put the bottle down.’ I felt like I’d been wrong for so long, so I needed to do the next right thing.” The minute she decided to get sober, she turned to the one person she knew could help and understand her best – her father, a former addict himself. Though they hadn’t spoken in years, he welcomed her back home and helped her through her detox.

At the time, Dean was living in Florida, but she really needed a change of scenery to have a fresh start. She moved to Colorado, determined to stay on her new path, but still uncertain of where it would lead. “I just

didn’t know how to start a career. Also, there was this element of not even knowing what I was good at. I didn’t have an identity yet, and I think that’s one thing that drug or alcohol abuse really does. You only identify with this kind of party persona, and you don’t get the chance to really know yourself or grow into yourself,” she said. “There’s that theory that you stop aging when you start doing drugs, so at 28, I was a 13-year-old again, having to establish all that stuff that I didn’t do during adolescence.”

She returned to school with an ardent interest in environmental advocacy and writing. She also had an awareness often reserved for older students. “When I came back to school, I had an enormous appetite to learn to think analytically, because I’d never been challenged in that way before. I came back with some humility and so I was receptive to all of these different ideas. I attribute any skill in my writing to being able to critically analyze a situation and apply that information.” She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from MSU Denver, then went on to earn a Master of Arts in creative nonfiction from Colorado State University. Now she’s back at her alma mater teaching English, but she admits, “I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. I feel like I did a lot of growing up in the last few years, but it’s frustrating. I definitely feel like an adult, but our society just doesn’t value writers.”

by Carlos EscamillaContributions by Amanda Berg

8

Spotlight

metrosphere

There’s an interesting dichotomy weaving through Dean’s recounting of her life these past years – on the one hand, there’s hope, and the other, a hidden struggle. That complex duality is also evident in her storylines she shares in her writing. Her featured story (see page 9), “And These Secrets I’ll Take Up the Mountain,” is a great example of this – bleak, yet optimistic. The protagonist’s anxiety builds up, inspiring a sense of nervous, inevitable dread; however, the reader keeps hope that the fledglings will survive due to her determination.

“I’ve always been a storyteller,” she said. “So I want to entertain, but while I’m doing it, I also want other people to be worried about the things I worry about.” The narrative of “And These Secrets…” is a rich exploration of cultural and environmental observations about the animals that connects to her philosophy about the interconnectedness between suffering and helping other animate beings. “There’s a strong connection between people with addictions and animals,” she said. “There’s

an empathy there that I don’t know occurs in a life without suffering.”Another message in many of her stories relates to environmental awareness. Her master’s thesis is

the story of two brothers in Florida, after one has been swallowed by the a sinkhole. “The second I read the headline about the sinkhole, I knew I had my story,” she said, adding, “I immediately saw the connection between the guy who got sucked into the sinkhole and my own story.

But I also wanted to tell the story about how the agricultural system affected Florida’s ecosystem.”

Her advocacy permeates her stories. “I know that stories are what have shaped my person. It’s through stories, through reading and listening, that I’ve learned how to improve parts of myself. So writing is my way of sharing what I’ve learned,” she said. “My hope is that I share with [people] a story that resonates with them, that makes them not want to walk away.”

“It’s through stories, through reading and listening, that I’ve learned how to improve parts of myself.”

9

Featured Story

I’LL TAKE UP THE MOUNTAIN

The songbirds had me standing on the lawn in my underwear. Seven a.m. and the bicycle com-muters wheeled past the house, and although my home sits back from the road, I’m tall and tattooed and blonde-haired—and I was throwing rocks. The cyclists looked over their shoulders to see again what they thought they saw the first time, but they didn’t stop. Not when there was a woman on the lawn in her underwear, throwing rocks.

I didn’t have time to dress when the shrill squawks flooded the room with sound. Out of a dream they came, furious and desperate, and out of my dream I awoke with a violence, tearing the sheets aside, whipping the screen door wide to find the trouble raining down on a Tuesday morning.

It was the mountain jays and robins that nest in the canopy of box elders above my home that raised me from a dream and drew me out into a world that was upset with no way to set it right. These songbirds I had come to know over the last few seasons, as I wrote and studied at my desk, facing west to the Rocky Mountains, the gnarled box elders swallowing the mountain-view. These songbirds, their songs and squabbles I’d come to recognize, as they perched on the fence around the backyard. When the words on the page and

computer screen melted together through the weary lenses in my head, I stared out the window, into the branches, and watched the wildlife that had taken up residence so close to my own. Bound to the chair, committed to work and academics, I gazed with fatigue and boredom and frustration out the window onto a world I never made time for otherwise.

They were my birds. They felt like my birds because I’d finally taken notice of them. A deluded thought - my choice of words - to take ownership of an animate being just because I’d inadvertently plugged in to the world around me. But I couldn’t change feeling responsible for them—at least, through the spring. I thought of a Rumi poem: “You have forgotten the One/who doesn’t care about ownership/who doesn’t try to turn a profit/from every human exchange.” I had, indeed, forgotten the One, if I ever knew the One. The season was spring and I’d counted three nests in the branches above my little home, one belonging to mountain jays, two belonging to robins. Each pair of birds had beared two chicks that season, and each of those chicks survived the first few critical weeks, when they were most vulnerable to the elements and illness.

THESEAND

SECRETS

by Whitney Dean

10 metrosphere

Featured Story

In all that new life, though, bloomed a hardness. Never knew how hard before my window lens. By the time the crows arrived and settled on the telephone wires above Maple Street—a murder of roosting crows—the chicks had grown to fledglings, just days away from taking their first flights.

I did not make the correlation between the silence in the trees and the crows on the wire, as I hadn’t yet gotten to know the crows, but from my window view, I learned. The crows came and two of the three nests in my box elders were abandoned with the parents having nothing to stay for now.

Crows aren’t hard to observe, bold as they are, but I had to hold still to really see them. I had to occupy a space longer than a few moments to understand the absolute attention a crow pays to another while preening. From the window in my little house, I learned to identify the members of the extended family by their missing tail feathers and the shapes of heads, to distinguish the gleams off the plume of the young from the dull matte of the old. I came to recognize their greeting calls, the ones that came before the sun rose and the ones that came just after dusk, as different as a hoarse good morning sounds from a weary good night. Two dialects: the loud cries disseminating gen-eral information, the soft chatter exchanging intimate conversation.

And I learned, on a Tuesday morning, predation is as much of a part of a crow’s omnivorous feeding habits as is scavenging.

Wednesday is trash day. One more day and a particularly tenacious crow, who on a Tuesday morning was undeterred by the songbirds’ beaks and claws, might have turned to the easier food supply of the curbside trash bags, met less resistance at the city dump. I had observed how the crows thrived on our public waste system, indexing the days trash is put to the curb, memorizing the compactor routes. But it was Tuesday, a week since the last trash run, and I imagine, a day fraught with concern for a hungry bird.

By the time I swung the screen door wide, the crow

had already made off with one of the fledglings. The crow had spotted the robins’ nest and negotiated the consequences far before I’d ever stopped dreaming. And the song birds raised hell and descended upon that crow, fiercely, a quarter of the crow’s size with a sliver of her intelligence, yet the parents of those fledg-lings dove again and again—out of their minds, beside themselves, haywired. Mountain jays and swallows

joined the robins’ defense of the nest. So mad did the songbirds beat against the crow that she droped the fledgling to the concrete of my driveway. So mad was I that I ran out the house in my underwear and cupped the baby in the palm of one hand. With the other, I lift-ed myself to the roof of my car, which put me just close enough to the nest to roll the young robin back in. Half naked, on the roof of my car, stretching up on my toes to reach a bird’s nest. My neighbors if they noticed, never mentioned it.

I felt for a moment as though I’d done my job. I’d made the upset world right. The crows had cleaned out the other nests, but not this one. This one was mine. I claimed it as I claimed my little Maple Street home that’s actually a rental, but around which I labor over the hedges and stones, as if it were my own. The squawking had ceased for the time being, and I’d made right this small ecosystem in the world. I re-turned to the house to find my pants when the fucking commotion started up, again.

I wondered if I’d caught her off guard. If the crow

had suspected only to contend with an avian aerial assault, she was now raided from the ground with rocks, the rocks which secured the foundation of my house, which was built directly on the ground, and has since, over the last hundred years, settled with the earth at various elevations, making the hardwood floors curve like a spine and the bookshelves rest at odd angles. I wondered if the crow had time to register my face, catalogue its features in her mind under the enemy file, as I’d read crows do. I wondered, as the crow reluctantly flew away, if she’d already figured me into the equation of how to divorce the fledgling from its nest. In the moment I chose the largest rock to fit in my hand, in the moment I leaned back to throw that rock forward with momentum, I entered the life of a bird, who maybe, previously, has only casually acknowl-edged my existence. In that moment, standing on the lawn, throwing rocks at a crow, I became conscious of a relationship with the world I’d once known in child-hood but had long since forgotten. A childhood spent outdoors, in the woods, when birds occupied most of the conversations in my day. Long before my seat at the office window, where I heard sound but not the birds. But I’d come into something. I was mad with it, outright haywired.

Tuesdays I had off from work. They were typically

still busy days for me, but I had a fledgling to attend to, the last of the six chicks born that spring in the box elders above me. I worked at my desk with the win-dows and front door open, listening for the songbirds

4

4

44

11

Featured Story

to alert me to the crow’s return to the scene, which they did approximately every hour. Every hour I ran to the yard, scooped a handful of rocks in one hand, and chucked them with the other. The pile of work I had to do that day was merely shuffled around on my desk.

