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Just a few minutes away from my home is a local attraction called the Desert of Maine. A hundred years ago, a farmer got overzeal-ous and worked the land too hard: now, all that’s left of the farm is a few abandoned buildings and forty acres of sand. My mom used to take me and my siblings here on field trips (until there were too many siblings to justify too high admission). They had a camel statue we liked to climb on, and a person making sand art in glass bottles, and an open car that drove around the desert pointing out the buried gazebo and the abandoned wagon wheels. But the best part of the trip was at the end of the tour. The Desert staff had hidden tiny polished gems in the sand and given us drawstring bags to collect them—we could keep the first five we found. My siblings and I would run across the desert, scavenging for gems in the dirt. We shouted when we found one, blew the sand off it and held it up to the light to see what color it was and what patterns it had, then slipped it into the velvety pouch to take home and store with our other treasured possessions. Editing Vessel this year has been like running through the desert with my siblings. Except it’s not my siblings but my editorial staff, and we’re not running but (generally) sitting at our computers, and we’re not looking for gemstones but for good writing. Still, when we find a good submission, one that sparkles when we hold it up to the light, I get excited. And this issue of Vessel is our equivalent of the collector’s pouch, where we can proudly display some of the best specimens we’ve found over the past year. Choosing what to include was difficult; some excellent submissions had to be excluded simply because of space limitations. But what you have here—selections from our fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, accompanied by all-new artwork and featuring a poem by prize-winning author Lisa Lenard-Cook—is some of the best that you authors have let us editors dig up in the past year. May these writings gladden your heart as they twinkle in the sun.
—Harrison Otis, Editor-in-Chief
Vessel Editorial StaffEditor-in-Chief Harrison Otis
Fiction Mary Elizabeth Bransom / Makishi Inaba / Sarah WattersonNon-Fiction Sarah Eis / Clayton McReynolds
Poetry Alicia Constant / Josiah WrightDesign Hannah Walker
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Table of ContentsVol. 2 No. 3
Best of 2013-14
FictionThe Girl in the Woods ~ Jonathan Boes...............................................6We Who Were Living Are Now Dying / With A Little Patience ~ Keaghan Kane........................................................................14
Non-FictionI Am Alive! ~ Mary Elizabeth Bransom..............................................20Fall Break 2012 ~ Harrison Otis..........................................................10
Poetry#Loveispatient ~ Jonathan Boes...........................................................22Poetry Cannot Be Taught ~ Mary Elizabeth Bransom.......................5Daddy’s Skin ~ Emily Cardé...................................................................9March in Bavaria ~ Colin Cutler..........................................................19Mary McGinnis’s Hands Read a Poem ~ Lisa Lenard-Cook...........12Morning Geese ~ Hannah Walker.......................................................23
ArtworkFlower ~ Jack Laufenberg......................................................................17Sailboat~ Aimee Stauf..............................................................Cover ArtDream Hope ~ Gerry Serrano................................................................4Sudden Sun ~ Stephen Williams............................................................8The Ferris Wheel ~ Stephen Williams.................................................13
From the Editor
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Poetry Cannot Be TaughtMary Elizabeth Bransom
Poetry cannot be taught,And writing is not learned.Classrooms give no wings to thought —Nor teach you how to yearn. But watch the world for half an hour—Be silent in your soul.Leave, for once, your ivory towerAnd listen to the pull Of falling stars, of concrete, trees,Of lovers’ rendezvous—Dance unshod through dewy grass,Or memorize your shoes. Read a book—or two—or three—That makes you laugh aloud;Be unashamed to shout and weepAmidst the grey-black crowd. Then listen to a little childAs if he were a king;Sit with him an hour, and windHis yo-yo on its string. Then—and only then—you mightBegin to hear the songThat underscores the woolen night;That makes the day run long. Then once you steal the glittering wordsThat fill the thickened airThe heartbeat of the universeMight open to your ears. And if to class you then returnYou’ll know the truth untold:A poet’s born, and learns to yearnBy first becoming old.
