California State University (CSU): Open Journal Systems

M. Lam, Amy

AMY M. LAM 
ScRAPED 
H E ASKED ME IF I WANTED A "SCRAPED." DELUSIONS OF MY hipness drained out of me. I thought I knew most of the slang my junior high kids were using but this was a new one. Did he just ask if 
I wanted to have sex? I turned to look at him. He was looking at me oddly with 
his arms up in front of his chest. Why was he looking at me like that? I looked 
down at myself. I had assumed the same pose. I must have unconsciously taken 
the "neutraVdefensive, possibly offensive" stance I learned in self-defense class. 
The instructors said our combative learning will ingrain itself into something 
called muscle memory. I guess it worked. 
He asked if I was okay. He dropped his arms to his sides. His demeanor 
showed me that he had no mal-intentions. With my arms still up I asked what a 
"scraped" was. He said that it was a shaved-ice treat, like snowcones. He pointed 
to the brown man corning toward us pushing a cart with a huge hunk of ice and 
syrup in dispenser bottles on it. The bells strung onto the handles jingled. He 
said his kids tell him that in Spanish this treat translates verbatim into English 
as "scraped." I let down my guard, and my arms. I have seen these carts before 
in front of the school. I just never suspected such a question from him, today 
being his first day at work. I told him I would like one and we walked, sucking 
on sugar coated ice, to the adjacent teachers' parking lot. 
Yeah, that was a strange day. I sat at my desk, grading assignments. I was 
frustrated with the number of incorrect answers. Perhaps it wasn't just the stu-
dents' fault. After all, I put off making the assignment until two a.m. the night 
before. I just didn't feel like doing it any earlier. There could have been some 
ambiguous questions. Well, teachers have lives too. 
Then I got caught up in watching John. He came out of his apartment dow'n-
stairs. I turned back to my stack of papers. The penmanship on some of those! 
DIANEKAI 

Scrape 
But before I could even pick up where I left off, John came back. And then he 
was out again. I was distracted. A bad thing. But then maybe a good thing. I 
wanted it. A distraction. 
Distraction is like diversion. In Spanish, they call diversion entertainment. 
So I was entertained by John. I watch him come and go. I watch him like a cat 
from my window. I am fascinated. He's tall, and I never suspected that he's 
balding. He walks as if sighing continuously but without the exaggerated chest 
movements. I couldn't help spying on him all afternoon. His apartment ex-
truded him, sucked him in, expelled him, inhaled him. I was finally bored around 
six that evening. 
On television, Phil, the liberal devil's advocate, was grilling underage young 
women about having anal sex with their boyfriends. One woman even con-
fessed that she worries that she might be pregnant and might have an anal baby. 
Where does he get these people? But I am riveted. Only during commercials do 
I allow myself to take my ritualistic sojourns to the freezer. Now this is when 
the cheese falls out and breaks my toe. Well, it's been so hot this summer I even 
stopped wearing underwear. The elastic choked off my thighs into sausages, 
and I couldn't bear looking at them and fight off the heat at the same time. I 
could blame it on my mother. She's been feeding me cheese all my life. Cheese 
she gets from the government. Why does the government give out cheese? 
Mom still gets in line for the cheese even though she's been lactose intolerant 
for years. "It's mine," she says. "The government isn't going, to give me any-
thing else so I'm getting what's mine." Well, what's hers is a distinct essence. 
You should see her freezer. It's loaded with cheese- all kinds. It's from her 
that I learned to store cheese in the freezer. Only I never expected the cheese to 
be a weapon. 
So, I was at the emergency room for three hours last night. I wasn't a prior-
ity, they said. Finally, they looked at my foot, took X-rays, and told me that it'll 
heal itself. I waited all that time for nothing. They wouldn't even give me pain 
killers, because, they said, my broken toe didn't hurt. Can you believe that? 
This is why, Mrs. Brown, I can't come in to work today. Would you call the 
sub desk? 