My mother called and when I relayed to her the morning’s events, she jokingly suggested I make a scarecrow. So, I built a scarecrow—over a millennium of farmers can’t be wrong—complete with last year’s Halloween clown costume, a Mexican wrestling mask from my collection of said masks, and a tilly hat I had no use for that day, as I was homebound, keeping vig-ilance over a fledgling I hoped would take flight soon. Only one day until the residents of Maple Street tossed trash to the curb and gave the fledgling half a chance to survive against the will of a crow.

A young robin’s survival against the will of a crow, I wanted.

With each return of the crow, the songbirds’ squawking was preceded by silence. The fledgling ceased barking for food, and the parents ceased an-swering its pleas. The silence cued me to push the chair out from under my ass, run out the front door, and grab rocks. All day I listened to silence, listened for silence, maybe for the first time in the last thirty-six years that I’ve been within earshot of the world.

And this crow, who returned again and again, first standing on the neighbor’s fence, then standing in the street, cocking her head from side to side, consider-ing the songbirds, considering me, considering my scarecrow none, at all. I wondered what a millennium of farmers had been thinking? Had crows just evolved, gotten smarter, or had any successful crow scare just been coincidental? Had the crows just chosen to fly away, as this crow just chose to fly back, again and again, until she got what she came for?

I canceled meeting a friend at the gym and can-celed dinner plans with another. Just let nature run its course, said one friend. It sucks to be a bird, said an-other. And over the course of the next few weeks, when I told people the story of the fledgling, they responded in a similar way. They told me to let nature be, stay out of it, life is hard, there are plenty of robins—but these sounded like excuses because humans have already set the imbalance into motion. Tipping the balance back in the favor of the songbirds’ seemed only the next course of action to take. We swing the pendulum, and it swings back, unless it meets some interference.

The songbirds are having a hell of a time, as it is. Between habitat loss and domestic cats that have decimated natural songbird populations, there are not too many more hits the birds can afford. And despite humans’ general distaste for crows, we’ve accommodated them in the most extraordinary ways. Great lengths we’ve taken to provide crows with the vast open spaces they value so much to protect them-

selves from predators. What was once forest, is now cattle pastures, croplands, commercial developments, and suburbia. With the forests went the owls and other prey birds, and with them off the table, with the wealth of food sources in human refuse and agriculture, the crows’ numbers soar, putting the songbirds in my box elders at a fatal disadvantage.

The size of the crow’s brain in ratio to the size of its body makes it one of the most advanced brains on the planet, right up there with those of elephants, chimps, and humans. With a natal period of five years, roughly a quarter of a crow’s natural lifespan, the chicks have plenty of time to develop cognitively, and with extend-ed family members around, helping to protect the nest and feed the young, they don’t have to worry about survival so much. They can hang out and be curious, let their imaginations set fire.

But I’ve been paying bills and working for a pay-check to pay those bills, my imagination long since burnt out. A woman with her rocks, a bird with her wits.

My harvest figure, the scarecrow, was ephemeral, lasting only as long as the threat presented itself, only as long as there was something of value to be threat-ened. In the afternoon, I took my desk chair outside and ate my lunch on the lawn, as the crow wished she, too, could eat her lunch on my lawn. I sat outside and considered my scarecrow that the crow had considered none, at all.

As far back as 1300 years ago, the Japanese rec-ognized field deities who sent the birds from the fields. Deities such as Kuebiko, who could not walk, yet knew everything about the world, who sat dumbly in the field, keeping watch over the crops until harvest. One version of this Japanese folktale says it was Kuebiko who flew down from the mountains every spring to sit immobilized in the farmers’ fields, and it was the crows that came to him, perched on his outstretched arms, and whispered secrets for him to take back up the mountain to share with the gods. But my Kuebiko did not fly down from the mountains a mile from my little house, and the crow that returned again and again for the baby robin knew it. My Kuebiko recognized no gods, heard no secrets.

Later in the day, after another attempt by the crow

to attack the nest, I followed her to the street, chucking rocks well into the neighbor’s yard, and noticed the other fledgling in the gutter, the one I’d assumed had been in the nest the whole time, but I hadn’t looked. Even when I stood in my underwear, on my toes, on top of my car, to return one of the fledglings to the nest, I did not notice the baby bird was alone. This one the

4

4

12 metrosphere

Featured Story

crow must have dropped, as well, with the onslaught of the songbirds’ defenses, while I slept dead to the world.

I picked up the dead bird. I needed to know how death came to him or her (the gender I couldn’t deter-mine). Perhaps, it was the impact of the fall. Perhaps, a fatal laceration on the underside of its body. But I was wrong. Nothing but a small wound at the base of the bird’s neck between the wings, where it appeared a single puncture had severed the spinal cord—a swift execution, a sudden end. I wanted to throw the dead baby bird to the other side of the street, offer the crow what she’d worked so hard to get in exchange for the life of the only chick left in my box elders. I’d been throwing rocks into the street all day long, and now I would throw a dead bird. For the first time that day, I became self-conscious of what someone might think about a woman throwing rocks, then a dead bird, across the street into the neighbor’s yard, and I decid-ed against it, throwing the baby bird’s body into a bush for the ants, instead.

By the time dusk settled, I hadn’t seen the crow in several hours. And I was tired. I was tired of what I realized was a futile fight anyway. Was I to call in to work and throw rocks all the next day, as well? I considered

it. I pressed my fingers to my temples and tried to remember if I’d seen crows active at night. I couldn’t recall. I tried to recall. Then, nightfall brought a storm, a severe storm with violent gusts of wind and hail like the rocks I’d been throwing all day. Surely, too much for a crow. Surely, a few hours of sleep.

But I woke to a different kind of silence, an ab-sence. I rushed the front door, again in my underwear, and saw clearly that the last of the fledglings was gone. Where it had perched the day before on the lip of the nest, fluttering wings on occasion, like shaking out a hand before committing fingers to the keys of a piano, there was now a vacancy. No parent in sight. No robins, no jays, no flickers, no song sparrows, no house finches—no songs. Just the crows in their Maple Street roost. On the outstretched arms of the telephone wires, they spoke amongst themselves. They seemed to speak to me. They might as well have perched on my arms, outstretched—light as a feather, stiff as a board—and whispered their secrets to me, secrets for me to take up the mountain and share with the gods. But I’m ephemeral, lasting only as long as the threat presents itself, only as long as there is something of value to be threatened. I recognize no gods and hear no secrets. The crows now considered me none, at all.

13

Spotlight

14 metrosphere

Submissions

Cedric ChambersAutumn Optiz. Oil on canvas

15

Submissions

Cedric ChambersMaya G. Oil on canvas

16 metrosphere

Submissions

Connie Mobley JohnsRobodonna. Oil on canvas

17

Submissions

Sadie Young Armor. Oil on canvas

18 metrosphere

Submissions

Chad stood in the living room of his minimally fur-nished apartment, facing a mirror propped against the fireplace mantel. He glanced distractedly at his reflec-tion and touched a scar above his eye; the stubble on his weathered face had grayed. A photo of his family next to the mirror caught his eye. The glowing face of his wife Matilda, who held a baby boy, matched that of the young girl clinging to Chad’s arm. He stared at the face of the girl.

“What?” He turned his back on the photograph. He switched the phone to his other ear, having forgotten he was in the middle of a conversation.

“I asked if you could take the day off.” Matilda’s voice shook. “Never mind.” Her labored breath resounded through the phone.

“I’ll get a ride over after my meeting. How’s Hugo?” he asked. But she’d ended the call.

“Don’t let me down…” Chad’s alarm clock sang. When the music repeated itself ten minutes later, he rose from the loneliness of his bed and got ready for work. He left his apartment for the convenience store across the street, and purchased coffee. He then waited on the street corner for the bus. The air was frigid and a haze hung low in the sky. He found his regular spot on the bus and removed a book from his briefcase.

“Twelve steps?” a middle aged woman inquired gen-tly. Chad nodded, but said nothing. Twenty minutes later, he was dropped off near Jackson Middle School.

“Mr. Munson?” The door creaked open and three girls were peering in. “Morning!” They pushed their way into the room. Chad turned from the rows of empty desks he’d been staring at.

“Morning, ladies.”“Mr. Munson, are you coming to the play next weekend?”

“We’ll see, Harper.” He rose from his desk and moved to prop open the door.

“I’m Hilary…” she shot him an uneasy glance.“Sorry. Hilary. Yes, count me in,” he agreed hastily.“Really?” The girls high-fived each other. More stu-

dents filed into the room. While his seventh-graders read The Tell-Tale Heart,

Chad stared out the window, ignoring the note passing and whispers.

Chad waited for both students and faculty to leave for the day before he left his classroom. Sleet fell from the overcast sky and stung his face on the bone-chilling walk to O’Sullivan’s Pub. He ate quickly, left cash on the table, and walked a few blocks further to his meeting.

The weather subsided as night crept in. Chad climbed the steps of a brownstone and his phone fell from his pocket. He picked it up and discovered a se-ries of missed calls from Matilda. He dialed her number, but a car horn stopped him. She was parked across the street.

Chad cautiously approached the car and Matilda rolled down her window. His heart skipped a beat when he saw her up close. “You shouldn’t be driving,” was all he could muster. She looked like a skeleton clothed in putrid flesh. He turned to see Hugo asleep in the backseat.

“They’ve given me a few weeks.” Matilda was choked up. “Hospice is arranged.” Chad got in the passenger side of the car. Matilda turned away from him.

