California State University (CSU): Open Journal Systems

Harris, Mary

Mary Harris 
Old Homestead, New England 
The restored farmhouse is two hundred 
years old. It has its own history. 
Former owners unearthed gravestones 
on the property, paved them in a terrace 
by the back door. The coffins 
have never been found. 
She imagines them buried below topsoil 
erupting like teeth through gums. 
Her husband refinishes antique furniture 
in the bam. She lines 
windowsills with tomatoes 
ripening in sunlight. 
When he cuts grass, the mower drones 
across the fallow field. 
She watches from the kitchen, 
slicing zucchini from her garden. 
They know seasons as well 
as farmers who settled the land, 
believe they can cultivate 
a family as easily. 
At night they plow together, 
skin taut as green tomatoes. 
His deft hands stroke 
the grain of her body 
like wood sanded beneath a plane, 
desire one bone between them. 
89 


English

Old Homestead, New England

Reynolds, Amy

Two Poems: "When She Was Out" and "Quickening"

Wood, Eve E.M.

Two Poems: "I Cannot" and "Lie Still With Me"

Laurence, Helen

Helen Laurence 
How To Be A Lesbian In 1957 
In Seventh Grade 
Stroll across lunchtime grass 
to the bright group of girls. 
Smile as usual, eager to share, 
until one of those you walk home with 
all giggly sly asks you 
do you know what a queer is. 
Muster laughter as the others 
burst into the hilarity only seventh grade girls 
can manufacture. 
Wonder if your inner confusion 
creates the same chasm across your face 
as it's carving across your heart. 
Try to make your smile less forced. 
Pray that no one can read your mind. 
Next Thursday join the poodle-skirts 
and learn that wearing green on Thursdays 
means something. 
Decide to be extra careful on Thursdays. 
Maybe then no one will suspect 
you spend ninety percent of your time 
daydreaming about women. 
Remember, as you ran from sixth-grade boys 
who tried to grab your new breasts, 
the whispers and adults speaking of Jess and Deena 
who must be separated. 
Remember crying "no" inside, 
"they are happy and so beautiful, please 
leave them alone." 
Think back to September when you noticed with joy 
they still held each other, if more secretly. 
But why did Deena's family move from town in spring? 
Begin to fully comprehend that preferring women 
is more shameful than being black, brown, crippled, 
Jehovah's Witness, or even retarded. 
Begin to see that hiding, 
for you, 
is not a choice but an imperative. 
When the girls suck milk 
from cow breasts packaged in cartons 
labeled HOMO milk 
and titter 
and speculate on who's HOMO 
giggle. 
Then go home and speculate on 
sickness, sanity, being HOMO. 
Come home from school on time. 
Try to answer your mother 
who has read your diary 
when she asks you why do you love 
Gale so much. 
Decide never to leave anything around again. 
For the next fifteen years bum 
every journal you write. 
35 


How To Be A Lesbian In 1957 In Seventh Grade

Moore, Anita M. E.

AnitaM. E. Moore 
Elegy On A Bar Of Soap 
How clearly I recall the hour you emerged 
triumphantly from your box, 
You who lie now utterly spent, 
Formless, in the slimy debris 
of your former self. 
So smooth you were, so firm and shapely, 
In the days when the letters stamped 
on your brow 
Still boldly proclaimed the glory that 
once was yours. 
How ceaselessly you laboured 
throughout your life, 
Wearing away your youth so that others 
might find comfort. 
How much tired skin you must have healed with 
that deep-cleansing, moisturizing caress, 
Leaving more and more of yourself 
behind each time, 
Giving so freely of that of which you had 
so little, 
And taking in return only the 
grime and the soil 
Which is, in the end, all that this mad world 
has to offer. 
You did not even complain when someone carelessly 
turned the water on the soapdish 
And left you to drown helplessly 
in a stagnant, murky puddle. 
There you lie now, your shapely perfection gone, 
your firmness dissipated, 
A pale, bloated shadow of what you once were. 
Now, your faithful service forgotten, you are 
Condemned to be scraped mercilessly away 
by ungrateful hands. 
And soon, very soon, another bar, 
fresh and fragrant, 
Will take your place, 
And lie in the dish that once was yours ... 
... as if you had never been. 
51 


