California State University (CSU): Open Journal Systems

Kirk, Alan

29 
Alan Kirk 
Jesus Potato 
I saw the face of Jesus in my baked potato. 
It happened last night during my solitary dinner. I baked a 
potato and decided to get fancy with it so I stuffed it with cheese, 
garlic, chives and butter, and tossed it back in the oven for a few 
minutes while I finished watching the news. Little did I know ... 
When the news was over, I took my potato from the oven and 
set it on a plate. Uninspired, I decided to eat just the potato, without 
green beans or any other balancing of my diet. I plopped down in 
front of the TV and unwrapped the foil-and there was the face of 
Jesus, staring up at me from the wrinkled skin of an Idaho Russet! 
I'm not a Catholic or a Protestant. I used to be both, if you count 
my ancestors. I take my religious experiences as they come, or just 
make 'em up as I go along. And seeing Jesus' face on the skin of 
my potato was a religious experience-for about two seconds. 
Then I remembered all those news stories of sightings ofThe Virgin 
Mary in glazed bathroom windows; and of the Muslim pilgrimages 
to England to see some crazy eggplant whose seeds spelled out the 
name of Allah; and of the fundamentalist bees who spelled out · 
somethin' religious in their honeycomb. 
All that stuff seemed a little weak to me. Now, if they'd opened 
up the eggplant and found a gold nugget inside, it might have been 
somethin' to write home about. If I could just figure out some way 
to squeeze a few bucks out of this Jesus Potato thing, maybe I'd have 
a religious experience that would last a little longer than two 
seconds. 
What to do? 
I called my friend Dolores, an ex-Catholic. She told me to eat 
the potato before it got stone cold. -No way! 
30 NORTIIRIDGE REVIEW 
I set Jesus Potato on the kitchen counter and went back into the 
living room. I needed to watch TV for a while (I think better when 
the TV is on). When the show was over, I took another look at Jesus 
Potato. It was gettin' so you kinda had to use your imagination a 
little bit in order to see Jesus. I figured I'd better get to preservin' 
it pretty quick or I was gonna lose it. I headed for the garage. 
After rummaging around in the garage for a while, I came up 
with a can of varnish. Great! A few coats of varnish and my fortune 
would be secure. 
Would a one dollar "donation" be a fair price to charge the 
50,000 pilgrims of the weak-minded variety who would flock to my 
door for a glimpse of this recently-baked relic? Two dollars? Why 
not five? -1 made a mental note to check into accepting plastic. 
Would the pilgrims crawling toward my botanical shrine re-
quire knee-pads for their bloodied limbs? -A basketball supply 
house! 
And, I could sell rights to fast-food chains to set up booths along 
the route. My mental list was getting a little long. I figured I'd better 
get a lawyer to handle the paperwork and incorporate: Jesus Potato, 
Inc. 
I hurried back into the house with the varnish-but I couldn't 
find the dang Jesus Potato! Had I left it on the counter-or had I 
shoved it in the refrigerator? I opened the refrigerator. No Jesus 
Potato. Had I left it in front of the TV? I stomped into the living 
room. No Jesus Potato. 
Then I heard a scrabbling sound coming from a comer of the 
kitchen. The cat! 
If I wasn't such a macho son-of-a-bitch I would have cried. 
Ragtime, my cat-an atheist-had snagged Jesus Potato off the 
counter and was batting it around on the floor like a catnip-laced toy. 
Well, what could I have expected? A cat brain is about the size of 
a ping-pong ball, and holds about the same amount of air. Ain't 
much room up there for things spiritual and transcendent-like 
money. 
I pushed Ragtime away from Jesus Potato and examined it for 
damage. Shit! Looked like Charlie Manson now-another reli-
31 
gious figure----complete with a little cat-scratched swastika on his 
forehead. -Ain't no money in a Manson Potato. 
With great regret I dumped Manson Potato into Ragtime's 
bowl, reproaching myself for not having immediately whipped out 
the Polaroid when the spirit had moved me and the vision had been 
fresh. 
-But, wait! How 'bout a new, microwave fast food: "Potato 
Manson"? I could stuff it with cheese, garlic, chives and butter. 
Ragtime could do the swastikas ... 