“Matti, let me help you,” he whispered. He moved to hug her, but crossed his arms instead.

“If you want to help me, sign the papers to give up custody of Hugo.” A weak cough escaped her lungs.

“He’s all I’ll have,” Chad trailed off.“I found a good family. They’re experienced with

When StainsTurn to Scarsby Christina L. Schmidt

19

Submissions

special needs kids.” She covered her face and tears seeped through her frail fingers. “You could still see him,” she managed.

“I’m his dad.”“He needs attention. And love.” Matilda turned

to Chad and wept. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” A look of defeat covered her ashen face.

“I’ve been sober two years.” Chad swallowed the bile rising in this throat. “I love him.”

“I don’t trust you.” Matilda leaned her head on the window. “There’s too much that can’t be undone.”

The only sound in the car became Hugo’s light snoring. Chad closed his eyes and listened.

“I don’t feel good.” Matilda started the car. “I need to go.” She pressed the unlock button and waited for Chad to leave.

“Let me drive you home,” he offered helplessly.“You don’t have a driver’s license anymore,

remember?” She wiped her face and stared ahead. “Go to your meeting. Call me when you’re ready to sign Hugo’s papers.”

“When I finally came to the end of myself, I

realized I hadn’t been alone.” A woman stood at the front of a small, crowded, coffee-scented room. “And that’s when I was able to start over.” Every-one clapped and she sat down. It was his turn next.

“My name is Chad and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for two years and three weeks.” He paused to absorb the hum of the fluorescent lights and the crackling of Styrofoam cups. “I decided to get help when I was thirty-four.” Understanding eyes stared back at Chad. But they didn’t really understand.

“I needed help because… My wife left me because…” His throat was dry. The faces in front of him became blurry. Someone placed a cup of water on the podium.

“Sorry.” Chad drank the water and wiped his forehead. The face of his sponsor Ryan became clear. “It was time for dinner. My wife had just poured me a glass of wine. She wanted me to re-lax. But our one-year-old son with Down Syndrome was refusing to eat. I was concerned.”

“My daughter didn’t answer when we called her down for dinner.” He paused and closed his eyes. “I didn’t think anything of it. She still didn’t answer when I knocked on her bedroom door. She’d been having headaches; maybe she was napping.” Chad became short of breath.

“I walked in and found her hanging in her closet. I screamed at her, ‘Harper! Wake up!’ I called for help.” Chad stared at the ground, the muscles in his face contorted. “I couldn’t loosen the scarf from her neck. I just kept screaming at her. Her skin was cold. But I could feel her heart still beating. She

was twelve. Just a kid.”A clock ticked loudly at the back of the room. “When I saw her, I dropped my glass of wine.”

He took another sip of water. “It went everywhere.” Pressure gathered in his throat. “We couldn’t get the stain out, and I got frustrated. It reminded me of a scar. But a scar isn’t supposed to hurt. That’s when I started to really drink.” Chad cleared his throat. “Whiskey numbed everything for a while.”

“It didn’t take long for me to alienate what was left of my family. I was suspended from work. I flipped my car in a drunk driving accident. My wife visited me in the hospital to serve me divorce pa-pers and kick me out. A week later, she was diag-nosed with cancer. Not even that sobered me up.”

“But one night I ran into one of Harper’s friends at the grocery store,” Chad fought to remain com-posed. “This little girl started crying and apologiz-ing. She told me their friends had taught Harper how to play the choking game. And soon Harper bragged about playing it alone. This young girl pleaded with me to forgive her. And the whiskey stopped working. I was…wrecked.” He left the podium abruptly and found his seat next to Ryan. Nobody found it in their hearts to clap.

“I can take care of Hugo,” Chad argued into the phone the next morning, while it was still too early in the day to argue. But Matilda had made up her mind.

After their phone call, he pulled a box from his closet labeled “H” and placed it in the center of the living room, but it remained unopened. Ryan called while Chad was grading book reports that afternoon, but he didn’t answer. He knew Ryan was confirming their meeting, and he wasn’t going to go.

Nearly two weeks passed, and Chad contin-ued to avoid Ryan. One morning before work, he wandered to the back of the convenience store and stood in the liquor section. He didn’t feel so afraid anymore. He felt normal, even strong; strong enough to open the box in the living room.

On the bus ride home that evening, wet snow clung to the windows. Chad’s phone rang, and he answered, surprised to see it wasn’t Ryan.

“Matilda, I was just about to call—” but he was cut off by a hospice nurse. “Okay,” he finally an-swered. “Thank you.” He returned the phone to his pocket and stared out the window.

When the bus dropped him off at his stop, Chad went directly home. He removed a stack of essays from his briefcase, but he was too distracted to grade anything. Outside, dense snow had blanket-ed the ground. He eyed the box labeled “H” on the living room floor.

Chad ran across the street to the convenience

20 metrosphere

Submissions

store. He dusted off the snowflakes that had accumu-lated on his head and shoulders, and retreated to the liquor section. The cashier watched him.

“I have these small bottles of Jack on clearance for $6.99,” she suggested and held up a bottle.

“Yeah. Yeah, a little one is good,” he nodded nervously.“Need any mixers?”“I just want to sleep tonight.”“Gotcha.” She smiled and rang him up.Chad stared at the small bottle of whiskey on his

kitchen counter. His phone rang, but he ignored it. Through waves of building anxiety, he opened the bottle and smelled it. He walked away and stood in the dark entryway of his apartment until the stench had departed from his nostrils. He took a deep breath and returned to the kitchen. He filled a shot glass with the amber colored substance, choking back the terrifying aroma with every inhale. Finally, he took just a sip. He closed his eyes and a flood of recognition seared through his veins. He shivered. Moments passed.

He took a step away from the glass on the counter. He swiped the bottle instead and took a gulp that burned his throat. He made his way to the living room. He knelt down and opened the box. Inside was a collection of Harper’s things. Her stuffed animals still smelled like her apple shampoo. He paused to drink again. He found drawings, hair ribbons, her favorite sweatshirt, a pillow, her journal, and her ballet slip-pers. The more he unearthed from the box, the more he drank, and each bitter swallow warmed his veins, though numbness refused to kick in. He held Harper’s baby blanket, and found the doll he’d given her for Christmas. He paged through the photo album of her last birthday party. And at the bottom of the box, he found a picture of her proudly holding newborn Hugo in the hospital. Hugo.

A hot sweat covered Chad’s body and he could no longer see straight. The bottle was gone. He left the box and crawled onto the couch. He stared at the piec-es of Harper’s short life chaotically strewn about the living room. His phone rang again, and he stumbled to the kitchen. He finished the shot glass he’d poured, and his home was once again dry of liquor. The missed call was from Matilda. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath; shook his head and focused. He dialed her number.

“Hello…” He started, prepared to speak with a hos-pice nurse.

“Chad.” Matilda’s voice was barely audible. He had to strain to hear her.

“Matilda.”“I want to see you.”“I’m sorry,” Chad wept bitterly. He resented that the whis-

key hadn’t done its job to numb his heart. He should have known. He sat down in the midst of Harper’s belongings.

“Can you make it?” she whispered. All regret he’d

ever felt rested on his heart in that moment. “Wait for me.” Chad heaved a helpless sigh, and

hung up the phone. He brushed his teeth, then searched the apartment for his old car keys. He found them in the junk drawer, and took the elevator to the underground garage. He stumbled into the driver’s seat of his car. He drove out of the garage into the snowy night. The whiskey in his stomach began to churn.

Chad turned onto the icy highway and passed cars on both sides of the ditch. He couldn’t see the lines on the road and the windshield was fogging. The car hit a patch of ice and he swerved. He slowed down and gripped the wheel tighter, his palms sweating. He reached the exit and approached a stop light. The car slid to the right, he slammed on the brakes, and hit the median.

The car stalled. Chad turned the key again and again. Finally the engine sputtered to a start again. He clum-sily reversed and redirected the dented vehicle into the correct lane. His fingertips were tingling. While he waited at a red light, Chad dialed Ryan.

“Where are you?”“Driving to Matilda’s. I’ve been drinking.”“Pull over! Where are you?”“Almost there.”“Damn it,” Ryan said hastily. “I’m on my way.”The car slid again as Chad turned the corner onto

the street that was once his. He pulled up to the house, and took the keys from the ignition. He peered into the windows of his old home, and trembling, gripped the wheel again. The master bedroom was dimly lit. Hugo’s room was dark. A few moments later, the master bed-room went dark. He got out of the car and approached the house. He fumbled with his keys and unlocked the front door.

“There’s still time.” A woman greeted him at the door.

He stopped in the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. Matilda had always seen through him. He washed his hands and face and ran his fingers through his hair, hoping to mask the remaining smell. He drank a sip of water, which only activated his gag reflex.

He climbed the stairs wearily, remembering the sound of tiny footsteps and the vision of toys strewn about. He passed an empty room and stopped. The door was cracked open just enough for him to see a picture of Harper on the bedside table. He pushed the door open further and saw the faded wine stain on the carpet. It would never go away. He pulled the door closed again and made his way to the master bedroom.

Matilda didn’t respond when Chad sat down next to her. But when he held her hand, she tightened her grip on his. He tried to ignore his own heart beating so hard in his chest, and listened to her breathing. He tried to clear his head of the unwelcomed substance raging through his veins. He thought of Hugo, asleep in the other room. She’d said goodbye. Her breathing

21

Submissions

was uneven. He lay down next to her, but didn’t speak, so her senses wouldn’t ever again be reminded of what had torn them apart. He rested his head next to her fragile face and enveloped the silence.

