Iowa Journal of Literary Studies

Hill, Rick

POISON OAK
Rick Hill
LARRY’S D r e a m s  O f wealth and romance dissolve inexorably into an 
itch that crawls the length of his body. He sits up in the wan glow of 
his nightlamp, clawing his forearms and contorting painfully to reach 
the small of his back. Stumbling from bed, he gropes for the overhead 
light, and, squinting against its sudden brightness, begins a frantic 
inspection of his upper body.
T here—on his left forearm —a small red bump, like a mosquito bite. 
Another just above the wrist. He stares, wide-eyed, searching. . . . 
Nothing! No, wait, here’s two small ones crowded against his watch- 
band. He looks back to his left arm, knowing what he’ll find. Yes, four 
bumps now, four red, itching eruptions, and they’re no mosquito 
bites. Four more on the right arm now too, then six, then ten. . . . 
Larry yanks off the light; he can bear no more.
Poison oak! The curse of the coastal redwoods, the scourge of this 
so-called mountain paradise for which he’s fled the midwest and its 
comforts—poison-oak is descending once again to deny him restful 
sleep, hot showers, and all else that normal people take for granted. 
Normal people? Larry smiles grimly in the dark. Here it comes, 
symptom number two: he’s already beginning to feel like a leper.
He throws himself backwards on the bed and lies in a stupor of 
self-pity until his alarm clock sounds at 6:30. While dressing, he forces 
himself to examine the still- immature blisters dotting his limbs, an 
ant-like procession heralding another two weeks of torment. Two 
weeks of torment. . . . This phrase appeals to Larry, even through his 
morose haze. As he stuffs his backpack, he makes a note of it on the 
inside cover of his Executive Memo book. Might make a good song 
lyric . . . something like, “Two weeks of torment for each careless 
caress”—but no time for songs now.
He clumps downstairs and into the bathroom, where he stands 
scowling into the medicine cabinet, his armory of poison oak remedies
104
with everything from natural herbal to modern tech: Ivy Dry, Aloe 
Vera, Double Strength Antihist Cream, Corto-rub, Lanacaine, Witch 
Hazel, Green Clay—the whole pitifully ineffectual arsenal that cost so 
much and accomplishes so little against the demon king of skin 
eruptions.
Fully annointed, he adjourns to the kitchen to pack his lunch. He 
can feel an insidious itch percolating beneath the lotions and creams, 
stretching his nerves taut, tantalizing him with the urge^xTscratch— 
but he knows from bitter experience that scratching only intensifies 
the itch, only heightens the anxiety. Why, why did he get it again so 
soon? It wasn’t fair! He sniffles. His eyes begin to water; he dabs at 
them with a plastic sandwich bag.
Tex, his old friend and now landlord, ambles in from the living 
room, carrying a TV Guide and a cup of coffee. “Morning, Homes,” he 
says.
Larry sniffles again and bags a sandwich. Tex’s grin fades. “You ok 
there?”
“Got poison oak again.”
“You kiddin’! Again? You poor chump!”
Larry shrugs. “Ahh, no biggie. I’m gettin used to it. I guess.” 
“Used to it? You talk-um plenty tough, Kemo-sabe, but no one gets 
used to TH A T itch!” Tex starts for the refrigerator but halts in 
mid-step. “Say, Homes, uh, don’t let it get you down this time, huh? 
Kind of roll with it in a manly fashion, know what I mean? Write one 
of your funny songs, get a few laughs out of it somehow, right?” 
Larry smiles wanly. Tex would tell a colon cancer patient to cheer 
up. “It’s not funny. I can handle it alright, but it just ain’t funny.” 
“Whatever you say, Blood.” Tex shrugs and opens the refrigerator. 
Larry gathers up his lunch and backpack. “Later.”
“Toodles, Killer. Hey, really, take it easy today, huh? It ain’t what 
you been through, but how you been through it, savvy?”
Larry plods the half-block to the bus stop. Not even eight o’clock 
and already he feels gritty and exhausted. And this, he knows, is only 