English

Jesus Potato

Anthony, Craig

72 NORTIIRIDGE REVIEW 
Craig Anthony 
A Story and Its Telling 
There is a startling variance in truth. This is a fact. Yet, this is 
true in certain cases only. In fact, there is a marked variance in these 
cases, one that can be quite startling. 
One truth insists that the angelic Cinderella breathed through 
the keyhole as the glass slipper was forced unsuccessfully upon the 
heels of hags. Later, her body and the prince's intertwined upon the 
flagstones of the palace, where the sweat of her breasts soaked the 
other's tongue and drowned out the bluebirds' chirping (the film has 
run out long beforehand, albeit). Some insist that Cinderella, that 
"whore," left her cottage to ride alongside the prince's vassal with 
her lips all caked with ill-applied gloss. Behind her, two women 
writhed upon the floor in their own blood and portions of bones and 
shredded toe. 
The two cripples claimed they were always crippled, of course. 
And no one ever said: "whore." One person claims he knew 
someone who knew someone who did. That person, alas, had been 
cut from ear to ear and dumped in the alley where he was located, 
so the accuracy of such a statement is rendered unassailable and 
hence unresolvable. 
There is a glass slipper, though, within the palace. It rests upon 
a little pedestal and not in the closet with the other shoes (no pair, 
no little partner-quite impractical! Hardly socially acceptable!). 
There's a tiny bloodstain on the inside of the slipper, at the bridge. 
Usually, however, the sun bathing through the great stained-glass 
windows etched with saints and prophets is far too bright to notice 
this. 
Enough. The kingdom is happy now. The prince is married. 
The king will have a second heir. And-how convenient! Spring-
time! A long one, I might add. Then the summer baskets are 
73 
brimming with fever-scarlet apples. Every cobbler's hammer is 
tapping, tapping, tapping. There is no dearth of warbling songbirds. 
Waking to every day reveals a crystallized village in a miniature 
glass globe (sans snow), with the occasional pluralistic hacking and 
syphilitic whore, tiny midst the green foliage and endless horse-
drawn carriages. Here there is simply too many dutch-cottaged 
glass windows (and nary a stone tossed). 
An old bitter woman with her two maimed daughters, long 
before vacated the little house where the Lad lived with his Ma and 
Pa. Villagers would sometimes stop and point at their little house, 
but Ma and Pa knew it was their little Lad they pointed at with his 
cute little dimples (that or the cooling apple pies upon the mantle, 
surely). He was a good Lad, who played when time to play and 
played at learning when time to learn. He liked living in the cozy 
little house with his parents. 
Now, there were some very strange stains on the floorboards in 
the sitting room. Ma and Pa, not natives to this quaint duchy, had 
to ask where they could find a suitable rug maker. When they did, 
they found a fine-sized one. Now, the strange stains are covered by 
a floor tapestry of Saint Ursala and her virgins open-armed to the 
barbarian captors-cum-slayers. Perhaps it's a little out of place in 
the cottage. In fact, it's probably very much out of place-later, 
they traded it away and sanded all the floorboards clean. That was 
after Christmastide had come and gone. 
The Lad was very excited about Christmas: snow-flecked 
cobbles and holly-berry wreaths and sugar apples and candy sticks 
and wooden toys freshly painted beckoning behind frosted win-
dows. The winter sun was less evident. At noon, the glass of the city 
would bum less brightly and the castle took on a duller hue. Once 
in a while the princess would inspect the glass slipper upon the 
pedestal, and clench her dainty fists. Visitors to the castle would oft-
times do that also when they viewed the slipper. She was thinking 
of breathing through a keyhole, and they were thinking of her 
thinking of that. 
Now, when Christmas was said and done, the Lad received the 
toys he wanted and turned his thoughts to snowmen and studies (and 
74 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
pig-tailed girls), while Ma and Pa turned to brace the winter to 
embrace the spring. And so on. You see, their yam has already 
ended. This little crystal house in the little crystal kingdom is a 
pirouetting ballerina for other music boxes (surely you understand). 
In fact, the story is quite over, all the characters and settings and 
conflicts neatly packaged and sealed with a bright ribbon. It rests 
pretty upon the mantel. Fine. And now a digression, to provide a 
short Christmas tale. After all (didn't I tell you?) this is a Christmas 
story. 
THE END 
The Lad was sitting by the fire chomping chestnuts when his 
Grandfather pulled up a stool and leaned his face to the Lad, the fire 
lighting his sculpted furrows, "I've been making my own way here 
sixty blue moons and one greenone,myboy." (Lad: giggle, giggle). 
"I know a tun-full of things that would put a rosy color back in your 
cheeks-things you wouldn't nary believe. And tonight's the most 
magical night of the year .. .let me tell you all about Father Christ-
mas." 
THE STORY OF FATHER CHRISTMAS 
Every year, on that special day when the moon is an anecdote 
to that glorious star of the East, and the world slumbers in dreams 
of sugar fruits and steaming meat, Father Christmas rises from his 
stone crypt and unwraps the funeral cloth that binds him. He slips 
like a shadow, down the passageways of that dead castle that lies 
locked in the wind tortured teeth of the icy Northern Mountains. 
First, he rummages through the huddled and mephitic masses 
on their shelves- the gaping sockets and loose jawbones- to find his 
wonderful red sack. Then, he hobbles to the courtyard where he 
climbs into his great black carriage of brass bars and purple tassels. 
He nicks the champing creatures, patiently tethered and stamping. 
The sprawling crenelated tomb disappears behind them. With his 
black cape billowing like a wind-snared sheet, he plunges from the 
75 
forests of the night to deliver gifts to all the dead sleepers, each 
according to their worth. 
When the first ray of morning lights the scattered globes of tiny 
dew, Father Christmas is already back in his coffin, his arms crossed 
on his chest, the funeral cloth wound round, his face a frozen rictus. 
The black carriage has vanished. His deeds are done•; the clock 
begins ticking to the time when he will rise again. He and his 
sleeping companions sink to their dream-locked depths, carried by 
the wind's ceaseless howling. 
Once upon a time, on a Christmas morning, an old reclusive 
woman, her eyes red from a sleepless night of prayer, came 
downstairs. She came down to see if her exhortations on behalf of 
her poor maimed daughters had gained a merciful glance from the 
Redeemer on this, his day. She found them at the chimney. Their 
tangled bodies stuffed the brick shaft, as they dripped piecemeal 
upon the hearth and ashes. 
• They wake to his gifts, his verdicts, his deeds. 


