California State University (CSU): Open Journal Systems

Ritchie, Margaret

Margaret Ritchie 
his house 
under the oak we plan 
his house. i imagine the door 
where the small patch of grass is; 
the windows for branches. 
you feed me anise seeds 
waiting for my wince, you 
the engineer of this space, 
maybe my kitchen where inside 
i might stew vegetables, 
the garden set aside 
as an afterthought. 
and like plumped red peppers 
we sit in the sun our faces wet 
and tender with expansion 
and any sound startles us 
out here 
on your land even beyond the oak, 
42 
we play until dark; 
shooting arrows or making love 
and i ask about a child 
but you are building a house 
with room enough for guests. 
we are not only lovers of the land or trees 
yet sometimes we sit in the shadow of the oak 
the sharp brown leaves a picnic blanket 
where we eat and plan 
building these rooms 


English

his house

Dwiggins, Glenn

Glenn Dwiggins 
Suzy Q 
This is what probably happened. \era looked out the 
window the following morning, watched the gray stormclouds 
withdrawing from the sky like curtains. She then might have seen 
the blinding pinpoints of light from the drops on the tomato vines 
that clung to the trellis leaning on the shed. She may have also 
noticed the wet shaggy-dog smell of the morning as she followed 
with her eyes the silvery slime trails left by the retreating snails, 
which felt the air warming. All this she would process into one 
sentence: 
"Suzy Q got wet last night." 
The hell with Suzy Q, would be what Silas, that's her 
husband, thought. 
'The heck with the damn car," he would say. That's the 
way he was, and most likely still is. He would verbally echo his 
every thought. You could tell by the way he talked that he thought 
in short, relevant sentences of five words or less. He would think, 
there go the chickens, and a second later say, "There go the 
chickens." 
Whatever really happened that morning, at least one thing 
was different. I was not there. Neither was Suzy Q. Silas did not 
58 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
know that yet, but Vera did. She knew of a lot of things that Silas 
didn't. 
There is the matter of the car. Suzy Q, a fire-orange Jaguar 
E-type with a chrome scowl, one good eye and a tear in the top, 
became a device for communication for Vera and me, the live-in 
household maintenance-man. When Silas was in town making 
cabinets or something, Vera watched me as I tuned each carburetor 
until the motor purred softly. During the three months of dry and 
warm and dust that settled on Suzy Q's smooth curves, Vera and I 
would wash it, dressed in our swimsuits. That was before last 
night's rain. 
The car was hers by inheritance. He hated it. He thought 
she loved it more than him. This wasn't true. I knew that more 
because of what she didn't say about him than what she did say. 
That's how she was, and most likely still is. People don't change 
overnight. Anyway, she gave him her love, and last night, as the rain 
fell, she gave me Suzy Q, proving me right, and Silas wrong. 
They had a garden-he had the garden really. My main 
duty there was insect control. Silas liked to think he had everything 
but spareribs growing in it. That's what he said, like this: 
"Got nearly everything growing in there. But spareribs." 
He was quite proud of it. He said so. He never let me go into the 
garden alone, unsupervised, when he was home. When I went in to 
get some herbs for Vera, he'd say, "Don't cut too much. Got to grow 
back," and then follow me in. On hot days, sitting on the black soil, 
I would forget the heavy heat and the drops of sweat forming on my 
forehead and under my shirt, sliding like bugs crawling down my 
back. I was drunk with those moist, dense smells: the mint, the 
rosemary, the matjoram, the parsley. "People misunderstand pars­
ley," Silas once said, ''Try it on a burger, for lettuce." I said nothing, 
sat there stewing or marinating in the warm odors, and pulled leaves 
SUZY Q 59 
off the tomato vines. Out there in the garden, even with Silas 's 
droning commentary on his thoughts about herbs and vegetables, 
and the frequent low-flying buzz, it was always silent, calm, even 
quieter than in my bed at night, where my amplified breathing and 
the crickets ' racket receded only when I entered my loud dreams. 
I once watched Silas gently lift a damaged patch of basil I 
had accidentally stepped on, combing it up between his thick 
fingers, spraying it with water, until it stood up again on its own. 
"You just knocked it unconscious," he said. He sighed. "People 