Dream Hope Gerry Serrano
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The Girl in the WoodsJonathan Boes
It took Carson a long time to step into the woods. For a while he just stared like a frightened deer. Eventually he gave his shovel a good
squeeze for confidence and trudged forward. “I don’t think Santa will give me anything any good this year,” Wyatt had said. Carson had squinted at his little brother. Despite the empty bunk above them they both lay on the bottom. Wyatt got too scared otherwise. “Why’d you say that?” asked Carson. Wyatt rolled over. “I think I’ve done something awful, is why.” Now Carson trudged through the woods, chin against his chest. It took a good hour to find the path. Everything reeked of wet soil and pinecones. He knew the spot when he found it. He and Wyatt had waited here for hours. Two steps deeper in, next to the rotten oak tree—that’s how Wyatt stood last week. Carson propped the shovel beneath his shoulder, gripped it tight, and squinted down an invisible gun-scope. Just like that. He trudged forward. A black speck stuck out in the snow up ahead. It grew like a tumor as he approached, taking the worst shape it could, and he wished to God he hadn’t come. He pulled a crumpled poster from his pocket. A cuss escaped his lips in a burst of steam. He left the woods half an hour later, without the shovel. Biking to Bethlehem Estates took longer than expected, but he hadn’t expected to do so at all, so he didn’t mind. He’d imagined a place called Estates to be full of mansions like movie stars and millionaires would own. Instead he found two rows of trailer houses, long and frost-covered like stale éclairs in a bakery window. A rusting sign promised he’d come to the right place. He knocked on the door of Number 17. A dark-haired woman opened up. She had on a grey sweater. A cigarette dangled from her fingers. Her eyes reminded Carson of the coal you’d use to make a snow-man’s face. He folded his hands. “Hello, ma’am, my name is Carson Thomas.” She exhaled smoke. He retrieved the crumpled poster and smoothed it against his stomach so she could see the photograph. “Is this your daughter—
ma’am?” He considered biking off while he could. She snatched the poster and tossed her cigarette onto the door-step. “Me and my brother was hunting—” Carson imagined standing at the forest edge again. He had to trudge on. “—I just wanted to teach him. I showed him how to handle the A-Bolt and the safety and every-thing, I promise. I only took my eyes off him for a second, is all. I’d sworn he fired a shot into nothing, thin air.” She studied the poster. “I didn’t believe when he said he’d hit something—when he saw the missing posters in town. I wouldn’t believe it until I went back out to the woods myself.” He just had to trudge on. “She was still there. I told myself I’d just bury her and not tell nobody, but I couldn’t. She looked all peaceful. She had on the snow like a blanket, like God tucked her in.” She said nothing. “Do you understand me?” Her eyes met his. “Sabes mi hija?” He held back a bad word. She hadn’t understood a thing. Then all at once she let loose a rambling flood of speech. He shouted over her. “My brother—” Her voice drowned his. She shoved the poster back at him. He tripped off the doorstep. “My brother—!” She yelled louder, voice barreling. Her coal-eyes burned and her mouth steamed like a train. Carson scrambled up and yelled back. “I shot your daughter!” His words echoed like the report of a rifle. She dropped the poster, gripped his jacket and slugged him in the bridge of the nose. Something snapped but he didn’t feel much and another hand connected with his cheek. He couldn’t get out of her steam-engine path and the bar-rage kept coming. Then it stopped. She collapsed, shaking, and pointed away with one arm. Carson rushed for his bike and bolted, his face warm and wet and tasting of copper. When he arrived home his mother screamed. He had a black eye and a cut on his cheek and the bottom of his face was painted red. He caught Wyatt peeking out from the stairwell, wide-eyed and gaping, like he’d just received the worst Christmas gift he ever would.