English

Scraped

Kolarek, Tara

RANDOM LESBIANS 
Never having been to New York it is 
impossible to account for the strange 
goings on in my life. New York is so 
incredibly far away and my living room 
so close that I fail to see the connection. 
There was a criminal I once knew who 
stole my VCR and left a love note in its 
place. She wrote to me later from jail to 
tell me how much she had enjoyed 
watching tapes of old movies and that 
she had just completed her in-jail training 
to become a phlebotomist. I saw an ad 
for a quaint 2 + 1 in Arleta and thought 
of living there with her after her release. 
Her next letter to me established my 
fears as she told me that when she got 
out she was going to New York. At the 
bottom of the letter she stapled a person-
Tara Kolarek 
alized business card made in the jail print shop announcing 
her position as a cettified phlebotomist at New York General. 
She said there was a group of five women being released 
together and she hoped I wouldn't mind but she had given 
them my address. 
They were a hardworking bunch of women and never failed 
to clean their plates and ask for seconds. The jail had been 
so confining that Los Angeles seemed spacious to them and 
had an equal effect on their appetites. There were no prob-
lems but for once, when one of them ate more than her share 
of biscuits and another whacked her on the head with a 
broomstick. She immediately wanted to call the battered 
women's shelter but the other one quickly made it up to her 
by buttering her biscuit. One of the women, Miriam, was 
looking for work and saw an ad for a "bassist wanted" but 
retumed from the interview dejected because she thought 
they had wanted someone who could fish. 
On the day of my 40th bitthday the $5.00 savings bond my 
grandmother had bought at my bitth was to mature and the 
women planned a surprise patty for me. For the occasion 
they had resolved to dispense with their usual bitchy attitudes 
and put on dresses. Margo, the largest of the five, had the 
hardest time finding a dress to fit and ended up cutting a hole 
in the center of a Queen size sheet and wearing it serape 
style. Luckily, I had insurance because the sheet Margo chose 
belonged to Josephine, who had spent a lot of time in the jail 
weight room, and she sent my couch flying through the living 
room landing on my new VCR. We all sat around the couch, 
ate cake and ice cream, and told tales of incest with each one 
becoming more gmesome and fantastic. 
Darlene, who had worked in the jail kitchen, was the house 
chef and spent most of her days inventing new recipes for 
Spam. One of her concoctions was a bubbling stew which 
was very flavorful but we all decided that for our own safety 
4 Northridge Review 
TaraKolarek 
she shouldn't make it again because it required us to make 
the house non-smoking for fear of instantaneous combustion. 
We knew Darlene was hurt by this so we stepped up our 
effotts at encouraging her culinary skills, as cooking was 
therapeutic for Darlene and kept her arsonist impulses at bay. 
Once, a male-child came to the door and handed Margo a 
note which read "looking 4 mother" at which point Margo 
swept him up in her arms and made a pallet on the floor next 
to her bed for him. He fulfilled Margo's lesbian dream of 
childbiith without pain. At the time of the male child's arrival 
there was a D.J. available and another party was conceived. 
No furniture was thrown but a communal horniness empted 
which threatened to overload the D.J.'s supply of Patsy Cline. 
We all expressed passionate longings for family, motherhood, 
and sex. The women had had enough solitary confinement in 
jail as had I in my living room. Getting a babysitter, we 
dressed in varying layers of leather and lingerie and went out 
in search of a cosmic orgasm. The search called fotth all 
manner of the long forgotten creative unity of women. No 
longer were we in search of a roommate; although that's how 
we would introduce her to family. At first, it was sheer agony, 
but we each, in our own time, learned how to dance without 
our nipples escaping from our leather bras. 
In time, we hired a personal trainer to school us in the ways 
of carousing and arousing. We went through at least a dozen 
before we found one qualified in teaching groups. She was 
from the South Bay and was concerned about the long com-
mute so she moved in with us. Her first lesson was a lecture 
on the ways of a deaf culture with which there was no sign 
language for us to communicate. She was a 12-step lesbian 
who nightly attended meetings for anonymous heterosexuals. 
Her living with us disoriented Darlene as the trainer was a 
vegetarian and could not eat Spam. It disturbed Darlene so 