the beginning. After four or five days without a warm bath or sleep, 
he’ll have the hygienic tone and sunny outlook of a skid-row bum with 
wine sores and scabies.
He stands beside the bus shelter in the fog. After a couple of 
minutes, his legs begin to rub together and his right hand steals 
toward his left shoulder. He pulls it back hastily and forces his legs 
apart. No scratching! Will the stupid bus EVER get here? He stares at 
his watch. Red, blister-tipped pustules framing its black plastic band 
seem to stare back, malignantly.
Larry drops his arm stiffly and turns his head. His eyes wander to
105
the stand of overgrown holly and trampled ferns by the roadside, then 
to a tangle of shiny-leafed vines growing up through the shrub’s 
woody limbs. Their leaves are flecked with red blotches . . . blotches 
just like the ones on his arms. Larry steps backward hastily. He’s never 
really studied poison oak up close, never really distinguished it from 
the Vinca and Blackberry vines that tangle through the redwoods. 
Every time he’s walked in the woods he’s come down with the rash, but 
he’s always equated it with other skin disorders, like boils or warts: 
some get it and some don’t.
But—it dawns on him now—it isn’t really HIS fault he gets it. It’s 
this three-leafed, creepy looking vine gangling out into the roadway 
that PUTS it on him! He stares at the blistering constellations of 
soreness on his arm, then back to the poison oak leaves. Sneak 
attacker. You can’t be careful of it, not really. It worms its way through 
bushes and sneaks into lawns. It spreads its oily venom on your shoes, 
then to your hands when you tie your shoelaces. You can be infected 
by petting a dog or picking a flower, and YES! You can even get it off 
a toilet seat!
“You scum . . Larry begins stalking toward the glistening leaves, 
and they, in turn, seem to twine sinuously, malevolently, toward him.
“Sucker!” he hisses. “You ain’t fit to—”
The city bus rumbles around the curve and stops. Larry, startled, 
turns and hurries to board it. He juggles his briefcase and lunch up 
the stairs, searching his wallet for his bus pass. Suddenly, a stinging 
itch, a prickling that will brook no denial breaks across his shoulder 
blades. He twists spasmodically; the briefcase bangs against his knee 
and flies open. Comic books and file folders tumble out as his lunch 
bag rips, spilling sandwiches, apples, and corn chips down the aisle.
Scowling, Larry stoops to retrieve what he can while the bus driver 
chuckles overhead. It WOULD have to be her, the grandma-type who 
thinks nothing of chiding him about misbuttoned shirts, unmatched 
socks, and poor posture—as if he were a baby instead of an up-and- 
coming Systems Analyst. Now she tsks and says, “You’re such a cutie 
pie! You better unwrinkle or your face will freeze like that!”
Most of the morning bus riders are kids bound for the junior high 
down the street; they find this remark uproariously funny. Larry 
stumbles to an empty seat, ducking his head to hide his flushed 
cheeks. For the duration of the ride downtown he stares out the 
window, rubbing his wrist and wearing a look of deep concentration. 
He lets the bus roll past the offices of Sluicegate Technology and on 
to the end of the line: City Hall and the Municipal Library.
As the afternoon sun slants in through the library’s west windows,
106
Larry, who has spent the entire day hunched over thick volumes of 
botany and horticulture, removes his glasses and rubs his tired eyes. 
Who was it, he muses, who said, “Know Your Enemy?” Was it 
MacArthur? Marcus Aurelius? Bismarck?—or was it Luther Burbank?
He returns home at twilight, giddy and half-delirious, envisioning 
himself in an asbestos space suit, scourging the roadsides with 
backpack flame thrower and napalm hand grenades, laughing as the 
vines sizzle before his relentless onslaught. He knows of course that 
this sublime idea is out of the question, practically speaking. Even if he 