don't understand plants." 
Vera was looking out the nearby kitchen window, smiling 
and squinting in the sunlight. "Where 's my marjoram?" she said. 
"Come get it yourself," Silas said. 
"In that filth?" She laughed and closed the window. Silas 
flung a soft dirtclod quickly after. It hit the glass and made a sort of 
'thupff' noise. Vera stuck her tongue out. 
"She's some woman," Silas said. I said nothing. He was 
right; he often was, except of course about him and the car, and 
which she loved better. 
I stand now at the edge of a cliff overlooking the country­
side, watching the sun rise and the clouds retreating like curtains. 
Somewhere down there, among the mixture, a house here, a bam 
there, there a church, next to an industrial plant or a drunken 
checkerboard patch of farmland, is Vera, probably looking out the 
window in her bathrobe, not so carefully tied around her body, talk­
ing about her car like a pet, and of course Silas, talking about it like 
a scrap heap. "What's wrong with the Chevy?" he might be saying. 
She is also probably wondering where I am, for unlike 
Silas, she knows I am not there, for unlike Silas, she was there when 
I was on my way out, on that rainy night. I was at the kitchen door, 
sliding on my leather jacket, when she came to me, in the same 
bathrobe, her perfume almost completely worn off. I liked that 
60 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
faint -flower smell almost as much as that of the garden. As she ap­
proached, bare feet making a soft slapping sound on the hardwood 
floor, I could tell she was finding ways to stop me from going, 
formulating questions and arguments. As I was about to put on the 
helmet to the motorcycle I rode here, she said, "It's raining. Take 
the car. Here's the keys." I looked at her. The robe hung loosely on 
her body. I had never seen that much of her before. She was proba­
bly aware of this, but she only said, "Don't worry. Silas won't miss 
it. I 'll tell him that I don't care to get it back." I was getting hot in 
my jacket, so I said okay, some sort of thanks, and left. 
I think now about Vera, how she was that night, even 
though the flowers along this cliffedge are daisies, not lilacs, the 
scent of her perfume. I think of how she made me feel, particularly 
inside my jeans, when she smiled at me over the chromed engine of 
Suzy Q, and when she handed me the cold, shiny keys last night. I 
look at the car, the orange splashed with gray-brown mud, and 
remember how Silas hated it, his wife's most valued possession. I 
wonder about love. I think about what it is not, like logical and 
predictable. I remember that time in the garden, how Vera and Silas 
looked at and talked to each other, as if they shared a secret, in 
which I seemed to be involved, but was never allowed to share. I 
remember the smell of mixed lilacs, gas and grease as Vera and I 
took Suzy Q out for trial runs, her in the passenger seat, long brown 
hair slapping against the seat back, the three of us winding along the 
curvy mountain road, myself, Vera, and . . .  
Suzy Q had taken in quite a bit of water already. The dry 
weather had lulled us into neglecting to cover the car at night. The 
leather seats were wet and had that wet-leather smell. 
As I drove, the road was fast turning to slippery chocolate, 
and I had only the one headlight and my memory to guide me along 
through the rain, which fell hard. My face was constantly getting 
SUZY Q 61 
wet from the water coming in through the hole. Then the sensation 
came to me, a feeling that Vera was in the car with me. Looking over 
at the empty seat only strengthened the sensation. I noticed the 
lilac-scented "Chippendales" air freshener. I knew it was there, but 
I 've never been in the car alone before. I drove into the night, 
sensing her presence as strongly as I did her absence. The rain grew 
unbearable. I saw a sign with an arrow flash ahead of me. It said, 
"Vista Point." I pulled over and fell asleep, with my jacket covering 
the hole in the top. 
Birds are now flying overhead, some squawking in pleas­
ure over discovering snails which didn't fmd cover in time, others 
just happy that the rain has stopped. Some of the farm machinery 
has been started up, and the growling, burbling sounds are occa­
sionally sent up by the breeze, blowing up the face of the cliff like 
waves. 
I walk back to the car, knowing that the feeling that Vera 
is in there will be gone. As I start the engine, which speaks for itself, 
I think of Silas, who once told me, "A perfect garden takes work. 
Time and work." 