A Story and Its Telling

Coulston, R. J.

Fo g 
R. �. C o ulston 
I stood before the edge of the cornfield watching the low fog 
blow across the brown stalks, obscuring the ends of rows. 
They seemed to march into the gray fabric of the weather. It 
was all ruined. The night's freeze had turned the watery 
stalks to ice just as the ears had begun to ripen. There had 
been enough to make it pay. But the frost was three or four 
days early. 
The field was unearthly quiet. I stood for hours, I 
suppose, looking at the fog sweep away the cornfield then 
reveal the rows again suddenly, surprisingly, momentarily, 
before swallowing up the field again whole. Beyond the 
field, I knew, the forest was there. Waiting. 
My boots moved heavily. I walked to the house that 
seemed so far away, and the effort consumed me. I sat then 
in the kitchen, staring at the black stove squatting on its 
iron legs, consuming wood in its bowels. I opened the top 
vent and watched the slowed combustion curl its flaming 
tongues over the logs, licking hungrily. Steam rose from the 
kettle. 
"How is it?" asked Amy. "The corn-is it  all dead?" She 
stood at the partition between the kitchen and the room 
we'd named The Cold Room because no heat ever seemed 
to get to it. She was wrapped in a blanket. I nodded my head 
and turned away. I could feel her waiting there, wanting to 
say something, unable to speak. 
"What is it?" I asked. 
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NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
There was silence. Finally, with a rustling movement, 
she came into the kitchen. I stared at the stove. "Talk to 
me," I said hollowly. 
"Can we still afford it?" she asked. 
"Here and now? In this emptiness? Me with no job? No 
money?" 
She was quiet for some time. I thought about the little 
drawer she'd been filling with baby clothes. She'd taken out 
one suit with little hearts sewn all over it.  "Little hearts," 
she'd said, a wondrous smile on her face. That was not 
possible now. There would be no money. 
Now, she waited for a few moments, then she walked 
into The Cold Room and dressed. She came back in dunga­
rees and a heavy coat, pulling on her gloves against the 
cold. My own coat had grown heavy with sweat from the 
hot stove. We would have to sell the farm, now. Or the bank 
would take it .  Best to do it right away. 
The fog was heavy on the mountain road as we inched 
ou r way down to the valley with its banks and graveyards 
and hospitals and churches. The trees rose straight up out 
of the fog on either side of the road, soaring into the soft 
m ist, d isappearing. The long, cathedral arche over the 
roads were l ike hollow tubes, their ends stuffed with 
cotton. 
I almost collided with the station wagon. It sat still, 
squarely in the middle of the road, obscured by drifting fog, 
and I got out to s ee what was wrong, for the fam ily had 
gathered around it in postures of grief and tension. The 
man, in a black suit, vest, and tie, wa down on his knees, 
examining the underbelly of the car with regret. He raised 
his head as I approached, nodded first to me and then at the 
car. 
"Didn't mean to hit him. Dog's under there, and the car 
went over him. He won't come out. Seems wedged. Just ran 
in front of the car." 
I looked beneath his car and saw a black dog. He was on 
his side, panting heavily, the gray fog puffing from his 
mouth and rising in steamy clouds from his wet, black fur. 
Coulston/Fog 
"0 God," I said, feeling sick, suddenly, knowing he was 
hurt, out of reach. 
"He ran right in front. Dove into the car. I tried to stop." 
"How can we get him out?" the man in black said. His 
family had gathered like rain clouds. His daughter was 
crying. His son was grim. His wife looked resigned, but she 
sadly offered the sugge tion he'd be put out of his misery, 
oon. I looked again. He eemed to be suffering and the 
thought occurred to me that omehow he'd been the cause 
of all that fog. I was fascinated by this curious thought, 
almost hypnotically, until he turned his jet black eyes on 
me. Fixed me with them. There was an intensity in those 
eye , begging: help mel 
"Come on," I said, softly to him. He immediately roJied 
on his stomach and crawled toward me, pulli ng himself 
with his front paw , clawing the earth, pulling his limp 
hindquarters after him, struggling from beneath the iron 
thing that had broken him. He turned several t imes to snap 
angrily and to growl at his back legs, lying limp and unres­
ponsive, useless, impotent on the earth. I held his head in 
my hands, feeling the heat and the strain of his m uscles. He 
whined at me a moment, then turned to growl at his legs, 
confused that they would not work. 
"Open the door of my car," I said, scooping his body into 
my arms. 
"Careful/' said the man in black. "He may bite you." 
"Shit! I told you to Open the door." 
It was growing dark when we arrived at the vet's. I 
carried the dog in and lifted him onto the table. 
"He ran under a car," I said as the vet probed the dog's 
back with his fingers. Suddenly he stopped and turned 
away. 
"Christ!" he said, and pounded the wall angrily with his 
hand. "His back's broken. It's nothing but splinters in 
there." He began to fill a syringe. 
When we arrived home, the fog had lifted and a ful l  
moon bathed the field in white light. Deer were stealthily 
3 
NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
picking their way through the cornstalks/ feeding. I could 
see the forest now1 behind the field. 
Amy turned to me. "What shall we call the baby?" 
"Joshua// I said. 
4 