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Sudden SunStephen Williams
Daddy’s SkinEmily Cardé
A stranger lit the tip of his cigaretteFresh smoke twisted in the airSmelling of home…Of father.His ideas had twirledAs rapid and random as the smokeFrom his menthol-laden MarlborosI laughed with himContemplated with himPrayed for him…Of one thing he was sure“I’ll donate my skin as art.”It was himHe wore it proudlyFirst marked by Θεός…A claim for himselfOr a mark of ownership?I still don’t knowAnother god, a lame forgerWas mining away—Is that Man’s purpose?Or does Truth hide in the elementsEarth, Fire, Water, Air,They twine round his limbsWhere Prisms of light fracture into a rainbowAnd the Eye watchesStevie’s interpretationOf a silent ScreamAs Mr. Smith worriesHe is to be Spiderman’s dinnerJack is marrying Edward to a corpseWith an old lover’s nameAnd Marla’s sitting, emptied,In a used bridesmaid dressTossed away like a Christmas treeJoker’s laughing at the ceremonyHe questions my solemnityBut I am still afraid it’s a funeral.
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Fall Break 2012Harrison Otis
November 2, 2012
I’m kicking myself because I know I should be in bed right now. I have to get up early for church tomorrow, and it’s already past 11. But maybe
it’s worth staying up to write about this. We’ll see. At any rate, I know it’s worth staying up to fold my laundry, because if I don’t my button-down shirts will get wrinkled. So that’s what I was doing, not too long ago, in the doorway of my dorm room. There’s nothing much to do when folding laundry, and I was just getting thor-oughly bored when I noticed an unusual sound, as if someone nearby was boiling water. But no one was around to boil water. I wondered if some-one had left a faucet on by mistake, so I stood up to go turn it off—but as soon as I crept into the hallway, the sound disappeared. All I could hear was the gentle roaring of the air filters. I was curious now, and unsure if my ears were hallucinating, so I padded softly toward the two rooms next to me. The door on the left was closed, but the one across from it wasn’t. That door stood enigmatically ajar; inside, the blinds were down, the lights were off, the TV was dead, and the beds were empty. But I could still hear something: a new noise this time, like a crude Stone Age wheel crunching clumsily around a maypole. It was eerie—standing at the edge of the bright hallway, listening to the air filters whirring and a perversely unidentifiable sound crawling from uninhabited gloom. I bent down to listen, and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Aha—the clumsy wheel, if that’s what it was, must have been part of my wing-mate’s refrigerator. I stepped out of the room and headed back down the hallway, only to hear the boiling water again as soon as I reached my own doorway. I put my ear to our refrigerator: the water was boiling, if that’s what it was doing, inside. Mystery solved. I finished folding my laundry. Not too much later, I realized that I was only able to hear those sounds because the wing was so uncannily silent. As a matter of fact, the wing is still uncannily silent. It’s fall break, and most of the campus—in-cluding all but two of my wingmates—have flown off to campaign for Romney or to visit family, leaving their rooms vacant and their wings des-olate. Both my roommates have gone: Stephen is campaigning in Indiana and Kevin is debating in Vermont. Rather than join them, I have stayed
behind to study and rest. (Writing this, I think, falls under the category of resting, although right now, sleeping might be a more effective use of my time. But now that I’ve started, I can’t break off in the middle.) I do need the study time, I suppose—that was the primary argument I used against Stephen’s pleas for me to join a Student Action Team (which team, my roommate scolded, I should have joined if I really wanted to change the world, save the country, and support the causes I believe in). On second thought, I should phrase my words more firmly: I know I need the study time. I have a Critical Dialogue paper due in class the day after break ends; I have my first research paper due one week after the break, and I only started the research this evening. I also told Stephen that my relatives would very likely invite me to spend the break with them, and at the time that was true. Aunt Alissa invited me to come up yesterday, the day before break started; however, I told her that I had contracted pinkeye and what with copious amounts of sleep (for recov-ery) and studying, it didn’t seem like this weekend was the best time to see them after all. So, my fall break is turning out to be somewhat miserable. I’m stuck in an abandoned campus with mucus trickling out of my eye, work-ing on a paper that I should have started a week sooner—and I’m alone. Of course, there are other people around, but it doesn’t feel right to sleep in an empty room with three beds, or walk through the empty hallway of an empty wing. I should be enjoying the solitude (I seek it often enough during the rest of the year) but instead I’m finding it discouraging. It adds to the weight of worry for my health and my schoolwork. I have been seeking an antidote—some sort of spiritual solution that will buoy me over the crests of my autumn angst. Of course, I know the answers: God is in control, He will provide for me just as He has in the past, and He will give me the strength to be diligent. But somehow, the principles I’ve learned in the past never quite seem to apply to the present day. That’s why I sat down to write—why I’m still writing now. When I started about an hour ago, I was hoping to find the antidote just by writing about the situation, to find the bliss of El Dorado in the clicking of the keyboard. And in some ways, that’s happened. The act of writing this short essay has encouraged me, though I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it’s because when I start writing, choosing the right words and stringing them together in careful sentences to best communicate my message, I have to acknowledge that God is doing much the same thing with the entire world. Mucus and loneliness are not exceptions.
