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Liefeld, Robin

The Prairie Light Review
Volume 39 | Number 2 Article 26
Spring 5-1-2017
Old Edges
Robin Liefeld
College of DuPage
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Recommended Citation
Liefeld, Robin (2017) "Old Edges," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 39 : No. 2 , Article 26.
Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol39/iss2/26
Two Virgins 
  
The discovery, by two virgins on Cyprus – 
where no one can go without falling in love – 
that one of life’s cycles can be sweet, 
was only the latest knot in the long rope of surprises 
we are climbing. 
  
Hand over hand, hand in hand, 
two virgins on Cyprus – 
where no one can go without falling in love – 
sojourned across the dry white hills, 
floated in the saltiest waters, 
grasped tightly to each welcome knot. 
  
How privileged we were, two virgins on Cyprus – 
where no one can go without falling in love – 
to discover that we are two virgins of the soul, 
bodies well-used, but irrelevant, 
on Cyprus.
Old Edges
Robin Liefeld
Martha Attiyeh
Spring 2017    27 1
Liefeld: Old Edges
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English

Old Edges

Morris, Wilda

The Prairie Light Review
Volume 39 | Number 2 Article 34
Spring 5-1-2017
Ishmael Writes to a Friend Back Home: a Golden
Shovel Poem
Wilda Morris
College of DuPage
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This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
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Recommended Citation
Morris, Wilda (2017) "Ishmael Writes to a Friend Back Home: a Golden Shovel Poem," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 39 : No. 2 ,
Article 34.
Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol39/iss2/34
Ishmael Writes to a Friend Back Home: a Golden Shovel Poem 
            “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.” 
                        ~ Ishmael in Moby-Dick 
  
Depressed with life on land, I thought it better 
to head for Nantucket and set sail, to 
find contentment on a whaling ship rather than sleep 
walk through another winter. I left home alone with 
meager possessions. In New Bedford, I met a 
harpooner. An experienced whaler, sober 
and strong, Queequeg was a cannibal, 
but so congenial—more like a brother than 
a friend. His mistake—trusting me to select a 
ship. I picked the Piquod, whose captain was drunken 
with vengeance, having few values I’d call Christian.
Neptune’s Realm
Acrylic mixed media by Tania Blanco
Wilda Morris
34    Prairie Light Review 1
Morris: Ishmael Writes to a Friend Back Home: a Golden Shovel Poem
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Ishmael Writes to a Friend Back Home: a Golden Shovel Poem

McNichols, Matt

The Prairie Light Review
Volume 39 | Number 2 Article 49
Spring 5-1-2017
Star Child
Matt McNichols
College of DuPage
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This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
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Recommended Citation
McNichols, Matt (2017) "Star Child," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 39 : No. 2 , Article 49.
Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol39/iss2/49
Star Child
The stars aligned when this spirit was born 
A luminous being destined for a long journey through space and time 
Many lessons to be learned over many lifetimes 
Always yearning to reunite with the beautiful light in the sky 
Rejuvenate with the light, learn from the light 
Then return to the solid ground of Mother Earth 
Where school is in session for the soul 
When away from the great luminescence 
The spirit may suffer 
But it is always fated to return to the all-encompassing love 
That the bright radiance freely gives to its children 
  
Strive towards the ideals of the light 
Find peace in knowing 
Love is the common denominator 
The great uniter 
This trave The Warrior Healer 
  
Some are destined to be one thing 
Some are destined to be two 
The latter describes myself 
For I have been a butcher of men 
And a savior to others of my ilk 
My hands have been suited for a dual purpose 
To wield the sword and axe against foe 
And through graces not fully understood 
Send magical healing into the wounds of my tribesman 
I kill out of duty, not desire 
Gifted with the sword, yet I take no pleasure from it 
Warriors are numerous in tribe, healers are rare 
Yet my astuteness in fighting chains me to the battlefield 
While my God-given talent lies precariously dormant 
Until the heinous injuries of my kinsmen are too great to bear 
Perhaps I will miraculously grow old and unfit for confrontation 
Then my true calling will finally be utilized to its fullest 
For I fear not death, only destined potential squandered 
Taking lives versus saving them is my life’s conundrum 
May I solve it before it’s too late ling soul has held this awareness all along 
Yet it takes years, lifetimes 
To truly remember, grasp, and practice 
This age-old paradigm 
The star child continues his ongoing circular route 
Needing love, giving love, being love
Matt McNichols Spring 2017    47 1
McNichols: Star Child
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Star Child