Suzy Q

Mann, Mark

Mark Mann 
Fractions 
So my roommate Kogan comes in and says, "Look at this," 
and he drops half a classified section on the table, and I say "What?" 
and he tells me to look in the upper right, but I still don't get it so 
he gets tight and taps hard on it a few times and then I see that it says 
"Free Greyhounds" over a telephone number. 
"Maybe they only have three legs," I say, but Kogan 
doesn't think it's too funny. 
"I'm calling," he says. 
He talks long enough to write down the address and the 
time he should come. When he hangs up he says, "It's not that far. 
After dinner." 
"I thought we're going into Nogales tonight." 
"We are," he says, and snaps a beer off its ring. "We are." 
"Where're we going to put a dog that big?" I say, but Kogan 
hasn't figured that out yet. 
"Maybe we could sell it," he says. "I mean, they're free, so 
let's go over there and check it out." 
"If they're worth money, then how come they're free?" 
"Don't ask me," he says. "Ask the guy who's giving them 
FRACITONS 65 
away." 
On the way there we stop off at Skaggs to pick up a couple 
six-packs. We finish two cans each before we find the right street. 
The light is fading but we finally come to the place, a rusting trailer 
out in a field at the end of a dirt road. Most of the field is fenced off. 
There's a truck behind the trailer, the kind with slots to carry dogs, 
and angled up beside the truck is a '69 Goat, gun-metal, mint. 
A woman, sitting and smoking on an old loveseat by the 
front door, watches us approach. She looks young by the way she's 
dressed, a white halter and white jeans, and by the way she wears 
her hair, pulled back tight on her head into a short tail that curls to 
one side. 
We get out of the car, but the woman doesn't get up. She 
keeps watching. Her nipples poke out through her shirt, but she 's 
not as young as she looked back there. She has the feet around the 
eyes and the pudgy, pitted flesh on the backs of her arms. Still, she 
looks pretty good for someone who 's maybe forty-five. 
Kogan says hi to her, and she takes a long hit on the 
cigarette. She looks us over some more, then she says, "You're the 
one who called, I bet. You're here to get yourself a free dog." She 
says this like she knows something, and the comers of her mouth 
aren't pinched as closely now, rising lightly into a grin. 
"We'd like to take a look," Kogan says. 
"Bill," she yells at the screen door, "they're here about the 
dogs," but nobody answers. She pushes herself up from the 
loveseat and disappears into the trailer, the door clapping behind 
her. I hear her say, "Will you come on," and then a man puts his 
head out the door and says he '11 be with us in a minute. He's from 
the country or the south, maybe Texas. He has an accent. 
Kogan reaches into the car and pulls off two beers . .  We 
drink and wait a few minutes before the guy, Bill, comes back out. 
He' s  tall and thick with a big round beard, and when he turns into 
what's  left of the sun the light picks up the red in it The woman 
66 NORTHRIOOE REVIEW 
returns with a fresh cigarette and falls back on the loveseat. She 
draws her legs up and splays them along the cushion. She doesn't 
seem to care about anything one way or the other. 
"You wait here at the fence," Bill says to us, pointing. "I'll 
bring them on out." 
A few minutes later he comes out of a long tin shed with 
about ten greyhounds following him . They follow him on the other 
side of the fence to where we are. All of the dogs are muzzled, but 
they're beautiful anyway, especially the blacks. They're excited 
and weave back and forth in front of us, a single current making 
passes at the fence, heads up, ears back. Every now and then the 
ears twitch forward. After a while they calm down. 
''They're good-looking animals," I say to Bill. 
"Sure they are," he says. 
I ask him if I can touch one and he collars a brindle with a 
choke and parks it sideways along the fence. When it looks over at 
Kogan, I can see the white crescent of its eye. Its head keeps close 
to Bill's knee, and he closes his hand on its ear so that the top of it 
drops out of his fist like a flower from a vase. The coat is smooth 
and cool. I can tell it's outside a lot from the coolness of it, the cool 
air that gets inside a coat. 
"How come you're giving them away?" I say. 
''That wasn't my idea," he says. "This lady down in 