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But as soon as I get up from my computer, my El Dorado is go-ing to crumble into digital dust and blow away with the breeze from my open window. I know this from experience. In reality, nothing much has changed: I still have pinkeye, I still have too much to do, and the wing is still empty. And on top of this, I’m now going to bed about an hour later than I wanted. So what now? Has writing this done me any good at all? Nothing around me has changed, true. But now I know my task is to remember—to hold on and remember—that God has purposefully put me in this place for the next couple days, and if I pray, He will strengthen me to flourish in it. And if going to bed late is the price of that remember-ing, then somehow I think it’s worth it.
***Mary McGinnis’s Hands Read a Poem
Lisa Lenard-Cook
Butterfly fingers origami the page.One hand scissors, the other folds.
Bumps on page filter onto smooth fingertips:osmosis: the sound of words:
In this dream I can write without moving, the face putting petals over my closed eyes.
Before words demand their obligatory meanings,open eyes see them though they are dark.
The two italicized lines are from Mary McGinnis’s poem “When I’m Eating Chocolate and Writing,” from Written With a Spoon (Santa Fe: Sherman Asher Publishing, 2002).For more about Ms. Lenard-Cook, visit www.lisalenardcook.com.
The Ferris WheelStephen Williams
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We Who Were Living Are Now Dying / With a Little Patience
Keaghan Kane
Stay with me.
“I’m going.” He doesn’t move.
Speak to me.
“There’s nothing to be said.”
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
He shuffles his feet. He shoves his hands into his pockets. The movement is meaningless. It neither advances nor retreats, it does not cause or react. It is as stagnant as any man can be and yet move. Let the sirens call, let them sing and ply their craft. He’s too far gone to hear them.
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Drowning, now there’s a thought. At least it would mean some-thing. Now there’s a fragment he can hold. The fragment of death. At least that shard can still pierce his mortal heart. At least it still means. Every other thing may be empty—hope, love, treachery, even despair and ecstasy—but death, that is one that cannot be lost. In the absence of the meaning is the meaning found. Through death and only in death is there still any purpose. At least it effects. At least it still changes. At least the frail and dirtied hearts of men still cling to it, their poison and their antidote. He looks at the frail form in the bed beside him. Her withered lips move softly in a sort of dreadful dance. She has found the edge of that fragment, that fragment of death, and the bits of life that still taint her breath speak in short gasps of emptiness and the hollow hope of loneliness. She speaks sometimes, her sandpaper-rough voice etching the words as if her breath was a chisel and the air a stone.
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
He kneads his forehead and slowly reaches over to touch her hand where it rests against the sterilized sheet. Their skin is loose, as if the bodies that clothe them have grown too large—or their souls have grown too small. It’s translucent, and he can trace the paths of every dark vein and vessel, the maze of messy framework. That shard of death can so easily puncture or slice or decimate this fragile framework.