Elegy On A Bar Of Soap

Ryterband, Astrid

10 NORTIIRIDGE REVIEW 
Astrid Ryterband 
The City Where the Waves Begin 
One day last month, Nick, seven years old, gathered his favorite 
toys--four plastic globes of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and 
departed. He, like most people, had heard that all the wetlands 
beyond the shoreline were available to anyone who cared to live 
there. 
Due to Nick's intense imagination, he suffered from insomnia. 
He thought that by joining the peasants in their blue shacks, sweet 
sleep would come. 
A stretch of sandbar some ten miles long had developed when 
the tides began to recede two months ago. Scientists claimed that 
the axis of the moon had tilted significantly causing the earth's sea 
lines to retreat. Here was a chance for marginals, malcontents and 
tormented artists to live on free land and escape the horrors of 
paperwork produced by lawsuits, insurance settlements, home loan 
applications and income tax forms. 
Children ran about in tattered rags, spending their days building 
elaborate sand castles and inventing epic poetry. At night, under the 
diabolical moonlight, their bare skin left to inhale the fragrant salt 
air, they lapsed into a refreshing, dreamlike reverie that had eluded 
them while living in the city. This dreamlike state was entitled, 
"sleep." 
This phenomenon held a natural attraction for Nick. One day 
last month he left a note atop the computer which said, "Gone to live 
in the City Where the Waves Begin. Love, Nick." His parents and 
little sister, Marissa, had gone to visit him several times but couldn't 
convince him to return. They said his cat was ill, his toy guns were 
lying useless under the steel white gases of fossil fuel and construc-
tion dust. His computer games had become rusty with lack of use 
II 
and his second grade schoolteacher was suffering a broken heart. 
Nick was needed back home. 
Still, Nick refused. His parents temporarily gave up, returning 
home. Yesterday, Nick's mother, Diana, asked her sister, who has 
been immersed in a lifetime project of composing a contemporary 
opera of Euripides' Greek tragedy, Medea, to use her persuasive 
talents on Nick. The aunt, anxious to remove herself from the agony 
of resurrecting Medea, agreed. She drove to where the concrete 
ended and walked barefoot down the miles of wet sandbar. 
As she walked, she noticed that giant palm trees had sprouted 
from the depths of the muddy shore and shot upwards, penetrating 
the stratosphere. She recalled having read that there had been 
several airline disasters since these trees had grown. Sections of 
aircraft had crashed into neighborhoods ofblue shacks where pieces 
of palm and blue wood burned all night. 
Nick's aunt arched herneck backwards, hoping to see where the 
tops of the palms met the sky but all she could see were the trunks 
of these giant trees disappearing into cumulus clouds. 
She continued toward where the waves began, noticing that a 
half inch of salt water covered the sandbar. She passed rows of blue 
shacks until she spotted a boy juggling three plastic globes. The 
aunt watched the smooth way in which the globes rose into the sky 
then fell into the boy's small hands. As she got closer, she 
recognized her nephew, a boy with white skin, blonde hair and blue 
eyes. She called him. He stopped juggling, dropping one of the 
globes. 
His aunt lifted her long skirt and chased after the globe, 
blocking its way toward the open sea. 
She watched the globe struggling in the tide. 
"Pick up the Earth, Auntie," Nick said. His aunt did so, handing 
the wet globe of Earth to him. Then she kissed him profusely. 
"Whaderya doin here, Auntie?" Nick asked as he ran his left index 
finger along the coastlines of the Americas. 
"Your parents miss you," Nick's aunt said. "Why won't you 
return?" 
Nick said, "Suki won't sleep with me anymore. The quality of 
12 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
life has greatly diminished at home. I'm a total wreck without 
twelve solid hours of uninterrupted sleep." 
His aunt responded, "Suki 's twenty years old, she's ill. We'll 
get you a new kitten with fresh whiskers and a striped face and she'll 
purr on your pillow and you'll sleep." 
Nick nodded faintly. "What about the rest of the planets? I still 
need Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus and Pluto to make me feel 
complete, Auntie." 
The aunt shook her head. "Those aren't yours. They belong to 
the neighbors, Nick." 
"I know, but I can't sleep without our solar system resting 
below my pencil bed. Mom told you about my special sleep 
disorder." Nick said. 
The aunt kneeled, noticing the undercurrent growing aggres-
sively in a sharp, diagonal motion. "Alright, Nick. I'll negotiate for 
the planets but please return with me right now!" 
Nick nodded, studying the burgeoning sea for a moment. "In 
three days, Auntie. No adult can force a child to do anything. I want 
to enjoy a peaceful sleep a little longer." 
"Alright," said the aunt hesitantly. She looked beyond the 
horizon of blue shacks seeing that the waves were gaining. She 
kissed her nephew and walked back home. She turned her head, 
watching Nick juggling the globes, his expression one of simple 
pleasure. She continued on her way. He was right, she thought. 
This is the twenty-second century and parents are no longer able to 
influence their children in any way. 
Three days later, the aunt sat at the edge of the concrete, 
watching the pilgrimage of blue shack dwellers moving toward her. 
Scientists had warned the public that due to the unstable gravity 
occurring within the expanding Milky Way, the moon could, at any 
time, revert to its previous axis. The result would be chaotic tides 
and deviant moonbeams. 
Above the waist deep tide, the marginals carried their children, 
their animals, their spare possessions. The aunt searched for her 
little nephew among the wet stragglers. Her eyes widened as she 
spotted two monstrous walls ofwaterrapidly advancing toward her, 
13 
their crests carrying mangled palm fronds and blue pieces of wood. 
At last she saw her nephew wading in water up to his neck as he 
struggled to keep a baby donkey above the water. The aunt waved 
and shouted at him but her voice traveled nowhere. All that was 
heard was the sound of the advancing walls of water reconquering 
its lost land. 
Hernephew was almost within her reach but the sound of the sea 
caused him to tum his head for one last look at the point where the 
city ended and the waves began. 
And even as the salt water invaded the cells ofher body, the aunt 
thought ofhernephew, imagining him juggling the globes, recalling 
his innocent expression. As her mind gradually lost its ability to 
reason without oxygen, she clung to the memory of Nick's face as 
long as she could. 