Peter, Amy

The Prairie Light Review
Volume 39 | Number 2 Article 57
Spring 5-1-2017
At 17
Amy Peter
College of DuPage
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This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
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Recommended Citation
Peter, Amy (2017) "At 17," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 39 : No. 2 , Article 57.
Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol39/iss2/57
At Night 
She's the one you love, 
I'm the one you lust for. 
She's what you really want, 
I'm what you desire. 
She's on your mind all day, 
I'm only on yours at night. 
It is what it is, I can't change it. 
I need to accept it, and decide if it's alright; 
because when I heard her name from your mouth in your sleep, 
I knew it wasn't me you were dreaming of. 
She's the one who lit your candle, 
I'm just here to fan your fire. 
She's your wonderful Desiree, 
and I'm just a momentary desire. 
Its her you want during the day, 
 and me only at night. 
My demons shape a part of me.  
I'm so happy with how far I've come, 
and that I've lived to see the sun. 
Still, I'll never forget who I was at 17. 
The conflict between my outside and inside worlds, 
and choosing which one to believe and live in. 
Covered in external and internal scars from making mistakes. 
Full of so much insecurity, shame, and hurt. 
The struggle between how everyone said I should be feeling, 
and how I felt. 
How not many understood my depression or anxiety. 
Young, and sad, and tired 
Wondering what the future would be like, 
if I survived. 
Well here I am, 
I made it. 
At 17, I wanted to die. 
At 18, I decided to give living another try. 
At 19, 20, 21, I made a new life, 
but I'll never forget. 
Never forget who I was at 17. 
Because she's always with me. 
Sometimes she even pays me a visit from time to time. 
Am
y 
Pe
te
r
At 17
56    Prairie Light Review 1
Peter: At 17
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At 17

ESSAI
Volume 15 Article 2
Spring 2017
Title Page
Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.cod.edu/essai
This Prefatory Note is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for
inclusion in ESSAI by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu.
Recommended Citation
(2017) "Title Page," ESSAI: Vol. 15 , Article 2.
Available at: https://dc.cod.edu/essai/vol15/iss1/2
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ESSAI 
 
The College of DuPage Anthology  
 
Of 
 
Academic Writing Across the Curriculum 
 
 
(Volume XV 2016-2017) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois 
 
 
The contents of this anthology copyright, 2017 
 
College of DuPage 
 
 
1
et al.: Title Page
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Title Page

Fortier, Mardelle

The Prairie Light Review
Volume 40 | Number 1 Article 8
Fall 12-1-2017
Degas at the Ballet ("On the Stage", 1876-77; Art
Institute)
Mardelle Fortier
College of DuPage
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This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu.
Recommended Citation
Fortier, Mardelle (2017) "Degas at the Ballet ("On the Stage", 1876-77; Art Institute)," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 40 : No. 1 , Article
8.
Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol40/iss1/8
2Prairie Light Review  Fall 2017
 
Degas at the Ballet (“On the 
Stage,” 1876-77; Art Institute) 
Mardelle Fortier
 
Everything billows: chiffon gowns, long hair. 
Arms circle over heads, blues and whites become fluid 
magic. 
Nothing can be pinned down: not the silky 
slippers, nor the light. 
Everything is vanishing, as flying legs leap offstage 
and a smile lasts only as long as a note. 
  
Bright blossoms, satin dresses, dance your joy 
and hope that Degas can capture changing lilac shades 
and regal youth; dreams of eternal music. 
  
In this illusion, the painter lives, eyes trained 
on a scene that can last 
only if his brush is pure and sure.
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Fortier: Degas at the Ballet ("On the Stage", 1876-77; Art Institute)
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Degas at the Ballet ( On the Stage , 1876-77; Art Institute)

Miklosz, Molly

The Prairie Light Review
Volume 40 | Number 1 Article 28
Fall 12-1-2017
Continuum
Molly Miklosz
College of DuPage
Follow this and additional works at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr
This Artwork is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
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Recommended Citation
Miklosz, Molly (2017) "Continuum," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 40 : No. 1 , Article 28.
Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol40/iss1/28
24Prairie Light Review  Fall 2017
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Miklosz: Continuum
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Continuum