could find a space suit and flame thrower, even if there were such 
things as napalm hand grenades, his trainee-level budget won’t begin 
to cover it. Besides, his research has revealed that burning poison oak 
is worse than touching it: if you breathe the smoke, if you inhale just 
once . . .  he shudders, knees weak and mouth dry at the thought of 
the loathsome itch in his lungs, mouth, nose, throat. Ghastly, ghastly!
No, not death by fire. Pulling it up by the roots won’t work either: 
even with protective clothing, one brush on the nose, one microgram 
of the urushiol oil that impregnates the leaves, and . . . No, it had to 
be chemicals, powerful chemicals! Herbicides designed to either 
asphyxiate on contact or systematically saturate the hellish growth to 
the outermost cilia of its poison-bloated root system.
Larry shudders through a cold bath, rebalms himself, and goes to 
bed wearing a pair of socks on each hand. He squirms and tosses late 
into the night, body wracked with itches and brain ablaze with plans.
In the next few days he ranges the farm districts, making discrete, 
whispered inquiries of older nurserymen and hard-bitten county 
agriculture agents. San Lorenzo Garden Supply is just down the 
street, but its owner is a smiling, bearded young man who wears 
rainbow suspenders over his “Love Mother Earth” tee-shirt and holds 
Monday night classes on organic integrated pest management. Larry 
knows an appeaser of that ilk just wouldn’t understand. This is WAR!
The following Saturday morning, as the wraithlike mists drift 
sluggishly through the forest that nestles Tex’s Redwood Courts, 
Larry strides toward the tool shed, fully awake and grimly deter­
mined. He wears knee-length rubber boots and a raincoat jacket 
zipped over his coveralls. His turtle neck sweater is rolled up to his 
chin and his forehead is covered with a rolled down wool stocking cap. 
“Do it. Let’s do it,” he whispers. “Move it. C’mon.”
“You’re up early!” Larry drops to a fighting crouch, then straight­
ens up again, warily. It’s his neighbor, Sharon, peering at him and 
smiling through her screen door. “What’s happening?” she yawns.
107
“Somethin’ I gotta do.” Larry speaks tight lipped and stern, but with 
a hint of anticipation that is almost sensual.
Sharon pulls her robe up tighter around her throat. “Uh, how’s 
your poison oak? Tex told me you got it again. Drag!”
“I can handle it.”
“Wow, you’re really brave.” Was there the faintest hint of sarcasm in 
her voice? No man could tell.
“Yeah, well. Nothing to cry about.” Larry aims a steely squint 
through his glasses. “Me, I don’t get mad. I get even.”
“Huh?” she says, but he turns on rubber heels and is swallowed by 
the mist.
In the privacy of the tool shed, he pulls on elbow high rubber gloves 
and goes to work. First he pours the legal—but frowned upon—Ortho 
Brush Killer “A” into the bottom of a Hudson Sprayer. The directions 
call for eight ounces of herbicide per two gallons of water, but Larry 
empties the entire quart bottle into the tank. From a flat metal 
container wrapped in a paper bag, he adds the pint of illegal and 
infamous 2,4-d—the bottle that grizzled old feed store owner in 
Watsonville charged him so dearly for. After mixing the two chemicals 
into a slurry, he fills the sprayer to the two-gallon line with water and 
screws on the plunger cap. He works the pump handle in quick, 
forceful strokes until the pressure is correct, then snaps it into lock 
position. Cracking the shed door an inch, he makes a quick reconnoi- 
ter. All clear. He secures his plastic safety goggles and steps out, 
creeping stealthily down the back service road, gripping the sprayer 
and wand tightly in rubber-sheathed fists.
He begins as far away from Sharon’s view as possible. She doesn’t 
seem to be one of those quisling ecology types, but you never can tell.
There. The shiny, sebaceous, reptilian green and red- splotched 
horror. Twining itself around the lower branches of a young redwood. 