Memmer, Scott

Wh e re t h e  
Fl o\Ne r Lives 
Scott Memmer 
We can only know that from the unknown, profound desires enter in upon 
us, and that the fulfilling of these desires is the fulfilling of creation. We 
know that the rose comes to blossom. 
-D. H. Lawrence 
Even at the beginning of that summer it was apparent to 
Steven that something would change. This would be the 
summer. He couldn't say how he had come upon this 
knowledge-certainly it hadn't been asked for-but the 
knowledge came to him somehow, and he, not knowing 
what else to do with it, but knowing he must do something, 
took it in. H e  was fourteen at the time. It had been a placid 
fourteen years, this growing up in a small Ohio town, this 
chasing of dreams and fireflies through the twilight of 
thirteen summers-but now, suddenly, he felt boyhood 
giving way to the man in him, felt the muscles in his arm 
harden whenever he helped his father hoe the garden 
behind their house, and with this sensation of hardening 
came a fear. A fear of he didn't know what, although he 
suspected it was of women. For as long as he could 
remember he both loved and feared women, craved their 
touch and at the same time wanted to run from them. He 
loved them; and yet they terrified him. He wanted to know 
them; and yet he didn't know them. He wanted to know 
them-he ached to know them-he would know them. But 
for now, because of his Jack of contact with them, he knew 
them only secondhand, through vague imaginings and 
those rare nights when they walked hand in hand with 
their lovers down the lane, their laughter trilling in the 
treetops and hiding amid the leaves, then swooping down 
to gentle Steven in his quiet bed. 0, how he thrilled to hear 
·their voices! They were wonderful. He would know them. 
28 
Memmer/Where the Flower Lives 
Steven had never considered himself handsome. In fact 
he wasn't. G iris had made fun of him for as long as he could 
remember-his large ears, his too-large nose, his slightly 
buck teeth-and this cut him deeply, for as much as his 
mother told him he was a strapping and handsome boy, he 
knew himself for what he was: an awkward, gangling ado­
lescent, all elbows, knees and chin. At fourteen he had yet 
to fill out, and this left him with an impression of himself as 
hovering uncertainly between toddlerhood and Charles 
Atlas, leaning, if anywhere, toward the toddler. But this was 
Steven Hart in the summer of 1967, this was the boy as he 
knew himself and as others knew him, and the painful 
awareness of his image as he knew it must appear to others 
drove him wild with distraction and despair. 
He looked at his face in the bathroom mirror. He traced 
his cheekbones with his index fingers. They were too 
high-made him look like an Injun. But he wasn't an 
Injun-there wasn't a drop of Indian blood anywhere in his 
parentage. Even so, his nose was a little hoqked at the end, 
with a s l ight hump in the niiddk, as if it had been broken 
once or twice !maybe he was an Injun after all). His eyes 
were deep brown, almost black. His skin was fair, with 
freckles along the arms and legs. His face, as he looked at it 
in the mirror that morning, showed not even a hint of a 
beard-not even any peach fuzz; he hadn't shaved yet, 
although he'd tried once and cut himself miserably. Some of 
the black guys in his class had been shaving for more than a 
year. This upset him. 
"Hey, Steve-phone!" his brother's voice said through 
the bathroom door. 
"Coming!" 
He washed his hands and stepped out into the hall-
way. He picked up the phone. 
"Hey, Steve!" a voice said. 
"Hey, Rich," Steve said. 
"Gonna meet me there!' 
2 9  
NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
"I said I would, didn't I?" Steven said. 
"Yeah," Rich said. "I just wanted to make sure you 
weren't gonna wimp out on me." 
"I told you I wouldn't." 
"I just want to make sure," Richard said. 
"I won't," Steven said, a little perturbed, "okay? What 
time is it?" 
"Nine-thirty," Rich said. "Half an hour." 
"Well, I'll see you in half an hour," Steven said. 
"If you don't wimp out on me," his friend said, laughing, 
and hung up. 
Steven returned the phone to its receiver, swore to 
himself, and walked into his bedroom. His brother was 
listening to the Rolling Stones. 
"Mick Jagger sounds like he swallowed a bowling ball," 
Steven said. 
"Aw, the Stones are keen!" his brother said. 
Steven gathered his things together and made for the 
door. 
"Bob Dylan sings like he has asthma," his brother 
challenged. 
"At least you can understand the words," Steven said, 
and walked out. 
"Hey-close the door!" 
"Close it yourself!" 
Steven walked into the kitchen, picked up a pencil 
from the counter, and scribbled a note to his mother. He 
wa leaving to go to the pool. He would be t here all day with 
Richard ( he didn't feel a need to mention the girls) .  Yes, he'd 
taken the garbage out. No, he had not mowed the lawn as he 
promised he would-would do it tomorrow. He felt terri ble 
about not mowing the lawn-in fact, he wanted to kill 
h imself. He hoped she st ill Javed him, though he didn't 
think she did. Regards, Steven. 
30 
Memmer/Where the Flower Lives 
H e  folded the note in hal( wrote 11MOM" across the 
front of it, laid the pencil down, retrieved his towel and 
slipped quietly out the back door. He cut across the back 
yard, hopped the white board fence at the far end, cut 
through the Barkers' back lot, waved to Mrs. Barker in her 
kitchen window, and came out onto Mockingbird Lane. His 
mother wouldn't see him if he went this way. 
He paced down the long slope of the hill, feeling the 
insistent Ohio sun on the back of his neck, listened to the 
