California State University (CSU): Open Journal Systems

M. Goodwin Teltoe, Hollie

Pray 
Hollie M. Goodwin Teltoe 
1 saw Mary rocking baby Jesus, 
swaddled in a hag's dirty bathrobe, 
near the drugstore where 1 had stopped 
to suck marshmallows 
out of a double Rocky Road. 
It was cold. 
Joseph stood in the street wearing his face, 
that question flickering just below wet lashes. 
One hand limp, thick, 
dangled wasted. 
'the other bore his shield.-
UJill UJork For Food. 
1 hate nuts 
so 1 spit them out on the ground. 
Mary paced in half circles, 
stoop shouldered, lead breasted, 
crooning comforts and lies 
to baby Jesus 
who dreamt of God. 
Chocolate oozed from the tip of my cone 
out of control 
and dripped all over my shoes. 
l wiped it off 
but there was really nothing 1 could do. 
So 1 threw it away 
and went home. 
Tbe Nortbrid?Je Review 
107 


English

Pray

Kirk, Yolanda

152 
The Earth Eater 
Yolanda Kirk 
1 became obsessed with Shamdev the moment 1 heard of him. 
Last night 1 ducked into a phone booth and drank coffee 
readlJ to hang on everlJ word lJOU did not salJ. 
FinalllJ 1 made it to a bar. There He Sat .. 
Shamdev' s believer. 
1 recognized him and he recognized the imbalance in me. At eleven we went into the kitchen 
with a few leftovers who were also fearful of strobe light fingers touching the earth. 
There, five of us managed to spend the evening and earllJ morning hours devouring cold left .. 
overs of dressings, tomatoes, veal knuckles and bread. UJhen Bruce showed me a picture of 
Shamdev wolfbolJ as a child, mlJ heart heaved. UJhen he took me to his car and showed me a 
picture of the wolfbolJ as wol.fuouth, 1 recognized the pride Shamdev was trlJing to preserve. 
Shamdev had, in this eighteen lJear old studlJ picture, plucked the hair from his chest and balls. 
He was an animal on all fours with the come .. hither smile of a child who in all true innocence 
knew not what he had done. His crouch dipped, swalJ back and the look in his elJeS betralJed 
his innocence. He had licked and slobbered on the devil. For the animals in their innocence 
have licked and eaten the dirt from the earth and have tasted the bowels of the beast. 
His penis glistened in the sepia and his balls stood firm and hard. His hair was braided and 
except for the few stragglers on his temple, he was electric born anew. 
1 am an earth eater. 1 have no pride. 


