California State University (CSU): Open Journal Systems

Jung, Christopher

English

Skin Deep

Tapp, Tom

THE GLOSSING OF 
A MAN IN THE 
SIDE- SHOW 
What she was doing there I couldn't 
know. I couldn't even see her face at 
first, hidden among her hair stringy with 
sweat. I couldn't tell she was a woman 
until I saw, down above her ruffled 
brown skirt and spoiled legs, near her 
unusually wide hips, the smooth invetted 
triangle that said so. 
I had to figure she was confused. 
Somehow she hadn't seen the sign with 
the pants on the door when she came in. 
Maybe a drunk or a desperate junkie 
searching for a place to fix, I thought. 
But even then wouldn't she have noticed 
the bad poetty on the stall door was 
written by men? 
Tom Tapp 
Straight: 
Julia's a whore/She wants some more. 
Gay: 
I'm a fag/! like to drag/My big lips/On your big dick. 
Religious: 
If Jesus was my brother I'd share my wife with him. 
When I came in , I thought the place was empty. I didn't 
hear a sound. It wasn't like when you come in and someone 
is on the pot and they're tying to be quiet. It didn't have that 
hushed quality. It seemed empty, like a church. So I walked 
to the nearest stall and opened. 
She hadn't locked the door. When she finally swiveled her 
head up at me it didn't even seem she knew she was in a 
bathroom (much less the men's room). 
She looked Hispanic, although I couldn't be sure because 
somehow it was dark in there, in the stall. It contrasted with 
the white antiseptic of the bathroom at large. She sat how 
you sit after a long bad day. Her legs were spread wide in a 
mannish fashion, the way we watch tv and wait for the dinner 
tray. 
"Oh," I said. 
111en after a moment like frozen rope around a brittle 
skating pond, I tried to take control. "Well you really 
shouldn't be in here, should you? Do you need some help? 
Here, let me help you." 
It was when I moved towards her and she didn't move--
sitting, staring--that I caught my first real chill. I got a better 
angle on the seat where she was and noticed, there, on the 
dark whiteness, blood. 
16 Northridge Review 
Tom Tapp 
Maybe she was a patient, I thought. Someone out of her 
head who had wandered here and hemon·haged. I was new at 
the hospital and maybe this was something that happened all 
the time, something I didn't know about yet. But no, she 
wasn't clean enough to be from the hospital, didn't have the 
proper clothes on. She must have come in to Emergency. But 
what was her emergency? 
Thinking about it now, I should have gone for a stretcher 
and some help right then, but for some reason I was caught 
there in that dark space with her, too dose to back away or 
move. I Looked down at my hands and then my turgid green 
orderly's uniform -that baggy, ill-fitting joke of an outfit they 
give you and ask you to wear as testament to your cleanli-
ness, sterility. 
But I couldn't leave and do things right. So, once again, 
with a feeling of an icy pond (where did I get that? maybe 
something from childhood?) I reinitiated my stalled movement 
towards her; gingerly, as though I might break through the 
ice. 
When I lifted her from under the arms she screamed. It 
wasn't high, rather low and mbaning, but it was definitely a 
scream. 
I tugged at her, ttying to get her to help me in all the ways 
we leamed in school, professionally: "Just stand up. Come on, 
I can't do this alone. You've got to help me so I can get you 
in to where we can help you." 
The screaming died down into just groans and I got her to 
her feet when it all came fotward between her legs in a wet 
bloody rush: the spiralled cable, blue and gory; the spongy 
mats of tissue, falling. 
Worst was when I realized the anchor, the thing it was all 
connected to, holding it down, was still below in the toilet 
and I had to look. There, between the injection-molded 
contours of the hospital toilet seat, was something small but 
so large and pulling neither she, nor I, nor we, could lift it. It 
had weight in the water and got stuck up under the lip where 
they scrub with ironwool brushes. 
Pulling, I slipped on the blood and water and she flew back 
down onto the seat. For some reason I started shaking hard. I 
left the woman and went outside into the halls beeping with 
voices. 
I might have simply wandered, skimming around in my 
hospital fatigues for days, eventually settling into one of the 
wings and becoming a patient, someone seen but unrecog-
nized and accepted for who they seem to be because they fill 
a place. 
The first person who noticed me was an old Lithuanian 
woman who barely spoke English and was in charge of the 
new staff. She took and stopped me by the shoulders when 
she noticed me moving downhall, leaning against the cold tile 
wall. She stared in my eyes and held me at arm's length, bony 
tight, until I stopped walking. 
I had an intense feeling of being scrutinized, searched, but 
my awareness was elsewhere, near the ceiling, watching from 
above. A bird circling matted fur on the highway. 
"Whatt are you donig? Haillo? Mister?" / 
She had a large nose that seemed to come at me from the 
other side of a fishbowl. Blue spots on it. Cancer, I thought. 
Soon there was a good crowd around me. Speakers over-
head were booming with announcements that I knew had 
something to do with me. Everyone seemed to be in a huff. 
All I could think about were the spots on the old woman's 
nose, and then only the woman in the bathroom. 
It was minutes before I could tell anyone anything. Actually 
I never really told them. All I could do was point. My shaking 
18 Northridge Review 
Tom Tapp 
elbow jerked spastically like that of mechanical circus-show 
clown saying, "That way! ... In there!". In fact, to this day, right 
now, that's all I'm really doing. 