steady flip-flop-flop of his faded blue rubber thongs as they 
slapped endlessly against his heel, swatted a few pesky 
gnats, then turned right onto Hillbrook Street and con­
tinued down the lane. When be got to the creek at the 
bottom of the hill he walked onto the bridge and stopped to 
have a look. Those scientist certainly had cleared up the 
pollut ion. A few years ago you couldn't have stopped here 
for more than thirty seconds-would've been asphyxiated. 
He spat into the creek, threw his towel over his shoulder, 
and continued up the other side of the hill. 
Gir ls, girl , girls. He pulled up the steep bill and tried 
to shove them out of his mind, but they wouldn't go. They 
never went anywhere you told them to go, they never did 
anything you told them to do. They talked to much, they 
organized little enclaves and cliques, they made enemies 
quickly, they held grudges. But they were lovely, they were 
o very, very lovely! Steven's face H ushed and beads of 
sweat broke out on his forehead as he cleared the crest of 
the hill. He could feel himself sweating inside his orange 
swimtrunks; he could feel himself sweating all over. 
He walked over to the crosswalk button and pressed it .  
A sleek, si lver Chevy, driven by a young brunette in a 
frilly white blouse, glided by. The brunette's hair trailed in 
the wind. Steven watched the Chevy float past him and 
around the bend. Girls everywhere. And all so very, very 
lovely. 
When the l ight changed he walked swiftly across the 
street, breaking into a lazy jog on the other side. He jogged 
3 1  
NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
past the red brick, two-story high school, past the half 
dozen yellow-orange school buses parked around back, 
then slowed to a rapid walk. He could see the pool up ahead. 
He walked across the asphalt lot and came to rest on the 
bike rack near the pool entrance. He was eight minutes 
early. No Richard. He sat on the bike rack and waited. 
He sat there fqr two minutes until he saw Richard's 
short, stocky form coming across the baseball field next to 
the Police Station. Richard was the exact opposite of 
Steven-all muscles, bluster .and braggadocio. He kicked 
up dust  as he came. About halfway across the baseball field 
he bent over, picked up a rock, stood, and flung it at a stray 
dog. The dog yelped and bolted. Richard's face broke into a 
grin, and he waved to Steven. He started to trot. 
It was getting hotter. Steven could feel a trickle of 
sweat wend its way down his backbone; his shirt was get­
ting wet with it. That pool would feel great right about now. 
"How's it going, Shakespeare?" Steven said. 
"Aren't you hot?" Steven said. 
"The ladies think so," Richard said. "Where are they?" 
"Haven't seen them yet." 
"That's women," Rich said; "always late." 
Just then a blue Ford Fairlane pulled up, stopped and 
the three girls got out. The woman who was driving­
Cathy's mother-turned the ignition off, got out, and 
opened the trunk with her key. The girls removed their 
things. Cathy's mother had to borrow one of the girl's tow­
els to shut the trunk-it was that hot. 
"Hey, Rich," Cathy said. "Hey, Steve." 
"Hey, Cath." 
Cathy twitch-bottomed up the sidewalk, the slap of her 
thongs echoing off the chool buses, and turned to wave to 
her mother. A girl named Miranda followed her up the 
sidewalk. Steven knew Miranda from school; she was a 
petite girl, with freckles and light brown hair. The third girl 
was someone Steven didn't know, but she looked a lot like 
the brunette who had been driving the silver Chevy. 
32 
MemmerjWhere the Flower Lives 
"Hi-ya, Miranda/' Steve said. 
"Hey, Steve." 
"This  is my cousin-Roberta," Cathy said. "Roberta-
Richard, Steve." 
"Pretty hot out," Steven said to Roberta. 
"Ain't it, though?" Robert said. 
The five of them flip-flopped up the s idewalk to the 
pool entrance. Three minutes to ten. Steven sat on the 
rai ling next to the entrance. 
"I wish they'd open the goddammed thing early," Rich 
said. 
Steven said nothing. He sat on the rai ling and watched 
Roberta.  The way she moved was different than the other 
girls. Somet hing about her-something about the way she 
carried herself-was different than Miranda and Cathy. She 
possessed an ease of motion he'd rarely seen in girls his own 
age. Whenever she brushed the hair away from her face, or 
turned her head, or swatted absently at a gnat, be felt his 
entire body go rigid with attention. It was like watching a 
ballerina. Everything about her-the delicacy of her hands, 
the suddenness of her mi le-suggested worlds of tender­
ness and grace of which Steven could only dream. He 
wanted to reach out and touch her; he wanted to extend his 
hand and feel her skin, the smoothness of it, the brownness 
of it. He wanted to-
"One more minute," Richard said disgustedly. 
He wanted to know her omehow, to know something 
i n  her that he didn't know in himself, and by knowing that 
part of her, he felt, he would know once and for all what up 
to that point had only been imagined. He exhaled. He felt 
the trickle of sweat wend its  slow path down his backbone, 
felt i t  i ncrease its  flow and soak the back of his shirt. The 
sun was hot on his back. He smelled the grass beneath him, 
pungent and newly-cut, the cl ipped dandelion stems lying 
haphazardly about the lawn like the candles of a birthday 
cake, their yellow flowers scattered about like flame. He 
looked up and saw Roberta toss her long brown hair over 
3 3  
NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
her shoulder, fol lowed the curve of her neck and brea ts 
and abdomen, until hi eyes came to rest on the pale ivory 