Another strand at the base of the fence post ahead. More a few feet 
southwest.
A white ring forms around Larry’s lips from their pressure against 
his teeth. “Okay. My turn now,” he whispers to the plant nearest him.
His hand tightens on the pump handle as he creeps forward, 
stroking the spring action trigger. He raises the wand, then pauses, 
savoring the touch of his gloved hand on hard metal. He bends over, 
bringing his head within inches of the plant. His face looms in the fog, 
a grinning death’s head of cold fury. The wand begins to wave back 
and forth rhythmically, his finger ever-tightening on the trigger.
A new bud on the vine before him is opening, and the large leaf 
above it hangs over, seeming to shelter it. Other leaves curl up toward
108
him, as if in . . . supplication. He smiles unpleasantly and swings the 
wand within a half inch of the stalk.
A drop of dew glistening on the tip of the large leaf suddenly drops 
to the ground. Then another drop from an upturned neighbor, and 
two more in quick succession, like tears falling onto the damp earth.
Larry swallows and knots his brow. His eyes dart to the sky, then 
back to the leaf curling maternally over the newborn bud. He feels a 
stirring uneasiness. Roman soldiers flicker in his mind’s eye from a 
movie he watched as a child, laughing as they killed newborn babies.
. . . Scenes from recent TV specials knife through his brain: gas 
chambers, jackbooted soldiers . . . Policemen with dogs and clubs 
attacking innocent marchers. . . . Vision upon gruesome vision pa­
rades forth, every inhuman atrocity he’s ever heard or read about, 
faster and faster, a ruptured vein of cruelty—
“NO!”
The word rages from Larry and echoes raggedly in the mist. His 
fingers loose their grip on the wand. A shudder passes through him 
and he staggers against a fence post.
Slowly the tremors subside. He wipes his eyes with the back of his 
hand. Looking down at the poison oak plant, he shakes his head 
slowly. How could it have happened? He always considered himself a 
reasonably moral man; how could his abhorrence of slaughter for 
“sport” or revenge be swept away by an itch, however annoying?
Larry pushes away from the fence post and straightens himself. The 
sweat dotting his forehead begins to dry in the morning breeze. The 
fog is dissipating; leaves rustle overhead. He removes his stocking cap 
and addresses the plants, twisting the hat in his hands as he speaks:
“Some monster. You couldn’t even move out of my way, much less 
ATTACK anyone. . . . I’m —I’m sorry. I don’t hate you. . . . Can you 
really sense when people want to— uh, have bad thoughts about you, 
like in ‘The Secret Life of Plants’?”
He pauses and sighs, eyes scanning the redwood studded hills. He 
looks back down at the poison oak, clearing his throat to speak 
further.
Strange. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear one of the vines has 
moved a leafy tendril a few inches closer to his leg. Wait a minute. One 
three-leafed cluster is definitely hanging toward him, shiny with 
urushiol oil.
Larry steps back in revulsion, sweating anew. “No, really, you 
aren’t —I don’t really think—”
He lunges for the sprayer, swinging the wand from the hip and 
squeezing the trigger in one motion. His heart is pounding, but he 
watches unblinking as the pale poison stream bursts from the nozzle
109
and splashes upon the leaves.
“I feel terrible about this, I really do! “But . . . well, little kids play 
around here and . . . and stuff—and Tex doesn’t need . . . but 
somebody’s got to—believe me, this is no fun, really.”
He marches along the fence, methodically dooming plant after 
plant, careful to spray underleaf and drip line around the base of each 
one. He works steadily until the tank runs dry, only pausing to scratch 
himself as necessary.
Sharon, upon seeing him later washing his hands by the shed, is 
struck by the expression on his face. “Hi, Lar— Wow! What are YOU 
grinning at?”
110