The Earth Eater

E. Archilla, William

178 
Unfinished: 500 years of History 
William E. Archilla 
Sympathy 
Sympathy for my immigrant Father .. 
drilJen mad by the heat and wind 
weeping on the telelJision couch 
eyes red to melodrama news of the screen 
Sympathy for my step mother .. housekeeper 
trying to imitate her pale, insipid, unsugared 
Cleanliness .. nexHo .. qodliness actress 
from the (3olden Age of Hollywood 
Sympathy for my half brother .. now and then 
arising like a flower, but feeding on electncal circuits 
mocking his baby grandmother 
and SallJador stains in sky light 
growing into the cracked miirror 
of his up .. nosed, puppet mother 
Sympathy for the uncle 
who drinks himself to bottom of bottles 
wlth {3in and Tonics .. Vodka, lemon and lime 
because his family can't deal with el Chisme 
that at night hot Carl grabs him from behind 
in silk tropical rage .. pressing 
rubbing hard against dark hairy belly 
humming Chorus Line in the dark 
Sympathy for the mo\Jement 
whose bread and wine 1 can't recei"e .. 
break down, swallow slowly .. drink it, zip it: 
pounding tears and sweat 
drumming blood in the stomach and head 
Sympathy for the raging Chicano LA. hipster Ranchero night 
ignoring Central Amencan Immigrant Poet 
reciting death chants on the dark lea\Jes of his country night 
ra\Jing .. ranting because these two busted bronze bullets 
came from the same rusty gun 
but landed on different sides of the border 
Sympathy for the {3reen 'Berets in El SallJado, 
the Marines in Nicaragua, C.lA. instructors in (3uatemala 
US military bases in Panama, D.E. A. agents in Colombia 
wiWam E. Arcbilla 
Sgmpathg for military men 
thinking with their bloated stomachs 
dressed like soldiers .. smelling like thieves 
Sgmpathg for La Ziguanaba, friend of the river night, 
walking endlessly the streets of Los Angeles 
with dead daylight dreams of her own skies and earth 
Sgmpathg for the Mission boys 
who sit and hang in the slow afernoon corner 
rapping pump rhymes and "Billy blue bop 
as cops patrol this "dog .. fight district" 
keeping this rapping racket from the golden tree 
Sgmpathg for the city bird 
with dark spots on its brown wings 
flgmg into green broken boHles and pavement floors 
no sunflower cloud or river song 
Sympathy for the Earth .. darker .. than .. night housekeeper 
who traded Death Squads in San Salvador 
for the crazy bullet buzzing her ears 
on her new streets and broken steps 
Sympathy for the mid west dreamer in South Central 
who fled one broken down isolated Memphis, Tennessee, 
crumpled like paper in the dim diesel night, 
to raise children in the ashtray city of Los Angeles 
Sympathy for sugar .. coated American reader 
who see LA. as Hollywood or Beverly Hills 
and not Latino barrios of Echo Park, "Bogle Heights, San Fernando 
Sympathy for Joan Didion, L.A. writer d 
ominated by her own institutional Altar of Hollywood .. LA. Times, 
whose wasted, seduced, prostituted talent 
used Salvadorean death in the 80's 
to release a thin 100 r;>ages black book 
on her disgust against thin light volcano mountain skys 
el puppet politic who drools over Mr. Reagan's rocket 
only to replay a Vietnam nostalgia dream 
of a reporter gone pavement dried 
Sympathy for David .. his screaming silence 
Tbe Northridge Review 
179 
180 Wi Wam E. Arcbi lla 
and big boy bark in the Asian .. Latino LA. classroom w 
ailing for angels to rain, bless his scaHered dreams 
Sympathy for that one long hair Chicano actor, 
son of poet, who claimed the cause and movement 
as his own coat for winter nights 
but left it behind to rot 
when he entered the golden gates of Hollywood 
too sunbathed and artificially tanned 
Sympathy for the nude dancer 
sucking dollars through her red lip mouth 
Sympathy for the highly erotic sophisticated Plato 
pretending to be the raw and cooked actor 
looking for wine cork pops in the night light 
Svmpathy for the greedy, high stone, pillar statue of a politician y 
ou punk you death stupid brute cock idiot father fucker 
Sympathy for Mr. Ronald Reagan 
who orders the IDhite House Home Made Special: 
IDonder Bread, Amencan cheese, strips of bacon 
Sympathy for Napalm cancer 
and the US pilot who prays 
before he bombs Vietnam 
Sympathy for father Martinez 
who barks his Sunday sermon on the tortured Christ 
eyes like dead fish .. cold clear Christian Church 
Sympathy for the praying and decaying lord of pain 
the song of the virgin mother of sex 
pouring serpents and thorns like sinfill rain 
Syrmpathy for the English teacher 
who chalks across the blackboard: Columbus discovers America 
And Sympathy for Cristobal Colon 
who sailed the ocean blue in 1492 
set foot on virgin lands: unmapped 
unimagined 
unnamed .. untamed, 
unexplored, undeveloped 
undocumented 
The Northridae Review 
wiWam E.ArcbiUa 
eut the west alwalJS remains a virgin 
since this race of natural heroes, 
diseased with aching bones 
censored for tongues of fire 
wasted down to pestilence, 
don't wear clothes, read or write 
use silver ware nor sal] grace 
'!hel] don't mind sweat or blood smells 
Thel] don't even speak English 
Thel] get pregnant 
Thel] talk back to cops 
disagree with foreign policl] 
stat] on welfare 
overcrowd the schools 
for a miserable taco .. pizza lunch 
'!hel] don't understand what is like to be invaded 
5t]mpathl] .. for Christopher Columbus 
in the name of God, Glorl], Gold and the Empire 
5l]mpathl] for the American prat]er 
arising like a lizard under radiant skies 
eciting dead poetrl] of the snake in Aztec Nights 
Sl]mpathl] for the silence of Maria lJ Jose standing 
with their heads down .. handcuffed 
thrown, shoved, pushed into wide metal doors of a green truck 
driven bl] green uniformed .. dark sun glasses border patrol guards 
Sl]mpathl] .. A fucking mind remains a horrible thing 
St]mpathl] to those who adopt to evert]thing .. Amenl 
St]mpathl] to those who misread mlJ direct voice for anger 
Am 1 unamerican to t]ou? 
St]mpathl] .. Sl]mpathl] for all of them 
for thel]'re all sacrificial lambs, living crucifixes 
of 500 \]ears of historlJ and its conquest 
St]mpathl] .. for 1 hurt, too 
Tbe Nortbrid{Je Review 
181 