of her inner thigh. It was lovely there. His eyes rested on the 
paleness, the whiteness, until Roberta swung her head 
around, quite by accident, and caught his eyes uddenly in 
her own, caught them and held them. Steven felt helple , 
powerless. White-hot shame flashed through him and his 
knees started to shake. Roberta held his gaze, would not let 
it go. He smelled the dewy grass beneath him, and the 
dandelion stems, stronger now, more pungent, their fra­
grance rising, ca�ching his nostrils, mingling now with the 
talcum softnes of Roberta's colonge; and his face burned. 
Finally she released him, letting him go like a kestrel from a 
tether, but not before she smiled mischievously and tossed 
her head back ever so gently, her hair flowing down behind 
her like the freed tethers of a kestrel. And not before Steven 
looked once and caught the mirth and favor in her eyes. 
The gate opened and everyone except Roberta bowed 
their eason pa se to the girl in the booth; Roberta had to 
pay separately. They walked around to the deep end of the 
pool, setfing their thing on the deck near the diving 
boards. Everyone stripped and immediately dove in. 
The afternoon passed quickly. They alternated their 
time between swimming and sunning. Richard put his arms 
around Cathy once and kissed her on the ear. Steven kept 
half an eye on Roberta. Miranda was alone. 
About four o'clock Steven and Roberta were swimming 
together by themselves in the deep end of the pool; every­
one else was on the deck sunning themselves. The two of 
them paddled over to the side and rested their heads against 
the deck, their bodies underwater. It was the first time they 
had been alone all day. 
"Water's kind of chilly," Steven said, shivering. 
"Not so bad," Roberta said. 
"Your lips are blue," Steven said. 
"Yours are pink," Roberta said, laughing, "like flowers." 
She leaned toward him, stroking his chin with her hand, 
and kissed him tenderly. "I like flowers." 
34 
MemmerjWhere the Flower Lives 
Steven felt his body go all rigid on him. He put his arm 
around Roberta's waist, and pulled her toward him. 
"My!" she said, "you must be a flower-you're blossom­
ing all over!" 
"Am i?" 
"Yes," she said. "All over. Petal by petal." With that she 
giggled, broke free of him, and dove off into the deep end. 
She surfaced a few seconds later and dog paddled back to 
him, stopping just out of arm's reach. "I want you to know," 
she said, "that I saw what you were looking at this 
morning-and I liked it." She laughed, blew him a chlorine 
kiss, and dove off again. 
Later, at day's end, as the girls were loading their things 
into the blue Fairlane, Roberta gave Steven her phone 
number, and the directions, by bicycle, to her parents' 
house. She told him to come soon. She said she knew a place · 
where they could go and tell secrets to one another. No one 
ever went there, she said. 
Steven thrilled to hear it! But then he had to hold his 
towel in front of him to hide the small lump in his trousers. 
He did not sleep well that night. He tossed and turned on 
his upper bunk, and finally, after three hours of fitful 
slumber, awoke, and could not get back to sleep. He 
climbed out of bed and padded into the living room. For a 
while he sat on the sofa and ran his fingers through his hair, 
then stood and walked over to the picture window and 
looked outside. It was three in the morning. Everything was 
quiet. Nothing, not even a leaf, stirred. There was a full 
moon. Steven's house, his street, his hand as he rested it on 
the windowsill-all of them paled under the blanched light 
of the moon. He watched a squirrel scurry across his front 
lawn: it, too, was whitened with moonlight. It occurred to 
him then that the paleness of the moon was the same color 
as the inside of Roberta's thigh, and that everything he had 
ever known or loved-his neighborhood, his home, his 
heart and even his hands-had taken on that same color­
less tint of white, not actually the negation of all color, but 
35 
NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
the absence of all colors except one. The whiteness sur­
rounded him. His breathing concentrated itself and his 
entire body tightened. Something swel led in him, some­
thing wanted to burst, but it was a moment or two before 
Steven real ized that it was Desire swell ing in him, it was 
Desire wanting to burst1 and not the ort of desire he had 
been accustomed to as a boy. Thi desire wa different­
stronger, more powerful, containing in it the anger of 
oceans and the howl of the wind. There was something in 
this des ire which could not be denied. He felt a warmth 
flow through him1 a warmth as continual as blood and 
seasons1 and uddenly he didn't feel so awkward; suddenly 
he felt almost handsome. His hands began to tremble, his 
face began to glow. Everything had turned white. 
He looked out into the street and tried to remember 
what Roberta had said. What had she said? That he was a 
flower. Yes1 a flower. But what kind of flower? There were so 
many. What kind of flower? 
Maybe he would never know. Maybe she would take 
him to the secret place, and they would tell their secrets to 
one another, and after it was over-maybe even then he 
wouldn't know. But he had to find out, he had to know. For 
he knew this much already: something stirred in him1 
something that made the flowers themselves st ir1 that 
made bees and wasp stir, and which nudged all of nature. 
What kind of flower? He wished Roberta was there so 
he could ask her. But she was not, so  he turned slowly from 
the window1 seeing the whiteness of the room and his 
world1 and felt himself blossoming. 
3 6  