Tuscon heard about it and got me to give her a couple weeks to see 
if she could find people to take them. She took one herself. She put 
the ad in the paper." 
"Heard about what?" Kogan says. 
"Don't get me wrong now," he says. "I mean, I ' m  in 
business here. I race these dogs, and if they can't turn the fractions, 
then they're no good to me. Too much to feed. They gotta be put 
down." 
After this sinks in I tell him that it seems a little rough, and 
I see him tighten all over. 
FRACITONS 67 
"What's that mean," he says. 
"I don't mean anything," I say. "Forget it." 
He shrugs it off. "Okay," he says. "Forget it. They never 
see it coming anyway, they think it's dinnertime." And as an 
afterthought: "If I can find the time I might just go ahead and unload 
them all down in Mexico. They run them slower down there. It's 
a pain in the neck, though. Some of those Mexican boys are slick 
as owl shit." 
Kogan says, "Sure, I understand." 
I pet the dog again, and Bill lets go of the ear. "Well, what 
do you think?" he says. 
"I don't know," I say, looking up at Kogan. "We live in an 
apartment." 
Bill rakes his beard a few times. "They're fine if you run 
them good," he says. ''Takes the edge off when they're good and 
tired." 
"We can take turns," Kogan says to me. "Change off every 
day." 
"I don't know." 
"Come on," Kogan says. "You can sit in the park and let 
it fly around on its own." 
Bill puts the muzzle back on and lets the dog loose. "You 
know they been coursed, don't  you," he says. 
I don't know what he means. Kogan pretends that he's  
chewing something so he doesn't have to answer. Bill knows that 
neither one of us knows what he's talking about, but he waits like 
a teacher for one of us to ask. 
"What's 'coursed'?" I finally say. 
"You seen my track out there," he says, jacking his thumb 
over his shoulder. ''They been coursed for racing. Trained on 
rabbits. Once you sharpen up the instinct like that, once they get the 
taste, they'll go after just about anything small that moves. You 
don't have a cat or anything, do you?" 
68 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
I shake my head. 
"No small dog or a small kid around your place?'' 
"No." 
"Then everything oughta be fine if you keep it leashed. 
Whyn't you guys talk it over." 
Kogan and I go back to the car. "Let's roll," I say. ''This 
guy's jerking us." 
Kogan looks dismayed. 
"I'm not living in an apartment with a dog who kills small 
things that move," I say. "Let's go." 
"We could sell it down in Mexico like he said he's going 
to," he says, but he knows it's hopeless. 
"We're gonna think about it," I yell across to Bill. "We'll 
call you." 
"By Sunday," he yells back. "Sunday's the last day." 
We should be in Nogales in less than an hour. Kogan's 
driving over the limit because he's buzzed. It's too late to get any 
of the free shots of tequila or mezcal the storekeepers pour for the 
Americans who cross over for the day. I guess they figure if you 're 
not drunk yet you're not the kind who 's likely to spend much 
money regardless. I prefer the cantinas anyway, especially the 
ones with patios on the street. I saw a good fight at a place like that 
once. This little Mexican, no bigger than me, worked over some 
heavy-muscle type from Phoenix who had been bouncing off 
people all night. The Mexican was very fast, and it was beautiful 
the way he took that guy apart. 
Kogan pulls off on the shoulder to piss. It's very dark and 
bugs are flicking through the dust in the headlight beams, which 
break when Kogan cuts through them. I look out on the desert for 
anything there, anything solid to fix on, a big Saguaro maybe, but 
we're nowhere and it's dark and empty and no matter how hard I 
look it doesn't lighten up. It 's like chasing something you always 
FRACTIONS 69 
used to catch but now it's always up ahead, just out of reach, and you 
don't even need to see it anymore, you can taste it in your mind so 
it must be a memory. 
I light a match over my wrist to see what time it is. I hope 
Kogan gets on with it so we can get the hell going. I hit the horn and 
it lets out a hard, shattering note which should juice him good, 
which should crack through his bones. Things break in on you, 
zing, just like that, even when you're looking out. You get to a point 
and you don't  even know it. You're somewhere else, and then the 
time comes. 