much that she considered psychotherapy but changed her 
mind when she found that Tofu substituted nicely for Spam. 
Our second lesson was on safer-sex which was very enlight-
ening for Josephine who, until then, had thought it meant 
using silk scarves instead of hand-cuffs. With her newfound 
knowledge Josephine embarked on a new career of walking 
the streets in a sandwich board extolling the vhtues of dental 
dams. Josephine had nothing but ongoing fun especially 
when asked to demonstrate. After several complaints were 
filed against her with the EPA she turned her energies toward 
Queer Nation and volunteered as a dead body for their pro-
tests. 
Peyote, who had eamed her nickname, and who, until this 
time, had lived quietly with us, spending a great deal of time 
alone in her room making trails with her hands, began to 
express her lust for me. Before jail she had been a vocalist 
seeking a voice and now thought that I could be the one to 
sing for her. Admitting I was biased against dmg use and 
preferring my lovers to see only one of me, Peyote followed 
the trail back to her room and didn't come out for a week. 
Our trainer from South Bay next tutored us in body motion 
which actually took several lessons until we finally had gotten 
our sea legs. Luckily, we were able to bypass the condom 
lesson choosing instead to inflate them and decorate the 
house for the celebration of the male child's bilthday. There 
was worldwide celebration in our house that day in honor of 
all lesbian mothers who had been forgotten by Hallmark. For 
the occasion Darlene made a gourmet meal combining the 
best of Spam and Tofu. After much speechmaking by Margo 
we left the male child with Stella, the cat, and went off to 
Holly's Place for a few beers. Upon our retum, we found that 
the male child had been most adventurous and had tried to 
rewind Stella's tail in the VCR while watching re-mns of 
"Petticoat Junction". 
6 Northridge Review 
Tara Kolarek 
Peyote had since come out of her room in search of some-
one funny with brains, and without my anti-drug bias, to 
receive her lust. The last we heard of Peyote she had been 
busted and was doing time in Sybil Brand for shoplifting a 
blow-up doll. 
It was time, our trainer felt, that we should move on to the 
more aesthetic pa1t of our education and arranged for a 
charter bus to take us to a showing of dyke art in Santa 
Monica. The art show was an array of mixed media depicting 
hate crimes, love crimes, and stolen memories. There was a 
single woman standing in front of a metal sculpture of two 
women embracing, impaled on a cross. It was titled "Wanted: 
women, dead or alive". She tumed and looked into my eyes 
as if to ask "Are you sma1t enough to never let this become 
reality?" There was something in that look that was both 
charming and disarming and when we left she was on the bus 
with us. The ride home provided relaxing comfort from the 
tortures of dyke art. 
The male child, approaching puberty, began to exhibit 
unsettling canine behavior and we were left with no choice 
but to have him neutered. This stopped his pleas for dining 
from a bowl on the kitchen floor. Margo was the first one to 
notice the subservient nature of the male child. It was de-
cided that he should be under the guidance of a professional 
and so it was that Dirk, the valet, came to live with us. Dirk 
was dependable and in no time the male child was, in the 
French tradition, serving from the left and removing from the 
right. 
Chartering another bus, our trainer took us to the Nuart for 
a women in film series. Most of us, only being familiar with 
snapshots of old lovers, were unprepared for Simone de 
Bustier's inner child romping across the screen. The next film 
was a story of star-crossed lovers in which a Scorpio-fern falls 
for a Virgo-butch but whose families are opposed. The whole 
experience left us all feeling anxious and wanting to return to 
the safety of our home. 
Daphne, the woman from the dyke art show, claimed that a 
writer seeks spiritual fulfillment by not writing as this goes 
against tradition and it is only by suppressing the desire that 
one can grow spiritually. I tried this for awhile and found my 
spiritual self reading books on witchcraft looking for incanta-
tions to recite while burning Stephen Dedalus in effigy. The 
end result was a return to writing and visualizing Daphne's 
tight buns. She next tried to explain the works of a French 
philosopher and the concept of killing the author but I shied 
away from this as I had finally worked through my suicidal 
tendencies. She accused me of being only concerned that my 
books sold for at least $25.00 and not whether there was any 