Where the Flower Lives

Pronk, Ron

T h e  With e red 
H a n d o f  A u g u st 
R o n  Pra n k  
The withered hand of August 
is gripping my throat. Desert air 
scavenges the city. 
This day is too long. 
Pete Soileau, Don Winkleman, I can hardly see 
your faces in the light. I wonder if 
you ever recall what I 
cannot forget-
how elastic and green a twelve year old world appears; 
how our naked torpedo bodies loved to startle 
the still river; how it  felt 
to knead the thick clay bank 
between our toes. 
At night, when the alley dogs bay 
the hand loosens 
the air hums emptiness 
and I breathe too deeply. 
I see what stirs the dogs and draws them 
to darkness; something 
like the heat of this withered hand 
gripping with things that have passed 
untouched. 
73 


The Withered Hand of August

Martin, Susan

We n atc h ee 
S u s a n  Mart i n  
My father 
left an old brass trumpet 
in the basement on Yakima Street. 
I found it there 
the summer I met Uncle Art. 
He said I could have that trumpet. 
He smelled like old sweaters 
and the dust we stirred 
walking down the gravel alley. 
Uncle Art liked to hold my hand 
and talk about his navy days, 
the old Bremerton shipyards. 
Hanky 
drove us to Leavenworth, 
a Bavarian town, 
where all I wanted 
was the pearl-handled j ack-knife 
made in Taiwan 
to take, to remember 
and Uncle Art knew. 
BB 
We ate aplets and cotlets 
in Cashmere 
and watched them being made. 
We took pictures of the hot copper vats 
and the apple blossoms 
painted on the factory wall. 
I lived a Wenatchee summer 
learning that bats sound like rain 
flapping at night from catalpa trees, 
finding 
that I come from a place 
with green stone porches 
and big strong hands. 
Something was wrong 
when old sweaters suddenly 
smelled like wooden drawers. 
Something had been lost. 
8 9  
Martin/Wenatchee 