“You’ll be okay,” Matilda whispered, and squeezed his hand again. She took a last sudden gasp of air and exhaled. Chad waited for another breath, but she was finished. He wept, still holding her hand, which had re-laxed in his grip. Brokenness had swallowed him again.

Chad returned downstairs, and collapsed onto a couch in the den where Ryan was waiting. The hospice nurse quietly retreated to the master bedroom.

“I need air.” Chad stood up and Ryan followed him through the kitchen out to the snow-covered deck. He slid down against the wall of the house, crawled to the side of the deck and vomited over the edge. He hud-dled in a corner, shivering.

A few hours later, Chad woke up on the couch. His body ached terribly. The house was dark, and everyone had found temporary places to rest. The hospice nurse had explained to him what would happen the next morning, and she acknowledged that Hugo would be in his care.

He returned upstairs. He went into Hugo’s bedroom and listened to the gentle snoring of a little boy, un-aware that his mother had gone. Chad continued down the hall to the empty bedroom. He pushed the door open again and crawled onto the floor. He rested his head next to the wine stain in the carpet and closed his eyes. Remnants of liquor remained his veins. His heart burned. Goodbye’s swam aimlessly through his mind and collided with apologies, devastation, forgiveness, and grief. On the verge of another short, soundless sleep, Chad touched the carpet where he knew the stain would always be, and understood that he hadn’t been alone. Someday it would be just a scar. Someday he’d be able to tell the story without the company of pain. Then they’d be okay.

22 metrosphere

Angel Lopez Woodless Man, Charcoal on layer of bark wood

23

Tommy McLaughlinTwo Species Meet, Each Supposing the Other to be Equal. Linocut printJob Well Done. Linocut print

24 metrosphere

Submissions

Beyond Space and Time.

The Abyss. Heaven. Limbo. Waiting room with clouds. A line of people dressed in white, filing off stage. A reception desk made out of clouds and warm icicles. Hope, f, ageless, mans the desk.

Willy Loman, m, 65, sits down on a seat made out of clouds. He holds a ticket in his hand with the num-ber 999K on it. He hangs his head in his hands, wiping off tears with his palms.

Dexter Green, looks like a dashing young 50-year-old, swings a golf club around without a golf ball. He raises his hand to his eyes and peers out at the audience.

DEXTER (to Willy): Great weath-er we’re having up here, eh? The clouds are as white as snow.

Willy looks up at Dexter and smiles through his tears.In storms Dave Moss, wearing a white suit and white fedora hat, while carrying a white briefcase.

DAVE (raising hands): I want to be reborn a rich man! STAT! Don’t give me any bullshit about it. I got shortchanged on the last deal, and you know it!

HOPE: Dave? Dave Moss?

DAVE: That was me. I’m thinking Velasco Javier, something. Some-thing rich and foreign.

Willy rises from his seat.

WILLY: Now, wait a minute, Hope! I was here long before he was. I’ve been patiently waiting my turn. Why does he get to --

DAVE (flustered, fast-paced): You know why I get to go first? Because I’m the machine. I AM THE –

Shelly Levine, m, late 70s, walks by wearing a long white robe and a red hat with a black feather, a Su-per Model Angel on each shoulder.

SHELLY: Now, Moss, you know that I’m the machine, and not you, which is why I get to go first.

HOPE: Let Shelly Levine through. He gets to go first.

Willy shakes his number and snif-fles. Shelly is escorted off stage.

WILLY: This is not fair! I’m well-liked! I should go first. I’ve been here long enough.

HOPE: Don’t fret, Mr. Loman. Your new home should reflect the per-son you want to become, not the person that you were. You need a loving home that will allow you to balance past Karmic patterns.

DEXTER (swinging golf club): Somewhere in the Alps, where I can go skiing and climb fourteeners.

Shelly waves snidely to Moss, exits with the Angels.

DAVE: That man’s a thief! I tell you!

WILLY: Aren’t we all?

Dexter gathers next to Willy and Dave.

DEXTER: Not all of us have to be thieves. Some of us actually work hard for a living. By the time I was 27, I was the richest man in my region, owning a large chain of Laundromats. I tell you, work hard and you can achieve greatness.

WILLY (sniffling): I believe that!

My brother walked into the jungle a boy, with no money to his name, and then walked out a rich man and owner of a diamond mine.

DAVE (waving arms): Bullshit! No man becomes rich quick without being a bit dishonest. You never stole a lick?

DEXTER: Not a dime!

DAVE: You lying scumbag!

HOPE (smiling): Now, Dave, if you don’t watch your tongue, you’ll be next.

Dave pounds fists onto Hope’s desk.

DAVE (glowing): I want to be next! Dammit!

HOPE (smiling): You just may be.

DAVE: Where’d Shelly go? Where’d that lying bastard get to live out his next life? I want to be somewhere warm, sunny, and tropical. And I want to be rich! Filthy rich!

HOPE: Shelly Levine has been reborn into a warm, sunny… desert land. He’ll become a vulture in his next life. If you don’t watch your tongue, you’ll become a desert rat.

The Super Model Angels return.

DAVE: No. Freakin’. Fair!

HOPE (pointing to Dave): Angels… Take him away.

The Super Model Angels grab Dave, and start to leave with him.

DAVE: I said FREAKIN’! Freakin’… Not --

The Super Model Angels silence Dave’s mouth with their hands and

American Afterlife by Colleen Kellogg

25

Submissions

exit with him.

HOPE: It pays to do the right thing.

WILLY: I’ll wait over here.

Willy grabs a chair and places it near the front of the stage. He lets out a big sigh.

DEXTER: Your next life might not be as bad as you might think. I was a penguin once. Had a lovely penguin mom, penguin wife, kids. It wasn’t half bad. I feel like I met my full potential then.

Willy puts his right foot on the chair.

HOPE: Feet off the chairs, Loman.

WILLY (putting out hand): What’s your name, son?

DEXTER (shaking hand): Dexter Green, at your service. At every-one’s service. I’ve served so many people. Even as a rich man. Who has ever served me?

WILLY: Wouldn’t you have people waiting on you hand and foot?

DEXTER: Life is a strange thing, Mr. Loman. That’s your name, right?

WILLY (saluting): That has a ring to it. But you can call me Willy.

DEXTER: Do you ever wish you could redo the same life, but a different way?

WILLY (waving 999K number): Ev-ery day. Or, however long I’ve been up here for. Even in my old life.

Dexter swings golf club and peers over audience.

DEXTER: I thought money would buy happiness.

WILLY (resting foot on chair): Doesn’t it?

HOPE (pointing with a feather pen): Feet, Mr. Loman.

Willy takes his foot off the chair and kneels on it instead.

WILLY (peering out at audience): Doesn’t it? Doesn’t money buy happiness?

DEXTER: Not at all. It’s lonely being rich. I wish I had love. If I could relive my life, I would reevaluate my priorities. I don’t know how, but being a penguin I was so much hap-pier than being a rich entrepreneur. Life just made sense then. Did you ever have love?

WILLY (standing up): I did. I loved Linda. I loved my boys. I loved my whole family. But what’s love with-out money?

DEXTER: Then you missed it. You missed the point. Just like me. It went flying over my head, like a golf ball. I still can’t find that golf ball. What’s a golf club without a golf ball?

WILLY: It’s nice to swing.

DEXTER: In my next life, I want to get it. I want to get the point. I will wait here in Limbo, or wherever we are, until I figure out just where I’m supposed to be.

HOPE: Willy!

Willy turns his head back and forth between Hope and Dexter.

WILLY: Yeah, Hope?

HOPE: It’s time.

WILLY (staring at Dexter): Time for what?

HOPE: For your new life.

WILLY: But I’m not ready. I don’t know what I want anymore.

HOPE (putting arm around Willy): Don’t worry. We’re placing you with a loving family. They have two boys. You’ll be their third. Good morals. Steady income. A house in the country with a vegetable farm. You’ll grow up on a ranch, working with your hands.

WILLY: Now that’s the life.

The Angels gather Willy and take him off stage.

Hope takes a pink golf ball out of her gown and hands it to Dexter. He grasps it for dear life.

DEXTER: Thanks, Hope. Hope. Hope is a good name.

HOPE: You’ll find what you’re look-ing for, when you least expect it.

Hope heads back over to the re-ception desk. Dexter follows.

DEXTER: Say, what are you doing when you get off tonight?

HOPE: Tonight? Hmm. Well, I’m skiing in the morning. Care to join me? The slopes here are divine.

DEXTER: Sounds like heaven to me.

HOPE: It really is. You know, if you play your cards right, you could be reborn into the God Realm.

Dave Moss runs onto stage.

DAVE: BULLSHIT!!! He gets to be reborn a God, and I’m reborn a desert rat?

HOPE: Fine. Angels, send him to the Asura Realm.

DAVE: What’s that?

HOPE: Jealous gods.

DAVE: Just as long as I’m a god…

The Angels take him away.

HOPE: It’s been a long day. How about a walk?

DEXTER: Sounds divine. So, who were you in a past life?

HOPE: I was a penguin. Do you not recognize your wife?

DEXTER (double take): Wow… It’s been a long time. But I never lost hope.

HOPE: You’re such a cornball, Dex-ter. But you’re mine. You will love the next life. I swear.

They exit. Stage goes black. The End.

26

Spotlight

metrosphere

Let’s start with your “Holocaust Portfolio” in which you used your “Torah” typeface. What did it feel like creating the work? Was it cathartic?