content. I tried to convince her this was not true because I 
was perfectly willing to have them sold at Crown Books and 
to show her I was sincere, gave her the teddy bear I had 
gotten at my first writer's workshop. I stayed secluded for 
several days after this in my little den wonying about my 
writing and dreaming of philosophers ttying to get in and re-
write my work. The dreams stopped, finally, after I took all of 
my writing and bound it securely in Saran Wrap. 
P01tia came home one day after her weekly session of tarot 
counselling. She claimed that a near death experience was 
awaiting one of us. Not completely trusting Pottia we went to 
Puppy Carmona, the numerologist, for a second opinion. 
Puppy said that is was possible, but that we could prevent this 
from happening if we would lock onto the sensual nature of 
our communal living arrangement. This would mean cutting 
the proverbial apron string which bound us all to our mothers. 
F01tified by the accumulative total of our body fat we em-
barked on our search for the sensual. We insured that our 
gathering would be informal by discarding all jewehy and any 
clothing with sharp objects. Puppy had warned us that some-
times these journey's left few survivors so we doubled our 
8 Northridge Review 
--
Tara Kolarek 
body fat and held tighter together. A warm glow started to 
envelope the group but it turned out to be Stella rubbing 
against our legs. Trying to speed up the process we each 
stood back and yelled "here I go" before flinging our bodies 
in a pile on the floor. This did not have the desired effect as 
Margo ended up on top while Portia lay on the bottom and 
indeed Portia did have a near death experience. Three weeks 
later Pottia was discharged from the institute. She gave up 
her tarot counselor, became a Buddhist and studied the art of 
Zen. 
The daily industry was looking for a few good milkers so 
Margo packed up herself and the male child, fired Dirk and 
left for Wisconsin. The daily farm she worked at had all the 
modern equipment and Margo's job was teat monitor. The 
only delight she found was when one of the rubber suction 
devices came off and had to be re-attached. I had read in the 
AAA Tour Book that there was no erotica to be found in 
Wisconsin. Later, I found out that she had met up with a 
gorgeous milkmaid from a neighboring daily who milked the 
old-fashioned way with her hands. Watching T.V. one night 
and re-reading Margo's last letter I saw Josephine on the news 
having been arrested at a Queer Nation protest holding up a 
sign that read "I still love Martina" while being led away in 
hand-cuffs. 
With Margo, Peyote and Josephine gone the house started 
to lose its womanspirit. Dusting off an old tube of lipstick I 
suggested we needed to be recharged. Daphne, 23, fun 
loving and bored was all for it. We signed up for guitar 
lessons but found it took too long to learn anything but "Puff 
the Magic Dragon". Next we trained for marathons but only 
ended up with shin splints and spandex. We were looking for 
soul in all the wrong places. Still determined, we hired a 
Swedish woman skilled in massage. After much discussion of 
meatballs and no massages, we let her go. Darlene had 
grown tired of Spam and Tofu and longed for expanding her 
culinary skills in the purer methods of Bisquick. Darlene left 
with a full figured Jewish woman who promised secret recipe's 
for Bisquick bagels. 
It was then only myself, Daphne, Miriam and the personal 
trainer left, that is, until Miriam rode off one day with a mo-
torcycle club. The personal trainer still had hopes for Daphne 
and I to get in touch with our goddess in the office. She 
brought a crypt home and had us each take tums laying in it 
and concentrating on invoking the goddess of words. Instead, 
we both dreamed of a Puerto Rican woman in a marketplace 
uttering words neither of English or Spanish. Next, she 
brought in a Gay Christian to pray over us as we lay in the 
crypt together. The Christian ritual being too familiar we 
realized we were not marriage minded and retumed the crypt 
within 30 days for our money back guarantee. 
Our time spent in the crypt, however, did do wonders for 
Daphne's reluctance to engage in foreplay. We went back 
and practiced the body motion positions. Position 47 was 
utter brutality but we were able to put Daphne's leg back in 
place without calling 911. We never found our goddess but 
did meet up with a huntress wearing a head dress. 
Never having been to New York it is impossible to account 
for these strange goings on in my temple of heaven. New 
York is so incredibly far away and my living room so close 
that I fail to see whether this is a cult or cure. 
10 Northridge Review 