Fractions

Klein Healy, Eloise

Two Poems: "We Are Not Married In A House Together" and "The Peahens"

Harris, Mary M.

Two Poems: "Dirge" and "Mincemeat"

Harris, G. N.

G. N. Harris 
Therapy Session 
I never went for psychotherapy, though several people I 've 
known have, some probably because of me, some at least partly. 
Last Tuesday I woke up with an ant in my ear. Lately I've been 
pretending to leave the apartment and instead hiding in a towel 
closet near the bathroom and listening to my girlfriend move about. 
Twice I heard her masturbate deliciously. 
I close my eyes while driving on the freeway sometimes, and 
count. Once I got to eighteen. I like Jehovah's Witnesses coming 
to my door and sometimes invite them in, then disagree with 
everything they say. I flip channels looking for street fights and 
spontaneous, filmed violence and often find it. Policemen clubbing 
people is an especially prized clip. 
I have sexually explicit dreams about people I know and never 
mention it to them. I am a consistent person-for three years I 
orgasmed every time I engaged in the sex act. I am living with a girl 
who wants me to move out. In the meantime, she gives me piano 
lessons. 
I object to her jewelry. I don'tlike metal against the skin, mine 
or anyone else's. I 've never understood why people must hang 
ornaments from their ears and drape chains around their necks. It's 
like the feeling of sweat you get in your palm when clutching a 
handful of pennies-very distasteful. She has one dull silver 
bracelet that particularly irks me and once I wouldn't let her touch 
me with it on. 
I have never owned or fired a gun but now I am thinking of 
buying one. I saw an ad that sells them by mail order. Every night 
I wake up at exactly three-thirty and lie awake 'til exactly five 
86 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
o'clock. 
I've been following the career of a baseball player who has my 
name. He's a pitcher with a losing record. I had a job but I came 
to work barefoot and they fired me. I have had several good ideas 
to write on toilet walls lately but didn't have a pencil with me. 
On Sundays I visit a friend who 's in prison and sometimes 
pretend I 'm a convicted killer and won't be going home. It's a 
different feeling then, when I leave. The girl I live with is unhappy 
that I decline all social invitations and still haven't met her parents. 
She invited them over last month and I went to a movie. 
At the end of every day I read my horoscope to see how 
completely wrong it was. My mother believes in God and goes to 
church and prays for me and I wonder if prayers can work for 
atheists. The girl I live with is distressed that she has not met my 
mother. 
This girl I live with tells everything to her psychotherapist. · I 
know she talks about me. Often I imagine that he likes hearing 
about me. He probably knows by now that I have no money, she 
always !eminds me of that fact. 
I have one plate, one knife, one fork and one spoon, so I never 
have to wash dishes. People have much more than they need and 
work hard to earn money to buy more things they don't need. My 
girlfriend wants me to do that also. She has a full set of china 
stacked in the cabinet and mostly eats off paper plates. 
I use coupons to buy food. Occasionally I lose a hundred 
dollars at the horse track. I never time my long distance calls. I was 
married and divorced once and sometimes the phone rings and 
nobody's there. I wonder if it's the kid, and I say her name lightly 
into the receiver but never hear anything. 
I hate holidays, they're just promotional gimmicks with no 
feeling. This girl I mentioned gets emotional over the news but 
doesn't know what's happening in our neighborhood-! think it's 
a national symptom. We have a lot of sex and always argue 
immediately afterwards. 
I press my ear to the thin walls of our apartment and I can hear 
the middle-aged man next door arguing with his sister on the 