The Glossing of a Man in the Side-Show

Ann Heimann, Mary

""WVO:IVLA.N IN 
DANCING 
A GYPSY 
I> :HESS 
MARY ANN HEIMAN 
This is something I've not seen before: 
my mother--perhaps it's the drink my uncle fixed her--
bringing out the photographs in the wooden box, unbidden. 
Pink roses and blue inlaid in cedar--who makes things like 
this anymore--a fine box just for holding pictures. 
She reaches in and pulls one out--great grandmother, I think, 
stern, germanic, not a loose hair anywhere, her shirt sleeves 
stop an inch above her bony wrists and mean enough to scare 
twin babies clutched up against her chest. 
I can always tell my mother, she's the wide-eyed one and 
sleepy uncle, 
he won't take the picture as I pass it to him. 
"I'd do things different, if I could go around again." 
"What?" My aunt is interested now, fearing, I think, 
it might have something to do with her, but no--
"l'd be more assertive," is what he says. 
We all think of my grandmother. 
I find her, tiny in perfect early 1900's bustled gown, 
waist held in tight, a man's hands could circle it, 
she used to tell us, 
under a hat upon which a bird is poised to fly. 
Here she stands beside my grandpa, 
the top of the hat just reaching his shoulders. 
And here he is with spotted hunting dogs and hanging feather 
bodies that must be ducks, 
a rifle casual underneath his arm. "You know he used 
to stash bottles at the club house," my aunt tells us. 
No comment from my mother, only more pictures: 
herself and me as a baby. 
She was quite beautiful, hair dark and gathered at the neck 
and then again almost half-way down her back. 
I don't remember this beauty, at least I don't remember 
knowing it. And what must she be feeling? 
She won't tell me but she is returning or recreating 
that other life before my father and inviting me in, oh, not 
25 
directly, never directly, but shyly, 
"and here's Aunt Margie and Uncle Jerry's wedding." 
He looks assertive here, shoving cake into Aunt Margie's 
face. She's laughing. 
And she laughs now--the same laugh, for our essential 
selves don't change that much. 
Just yesterday she told me that my uncle's 
stopped flushing the toilet and she doesn't know hey. 
They've been married over forty years--
forty years and four children since he shoved cake into her 
face. 
Here now my favorite: mother and father at a lamp-lit 
restaurant table on the evening of their wedding--
His eyes are half-closed; a cigarette dangles from the corner 
of his mouth. 
And she, impossibly slim, is gazing somewhere through 
the film that glistens on her eyes into that dream she thinks 
will be her future. 
I see something I'm sure they don't see 
a forties movie, and they are the stars, 
an apartment with crystal canisters for drinks, 
something about that golden elixir shining through the 
glass--it's better as a picture. 
In an art deco world nothing bad can happen. Or 
if it does, it's funny. 
I don't like these later pictures. My mother seems to lose 
her sense of style, or is it just the fifties 
living on the backs of cereal boxes, long-play record jackets 
and that new thing called t.v. 
or maybe it's myself I don't like seeing 
--as if my being somehow compromises 
a life that could have been, 
a man that could have loved her, not fat fingers 
groping for her, 
for any of us, to keep him company when she rejected him. 
What happened to the woman in a gypsy dancing dress, 
on the front lawn of that tow-story house where 
she lived as a girl. 
I remember her upstairs room: built in bookshelves lined with 
books no one now has heard of 
26 
but I read every one of them while everybody else was sleeping 
when I stayed there with my grandma. 
And I would play with the silver-backed 
brushes and mirrors still laid out on her vanity 
as if she had placed them there that morning, 
and imagine I was her. 
I don't like these later pictures--my father khaki-clad. 
Everything broadened; there is nothing fine about him. 
He's dead now. I find one I've never seen before--
he must be eighteen and cocky, I would have been 
drawn to him--farm boy comes to the city to 
audit the books at the Kroger Grocery Store. Where did he 
learn to do that? I'm one generation from the farm, 
and we don't have any pictures from his family, only 
some stories passed down that made them seem like hicks--
when they got indoor toilets they would only flush them once 
a day because they thought the water would get used up. 
We're back to that now, but then it just seemed stupid, and I 
wanted nothing to do with my cousins from the country. 
\ 
But now the pictures must go back into their box, 
the late-nite news is on: my mother watches Ginger Rogers 
receiving an award and doesn't comment on how fat she's 
gotten. 
No sign marks her face as she puts the box away. 
I once heard that when we reach a certain age 
a natural anesthesia is releases that stops the pain 
that comes from knowing time's become a finite box of 
pictures that cannot be removed or changed or even taken out 
and only a few more can be slipped in on top, 
travel pictures mostly. 
I wait until the three of them are sleeping to take 
the pictures from their box again. 
Black and white has faded into color. 
Is this what sets us off from jungle beasts--
we seek to capture moments in our lives, wrench them out and 
trap them for display: a smile, 
a hat upon which a bird is poised to fly. 
A man chases a woman on an urn. In the next picture 
they pose with their two lovely children and 
27 
years later, we see him with his second wife 
pretending to push her over Niagara Falls. 
There is one more picture I need and 
in the morning I will ask my Aunt to take it, 
a picture of my mother and myself 
posed together not quite touching, on the couch. 
I will place it on the chest at the foot of 
my bed beside another picture waiting there: 
she at thirty and I at four in matching purple dresses. 
28 


Woman In A Gypsy Dancing Dress

Caruth, Elissa

Gum Alley, S.L.O.