Random Lesbians

Bear, Shining

Lookin 
Shining Bear 
How s t r a n g e this surfaceworld can be! 
Sometitne, in the dearin halfway up Takespirit Mountain, 
in spring when warmbreath breezes play in 
blossoms thick perfumes 
and stroke the grasses with their 
lovin whisperfmgers, 
I build fire and set to Lookin. 
When the treefolk all around smell they can trust, 
they lets their leafchilds do the little shines -
like just-bathed by an evening showerain. 
Catmother calls "CAUK-CAUK-CAREFUL! BE MINDFUL 
WHEN YOU STEP!" to baby walkin there too 
near the vinetangles and them bramble traps on 
edge of cliff. 
11lunderwaters in deep canyon w-a-y- down below slap hard 
on winter-dozin boulders as they run; 
20 
keep callin "Here's the place ravine gets smaller-
we're altnost back to Sunmoon lake there 
now." 
Northridge Review 
Shining Bear 
My Lookin starts by slidin zigzags cross the smooth thick 
shadows fillin in the creases of the nearby 
mountains skirts with their best black 
imagination --lacquer; 
then, on my steady breath, my Lookin flies out streaks 
on the distant ranges pale as mica in 
moon's evening glance; 
then my voice cuts in kine-power roar and my Lookin 
ROCKETS up in gazeship to the fullness of the coverin 
sky. 
The place inside (just 'bove the belly and below the heart) 
that Knows The Changes 
finds the place I'll go tomorrow for to eat and wash 
and pray, 
and marks it deep inside my brain; that duty done 
loose me to soar 
up up to starpasture where all the Heaven Fourfoot 
graze 
and starry Heroes, gods, and cowherds sprays their 
milk to mark The Way. 
In that mindcuddle my Lookin thoughts and fire-fed body 
go so still 
that in my boneblood I can Feel A 11 on the move; 
free of manmask, I am now a tiny flair of light con 
trolled and guided 
by the eon-age Orinda which the maneye cannot see, 
the One that pendulums the Clock of Fate, and laughs 
at ticks 
and whirs 
and buzzes 
of the humans tiny tick-tock-tick 
slavemaster clocks. 
In that deep mindfreeze, just one thought alone swims free: 
22 
It's all in circles; 
A 1 l's round the circles; 
go D E E P into 1he Circle 
if you would to Know the Lookin Me. 
Northridge Review 