telephone. Recently, I picked an extremely ugly girl up hitchhik­
ing. She had looked okay from behind, walking with her thumb 
outstretched. I have no insurance on my car, as I don't believe in 
THERAPY SESSION 87 
accidents. 
I went to college and experienced the entire range of the grade 
scale, A, B, C, D, E, F, I, W, S and U, before dropping out. During 
one fight, this girl I live with sprayed perfume all over me, some 
stuff! had bought her. I was stopped at the supermarket and asked 
to register for the election and replied, "I have never voted, and I'm 
proud of it." 
My girlfriend says her psychotherapist never says a word. She 
complains I don't talk about things with her. I have a friend who 
is gay and pretends he isn't and we talk about the many women he 
has had. Yesterday I went for an interview and hoped, throughout 
it all, that I wouldn't get the job. 
I evaluate every girl I see as my next possible companion, but 
I do not say a word to any one of them. I smash most bugs but let 
spiders go. When I hear the neighbor girl's high heels on the 
sidewalk I imagine forcing her into sex from behind. The girl I live 
with wears colored contact lenses and has blue eyes, brown eyes 
and green eyes. 
I spend most of some days waiting for the mail. The other night 
I recorded my girlfriend in bed without her knowing. On the tape 
I have her moans and soft cries and then her demand that I move out. 
I used to be against war, but now I think I would be the first to 
volunteer in the event of one. After each psychotherapy session, 
my girlfriend puts a blanket over the window and lies down in 
darkness. I have never contemplated suicide. The lady downstairs 
takes in stray dogs and one barks constantly. 
I have made several appointments to see new apartments and 
not shown up for any of them. The girl I live with has accused me 
of hating her family, whom I have never met. There is a neighbor 
who screams at his wife and every afternoon I sit and listen for his 
daily tirade. I calculated that my girlfriend spends over three 
J:mndred dollars a month· on her psychotherapist. I have smashed a 
clock radio, kicked a hole in a door, torn several photographs and 
broken a chair during our disagreements. One late night we made 
furious love on the stairs outside our apartment. When a neighbor 
knocked yesterday, I watched him for awhile through the peephole 
but didn't answer. Neither of us has vacuumed the carpet since we 
moved in together. I learned one song on the piano and play it over 
and over. My girlfriend once stayed in the bathtub for an entire day. 
88 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
She has had herself tested for AIDS, examined for breast cancer 
twice and on numerous occasions she assured me she was pregnant. 
I saw a classified ad that said "Will do anything for $3,000." I wrote 
and answered a personal ad from a single woman looking for a man. 
Recently I planned several errands, meetings and short trips, but sat 
still in my room all day instead. 
I devised my own personal ad-Preying Mantis seeks edible 
mate for mutual devouring. My girlfriend always uses our assigned 
parking space and makes me park in the street. I wonder what her 
therapist would say about that. 
I know what I would say to her therapist if I made an appoint­
ment. I would never do that, never waste money on a psychothera­
pist. But I know what I would say-that thanks to her treatments 
I have learned what is wrong with me. I know what else I would tell 
him. I would tell him it was none of his business, that he isn't 
entitled to eavesdrop on my life, that she doesn't need his advice 
and that he shouldn't encourage her to get rid of me. I know how 
I would do it, too. I 'd do it by bursting in on them during her session. 
I 've followed her and know where the office is. After all, it's almost 
like catching them in bed together. That's how I'd do it, I'd burst 
in with a gun and there'd be no more talking. 