The City Where the Waves Begin

Hall, Janean L.

18 
Spectator Slowdown 
The telephone pole 
rests lazily across the hood 
as the man steps from the metal heap 
the eighty-proof bottles 
forgotten on the back seat. 
Shards of tinted glass lie inert 
reflecting the vultures standing, 
feasting on the sight 
while the form of a little boy 
liquidizes and flows into the gutter. 
Janean L. Hall 


Spectator Slowdown

Nave, Jeremy

36 
Japanese fighting fish 
phone-call phobia during hot bath bubbling 
breathing chest rising high and falling 
woken by screaming children 
connected to the wall 
your thin arm coldly hangs up 
sticky eyelash laughter sound 
asleep floating in waterdreams 
waltzing heartbeat journey over 
jagged late night broadcasts 
I touch your naked leg 
Jeremy Nave 


Japanese fighting fish

Grady, Pierre

37 
Pierre Grady 
My Crayons 
Sixty-four over four over sixteen is more 
Than an aura of domestic life on a desk; 
Is more than 'Creativity' embalmed on fribble 
Cardboard for a lonesome tenure of community; 
Is more versatile than an ego-boost pointed 
Within the embellished love of my past. 
Each tenant pursues its own realm of novel wonder, 
Each part of a florid breed who stations no restraint 
In their furnished aversion for desire or coalescence, 
Ruled by the digits of a queer-souled proprietor in and 
About a unique image, amidst a muddle for the ambition 
Of the dream, thinking merely, "I love my crayons!" 