Unfinished: 500 years of History

Lawrence, Monti

The Birth of Rapture

Villani, Luisa

Degrees of Freedom

Waggoner, Kathy

Soul Skin, View #2 
Ceramic Sculpture 
By Kathy Waggoner 
49 


Soul Skin, View #2 Ceramic Sculpture

Frixione, Alex

Alex Frixione 
the unwanted guest 
i guess this is how the story should start: Joaquin has walked 
a million kilometers north, smiling to the sun dropping like a 
giant fruit through clouds of dust and red as hell. Far to his 
right are tiny mountains and to the left, but beyond his sight, 
the ocean that the sun is diving into. Walking north of course 
through a field of dirt and with a tired back with his life in a 
piece of cloth over his shoulder, hanging. 
Butterflies are floating in his stomach from anticipa-
tion and a smile cracks into his face. Right now he doesn't 
mind so much the tearing through searchlights and search 
dogs, guns and barbed wire, and rivers and fences . He decides 
to keep walking into the dark tonight. He feels his journey 
coming to an end soon. 
Joaquin has the gift and passion of a great artisan and 
in the dark of the day, when everyone else is quietly sleeping, 
he makes clay figurines that in his tired and bruised hands 
come to life. Figurines of the past: his dead daughters and 
sons, his wife dying while giving birth to a dead nameless 
miniature boy. The small unpainted figurines of clay have 
wings and smile and can't remember better days because 
there probably were none. 
He left his village with tears down his face . A small 
handmade village whose houses of tin are rolling onto each 
other on the side of a hill. It's a small frightened village made 
of glass bottles and plastic tarps that are tripping over them-
selves. Houses falling and grasping each other's frozen veins 
as if they were huddling in from a blizzard. The stench of an 
angry sewage system that never worked visits every cloth door. 
Skeleton dogs parade the streets and play with children. 
Activity is heard from every narrow, crooked, banged-up dirt 
road. Seen from far above, the city turns into a speck at the 
base of a mountain, and off to the north a bigger city buried in 
pollution can be seen. On the road between the two Joaquin 
is walking, crying. 
50 
the unwanted guest 
One billion tons of concrete built on water. The build-
ings are giant and decrepit and they hide their tops in the 
cloud of exhaust that engulfs the tremendous city. Tired cars 
made of string congest the cracking streets, like a puzzle, 
honking. And Joaquin, walking through the disaster of 
human multitudes buzzing through the streets or lying drunk 
or hungry beneath the million feet that didn't stop that day, 
stops for a while to listen. The music of horns and familiar 
commotion, like concealed complaints, hums so loud that it 
almost shakes apart the crowded cars and plywood trucks. 
The hum shakes the city, and the crooked buildings sway like 
drunks; and if the city was quiet maybe their chuckles of mis-
ery could be heard. Unlike those who traveled here for a 
chance at a chance at a chance, Joaquin keeps walking north. 
in the day somebody sleeps in the walls. The house is com-
pletely at peace and sometimes you can hear them stir to dis-
tribute blood and snore. 
Transparent men own the house. Absorbed inside 
themselves they walk in and out of the house at similar times. 
At night they sink through the door and into the television set 
and make no noise until they go to sleep. 
In the night the walls are quiet, the snores are gone. 
The transparent men are lost in their giant beds stuffed with 
clouds, sleeping in their feet pajamas. 
In the morning the Men wake up to find a table full of 
grapes and corn and strawbenies and peanuts, and clean toi-
lets and sparkling driveways, and their yards with grass like 
green carpet and animal shaped bushes. The Men never think 
of the offerings of the breakfast table made by the hands of 
architects and surgeons and pilots and dancers. They eat 
until they almost crack their fat stomachs. They leave the 
house in suits and impossibly colored ties, already on their 
phones conducting important business. They leave to the city 
in their cars made of gold, and already money begins to fall 
from their mouths. They hide from the sun inside their offices, 
300 stories high with windows made of water, and so, like 
51 
Alex Frixione 
deep ocean fish they turn transparent. 
Two cats, a clumsy black one and the devil who is 
white, live in the house. Its ceilings reach over heaven and its 
architecture is stolen from a genius. It's deserted except for 
the two felines that roam around for hours and still haven't 
been in every room. The dark one rests in the shadows of the 
house and falls from room to room, sleeping. The white one, 
always asleep in the sunlight of the giant windows, sleeps with 
its eyes open. The cats are hunters and don't think about 
blood and the soul; and so, like mice, the people asleep in the 
walls occasionally come out for less than a few seconds. They 
tiptoe on the walls so as not to disturb the napping cats and 
then submerge back into the walls. The tiny cats know every-
thing. They know they own the still and silent air-conditioned 
house and they sleep in quiet. 
when the night honestly dropped, he saw some motion in the 
fields ahead and they took him in like family. 
"But no," he argued "I have these hands." And even 
though they didn't look up he showed them his hands as if 
they didn't believe him. "These are my hands!" he screamed 
shaking his hands at the crowded field of people bent over 
their work. 
The only man that had stopped to look at Joaquin went 
back to work under the burning moon that was hotter than 
eight suns. 
They wake up at one o'clock in the night and work like 
oxen, sweating dust, up to their knees in pesticides. With 
handkerchiefs hiding their faces and heads from the enraged 
moon, they look more like machine-gunned warriors hiding in 
the fields than agricultural workers. Handkerchiefs covering 
their mouths as if they were cursing through their hidden 
smiles in a tongue those fields don't recognize. Handkerchiefs 
tied over their heads as if they had been holding loaded 
weapons and are furious enough to kill the burning moon that 
scorches their heads. The stench of the pesticides keeps them 
moving too slow for guns and all they can think of is how 
blessed they are for not being where they once were and still 
52 
the unwanted guest 
resentful that they had to lose so much to be here working 
until their hands bleed and blister in the moonlight. Working 
until their own spirits have to drag their exhausted bodies and 
baskets from the field back to the giant house to hose them off 
in the driveway. Their spirits look down at the wet pile of bod-
ies that are drying in the darkness of a sunrise, coughing up 
toxins and dust. 
the transparent men are beginning to die off. And leave it up 
to the one with the diamond colored tie to accredit all this to 
the snores in the walls. Leave it to the one with teeth of gold 
to suggest calling in an exterminator to destroy the giant rats 
that tumble around in the walls every once in a while in their 
sleep to distribute the blood with a machine-gun in their 
hands and a handkerchief over their mouths. Leave it to them 
to blame the girl next door. 
53 