Therapy Session

McHaddad, Kristina

Kristina McHaddad 
Red 
Dana has watched a streetlight bum out every night for a month 
now. Every night. 
Each time the blue-white light shoots quickly into fire bright 
light and then fades slowly down into the black night. 
She is beginning to worry. 
Usually she is driving alone late at night. It is the sudden break 
of bright light as the bulb bursts that catches her eye just quickly 
enough to watch the lamp bum out. 
Occasionally she is driving with someone else and she starts at 
the sight and calls out Did you see? but they never do (not even 
Laine). 
It is not that she doubts herself or what she is seeing. But she 
wonders all the same. She fights an urge to track down each 
individual light the next night to see whether it has been replaced. 
Laine is a poet. She writes of James Dean, of smoking in 
bathtubs, of catching houses on fire. Dana still writes of sunsets and 
oceans, but she's working on it. 
Both Dana and Laine think that they are in love with their 
writing professor but they talk about it with one another as though 
they are not. They only admire her greatly, want to write like her, 
look like her, have her life although they have no idea of what her 
life might be, to be her. 
Laine writes a poem and shows it to the professor, a poem 
describing two women who are bound together by the length of a 
telephone wire, two lives mirroring and echoing one another, 
talking each other through something. The teacher knows and 
Dana knows. 
90 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
Dana too writes a poem. She shows itto her instructor only with 
an explanation that the words have no meaning, that this woman is 
only a catalyst for the words. Dana's teacher says, "It is fine that 
you write poems about me, but you are not to fall in love with me 
and do not send the poems in Valentine's  Day cards. "  
S o  much for the disclaimer, Dana thinks. 
Dana takes the glasses from her small face and cleans them 
against the white t -shirt, pulled from the waist of her Levi's. She 
waits for class to start. She slips the glasses back to her pale eyes 
and holds her short blond hair up with one hand away from the back 
of her neck and heat of the room. 
She has been wearing glasses now for about three months off 
and on. Not prescription glasses. Actually the lenses are only clear 
plastic set into clear plastic frames. She wears them because they 
so significantly alter her physical appearance. She feels quite 
different from herself when she wears them. 
But lately she has begun to worry about her eyesight, fearing 
that imperfections in the lenses might damage her eyes. She finds 
it difficult to remember to keep the lenses clean, thinking that the 
spots and blurriness are on her eyes rather than the plastic. And 
she's not sure whether she exists more with the glasses or without 
them. 
Laine walks into the classroom only a minute after the instruc­
tor enters, but enough to be noticed. She slides into the seat next to 
Dana and acknowledges her through dark shoulder-length hair 
which falls into her brown eyes. She drops her books onto the floor 
at her feet and stretches her legs out onto the seat of the desk in front 
of her. 
Laine spends much of the hour sketching in her books-boys'  
faces, strange scenes, self-portraits. 
And Dana, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, watches Laine. 
Dana feels the desk growing smaller around her. The air is 
unreasonably hot, unbearably humid. The room is stuffy and too 
brightly lit by overhead florescent lights in parallel rows. Open 
windows high up on the walls pull in cooler air from outside only 
to have the room warm it and weigh it down. 
Dana looks up to find Laine watching her. 
Laine points to Dana's white tennis shoes and then to her own 
red high-top sneakers. "Maybe if we take them off," she suggests 
in a whisper and a grin. 
And so they do, but it doesn't help much. 
Laine leaves class early. 
RED 91 
It might have been Laine who first told Dana that the way to cut 
yourself was along the vein rather than across it; but Dana doesn't 
think so. Dana's known this fact forever and they haven't known 
each other long enough. 
But it was Laine who told her that often times suicides begin to 
smoke cigarettes right before they kill themselves, sometimes even 
before they consciously decide to do it. She says that it is possible 
to trace the last movements of a suicide by tracking a trail of 
cigarette butts, the place of death marked by a pile of butts and 
ashes. 
Laine, who smokes all the time, says people should begin to 
worry when she stops smoking. 
It is Valentine's Day and the assignment is a writing exercise, 
a free association with the word red. Dana thinks, not roses, not 
hearts, not clowns. She looks down and sees Laine's shoes. Red. 
Red fingernail polish on short, bitten-down nails, a red pro-choice 
button, a Laurie Anderson t -shirt. And so from shoes to nails to 
lipstick to blood to. Stop. 
She can't read it aloud, can't tum in the assignment at all. 
It is late. She needs to be at work in five minutes and it will take 
twenty minutes to get there from here. She is standing in the 
stairwell between classes talking with Laine. Talking with Laine 
about what. Sometimes, even during their conversations, she is not 
sure what they are talking about. And she is deathly afraid to admit 
that she does not know a great deal of what she is sure that Laine 
thinks she knows. 
Later, on her way to work, Dana listens back and hears Laine 
put into words things Dana was only partially thought, considered 
in unorganized bits and pieces. She thinks she does not know but 
they are really Dana's own thoughts all along. 
They're walking that telephone wire. 
It is hot and stifling in her room tonight. Her window is open 
as far as possible. Blankets and sheets from the bed mound on the 
92 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
floor. Her body twists against her clothing. 
It is all so real. The face is blue and swollen and so very still. 
She sees it first, before anyone else. She is inside a small dark room 
and thinks that it must be light outside. 
Dana jerks awake, sweating and chilled, drenched cloth stick­
ing to her cold skin. Three o'clock in the morning. She fights not 
to dial Laine's  number. 
It's only a dream. Remember. 
The next day she sees Laine and she's still smoking. 
Dana thinks, powerlessness is not when your own life is 
beyond your control; it's when you can't save someone else. 
Laine pulls a thick manuscript from her backpack, white pages 
bound between two blue covers. 
"Here," she says. "This is the fmal project for my screenwriting 
class. I want you to read it. I want to see what you think." 
Me? "Sure, I'd love to." Doesn't she know I still don't know? 
"Call me after finals and we '11 get together for coffee, okay?" 
"Yeah." Haven't they done that before, coffee or something? 
Seems like there must have been something; but, no, there is only 
this. 
At first, Dana is too eager to read the script. She keeps it close 
by the side of her bed, waits for the perfect time to give it her 
undivided attention, the pages and Laine. 
They see each other a couple of weeks later at a reading where 
their poetry professor is performing. They talk for a moment in 
passing, other people to attend to. They discuss how their teacher 
has remained remarkable but has somehow lost her immortality 
over the last month. Perspective (either way) is gained by distance. 
Dana apologizes for not having called. Laine understands. 
They say goodbye and promise. 
Dana knows that it will be a year later and much too late. Laine 
will have probably moved (Dana already has). Laine will probably 
not remember giving Dana the script. Probably won't remember. 
Probably won't. 
Dana will have misplaced the manuscript anyway. 