Brown, Tiffany

Schweid, Lani

Streams of Consciences

Shrewsbury, Alexis

Lights Out, Camera, Action
Alexis Shrewsbury
“Get in, get out. Get in, get out,” Maya 
mumbled to herself as she unlocked the side door to 
sound stage thirteen. She hated being at the studio 
at night, let alone being out at night by herself in 
general. It was dark, cold, and the roads were wet 
after the rain had just poured on top of it. Her 
irrational fear of a horror movie-like monster hunting 
her down was in full swing. She pulled her coat in 
tighter and headed inside. “This paper better be 
important, Michael.”
She closed the door behind her, the rumble 
of the metal frame making her jump, and was 
swallowed in darkness. She fumbled her way 
through the area and flipped on a dim pair of lights 
over the hospital set. Bodies were sprawled all across 
the floor. Cherry red blood stained waves along 
the smooth, reflective flooring. Red paint and fake 
bodies, that is. Styrofoam and plastic.
Every item was left the way it should be for 
their cue. The wheelchair near the corner of the 
stage, the corridor doors closed, and the metal 
shelves filled with bottles of false medicine leaning 
on the back panels. Even the gaping void that bit a 
3
hole through the prop wall on the left of the set was 
prepared to play its role. 
Maya tiptoed over the fake bodies in her 
sneakers. She moved through the staged deceased-
like booby traps in order to get behind the hospital 
counter at the center of the stage. Just before she 
could reach clear ground, she tripped on the arm 
of one of the last bodies she had to pass, like it was 
grasping for her. Kneeling down, she pushed the 
outstretched limb back in place next to the lifeless 
cadaver and continued with her chore.
All the blocky cameras were pointed at the set, 
almost like a pair of eyes ready to capture her every 
move. As the director, Michael had the entire scene 
envisioned in his head, but he refused to tell Maya 
how it would play out. Earlier that day, he and the 
main crew were huddled together in conversation 
that looked to include gestures of arguing. One 
would think that the lead actress would be part of 
crucial discussions involving planning, but Michael 
insisted that Maya would understand his intentions 
to keep her in the dark when it was time to film.
Maya walked around to the back of the desk, 
also noticing a knife that was nearly teetering on 
the edge. Paying it no mind, she crouched down in 
the direction the blade was pointed. She shuffled 
through the prop drawers and searched through 
4
the other cubby crevasses, until she found a stray 
piece of paper stuffed into one of the corners. The 
overhead lamps assisted her vision as she took the 
piece of paper and read it: 
Michael Iers - Director
Freddy Krewler - Set Designer
Norma Bateson- Producer 
Chuck Keys - Stunt Coordinator
Jason Booriees - Sound Engineer
Hannah Bell - Script Supervisor
Carrie Wyatt - Wardrobe
Maya Lyzerman - Lead Actress
The names of the main crew members had 
been crossed out. All except one: Maya Lyzerman. 
She paused for a moment upon seeing her own 
name. Is this the list Michael was looking for? 
A sudden squeak behind her tore her away 
from her reading. The cued wheelchair had rolled 
forward, its wheels lurching the metal frame forward 
before stopping. Maya exhaled the oxygen she had 
swallowed from gasping.
“Relax Maya.” She took a controlled deep 
breath. “You’ve been working on too many horror 
movies.”
Another elongated screech from behind. Maya 
spun around and gripped her braided hair. Now one 
of the prop doors from the hospital’s corridors had 
creaked open, leaving a wide gap for more darkness 
to spill through. The rest of the doors that lead to 
nothingness were still shut up tight.
She looked around like she was crossing a 
street. No danger in sight, nothing to be afraid of, 
but she still cautiously approached the door. 
She whispered to herself while clutching her 
braid, “Strange. Freddy said he had fixed the latch 
on this thing...”