Yes, it was cathartic. It was heaven and it was hell. I worked on it almost nine years. My background is Jewish and I grew up in, not an Orthodox family, but a traditional family, and I have always been inspired by letterforms in writing. As a child, I was able to look at the Torah scrolls and look at the Hebrew letters, and I felt that they were just amazing. There was something about the relationship between the black letters and the surrounding white parchment on this beautiful scroll which very much inspired me. The Hebrew alphabet contains a total of 27 letters, and I decided that I wanted to look at the traditional letters as written by scribes - called Sofers in Hebrew - in Israel. I decided I needed to really come to understand these. They’re not really purely abstract images; there are levels of meaning that belong to a letter and the alphabet is very modular. [For example,] Yud is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet and in a sense it’s the DNA of all the other letters. So the first letter I learned how to do was Yud [and] once I conquered that, then I started building out to the most complex letters.

W ith over 40 years’ experience in the design field and 30 years as a professor, Martin Mendelsberg

has been a welcome addition to the MSU Denver family, joining in August 2013. He recently received the honor of 2014 Higher Education Art Educator of the Year by the Colorado Art Education Association, adding to a long list of awards and acknowledgements. An internationally recognized artist, parts of his collection of over 100 social, cultural, and political posters have been exhibited in Australia, France, Germany and Russia. His “Holocaust Portfolio” has been shown in Australia, China, Germany, and Russia, with its “Hebrew Typography” being marketed in Israel. He’s an educator who’s been described by former students as “the most influential,” “one of the best,” and an “unparalleled legend.” Metrosphere was lucky enough to sit down with Mendelsberg to discuss his work and influences.

INSPIRATION AND IMAGINATION:Learning from Martin Mendelsberg

by Ruby Onofre Contributions by Carlos Escamilla

27

Spotlight

Your International Posters deal with contemporary societal issues. What inspires your design for them?The poster is an amazing way to express oneself, es-pecially when you’re distressed or angry, but you could also be celebrating something. There’s enough subject matter that will keep me working for the rest of my life.

There’s one I like very much which I just finished. It’s called “Hollow Peace” – it has no words but it’s easy to understand. The whole point of that poster is the hollow nature of peace, especially in the Middle East.I think the

I worked quite a while producing the letters by hand with a turkey quill and ink. Once I achieved what I felt to be the best possible examples, these were then scanned and brought onto the computer. And I worked with several pieces of software that helped me put it togeth-er, but it’s a long, slow, arduous process. Once I finished it, it was like, “Wow, now I’m free to really imagine and work with a number of ideas.”

If you look at my Holocaust prints, there [are] about 100 of them and I still work on them. There are Hebrew statements, psalms and prayers that are woven into the graphic images. I’ve also used the typefaces for the design of logos and brand marks. Actually, they are used even more often in Israel because they’re part of a stan-dard set of fonts marketed by Master Font and Televes.

The advice I would give is read, write, paint, draw, work on a computer, study typography, and also speak. I think designers who are going to be successful in communi-cation design have to speak well, write well, and have to be able to be a good designer. You have to have com-plete control of the principles and elements of designs, but you also have to have a rich head full of ideas, and those ideas come from studies in other subjects.

That’s why I am a great believer in liberal arts. It gives you a whole warehouse of ideas to draw from. I always think this idea of imagination is kind of crazy, because what is it that builds a rich, vivid imagination? It’s the experience of life. It’s chances. It’s also reading a poem by John Keats and looking at the words and visualizing the words. All of that comes together to build an imagination.

What advice would you give to young artists?

best posters have absolutely no words. It means that you could see that poster in virtually any country and you could understand what the poster is about. Great posters are all about absolute clarity and simplicity. And they use an economy of means to make very potent statements without words. In fairness, most of my posters have words, but I think my best posters have no words.

© Er

ik Ts

ao -

Met

rosp

here

Courtesy of Martin Mendelsberg

28 metrosphere

SubmissionsSubmissions

Mario Rex FerraraFrom the Series: Midnight Madness. Digital photography

29

SubmissionsSubmissions

You were owl piercing with milky butterscotch of hard-candy. Your kisses tasted real like you tended to them in the garden of your mouth and plucked them in season to breathe into me. I held you as I would carbon-dioxide if I were something prettier and scared:

that citronella growing around Algernon’s deathbed, majestic redwoods without bulldozer whistles, a lilac stuck in the eye of a tornado; those milky butterscotch tornados.

So your hesitance felt harshest. You were chiefly footloose. It filled me with chagrin. You couldn’t mesh with my levity and because our brevity you’ll now spend time trying to make sense of everything that was always so light- hearted and heavy.

Treating me a tree; all truncated and hollow. This forest felt our falling but hadn’t the branches to break plunges so heavy.

Now stark white I sit here shaking in splinters. You’ve left me wooden like someone had to craft this heart, like someone had to whittle this brain.

Then you figured to find me outlandish. Yet my water blue eyes only measured to droplets of the hazel oceans that you did glare me. It was as if the nepenthe we drank had us each forget differently. So now I’m starting to get self-protective over our shadow like I own this casted bout of darkness; but it’s really the light that throws us dismal and paints us just as black and flat as we always seem to act. Realizing it was never either you or I, but us.

I just want us lifted so we can crash like hushed thunder, shaking, grounded, staring through all your butterscotch, just thankful for remembrance of how lofty our feathers once floated.

Butterscotch by David Clark

30 metrosphere

Submissions

Patrick CosnerAugmentation. Acrylic on canvasExigency. Acrylic on canvas

31

Submissions

Ben PattersonCost of Progression. Chalk pastels and pen on paper

32 metrosphere

Submissions

Alba L. GarciaVoces. Cut paper and thread

33

Submissions

The worst part was her handwriting. (If you could even call it that...) All right, perhaps the “rotting fruits of her fingertips...” It was more of a bewildered disarray of markings, primitive at best. It was almost anthropological in essence, but without the graduate-student lust and allure of the feat of its inevitable profound translation. Her writing bore no capacity for interpretation. It was an agent uniformed in discomfort to its viewers, and served to convolute and confuse.

The monster was this:Her o’s didn’t close all the way. The middle line in her capital E’s was always longer than the top and bottom lines. Lower case f’s didn’t curve like they should, hers resembling a baby tree laden with a dump of snowfall. C’s and L’s stuck together to be mistaken for lowercase d’s. S’s lost the autonomy of their curves, and instead mimicked commas. Her N’s possessed some nonhuman harshness, biting the subsequent letters with titanium teeth.The spaces between her words were inconsistently too small and sometimes non-existent. She couldn’t submit to the edict of lined paper. Her words still fluctuated in and out of the thin blue boundaries like a baby snake darting about in snow.She wrote with too much pressure. Her lead broke and the ink smeared and she misspelled too many things. Her black erase marks thinned the paper. She couldn’t draw straight lines.

She hated the messiness of her most profound thoughts. The depths of her mind dwelled in the mud of stagnant ponds and gutters. Her dreams and visions lived in the midnight boondock of a swamp. She was immune to order. Despite any dotted lines, special grips, or proper “training,” the intellectual red tape kept her ugliness trapped within the lifelines of her palms. She was plagued with an inability to translate herself. She was destined to sit on the throne as the Queen of Misunderstood. Her monster became tangible with every homework assignment, every receipt, every grocery list, every tax return, every birthday card, and every calendar.It made her worse.It made her dizzy.

All of her art existed within a meta-plane of ugliness, covalent enough to avoid beauty and the pretenses of ionic charge. She couldn’t make her art feel beautiful. It always retained a layer of dirt or some smudge that corrupted the purity of her words.

And no one would dare to look past the spots. So her heart would race. And she’d get clumsy. She couldn’t justify it fast enough. So instead she’d swallow her tongue. And feel her abandoned unspoken words escape through clammy palms and a pale face.

At the promise of solitude, she’d retreat to the self-sounding safety of her caves, and she’d pick up the drained words to nurse them back to language, to meaning. And her own hands betrayed her and left more stains, somehow paradoxically illuminating the face of her fear: a grimy artist. Her reflection on the tanned carcass was a conjured image of defeat, imminently and relentlessly charging towards her. The architecture of her neurons was dirtied threads that transmitted a toxic self-poison.

It was a self-perpetuating cycle of her deafening, oblivious muse.Nothing could keep her clean. Nothing could make it pure.

It (she) was dry and cracked and now.

Memory Dust (Now) by Carolyn Buechner

34 metrosphere

Submissions

Flux! Yet

patterns repeat with

symmetrical beats symphonic, ephemeral sound waves.

A warm

seal pressed against the

document made law supreme in the land, bill of rights.

Moon shots

Mars shots, satellites,

asteroids drifting, studying comets and calculus.

What might the Greek,

Heraclitus think of now. Have we still only attained

the excellence found in the apes?

FRAGMENT 98 by Jacob S. Garcia

Is time this labyrinth of mirrors? Is the past,

shown in a mirror of a face with cuts,

drops of blood, razor burn, warm wet

shaving blades?

Is the present clean, free of defect,

cool waters splashed, pores closing

after relief from the genetic protein product?

Is the future seen by present eyes

that view a beard already growing?

The labyrinth of quicksilver mirrors are interspersed

with night, it is a hall of

checkerboard relativity and within it

I walk.