English

Poison Oak

Reynolds, Jolene

Untitled, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 10.1

Slatton, Ralph

Refuge VI

Heck, Mauro

Resistance

Zinkand, Daniel

SOUTH OF HEIL, NORTH DAKOTA, 
POPULATION 24
Daniel Zinkand
The lichen-green rattlesnake lies in the sun 
on a road going somewhere 
out in nowhere
ivory underbelly stained brown 
by tar seeping through 
sun-warmed asphalt.
Ya can’t kill a rattler 
just by driving over it 
Ya just can’t do it 
says Arndt 
clutching the F600 
into third
as we climb Haffner’s Hill.
My aw-come-on face 
breaking through
a wraith of cigarette smoke and August dust 
dies
as Arndt yanks open the glovebox 
revealing rattles nestled by .22 shells 
and bounty-killed gopher tails.
I finger an obsidian-colored rattle 
button for each year says Arndt.
When I see a snake 
Arndt says 
I back up a ways 
step on the gas
147
and hit the brakes as I cross the snake.
Red-black flesh lies smeared 
on the road 
waiting for crows 
coming from somewhere 
out in nowhere 
North Dakota.
148


South of Heil, North Dakota, Population 24

Grearson, Jessie Carroll

THE TOP DRAWER
Jessie Carroll Grearson
TODAY I W a n t  to rearrange the contents of my top drawer. After my 
recent move, it has temporarily become a receptacle for everything- 
precious-that-hasn’t-got-a-place-yet. I like to think there is more to a 
top drawer than that.
Top drawers have always been places of mystery to me. I recall rare 
glimpses of my mother’s—its tiny handkerchiefs and silky things, its 
smell of linen and bedtime closed away, its own private, sealed-in 
sweetness. My father’s top drawer was mysterious too in a musty, 
masculine way: cufflinks, old photographs, and other odd objects I 
would never have associated with him, from times when he was the 
beloved and confident eldest son, the number one son of his family.
This task will be made more difficult because I will refuse, as always, 
to pull the drawer all the way out and sit it on the bed. This is a 
superstitious and impractical refusal— certainly it would be easier to 
reach the contents if I pulled the drawer out—but it is a rule that I 
invented or inherited somehow, somewhere, and will not break. So 
the drawer will teeter, pulled far out, on the brink of balance, as I 
examine its treasures . . . transplanted treasures, some of which have 
come with me from as far away as childhood.
I shared a large and beautiful room with my two sisters for many 
years. It must have been my older sister Faye who moved out first. 
Severely tested by our interest in her high school love letters, Faye 
decided to sacrifice the features of our larger, communal room, for 
the attraction of more cramped but private quarters. I didn’t mind; 
this meant I got to sleep in the bed I was born in—a beautiful bed with 
four carved posts ending in what looked like wooden pineapples. 
Later, as the house got more and more spacious (elder siblings left for 
college), my younger sister Merey took another vacant room. Thus I 
had this corner room —the best in the house with the most sunlight, 
the most moonlight—to myself, all through high school.
91
Later, when I went away to college, my younger sister moved back 
into it, and then the battles began. I recall the tightness of my chest as 
I argued long distance with my mother about the rights to that room, 
that bed. Surely Merey would move ou t—or over—at least while I was 
home for vacation. Well—I wouldn’t come then. I was being reason­
able.
Despite my adamant arguments and a few initial, placating wins, I 
was slowly edged out: my pictures were taken down, replaced with 
typical teen posters; my white vanity with its attached, carved mirror 
shuffled off to the attic; my desk emptied of its treasures, these 
dumped unceremoniously into a box, labeled JESS. Soon all that was 
left of my claim on that room remained in the top drawer of the dark 
wood dresser. It wasn’t until after I had returned from living in 
England for a year that the crisis of the top drawer occurred.
I can’t remember what prompted my sister to action, or how it was 
that I walked into that room and found the contents of the top 
drawer—my last fortress—dumped on the double bed. But I can 
remember the feelings still, as if I am just now coming into that room, 
coming suddenly upon that scene—my sister caught red-handed, not 
guiltily sifting through the things as she once was prone to do, but 
guilty instead of indifferent, lifting something lethargically in one 
hand, wondering what to do with all this stuff.
I believe Merey and my mother (who must have come up to see 
what all the thumping was about) were both truly astonished, and I 
believe I knew there was no way I could really reach through to them, 
make them see. Hopeless, I lay on the single bed in the room and 
wailed my anguish, forlornly and for a long time. I sobbed for all the 
times I hadn’t cried as I had been subtracted, piece by piece, from that 
wonderful room. I sobbed for losing all that moonlight and view to a 
little sister who could put up a poster of Wayne Gretsky, hockey star, 
where my own Georgia O’Keefe imitation had been. Merey, mean­
while, began putting her tapes (James Taylor) neatly, matter-of-factly 
into the top drawer—now the entire dresser was hers, didn’t that make 
sense after all—but at this point I stop remembering.
I wish, in a way, I could clean out my current top drawer instead of 
rearranging it, but the truth of the matter is, I cannot bear to look at 
most of what I keep. There are the letters that are such a sweet 
concentrate of emotion-long-ago that I can’t breathe quite right, even 
after just looking at the handwriting on their envelopes. There are the 
objects I am obliged to, dressertop keepsakes (often broken) or jewelry 
(often unwearable), objects someone gave me, responsibilities. I have 
often thought if I just could bear to put the letters and the unusable 
objects into a box and throw them away without looking that I would
92
feel much lighter, but something in me always would lift the lid, and 
each object would sing out its specific, irrefutable claim.
The truth is, as much as I honor my top drawer do I fear it: like 
traps set in the dark corners, the clamp of sudden, vivid memory can 
snap shut on the hand, the arm; it can drag you down, pierce you 
through.
I have an image of myself stopped at the edge of my top drawer, as 
if holding my breath in the presence of a dangerous, invisible gas, a 
vapor which rises from it if left open too long. Too much sadness in 
the room is never a good thing—too many lost places, lost loves, lost 
selves. Myself so strongly in the presence of myself—beginning with 
the child who started to collect, and hoard and lay claim to the world, 
lay some part of its coolness next to the cheek.
93