She reached her hand out for the knob, 
hesitating before moving her hand too close, then 
sucked in another deep breath and grabbed the 
chilled handle, creaking the door back to a close. 
She exhaled and bumped her head on the front of 
the door.
“You’re being ridiculous, Maya.”
Metal then clanged on to cement at the 
opposite end of the sound stage. Maya slammed 
her back to the wall. The pounding of her heart 
knocked the breath out of her lungs. Once was a 
coincidence. Twice was a funny coincidence. Three 
times wasn’t a joke anymore.
She eyed the knife on the desk to the side of 
her, the blade catching the gleam of the tinted lights. 
Any intruder would be able to see a weapon like that 
clearly. 
With her limbs still huddled to the wall, she 
inched her way closer to the counter. The rumbling 
of metal was reaching closer, echoing from the dark 
void at the other end of the set like the sound of an 
air vent shivering as a frigid wind ran through it. 
The reverberation seemed to grow louder, almost 
turning into a deep growl. Maya would have to make 
herself visible to the maws of the darkness to grab 
the knife. 
With a rush of adrenaline, she ran forward 
and gripped the handle of the lightweight blade. 
The abyss let out a metallic roar and she slid down 
in front of the counter in fright, her back pressed 
to the cold metal, her body shaking with every 
short breath. The knife was clutched close to her 
chest where her beating heart pounded, drumming, 
pumping. Pattering water in a nearby pipe replicated 
the pace of her heartbeat as it splattered on the 
inside of the metal. The throbbing clank became 
faster with every drop. The air turned silent. The 
dripping followed a rhythm. 
More clashing metal, like a shelf was rattling 
in an earthquake, suddenly slammed behind her. 
She mistakenly shrieked, jumped from her spot and 
swung around with the blade in her hand.
“They know I’m here now.” She began to 
hyperventilate, stepping backwards. “They know 
I’m here!”
7
Her gaze was fixed onto the cavern of oozing 
darkness. The rest of the shelves were having 
rumbling tantrums, spitting medicine bottles onto 
the floor. The wheelchair was swaying back and 
forth. The lights were cutting off and on. Maya took 
a few steps back. Her heel hit the arm of a corpse 
and she tripped onto the cold, blood stained tile. 
Another shelf fell, the crashing slam slicing through 
the hospital. She snatched up the knife she had 
dropped near the pale bodies surrounding her and 
tried to stand on her rubbery knees. Tears built up 
in her eyes, which soon leaked drops of horror. Her 
terrified reflection was imprinted within what could 
be seen of the floor.
Her voice was caught in her throat, like the 
air had a choke-hold around her neck, squeezing 
tighter. “Get away!” She managed to squeak, but 
she regained air, fighting back. “GET AWAY!” She 
roared into the darkness at the top of her lungs, 
almost feeling some kind of courage, some freedom 
as she did so. 
“CUT!” A deep voice shouted. A bell rang 
and the stage lights blared on at once like prison 
spotlights catching a criminal. She shielded her 
eyes, trying to adjust her tear-stained vision from the 
bright intensity to spot any nearby danger. The light 
was blinding. She took a few steps back, her shoes 
slowly tapping on the solid ground. All that could be 
heard was her heavy breathing as she felt enclosed 
in an asylum of light with her heart pounding. 
Pounding. Pounding on the bars of a cage. She kept 
the knife pointed forward.
A bulky hand then fell upon her shoulder. 
With a screech, she tightened her grip on the 
handle, whipped around, and thrusted the knife 
into the side of the silhouette’s neck. The figure 
stumbled to the side, gripping the blade handle 
she had released. The figure then stepped forward 
out the saturated light for her to get a better view. 
Brown wavy hair, glasses, an untucked dress shirt. It 
was Michael, clutching the handle of the knife, and 
removing the retractable blade away from his neck.