Coleman, Bobbie R.

Bobbie R. Coleman 
Wash day 
"Hang out the wash!" she bellows, 
passes me a basketful dingy white and dripping. 
I scrape caked bird shit from rusty clothesline 
bend down to reach 
for laundry, wringing wet: 
Socks, hankies, t-shirts, 
my father's underwear mysterious and lewd 
I almost blush to handle it. 
My friends are at the movies, 
flirting at the beach, 
practicing the latest dance steps, 
while I clip clothespins to comers of cloth, 
precise as Rockettes, 
and wait for a wind to carry me 
away with the sheets. 


Washday

Holland, Chaney

Chaney Holland 
My daughter on the Cyprian island 
The almond trees that were salmon in the spring 
moonlight are bared in July. Farther down the road, 
the dust shimmers along the banks of the dry canal. 
Fourteen trees, one for each year I have spent here. 
In other seasons, the sounds of boys splashing 
in the dusk. Every year, one or two never returned. 
I miss my children. Years ago, my daughter climbed 
those branches into the sky, from the public swimming 
pool into the blistering heat and sick every year 
from the ragweed that tormented her. She was glad 
to leave us. 
Now I dream of her childhood, finger-paintings of 
blue com and suns, a morning when I spooned 
a miniature silver cow from my cereal bowl. Am I so 
old that I cannot recover her willful and innocent face? 
I am not ready yet. My child like a Teraoka wood-block 
print, one world draped over another and through the 
folds, secrets and temptation. You who are so sure, 
daughter, of where you lead, who are these women 
who claim you? 
At night we said grace together over melon and olives, 
and laughing she walked backwards with me through the 
garden of scattered almonds. 
I am a man of faith but I know my sight was dim. The 
child who returned in the evening along the dusty path 
was not mine b�t a long-drowned boy. 
I cannot welcome these epiphanies. Though her mother 
loved her so fiercely, it was I who wept and pleaded 
with the thief who robbed me of my first miracle. 
39 


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his house

Suzy Q

Fractions

Two Poems: "We Are Not Married In A House Together" and "The Peahens"

Two Poems: "Dirge" and "Mincemeat"

Therapy Session

Red

Washday

My daughter on the Cyprian island

Three Poems: "In a Restaurant That Recently Changed Back Into a Diner" "untitled" and "Facts about Goats"

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