LABYRINTH OF MIRRORS by Jacob S. Garcia

35

Submissions

Anthony BearziThe Wrong and the Wrong. Pen ink and denatured alcoholThank You for Your Kindness and Cooperation. Pen ink

36

Spotlight

metrosphere

Submissions

My wide, flat nose was what had attracted her most—she always said it cast me as a younger, paler version of some New Age guru. As far as I was concerned, though, a divorce was not an option. Of course, for divorce to serve as an option a marriage had to happen first.

Karin and I had lived together for three years at that point and she was the solution to my mother’s blather-ing about a grandchild. Your sister already has a child, Herb. Your mother needs to know your father won’t be lost to his grave. My mother thinks talking in third person with her thick Turkish accent somehow makes everything more serious. After my first divorce, I was aware it would continue until I married Karin.

You don’t remember me, but I remember you. The redhead had thrust her hand into mine at the studio about a year before. Young. Twenty-three. Flattery, flirtation, oh, I remember that dizzying glance. Herb at twenty-three hadn’t existed in fifteen years, but what did it matter? Did Karin matter? Does she matter?

But, yes, the redhead. Her nose was not so wide and flat in the beginning—a piece of ivory with its upward dipping tip set between the eyes. A complete contrast to the nose she liked.

But then her nose was wide and flat and not so white. I keep the garnet she wore on her right hand in my left pocket. An engagement ring for a wedding she’d never walked the aisle for. He died. It’s why I took time off. Of course, I was never walking down the aisle for her—she must have known that.

Women and their expectations.

I passed her in the parking lot one dusky afternoon, sweat spotting her forehead like dew after a spring rain. She smelled like magnolias in the humid heat of Atlanta summers. I hadn’t exactly thought to tell her I was moving back to Atlanta. That I was marrying. Half thinking I could and should ask her to come with me, the moment passed and then we were embrac-ing goodbye. See you soon, keep in touch. Touch, I finally touched the hair that hooked the light and then I touched her lips to mine and that’s where it started.

It was nothing more than a kiss or a conversation be-tween glances or my hand on the small of her back and I knew it was too late three months later when we sat at the deli and Karin showed up. I knew that she knew who Karin was and it was enough.

But then, weeks later, a summer thunderstorm cloud-ed low and twisted us together on a sidewalk near the studio and like rain, tears sweated down the sides of her face. Let me drive you home. It was a simple offer she took me up on and I can’t tell you why I did it—smashed that nose all over the seats of my car, smashed that face until it was shades darker than her hair.

Getting rid of the car was easier than getting a divorce. Almost cheaper, too.

Why I’m thinking about that now, I don’t know. Her ring is still in my pocket and Karin’s waiting at the church. Probably with magnolias.

Snuffed Magnolias by Sal Christ

37

SpotlightSubmissions

Katie Scofield Experiments in Blue Ink. Ink, watercolor and mixed media

38 metrosphere

Submissions

Annabel Leaf stood next to the craft services table in her kimono, tapping a varicolored roll of script pages against her thigh and wondering how they were going to kill her. Not her, of course. Her character: Jessica. Jessica Virago, a dame in the Joan Crawford mold, in this picture mostly to drag hardboiled private eye Brick Thompson down into the film’s tangled intrigue. She (Annabel) didn’t know how the thing ended: the set in front of her was Jessica’s last stop. The whole show was now waiting for writer Tim England to churn out Jessica’s death scene.

Melody Uckwelt, dumpy but cheerful makeup girl, walked by the table and waved. Annabel smiled her thousand-watt movie star smile back.

Four months previous, MGM had made her a “featured player” in their stable of actors. They paid her $400 a week to appear exclusively in MGM productions. She had already been in two pictures, and though she had yet to smooch Clark Gable onscreen, she could sense bigger and better things coming her way. Even rumors about the year the studio had just gone through (and some big deal Supreme Court case) couldn’t knock her optimism. She would just give every scene her level best, and the studio couldn’t help but keep her around.

The Director Reinhard Kershwitz had cast her in his lat-est detective-melodrama, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. He was sitting, facing the set in his canvas director’s chair, within a cane’s reach of aggrieved production assistant Nico Falzatoli. Annabel never saw The Direc-tor standing; he was always perched in his chair like a one-eyed vulture, boots and eyepatch shining obsid-ian. Nor had Annabel ever seen The Director speak. Actually, she had seen him speak, just never heard. Every directorial dictate was channeled through Nico’s mouth. When The Director wanted anything done, “Ac-tion!” called or notes given to actresses or orders given to the master carpenter, he would crook his ever-pres-ent cane’s handle around Nico’s neck and tug the boy to him, whisper a terse command into his ear, and the tiny Italian would parrot his words. Annabel had heard that The Director actually spoke out loud to the Head of the Studio, and, when the spirit moved him, would yell “Cut!” to end a scene - but part of her refused to believe it.

The set was a room with three walls and two doors, made up in the studio’s cheap approximation of “New York City stylish” and drenched in light, looking oddly tiny in the hangar-like space of the otherwise pitch-black and empty sound stage. It reminded Annabel of a doll’s house, left open on the floor of a dark attic. The image unnerved her.

Boom Operator Mike passed Annabel by. She smiled at him too, but the kind look was not returned; the tall

man merely grabbed a donut off the craft’s table and walked away.

“It was you! You’ve been behind this whole thing! You were the one who had me hire Brick. You sent him on that wild goose chase after Harry!”

Turnsley held up his hands in mock surrender. “You got me.”

The Director still sat, his canvas chair just outside the glow of the klieg lights, his one eye darting between the two actors, making sure his machine was running smoothly.

“You animal, when Brick finds out what you’ve been up to, he’s gonna. . .” “Gonna what, Ms. Virago?” Turnsley grinned malicious-ly. “Oh, I see. You’re still under the delusion that our detective friend is about to burst through the door and save you, aren’t you? I hate to disappoint a woman so beautiful, but Brick Thompson has . . . another engage-ment this evening. I’ve made sure of it.”

Actually, Brick Thompson was there, standing on the other side of the camera from The Director. Not Brick, but the actor playing him, Stanley Turtledove. Annabel was surprised to see Stanley there; it was unusual for an actor so self-centered to be on set when he wasn’t needed. Yet there he was, part of the line of crew-members watching the action. Annabel noticed there were more spectators for this scene than usual, but she hadn’t time to dwell on it.

“Fiend!” she said. “You almost had me fooled, but I can see you clearly now. You’re just a pimp, a user. You play with people like they were toys and you don’t care if some of those toys break. Heck, you break ‘em your-self, just because, just to get your sick thrills, you. . .” “Cut!” Nico yelled offstage.

There was a flurry of activity. Make-up Melody had to retouch Annabel and Iain (Bennings, playing villain Arthur Turnsley), who, between the blinding kliegs and the fire roaring in the set’s hearth, had both done some serious sweating during the scene. The fire was relit. Nico came onstage to guide the actors to their marks for the next shot. The props master brought Iain a golden fire poker.

“Nico, what does The Director want me to do after I get stabbed?” Annabel asked.

“I dunno, Ms. Leaf,” the PA replied without looking. He

The Smiler with the Knife by David Ebel

39

Submissions

retook his spot next to The Director. The cane handle grappled him, and Nico squeaked, “Roll camera!”

Annabel was not ready for this. “Um, Mr. Kershwitz? What do I do after I get stabbed?”

The cane whapped Nico’s elbow, and he said, “Roll sound!”

“Mr. Kershwitz?” she asked again.

Cane. “Action!”

Iain stared at the poker pointing down at the floor. “Did you know I used to be a fencer? Internationally ranked. Foils, mostly, but I can make do.”

Annabel took a beat, putting on a face that would read as “terror.” It helped to imagine that she really was in her character’s place, with no film crew around. The scene was for real; she closed the “fourth wall” and believed she was in mortal peril. “You. . . you wouldn’t . . .”

Iain shot a short look at The Director, who inclined his head slightly. With a tight grip on the fire poker, Iain lunged at Annabel, jamming the poker’s point into her abdomen. She emitted a shocked cry. He took the point out.

Annabel clutched her stomach, her hand feeling damp, insides burning with pain.

“Cut!” Nico called.

The line of spectators shifted as two grips moved the camera onstage. Annabel, doubled over, took a few labored steps away from her mark, searching the line of shadowed faces for help, any acknowledgment that something was wrong, but no one was moved. Nico came over and gently led her back to her place by the wall. Iain stood with the camera over his shoulder, examining the bloody point of the fire poker. Nico told sound and picture to roll. “Action!”

Iain stabbed her again. The second time hurt worse than the first. “Stop!” she screamed. “Fucking stop, I’m hurt!” No one paid her any attention.

They did another camera set-up, this time shooting Iain head-on. Nico held a struggling Annabel in place while they set up the camera, then darted out of frame to call “action.” There was a third thrust to the gut. Annabel choked. Tears anointed her cheeks. “Why? Why are you doing this? You fucking . . . bastards. . .” A fit of cough-ing cut her off, and she fell to her knees.

Finally, there was some movement from the spectators. The line broke in two and a short man in a white suit approached the set. “Please, keep the gutter-talk off my stage,” he said. He walked over and knelt next to Annabel’s crumpled form.

“Do you know me? Do you know who I am?” he asked her. She made a sound. “Well, just in case you don’t, I’m Louis B. Mayer. That last ‘M’ in ‘MGM’? That stands for ‘Mayer.’” He jabbed his finger at every ‘M’ sound. “I run this company, I run this shoot, and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, dollface, but we’re letting you go.”

“Wha . . . what?”