Wenatchee

Lawrence, Doug

Sweaty Pa l m s ,  Ca l .  
Doug Lawrence 
The screen door stal ls on its spring. 
L ist less antennae wave 
from ins ide the i r  room at Roach Motel .  
The door presses s lowly closed 
but the latch doesn't catch. 
She won't answer h i s  call th is  t ime. 
She s i ps a pensive wi ne 
with a qu iet bouquet. 
U nder the l ukewarm stars 
her bare feet steam 
in the cool sand. 
There's a rose at the bottom 
of the phone booth. 
A voice with no brakes 
is out on the w i re 
in a scream ing wind. 
Powerl i nes fry the rad io. 
Mus ic  l i ke hot popping sausage 
tang les in  cigarette smoke, 
jumps through the wind-wing.  
Long sk ins of asphalt 
sl ide u nder the hood ornament. 
Sweaty Palm s, Cal. , 
balanc ing a black snake on the nose; 
The eng ine wi nds out, 
a f ly u nder the l id, 
a buzz i ns ide the ear. 
Sweaty Palms, Cal. ,  
she d idn't think I 'd come back 
and I spat 
l i ke a fat bug 
on her windshie ld .  
16 


Sweaty Palms, Cal.

Bailey, Robert

After R ead i n g  R e xroth 
Robert Bailey 
A night of days has passed 
Stubborn ly beyond our reach 
The concl usion: separation 
The vehic le: the sea 
( in a boat which 
leaves no tracks) 
22 


After Reading Rexroth

Harreschou, Murray

D i s hes 
Murray Harreschou 
I push away from the d inner table, 
push ing away from you. 
Our  argument l ies around us, 
leftovers on d i rty p lates. 
I turn on the tap, wasting im potent 
cold water. I squeeze o i ly  brown water 
from the sponge and lace it with J oy. 
Its thin wh iteness looks l i ke your  come. 
N ow the s ink  is  a pool with too-green lettuce 
floati ng and a c h i l i  can l i d  stu ck to the s ide. 
I g rind the d isposal but it clan ks 
from that part you d idn' t  fix. 
Steaming water eats away g rease, 
f in ish ing the tomato s l ice you d idn't. 
I scrub the p late and r inse it, front, 
back, and front again. You always leave bubbles. 
G lasses l i ne  up along the d ra in pan edge. 
I s l ide them next to the posit ioned 
plates. Cou ld  we be th is neat? 
I f in ish rins ing in  water 
that hurts my hands. 
33 


Dishes

Pearson, Marlene

D ivo rce 
Marlen e Pearson 
He knocked on my door with i ron kn uckles and a plaster smi le, 
explain i ng: 
" I ' m  leaving/ marriage ru in ing my job/ you never do what 1/ 
can't keep my bushes tri mmed in the yard/ and you know 
how I need seX/ got to d ivorce." 
I s hook my head. It tu rned bruise g reen real iz ing someth i ng. 
I t  fe l l  off and landed on the desk near my typewriter. 
My r ight arm f lew out the wi ndow in rage. 
"se l l  houses/ you half/ we' l l  spl it d ishessheetstvcouch­
gru bby anyway/ stuff you never wou ld  replace." 
My stomach became stone, d ropped to the f loor, 
ro l led down the ha l l  and out into the street, rest ing 
in  the coo l trick le of the gutter. 
An ear left my severed head and began typing poetry. 
" I ' m  keepi ng/ investments im portant to me/ don't touch 
my profits/ But  Anna is-" 
The other ear joi ned and they typed louder. 
" my main concern/ lovely ch i ld/ support 
one year/ that's al l." 
Spiders poured from my vag ina down to the floor 
weaving secrets in  red, then crawled away 
and h id  among the books in the case. 
" I  can't stay/ so you go-final decis ion/ 
I speak calm ly/ expect you to do the same." 
My feet stood there, j ust toes stiffen ing 
l i ke I 'd  been standing on ice for a long ti me. 
37 
The newly typed page began chanting sounds 
he had never heard before. He listen.ed. 
Smoke rose from his ears, mouth, privates. 
He fell in a heap of ashes. 
His head rested like a dull marble on top, 
glazed eyes looking up. 
My left arm slammed the door. My head yelled: 
feed the cats when you get up, 
they're scratching at the window. 
Theyve knocked over your geranium. 
I went to gather up the parts of me. 
38 
Pearson/Divorce 


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