Lookin

Stevenson, Melody

DELIVERY 
Chester liked to reacl. Not books, 
and certainly not the articles his wife 
kept pressing on him like "Confessions of 
a Compulsive Womanizer" or "Jewelry: 
The Unlikely Ego Booster" or "Beauty 
and the Beast: How Much 'Animal' Do 
We Really Want in a Man?" But he did 
like the shape of words on surfaces. He 
liked the black definiteness of the letters 
and he liked the way certain kinds of 
print made the K's look angry and the 
D's look cheerful, accessible, or some-
times fat and foolish. Chester especially 
liked the way certain directives were so 
clearly, so confidently spelled out. Take 
"First Pull Up, Then Pull Down" for 
instance. That was one of his favorites. 
Told a person just what to do without 
any fumbling over pleases or pardon 
me's or thank you's at all. And there was 
Melody Stevenson 
something about the power of those P's, placed the way they 
were, that was just about irresistible. Chester wanted to know 
who had thought that one up. He wanted to know if the 
author had struggled for years, cutting and revising, until he'd 
pruned his message down to its purest essence, or if it had 
just hit the lucky slob upside the head one dark morning 
while he was busy buttering toast. 
Chester wondered if the author still got residuals from each 
printing. That's what Chester wanted to do. Write something 
that good, that clean, that potent, then collect residuals on it 
for the rest of his life. Or even just for ten years or so. Even 
that much might be enough to buy him a ticket out of the 
Customer Service Department at BoscofPs Be-You-Too-Full 
Bosoms, Inc. 
Now there was a waste of good ink for you. Be-You-Too-
Full Bosoms, Inc. Chester couldn't bear misspellings of any 
sott, but cute ones really stuck in his craw. And the slogan 
was even worse, if anything could be, especially since it was 
poor Chester who had to lift the receiver all day long and 
greet the unf01tunate caller. "Thank you for calling Be-You-
Too-Full Bosoms, Inc." he had to say. "We build 'em fast." 
That '"em" at the end nearly choked him. He tended to slur it 
all together so that the customer started out confused. 
"Better to be confused, than repulsed," was Chester's motto. 
He'd made that one up himself, and though he recognized 
that it didn't have the punch of a "First Pull Up, Then Pull 
Down," for instance, it wasn't really such a bad little motto 
and he was disappointed that it had never really caught on 
around the office. 
Chester could remember when the company used to be 
called Hany's Health House. Admittedly, Harry Boscoff had 
an overdeveloped tendency toward alliteration even then, but 
Chester (he'd started out as "Product Sorter" in the ware-
house) never dreamt what success would do to Harry Boscoff. 
46 Northridge Review 
Melody Stevenson 
Chester had seen Harty safely through a lot of changes. He 
stayed on through Harry's Beatnik Phase (Harty's Health 
Hideaway), his Intellectual Phase (Harty's Health Habitat), 
and his Bill Haley and the Comets Phase (Harty's Health 
Hop). He even suppotted the old gentleman through that 
very difficult period following Harty's divorce when he called 
the place Harty's Health Harem and insisted that all the 
secretaries address him as "Harry Honey." 
Looking back, Chester could see that he should have 
jumped ship years ago, but who could've guessed that a 
ridiculous little hinged hunk of pink plastic would gross more 
than the rest of Hany's products combined? 
Chester remembered it all ... the day Harry discovered that 
he'd somehow stumbled into success; that he'd somehow 
tapped into the collective female unconsciousness through 
their collective female breasts; that the dollars would keep 
flowing rich as mother's milk, nourishing, limitless, and there 
for the sucking. That was the day Hany had mn through the 
warehouse, tossing quatters like chicken feed to the workers, 
shouting "Be-You-Too-Full! Be-You-Too-Full!" 
Chester sighed. Still, working for Be-You-Too-Full Bosoms, 
Inc. had its advantages. You couldn't beat their dental plan 
for one thing, especially for a man who'd already needed two 
root canals as well as bridgework. And, after 33 years of 
devoted service, old Hany let Chester take home free samples 
to his wife every single time they improved their product, or 
even just updated their packaging, and his wife always 
giggled and looked at him sideways when he did. So he 