“We’re cancelling your contract. Now, now, don’t feel poorly; you’ve done some fine work here. But, see, 1948 was a terrible year for the company. The people out there, they don’t love the movies like they used to. Like we do. What with television, the fucking Supreme Court trying to divest our theatres; you understand, right? Last hired, first fired?”

She shot him an outraged look. “You could have just . . . let me leave. . .”

“And watch someone else snap you up? Sorry, sweet-heart, but that’s not how we do business.” He looked to The Director. “Reinhard, baby, are you gonna get a close-up of this?”

The begrudging Director clambered off his chair and moved the camera to shoot at a spot on the wall, then propped Annabel into frame. The man in the white suit produced a long, slender dagger from his breast pocket and faced the crew. “Now. Who wants to do the honors?”

There was no immediate movement from the crowd. They looked left, right, down at their shoes, anywhere but the stage or Annabel or the knife.

Until Melody Uckwelt stepped forward.

The man in the white suit looked pleased. “Good girl! Reinhard, somebody, give that young lady a thousand dollars.”

Melody strode onstage and accepted the knife. She knelt down by Annabel. “Sorry, hon. Business is busi-ness. But look on the bright side: this one’s gonna knock ‘em dead out there in Movieland.” She put the blade under Annabel’s chin, then looked to The Direc-tor for approval. He motioned for her to move it out of the shot, which was a close-up of Annabel’s face.

“Don’t, don’t, please don’t,” the actress implored.

“Quiet on the set!” Nico called. “Roll picture! Roll sound! Action!”

Film clicked away inside the camera, capturing Annabel Leaf’s last moments at 24 frames per second. Her eyes were huge with terrible anticipation. Melody grinned, waiting for a sign from The Director. He cleared his throat, preparing to speak the only words Annabel would ever hear from his mouth.

“Und . . . Cut!”

40 metrosphere

Submissions

Georges Loewenguth Finding Love. Acrylic on canvas

41

Submissions

Kristen MorrisonAsk It, Paper collage

42 metrosphere

Submissions

Lindsey ErnstHigher Perspective. Casted bronze, copper and quartz

43

Submissions

Kristina SpargoMonty. Fibers

44 metrosphere

Submissions

John Grupe IIUntitled. Graphite on paper

45

Submissions

I had traveled this path many times before. This wasn’t the first funeral I’ve attended. I inspect my uniform again ensuring that I would look my Marine Corps best as I give my condolences to the family, and my respect to the dead. I brushed my finger across the bar that held the five glimmering medals on the left chest of my dress blue’s jacket. I did the same to the three ribbons pinned on the right, pausing when my finger passed over the combat action ribbon and goose bumps spread up my arm. I have tried to forget most of it, but the memories continue to surface with even the simplest innocent provocation. It typically ended in the same unavoidable fashion: me wasted, having drunk my way through a bottle of vodka and six-pack of beer, stumbling around, yelling at strangers in the bar, or at the shadows in the alley, or at my wife at home.

I closed my eyes and inhaled a long, deep breath. My entire chest expanded. I exhaled slowly, hoping the thoughts would leave my mind like a used breath. A single blurred face flashed in the darkness of my closed eyes. My eyes shot open and I stared blankly at the uniform in front of me. At least it was only one face that time.

It did not matter how many times I would try to breathe away my problems with slow deliberate breaths. It never worked the way they, the “skitzo docs,” told me it would. It did not matter what I tried to do; I would always be a killer, a combat veteran, a lousy husband, and someone with PTSD.

The strangers at the bar didn’t care. “Stupid, drunk kid,” or, “He’s had a few too many,” they’d say be-fore they continued their conversations about sports, weather, the headlines. The shadows didn’t care; they simply swayed back and forth in the dull streetlight, mimicking my wavering, inebriated state as I struggled to stand up straight to give a drunken rendition of a sa-lute to an invisible American flag that I imagined waved from atop a nearby light post.

My wife cared. I could tell she cared when she started crying. She pleaded for me to stop, asking what she could do to help, what she could do to make it go away, to make me better. Even in my drunken state I knew that I was hurting her, and though I wanted to stop, I couldn’t. I had to tell her so she’d understand. I had to describe my pain to her. She’d realize I wasn’t sick if only she knew what I knew, if she’d have seen what I’d seen. Today was going to be one of those days.

We drove from the funeral in silence. I was trying not to think about him, the Marine we had just buried in his flag-draped coffin. I was trying not to remember the muffled scream his mother gave as the twenty-one gun salute startled her, firing blank shots into the sky behind the congregation before the lone bugler played the mournful taps. I could tell that my wife was looking at me.

“I met him, once,” she said. “Before you deployed the first time. He seemed like such a nice guy. It’s so sad.” She paused, and I could tell that she was trying to feel out my emotional state and whether or not she was crossing some imagined, invisible line that would send me to the crazy side. The PTSD line.

I continued to drive. I tried to focus on the road, but lost the battle. She was there with us two weeks before heading over to Iraq. We were out partying, trying to keep our minds off the upcoming deployment, trying to live the ‘carpe diem dream.’ I pictured the recent-ly-buried Marine laughing so hard he was choking as he slapped the small, high-topped table, around which we all stood. He was laughing at a joke I had just told.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember the joke. I shouldn’t have felt bad about not remember-ing one joke, told in a club three years ago. But I did, for his sake; I hated myself for having wasted such an important piece of history by forgetting. My focus returned to the car.

“I’m sorry,” she started.

“I know,” I cut her off.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.” The reply was formulaic, dry.

When we got home, I walked straight upstairs and began taking off my uniform. My wife followed me into the closet, watching in silence, as I took off my shirt.

“I should have been there for him, back fighting in Iraq like he was. I could have saved him if I’d been there.”

“Or you could have been the one who got shot.”

“I wouldn’t have been shot, and neither would he!” I yelled, throwing the shirt to the floor. “I should have been there.” I ripped at the row of uniforms hanging beside me. “I could have stopped him from dying. He would be here now. I could have…” The sentence

Wasted by Liam Clarke

46 metrosphere

Submissions

slurred off into a mumbling cry as my wife wrapped her arms tightly around my flailing arms and pulled me close into her steady, loving hug.

“Stop doing this to yourself. There’s nothing you could have done to change any of this.” She held me tight, whispering into my ear.

There isn’t anything you can do or say to someone who has lost a friend in combat. I knew this from my time in Iraq. The many times we had dealt with it on our deployment. Nothing would make it better. The dead would still be dead no matter what anyone did, or said, and yet we knew how to deal with it then. We knew, as brothers, that we couldn’t resurrect the dead, our fallen friend, but that we could focus on the task at hand and try to not let it happen to anyone else. That kept us going, kept the emotions from breaking us down.

“Nothing will make this any easier,” she repeated, as she began to kiss me. I barely kissed her back; just let-ting my lips brush against hers as she held me tighter.

“I love you,” she said, before continuing the kiss. I didn’t reply this time. I simply let her take control as I followed her lead, letting her refocus my thoughts away from the funeral, away from Iraq, as she moved her lips down my neck.

“I’m pregnant,” she said, the test still in her hand. A few weeks had passed since the funeral and I’d man-aged to get my feelings under control again. It only took two binge-drinking sessions this time. I was alone for both of them and the yelling was limited to inside my head.

“We’re having a baby?”

Pure happiness covered her smiling face as she nod-ded an affirmative. She smiled, and I was back in Iraq on patrol through the city as a Marine next to me started talking.

“Some of them are smiling.” He nodded toward a large group of Iraqis. “Some are snarling, others just showing us their teeth.” I looked at the group.

“Which do you think is going to try and kill us when we turn our backs?” he asked rhetorically. “I say that guy.” He nodded toward a particularly large Iraqi who stood a little behind the others. “His looks more like a snarl than a smile.”

My wife’s smile returned. “We’re having a baby!”

I saw a mother screaming as she clutched a baby tight

against her chest, racing across the street, hurdling over large pieces of rubble. Bullets snapping at the walls all around us as we took cover behind anything we could find and began laying down a barrage of fire toward the direction of muzzle flashes. The moth-er dropped, falling hard onto her side; the blanket wrapped child flew out of her arms into the street, screaming. I never found out which side killed her. I didn’t want to know.

“Aren’t you excited?” she asked. Silence was my answer. “We’re having a baby,” she repeated, more timidly this time.

“I can’t, not now.” I said, as I tried to make my way past her.

“What do you mean you can’t?” She grabbed onto my arm and forced me to look at her.

“Leave me! I can’t deal with this now.” I pushed her arm off mine and, caught off balance, she fell sideways into the table like the woman who had been running across the street.

I didn’t go home that night; I wasted it away walking the streets, but she forgave me. I told her that I was sorry. I said I didn’t mean to run away as I had, but that it had just taken me by surprise and I was confused. I never told her about the dead woman, and the baby, who I had left screaming in the street.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” The question took me by surprise. I had been asking the instructor to sign my enrollment verification form required by the Veteran’s Affairs office to claim G.I. Bill money for college when a student asked it.

“Sorry?” I stared at her, but she didn’t back down. My confused look didn’t seem to faze her. Perhaps if I’d glared up at her with a killer’s eyes she would have backed down, but my feeble, “Sorry?” didn’t scare her off, and she repeated the question.

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

People always want to know this when they hear that you’ve been to Iraq. They want a yes or no, as if it is that easy to kill a person. Simply check the box, Mr. Doe, yes or no: Have you ever taken someone’s life?

It didn’t matter what I said, she’d still have a changed perception of me. If I said yes, she’d probably mark me as a cold-blooded, simple-minded killer. A robo-tesque being, trained by the U.S. Military to go away to another country and kill. If I answered no, she would

47

Submissions

most likely think I was a non-participant, never having experienced the true hardships of war.