My Crayons

Lewis, Damon

51 
Damon Lewis 
Charlie Ham 
1 reaches back of the bailin' machine an' gets my bottle of 
Kamchatka. I blows the paper dust off an' takes a sip. I hears the 
boy laughin' an sees the funny side of his head (This week lookin' 
like it been raked by a claw). Then he gone, duckin' down to tie wire 
round a paper bale. I don' mine none, he's the best partna I ever had. 
It'spaydaytoday,andwebothhappy. I comes outan'giveshim 
a hand rockin' the bale off the rollers. The buzz a' from the shredder 
rings an' I ambles over an' pulls out a pile of paper an' feeds it into 
the bailer chute. The boy comes up side me an' pulls at the paper like 
some kinda' maniac; pullin' so hard the back of his t-shirt sweat up 
in a minute. I smiles at the muscles workin' in his arms and back 
remindin' me a when I was a young'n. Then I says, "Slow down, or 
the res won't be no work left." Like a smart ass he tells me, "There's 
always work to do old man." 
I worries 'bout that boy. He works too hard. An' that funny 
weed he smokes all the time makes me nervous. Right after he 
smokes it he gets a dumb look on his face, then 'bout a half-hour 
later he's all tired out. Still, he keeps workin' like if he slow down, 
he die. No lunch, jus' eight hours straight. Ya know, an' when he 
runs outta weed, he talk real good, too good to be a janitor. 
Once I asked him how come he is makin' paper bales an' 
sweepin' up in the shop when he could get trainin' an' be workin' a 
printing press. He looks at me like he is real angry an' his pug nose 
starts a twitchin', an' his eyes git real small, an' he says real quiet how 
he don't have no plans to be a printa', an' how he jus wants to party. 
Well, the next day I takes the bus to Santa 'nita. I don't listen 
to the poor old white mens an' the brothers talkin' their stuff 'bout 
the horses I · , ak . 
· JUS t es my pmt o' Kamchatka out my coat pocket, 
takes a sip an', keepin' to myself, waits to try fo' some luck with some 
a' my money. 
*** 
Charlie Ham is pretty damn lazy, but I guess that's 'cause he's 
an old dude. I really don't dig the workers calling him Sambo. And 
the way he smiles and shakes his head-what an Uncle Tom. If 
anyone calls me nigger or Sambo, I'll knock them out, fast. 
This is going to be a righteous day. I barely managed to leave 
my herb at the crib to keep my ass clear-headed. Soon I won't have 
to worry 'bout goin' back to school or doin' this tired job. In the last 
race I'm puttin' all my money on Rich Cream. The last time he was 
blocked in the stretch, buttoday, at fifty to one, man I'll make atleast 
twenty thousand dollars when he wins. 
Hold on, is that suave lookin' brotha' Charlie Ham? I walk over 
to Charlie real cool, and wink at a fine sister on the way, tell her to 
chill, an' I'll be back when I win. The sound of my boots makes a 
lot of people tum around as I walk up to Charlie. That's right; I'm 
bad. I feel like I'm happenin': a winner. "Hey Charlie." I go over 
and whisper, "Hey man, Rich Cream in the next race." He just 
laughs. 
The race goes off and Rich Cream trails, then moves up eighth, 
seventh, fifth. In the stretch he closes in on the leader. I lose my cool 
and yell, "C'monRich Cream!" Both the jockeys whip their horses, 
pushin' their heads toward the finish. The wire comin' up, my 
jockey pulls his horse's head back, to lose by a whisker. 
With all my coin gone, I start to think about the next payday. 
The crowd, the girl, everything starts to look tired. Feelin' like a 
chump, as I walk away I nod to Charlie. He waves for me to come 
over. His vodka breath bothers the shitoutta' me. He pulls out a fifty 
dollar ticket on the winner, a ten to one shot,. worth about five 
hundred cash. "It's a tough game," he whispers. Then with his sad 
bloodshot eyes lookin' right through me, he tells me I should be in 
school. 


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