He who was living is now deadWe who were living are now dyingWith a little patience
He slowly lifts his hand from hers and sighs deeply. “Nothing to be done.” He stands.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
She shudders and her eyes slowly open. She looks at him with those coffee-dark eyes, and as if he were still the 17-year-old boy he was when they first looked upon him, his heart skips a beat. And all he can think is how dangerous that must be at his age. She mouths a word, but he cannot hear her. Again, feebly, her lips move and the sandpaper voice cracks into the air. “Stay.” He does not speak. He tightens his lips into a barely-curved smile and smoothes the blanket over her leg. “Stay.” He shakes his head. “Nothing to be done. I’m going.” He does not move. A broken whimper. He looks back at her, and despite the oxygen tubes and the IVs and the beeps and whirrs of the machines around them, he sees the beauty of this woman as her eyes glisten with tears. And he begins to fall in love once more. “Stay.” It’s pleading this time, it’s a final, desperate cry, almost resigned to its own pointlessness. He chokes and her sandpaper voice rubs his soul till it bleeds, and he sits down once more and takes her hand.
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And would it have been worth it, after all…Would it have been worth while,To have bitten off the matter with a smile…If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.’ She does not speak again, but those eyes are fixed upon his face. Sometimes, when she blinks, her eyes open and she is a different person and she does not look upon him with the same softness. He cannot move while she watches him; he is paralyzed. And even if he could, what would it do? She is still here, still locked into the cage of a body breaking and crumbling. Locked in the cage of a memory dying.
…mixing Memory and desire…
It doesn’t really matter that he is here. It is not him she wants. It is just a warm body. It’s the being alone she dreads, not the being without him. He wishes he could say the same. He wishes he could find as much truth and meaning in this broken world as she still finds—still finds, even with her mind lost and wandering.
The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard.
The door opens. He looks up. Two young nurses enter, their chip-per voices dropping to a hushed silence as they check all her vital signs, adjust tubes and ask if there’s anything he or she needs. No, no, no, just go away. Leave us. Nothing to be done. They pat his shoulder and offer consoling smiles but when they leave he hears their chatter resume. He knows his grief cannot touch them.
In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.
FlowerJack Laufenberg
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He turns back to her.
Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisionsAnd for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea. “Are you there?”
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strivesHomewards…
“Can you hear?” She smiles. She looks at him, her dark eyes glowing like ember, and she smiles. “Stay.” He stops. Stops his breath, stops his mind, simply stops. He stays. “I will.” She takes his hand and grips it and the translucent skin pulses with the last vestiges of life and he knows she is leaving him. His eyes burn with the fire of pain and grief and loneliness unbegotten yet already felt. She smiles and releases his hand and looks beyond him. He sees the peace and joy she always spoke of coming into her eyes.
Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside you…--But who is that on the other side of you?
He is so alone. She smiles, she looks into his eyes, she takes his hand.“I’m going,” she whispers. She does not move. Her eyes are dull, her chest stops; the ebb and flow of life’s breath and heart’s beat ceases. She does not move. The burning in his eyes grows and enflames his heart with agony and he reaches out to grasp whatever fragment of her peace, her calm joy, may remain in the air, floating in that last bit of breath from her lungs.
Burning burning burning burningO Lord Thou pluckest me outO Lord Thou pluckestburning
The world moves. He does not. The machines blare, the women come and go, the doctors speak, he does not move. They take her away, they come back for him, they tell him to go, he needs sleep, he needs rest, he needs to go home.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIMEHURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
“I’m going,” he says. He doesn’t move.
***
March in BavariaColin Cutler
You’ve not known age until you’ve watchedThe winter stretch its pallid throat above Bavaria,And seen knob-knuckled trees rise up like fistsFrom wind-nagged hummocks of hag-hair grassTo clench and clutch that throat and shake—But which is shaking which? In this land of Hansel and Gretel and grim witchery,Does heaven’s breath cause the earth to tremble,Or does the knock-kneed tree worry heaven’s neck?They shake again, in the crippled throes of winter’s death—The branches green with lichen, like the grave-mold clingingTo arms from a cracked tomb fresh-springing.