Lights Out, Camera, Action

13
The Opalite Pendant*
Alexis Shrewsbury
“Well then, Kian, we’ll meet here everyday 
so you can tell different stones apart in no time!”
So, each day Kian sits at his same spot 
and Maisey helps herself to his table, bringing 
multicolored stones and accessories to teach 
the young man about the beauty of each one. 
She lays them out on the surface for him to see, 
taking great care in making sure each one gets an 
equal amount of delicate attention. The common 
emeralds, sapphires, rubies—to stones of citrines 
and carnelians that looked like glamorized cough 
drops. Kian tries to zone out into a quiet state of 
daydreaming, but Maisey’s energy-charged words 
continuously interrupt him. He could avoid her 
all together and stop coming to the coffee shop, 
but it will be more of a hassle to change his daily 
routine. Besides, she’s like a leech to him now. 
She’s getting her fill, and Kian is just providing 
a numb platform for her to do it. She will 
eventually let go of him, like they always do.
As Maisey gives another one of her lectures, 
she fiddles with the sleeve of her sweater, gently 
tugging on the elastic fabric to cover her exposed 
14
wrist. When she gestures to another rock 
(amethysts being on the agenda today), something 
suddenly catches Kian’s eye. It’s the blue pendant 
around her neck, swaying gently like a vacant 
swing set in the wind. He’s seen it every day 
before this one, but the way it moves draws him 
towards its elegance.
*Excerpt