really couldn't complain. 
But deep down inside somewhere, something offended his 
soul. Chester had to accept that, finally - that he did have a 
soul and that something about his job offended it. 
He tried not to think about it. But when those thoughts just 
tiptoed into his mind, bumped right into "Packed with Pea-
nuts," "Safety First," and "Sealed For Your Protection," well, 
sometimes they were just impossible to ignore. That's when 
he would twist his head around backwards to whisper to Lola 
to tell the old man (if he asked) that he needed to get out 
and suck up some of the old nicotine. Then he would stack 
his letters neatly in the lower left hand corner of his desk 
(with the most irate ones hidden underneath so that people 
strolling by wouldn't suspect that he sometimes had his set-
backs in the customer appeasement department), quietly peel 
his coat off the back of his swivel chair, make a quick check 
that the old man's door was still closed, and set off in search 
of Tmth and Beauty. He hadn't actually smoked in years, 
ever since he read that the Surgeon General himself had 
determined it to be harmful to one's health, but old Harry 
thought he knew everything about everyone and it made 
Chester feel a little bit vindicated to mislead the old guy now 
and then. 
Chester always used the stairs, making sure to watch his step 
and to hold the handrail as directed. He had long ago given 
up on the elevator because it bothered him that those little 
lights could track him at every stop, no matter what he 
stopped for. Besides, walking was faster and better for the 
heatt. 
The receptionist sat in the lobby, near the front entrance. 
Chester always smiled and nodded at her as he passed, but 
she never once looked up. Her hair was beige and frizzy and 
something about her reminded Chester of a cactus. "Please 
Ring For Assistance" was posted near a silver bell on her desk. 
Chester wondered what she would do if he had a stroke 
rightthere, before he was able to reach the bell. 
Chester pushed through the revolving door, grateful that this 
time at least, no one else was around to make the "One 
Person Only" directive awkward to observe. 
48 Northridge Review 
Melody Stevenson 
Once outside, he inhaled deeply, scanning the length of the 
business block, first to the right, then to the left. Ah, to know 
the direction one must take, he thought, must be the greatest 
gift. 
A limousine with darkened windows rolled past. Chester 
plunged his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat. He 
shook his head, suddenly sad and bewildered. There was 
nothing inside except cookie crumbs and an old gum wrapper, 
just the foil patt. 
He shook his head harder. He was shaking out the sadness 
and the bewilderment. No matter, he said to himself, but his 
lips must have been moving again because two girls stumping 
along in their high heels eyed him curiously as they passed. 
"It's better to be confused than repulsed," he said to them, 
nodding pleasantly as he spoke and touching his index finger 
to his forehead as if tipping an imaginary hat. 
But then he couldn't move. He stood at the entrance for a 
long time. He had almost decided to push his way back 
through the revolving door and ring the receptionist's bell, just 
to see what would happen, when a big gold pizza van sailed 
down the street from the right. 
"WE DELIVER" it said in bold red letters. It splattered 
Chester with mud as it passed but he didn't care. Chester 
smiled and squinted as he watched the big gold van become 
a small dark blob. 
"We Deliver," he said out loud, and he savored the taste of 
the words in his mouth, and the feel of their weight on his 
tongue. The beauty of it, the possibilities, were overwhelming. 
He turned sharply to his left and his loafers hummed, if not 
sang, against the sidewalk. 
What a gift it was, the greatest gift, to be doubly blessed 
with a direction and a promise, both! Chester wished he had 
some quarters to toss. Chester spun around and saw "WE 
DELIVER" tattooed on the clouds and on the sun and on the 
glaring reflection of the Allstate windows. Perhaps they really 
do, Chester's soul cried out as he ran faster, faster toward the 
golden carriage. 
But what the hot dog vendor heard of Chester's soul was a 
quivety thin voice shouting shaky as if bumping over railroad 
tracks, "Be-You-Too-Full! Be-You-Too-Full!" 
50 Northridge Review 