I could sense the instructor’s embarrassment by the way he straightened up, ruffling the papers, silent. The stu-dent didn’t seem to care. She didn’t look embarrassed.

“Yes.” I answered, longing to say more, longing to scream at her like I used to when I’d yell at one of my junior Marines for losing a piece of gear. I wanted to yell at her as loud as I could manage, my face inches from hers, spit splashing on her cheeks as I asked her if my actions had affected her life.

I wanted to tell her about the faces I saw as I day-dreamed on the bus ride into school that morning. I wanted to show her the scab-crusted face of the dead Iraqi head I walked passed after he had wasted himself and two of my Marines, blown into small packageable pieces at the checkpoint of our compound. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t care when we let the flies feast on his bloodied, blank stare for a week before we threw it in the trash pile. I wanted to tell her that I killed be-cause I had to. I pulled the trigger, not for the Republi-cans, not for the Democrats, not for her, or freedom, or patriotism. It would be wasted on them.

I pulled the trigger to survive, to ensure that I wasn’t going home in a flag-draped box. I wanted to, but it wouldn’t have mattered. She’d have wanted more. She’d still have a changed perception of me.

The last thing I wanted was to have those memories resurface after a thoughtless question from girl who was going to forget all of this as she dressed herself up tonight in the hopes of finding a different, more decent man than me, the killer. A man that she could spread her legs for and not hate herself afterward for doing so. Those were the stories I wanted to tell the girl when she asked if I’d killed anybody, but as I looked into her emotionless face, I realized for the first time that I didn’t care anymore. I would never see her again after school, and my thoughts, stories, and emotions would be wasted on her. There were more important people

for me to think about now. I’d wasted enough of my life already. It was time to go home and tell my wife, and my unborn baby, that I was sorry.

My phone buzzed in my pocket on the bus ride home. It was my wife’s number. I didn’t answer; I needed to tell her in person. It rang again in the car while I was driving from the bus stop. I couldn’t wait to let my wife know that it was going to all be alright now, but not over the phone. I had to get home fast, to tell her that I had finally figured it all out, that the war was finally over. My life would no longer be wasted.

I opened the door that led into the kitchen. “Babe? Are you home?” No answer. I’d seen her car in the garage. I knew she was. “Babe?” I could see her purse on the table and I stood quietly listening. I heard a muffled cry from upstairs. I ran upstairs to the bedroom. It was empty. The bathroom light was on.

She was lying on the floor, the phone still clutched in her hand. Wet streaks marked her cheeks, and a small puddle of tears was beginning to form on the cold tile beneath. Her red eyes looked up at me as a louder, heart-wrenching cry began.

“What’s wrong?” I asked kneeling down beside her to brush her tear-soaked hair off her face. “Tell me.” She didn’t answer.

“Don’t cry, my love. It’s going to be all right. I’m not go-ing to hurt you anymore, I promise. I figured it all out.” I pulled her closer, tightly hugging her to my chest, and as I did, I noticed a small amount of blood and small grayish fetus in the toilet. I stroked her neck softly rocking back and forth like the shadows in the alley. She started crying more hysterically, my eyes closed, and my heart dropped. I inhaled a long, deep breath. I exhaled slowly, hoping that the thoughts would leave my mind like the breath, like the “skitzo docs” told me they would.

48 metrosphere

Submissions

The signs were simple:the yellow ticket upon the glass,an easy miss among the fallen autumn leaves,

I wasn’t sure at firstbut you move every month like clockworkwhen the sweeper comes.

a waiting companionunnoticed in her silent patience,ever faithful that the bowl would be filled.

She depended on you,but never made demandsof your tired old bones.

A missed encountercaused little worry,

They waited there by the third bench,just like every other time.

except in concert with a broken routine.That day something was wrong. Somehow you knew, even still,you were afraid to intrude,afraid to disturb the solitude.

Alert piqued my instincts,but I was sureI was imagining things, .

You knew the fence I built.so I waited.

Not link for link, I never knew the things you loved,

not post for post,or even if you had a family,

but somehow my history imprinted on you,split through the wire diamonds between us.

the neighborly pleasantriesrevealed more than what you thought I could see.

Not just this time,but always,and especially this timeyou knew. Somehow you knew.

I heard you climb the crumbled concrete

(grace.) by Micaela Haluko

49

Submissions

Sarah Beabout Used. Acrylic on canvas

50 metrosphere

Submissions

Sierra Schwartz Think Before You Type. Graphic design

51

Spotlight

51

INTERSECTIONPhotos by Eric Tsao

52

Spotlight

metrosphere

Clothing should never be tricky, it should always be practical. It should translate an invisible culture – over time, your collections will speak for themselves.

“

”

Hannah Barbera

53

Spotlight

To me, the world of man is fi lled with endless possibilities and to simply accept someone else’s version of what is acceptable to wear is pure laziness.

“”

Tyler Lewis

54

Spotlight

metrosphere

While it’s not uncommon to think graffi ti artists simply deface property with

illegible markings for their own enjoyment, many people may be surprised to learn that these images are often rooted in deep cultural meaning and made to unite communities. Ratha Sok combines graffi ti culture, personal heritage and community to produce his own brand of this often-controversial form of art.

RESPONSIBLEMISCHIEFThe Philosophy ofArtist Ratha Sokby Brandyn Federico

© Erik Tsao - Metrosphere

55

Spotlight

The work of the 25-year-old artist highlights a West Coast/East Coast graffiti style, which he describes as “bold and funky.” Across his body of work, he maintains a simple pal-ette, usually consisting of two to four colors, especially silver. “I love silver. Silver is a really bold color; it stands out,” said Sok. He prefers using a limited amount of colors in his work because it reminds him of black and white photography and how simple, yet power-ful, black and white can be.

Through his penmanship and sig-nature, also called a lifeline, is how Sok’s work is recognized. Those who aren’t familiar with graffiti may find it difficult to distinguish the work of different artists, but as Sok explains, “It’s like somebody’s shape, like their shadow. I can see somebody far away with their form and know who it is, and that’s how it is with my artwork and my tags. I

can see a tag from far away, and not see the letters, but see the lifeline and know who it is right away.” There really isn’t one defined way to tell if he created a piece. But if you pay attention, learn the lines and shapes, you will know the work is his.Sok’s style and creative process

has changed from when he started graffiti in his teen years. During high school, his life was simple; mostly hustling and doing graffiti for fun. This changed quickly. “[The police] learned my style, they learned my name, they learned my crew — it was right after my 16th birthday,” said Sok. “I was still in my boxers. They handcuffed me, they took me in the back of the van and said, ‘We finally caught you, tagster.’” He

ended up spending three months in juvenile detention, and during that time he said he would stop graffiti forever. “I didn’t want to end up in a place like this, and put my par-ents through this kind of trouble.” However, the run-in with the law only stinted Sok from doing graffiti

for a short amount of time. He found a way to use his talent to earn a living by getting work commissioned, which in turn made his cre-ative process more focused on what the buyer wanted.

After seeing that people enjoyed his art and were willing to pay him for it, he realized he had to be more responsible with his work. Now, with his personal style and lifeline, his work includes his Cambodian background. Though he doesn’t paint in a traditional Cambodian style, his intent is to represent his heritage by painting with meaning and positivity. “[My graffiti] didn’t

“[My] graffiti] didn’t have much meaning before, ... Now I fell like I’m responsible

for what I put out there.”

Photo by Brandyn Federico

56

Spotlight

metrosphere

have much meaning before, but now I’ve started to put more meaning into it,” Sok said. “Now I feel like I’m responsible for what I put out there.” Sok doesn’t have a true answer to how he includes his personal culture in his art; it just happens and is more of a non-physical representation of his beliefs and heritage. If it feels right and positively influences younger generations, it works. He takes great pride in the Denver culture as well because it’s where he was born and raised. To him, it’s his backyard, where he started, and tagging will always be a part of the Denver culture for him.As an artist, Sok has not limited himself to only graffiti. He learned screen-printing and began an urban cloth-ing line and art brand called Rawh. His screen-printings are featured on T-shirts and often highlight the same styles as his graffiti, but with a more individualized touch. He includes typographically designed sayings such as, “Know more. Do more. Be more. Lead,” and “Anotha Day Anotha Dolla” to personalize the apparel and make it more meaningful.

Sok continues to create limited-print clothing and graf-fiti murals in Denver, often in collaboration with other artists and community programs like the Very Special Arts Colorado/Access Gallery, which allows those with disabilities to access and experience the arts. He also participates in the Santa Fe Art District’s First Friday art walk every Spring and Summer. He runs a cubbyhole location on Santa Fe Drive, dubbed the Rawh spot, where he invites other graffiti artists and muralists to change the artwork inside, while hosting a party for the public. The goal of the project is to spread graffiti to people as a valid art form, one that is uplifting and positive. “It’s cool to see that different kinds of people are respecting our stuff and we’re respecting them,” he said.

Sok knows the graffiti and art culture will continue to influence his actions and he lives every day with grat-itude. “‘Rise-N-Grind’ is my motto. I wake up every day knowing whatever I create today is for my family, community and culture with passion and love.”

© Erik Tsao - Metrosphere

facebook.com/metrospheremymetmedia.com @metrosphere

f im

submission.metrosphere@gmail.com

Get Published.

Visit mymetmedia.com for more details. Open to all MSU Denver Students & alumni.

Submissions close December 5!