The Opalite Pendant

Morid, Ahmad

65
the two stages of the womb
Ahmad Morid
The shape of the womb I was in is brutally carved into 
my being Whatever I do, the contour of my body is 
theirs 
Every sharp edge of my eye is made from their 
intertwined soul Veins like ropes attached to my skin 
Demonstration my cages 
The geography of their face is imprinted on me 
I never left the womb filled with acid leaked from eyes 
However many of their knives land on me 
Just overflows the pond 
But I finally stand up on my own 
I swim against the gravity 
And leaves this infinitely deep pool 
Escaping from it may be impossible 
The water that has poisoned my eyes 
And it’s still is, up to my neck 
But at least my vision isn’t flooded anymore 
And I can see the horizon


the two stages of the womb

Korompis, Andrea

70
Can you Fit a mother’s love into a poem?
Andrea Korompis
Do you remember when you were younger? 
Do you remember a time when your secrets didn’t 
exist? 
When you used to tell me everything? 
Weren’t we close then? Was I not your best friend? 
Do you remember when you were younger? 
Do you remember how you used to play with all those 
toys? And how cute you were? Remember when I asked 
you, which one of us you loved the most? 
Do you remember a time when you were younger? 
Do you remember when you pestered me with such 
questions? 
I wonder, if you fancied yourself a philosopher? 
Why is the sky blue? Or what will I be when I’m 
older? 
Why do we love to look up at the stars and dream? Is 
it because we dream of things we may never reach? Or 
dream of people we may never be? 
Is glass breaking / the sound a heart makes when it 
breaks? 
How long does it take to say “I love you?” 
Three seconds? Three years? Decades? A lifetime? 
Why do you never listen to a goddamned thing I say? 
But I’m always right, no? 
Don’t you know that I always know best? 
Have I not done enough for you? 
Have I not given you everything, you hold in your 
hands? 
71
Have I not given you a roof, shelter, food on your 
plate? 
What more do you have to complain about? 
Are you sure you’re eating enough? 
Why, my dear, do you seem much frailer? 
Why must you always, always question me? 
Don’t be stupid, where else would you go? 
Do you think there’s anyone else that would take you 
in? 
Is there anyone out there that loves you as much as I 
do? 
Do you not love me too? 
I hope you remembered to take out the trash today. 
Have you received the package I sent you today? 
Did you get the packet of cinnamon and spices I sent 
for you? 
No, why do you talk back to me? 
Why can’t you just admit it when you’re wrong? 
But I’m better than them aren’t I? 
I was never like her, or him, was I? 
We’re not like that, right? 
Surely, I’m not as bad as her, am I? 
Well, I suppose I’m just the most terrible person, 
aren’t I?
Why are you always so busy now? How was work 
today? 
Why do you never pick up the phone? Why don’t we 
talk anymore? 
Why aren’t we so close? 
Am I still your best friend? 
Why don’t you ever call me? 
Won’t you take care of me when I am old?_
72
Do you still love me? 
Hello? 
Are you still there?


Can you Fit a mother’s love into a poem?

Buerklin, Indira

95
If I Was Passed
Indira Buerklin
If I was passed 
        Naked through a crowd 
If I was passed
        Hands along my waist 
To be carried 
       Engulfed in angel fire 
       & loved…
To be loved. 
Naked hands engulfed 
                    Through my angel hair
Cheeks of fluster
  
If I was passed, 
        Wasted on a crowd’s breath, 
I would burn alive.


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