The Top Drawer

Anderson, D.

BARELY THE MOON
D. Anderson
A local artist put together 
Little dioramas 
Inside blown eggs,
Christ on the Cross,
The Easter bunny,
Sort of ships in a bottle.
Several were plain country scenes
Empty meadows
Inviting you to put yourself in.
Through one hole I saw myself
Turning my back on someone I love.
My face was gone
Replaced by sand.
Another showed me 
Saving someone drowning 
In a country pool.
Is this what it means 
To have aged?
Tonight I get no answers:
A fresh egg on my table 
Barely the moon.
124


Barely the Moon

Darnell, Marc

FEVER
Marc Darnell
I have distilled my ways for you,
and yet, you displace my heart,
lifting it to the coldness behind my eyes
where it pulses small bells through my ears,
requiring only my temple vessels for its resonance,
though I still detect a dissonance
in the warm, sweeping room.
Upon this couch my delirious skin rests 
from a sugary fit of perspiration.
If my leg bones could clutch each other
I would urge them to lock,
for you desire them pulled and cleaned
on the carpet before me,
crossed and kindling whiter.
When I sleep you sleep with me,
and you decide my dreams;
you make small lifeless objects
swell in width and weight
because I refuse to hold them —
a growth of clay threatens me with its shadow
and begins smothering me,
and a half-dollar spins heavier on my wrist,
drilling hotly into the veins.
Awakening, I believe
I have killed someone beneath my blanket;
I cannot lift the window to tell anyone.
Lying down to a horizontal whirl 
I remember my innocence 
and wait for you to perspire from me 
with all your confessions.
127


Fever

ISLANDS
Jessie Carroll Grearson
If you have walked in sleep 
you know this moment, the dream that led you 
to this window, eyes open but unseeing 
your own voice calling you awake
or sometimes you do not sleep
night is something to be thrown off
like a too-heavy cover—
the same, these moments,
when the old becomes an island
everyone on it far away
their voices, distant, across the water—
The things you remember are not important: 
walking with your mother in air cleared by rain, 
running along a path through long grass to the 
stream
where crawfish disappeared in urgent spurts of silt
how your father placed a peppermint on your 
tongue
when you were a child 
like a doll
hardly able to warm your own bed
Your father who brought you water at night 
hands curved about a cup 
and told you those stories with those endings 
you believed
134
you believe they still think of you 
are leaning toward you, waiting 
for the correct words 
for your apologies
and you have imagined what you would say 
so many times
until your reasons and sorrows 
were as carefully arranged as a painted mosaic 
on some sunny wall, perfectly clear 
perfectly understandable.
135


Not a member yet