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quite make it to where they were intending to go. In general, real-life adventures are neither pleasant nor sensical. I like my adventures shrink-wrapped and scripted, thank you. So, of course, God chooses to give me things I don’t ask for, that I don’t think I need, and that really don’t seem to make sense. But they’re good. They’re very good. My life may be full of unwanted and unexpected gifts, and my nice, neat, scripted plans may fall through, but I’m alive, and I’ve received the grace of God, and against all odds, I’m happy. God’s ways are not our ways, true. But they are the best ways.
I Am Alive!Mary Elizabeth Bransom
How weird is that? Have you ever thought about how insane and crazy it is that you exist? The chances of you existing approach zero and flirt with it. In order for you to be sitting here, reading this, millions of highly improbable events had to occur. First, there had to be a planet in the exact right spot at the exact right time that was the exact right shape and size. Then there had to be life on it. Then that life had to be sentient. Then two people had to meet and have a child. Several billion times. And somehow, it ended up that you and I both exist—you, to read this and I, to write. Sometimes I wonder how much of this God planned just to ut-terly confuse people. For example, if I were God (which I’m not), Earth would be flat. And probably square. Because that would make it easier to keep track of. And then I would make maybe ten different types of animals, and they would all fit into easily recognizable categories. And then I would make creatures that would love me and serve me and agree with me all the time. And then I might make a couple thousand stars, and I would make sev-eral dozen planets to orbit a star in perfect concentric circles, and a star would be just like planets except bigger and shinier. And it would be excessively boring. God, in his infinite wisdom, made Earth round—ish. And tilted it on its side. And then started spinning it. And He made tens of millions of animals, including platypi, giraffes, and mud puppies. And He made humans. And He gave them free will. And He made stars innumerable and vast, and decided nine-ish planets should orbit one star in elliptical-ish shapes, and that same star should be a giant ball of exploding, flaming gas. God’s ways are not our ways. That is why I have so much trouble with our relationship. I like order. I like people doing what I tell them, and things stay-ing where I put them, and life in general making sense. Now, don’t get me wrong: I am still a romantic at heart, but adventures are messy things, and adventurers sometimes lose things, and sometimes, adventurers never
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#LoveispatientJonathan Boes
When God created man from dust, He madea garden tending gardens, walking fullof living water, seeds producing fruit.
The garden grew, explored, and learned to love,and He taught men to love like gardeners:
Ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ, love is patient, love isdopamine, vasopressin, serotonin, love is
1Love \’ləv\ noun 1a: deep attraction foranother, sexual. b: the invention of
the watch, to stuff-the-space-you-can before1:00, wholeness takes too long, give me
fact: age, race, gender, are ulgbt? straight? 2:00. wat
do u call urself?2 b r not 2:30
#love.It’s 3:00, r u
abl 2 learn who u areagain? 2 w8 4 man and woman
& their worries, hopes, and dreamsof escaping-through-the-garden, tearing
out the gates, to clockless hayfields, full of2Love verb, loved; lov-ing 1: to cherish another
Homo Sapien, grocery-clerk, Adam or Eve,Ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ, love is patient, love is
a garden plant, and tended over timeby men of dirt and water, blooming out
in red and white, who kneel in grass and grimeand wait, with shaking breath and growing doubt,
for three o’clock, till He returns the trustthey placed in Him, who made a man from dust.
Morning GeeseHannah Walker
The morning’s fullOf geese. The pullOf sheets must loosen now,And so I walk in the loud airAlone. I will allow
The sudden rainTo press againAs many times beforeWhen I have passed them waking there,Amassed on sodden shores,
Their voices starkIn purple darkStill lifting with the swellOf fog that renders beating formsGhostly, invisible—
I only knowThe sound, and slowMy steps a moment there,To hear the rowdy choir that stormsInto the thickening air.