the unwanted guest

Bernath, Greg

Then she turned towards me 
and ran her hands across the flesh of the doll, 
the flesh which has been stitched to the 
belly of her dress. 
And she began to sob as she stroked its head, 
humming a lullaby as she searched 
for the fabric of our mother's unfinished work. 
Ceramic Instrument 
Sculpture 
By Greg Bernath 
David Walter 
57 


Ceramic Instrument Sculpture

Rhodes, Heather

Heather Rhodes 
What I Assume 
Everyday 
he wakens with the sun. 
He lives in Poor Richard's world 
where the early bird 
never went hungry, 
where worms squirmed frantic with fear. 
He waits for the maize 
natural light to rouse his soul 
and his onion-skin lids from sleep. 
Everyday. 
He learned to make Cream of Wheat 
three years ago. 
He has an age spot that looks like 
Maine. 
He doesn't even know that 
when I drive by in my dirty white car, 
I see him staring up the sycamore 
like he does everyday. 
There used to be a bird there, .. 
who never sang, flew too low, lost a claw. 
Now, a nest that never leaves the autumn 
clings by a flossy twig, but never falls. 
Birdseed, bread, 
broken by gnarled hands, tossed 
shaking and tired, float to the ground 
and I think of the first dirt that covers 
the shiny mahogany as it sinks underground. 
The worms once the eaten, 
become the eaters. 
Now nothing seems fair. 
The light turns green 
and I drive home through the blur. 
64 


What I Assume

Maclean, Ian

80 
Tuesday 
Photograph 
By Ian Maclean 


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