Delivery

Quigley, Mark

MARK QUIGLEY 
She picks them up 
from the pharmacy every 
couple of months-
one bottle with about 1 00 
small green pills. 
She takes them so 
she won't hear voices 
or transmissions from the 
thoughts of strangers who 
walk down the broken 
sidewalk in front of 
her apartment. 
When she doesn't feel 
right she says: 
"It's like there's a 
telephone in my heart 
that always rings and 
hangs up." 
Rings and hangs up. 
She smiles while she 
says this, then suddenly 
becomes ashamed, guilty. 
She cries. She is afraid. 
The promise in small green pills. 
17 


Small Green Pills

Cho, Susy

SUSYCHO 
Thinking 
about my arm 
dangling 
out of 
Caryl's car 
we pass 
the sign 
to Summerland. 
The heavens 
dry up 
and as 
on 
the mustang 
in the right lane 
the sky-blue 
exterior 
flakes off 
turning 
translucent 
like fish 
food falling 
into the water. 
That soporific 
noise 
of echoing 
cantinas 
22 L 
and cafes 
the entrancing 
static 
of bloated pink 
skin and hot 
white hair 
disassociate 
themselves from me 
on the way 
back. 
Santa Barbara 
could have 
fixed anything 
but 
the arrow 
to Summerland 
pointing 
west--
right off 
the cliff--
insinuates 
another place. 
23 


Summerland

Ann Heimann, Mary

MARY ANN HEIMAN 
She's a friend of someone 
who works in my office and 
what I know is this: 
fifteen years ago she had a date 
with a man I've started to see. 
Since then, she's heard his name 
and that he married and divorced, 
had kids and raised them by himself, 
and she's encountered him occasionally 
over cabbage at the all-nite grocery store. 
They had a 'nice time,' she remembers, 
slight jolt of familiarity, 
the electric comfort of a blanket, 
and yet they hugged only once 
and said goodbye. 
Now this man who hugged her once 
and said goodby has 
startled my reflexes: 
he lives in a big house with red Spanish tiles 
and a dog on the side, 
and kid and a nephew who have their own rooms ... 
I went to visit and the house sucked me in, 
(I guess my anti-stabilizing shield was down) 
through the hall of yellow umbrella photos 
taken by his daughter, 
past the giant's kitchen table 
holding coffee cups of mottled gray 
each encircled by a strident color 
to ensure no drinking from the other person's cup, 
past the washer stacked with kid clothes 
into the living room blue couch which 
had no lamp beside it because it was 
just for looking out the window 
into the sparkling city. 
There we sat getting high and talking 
our words spinning out and touching 
mingling and repelling until 
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we had a square of cloth between us 
and when it grew lacy, 
I knew I had to go. 
He walked me to my car. 
I wanted to say I like you, 
you're really special but 
as he came toward me 
arms open like his house, 
my shield shot up and 
all I could do was scream 
SUSAN MILLMAN! 
He hugged me once 
and was gone. 
30 


Susan Millman

Reynolds, Amy

Malibu Fire, November 93

Kane, Clifford

JOE 
CLIFFORD KANE 
I remember, as a child 
listening to the body counts on the news 
while my mother cried 
I can't recall the figures 
but I know that they were a lot 
and I can't recall 
but I think that 
they must have announced them for both sides 
like the score of a football game 
I remember driving past 
the cemetery on the 280 
commuting with a teacher from my school 
he said 
"even in death they make them look the same" 
I was moved 
it was the best thing he ever taught me 
He drank Gallo Hearty Burgundy 
out of the jug 
while he played John Prine songs on guitar 
it was a long time ago 
nobody seemed to care 
that he drank wine at school 
He had been there 
most of them had avoided it 
but he had been there 
he worked in a medical unit 
he would tell us stories 
about how they would sneak in and steal 
spools of copper wire 
and shoot them with arrows 
into props of helicopters 
stories about doctors 
and really dumb guys 
or how he and Connie used to go see 
this old black blues singer 
in Oklahoma 
35 
who doesn't want a better guitar 
than his old Harmony 
because nobody could 
play better than him anyway 
he never told us much more 
but it was enough 
to make me understand resourcefulness 
36 


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