The Prairie Light Review
Volume 40 | Number 1 Article 36
Fall 12-1-2017
Rain Revelation
Amy Peter
College of DuPage
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This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu.
Recommended Citation
Peter, Amy (2017) "Rain Revelation," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 40 : No. 1 , Article 36.
Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol40/iss1/36
36Prairie Light Review  Fall 2017
Rain Revelation
Amy Peter
Today walking back to your house, 
I held the umbrella for us. 
But I realized something unsettling to my heart. 
That I would do anything to keep you dry, 
but you wouldn’t hop a puddle for me. 
It’s true. 
You don’t care enough for me, 
for me to care this much about you. 
I’ll find my puddle hopper, 
I’ll find my river forder. 
I’ll find my ocean crosser, 
but you don’t deserve someone like me 
who’d cross oceans for you. 
Robin Weis, 
“Squeeze”.  Acrylic on canvas. 
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Peter: Rain Revelation
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Rain Revelation

Sikorski, Mary

The Prairie Light Review
Volume 40 | Number 1 Article 42
Fall 12-1-2017
Let It Go
Mary Sikorski
College of DuPage
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This Artwork is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu.
Recommended Citation
Sikorski, Mary (2017) "Let It Go," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 40 : No. 1 , Article 42.
Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol40/iss1/42
44Prairie Light Review  Fall 2017
Let It Go,
Mary Sikorski
Photocomposition
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Sikorski: Let It Go
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Let It Go

Owen, Karen

The Prairie Light Review
Volume 40 | Number 1 Article 44
Fall 12-1-2017
Fall of Saigon, 30 April 1975
Karen Owen
College of DuPage
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This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu.
Recommended Citation
Owen, Karen (2017) "Fall of Saigon, 30 April 1975," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 40 : No. 1 , Article 44.
Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol40/iss1/44
46Prairie Light Review  Fall 2017
Fall of Saigon, 30 April 1975
Karen Owen
 Instead of doing homework, I watch the fall of Saigon to the 
Viet Minh. I’m not able to tear myself away from the TV set, loaned 
to me by my Uncle Robert, then Commanding Officer of the Great 
Lakes Naval Training Station.  I watch the people lining the streets 
waving welcoming flags. I had to believe that some of them were, in 
fact, welcoming a new reunification under a government not tainted 
with the colonialism of the past. I wondered, though, how many were 
apprehensive about their fate under a communist government, how 
many were just relieved to have the fighting, the constant shelling, 
and the random deaths, ended at last. 
The newscast begins a review of the war: August of 1964, the Gulf of 
Tonkin Incident. Do we know yet what really happened there? All I 
know is that suddenly our trip to Grandmother’s was cancelled. Uncle 
Robert, commanding a destroyer in the Pacific and due home on leave 
before a rotation of duty, wasn’t coming home just yet.  
A clip of a report is followed by a statement from Walter Cronkite: 
this was the last report filed by that reporter, a friend, gone missing, 
presumed dead. I recall the wedding of the neighbor boy. He’d just 
graduated from Annapolis and his colleagues in uniform made the 
traditional arch of their swords for him and his bride. All newly made 
officers, all headed for Vietnam. One was his roommate, like him a 
naval pilot. Both would fly rescue missions. Another was the first 
boy I’d ever dated. He’d gone to Annapolis as well, but had decided to 
be a Marine. 
Now Cronkite alludes to growing doubts about the war. In college I 
became active in the anti-war movement. Moved by the civil rights 
movement, I’d first joined Campus Friends of the Student Non-violent 
Coordinating Committee and, when the war escalated, Students for 
a Democratic Society, the pre-Weatherman, non-violent SDS. That 
had evolved, on our campus, into the Draft Resistance. I switched my 
major from Math to Sociology, it seemed more relevant. It was hard 
on my family, especially when I married a man who’d returned his 
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Owen: Fall of Saigon, 30 April 1975
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47Prairie Light Review  Fall 2017
draft cards and was under indictment for refusing induction. They 
believed I was merely rebelling against them; I believed the war was 
a terrible mistake.  
Now there’s a clip of General Westmoreland explaining how we’ll 
win: the tactics, the strategy, the necessity of our involvement. My 
father is a retired Army Colonel, my mother a former First Lieu-
tenant in the Army Nurse Corps, veterans of World War II. Two of 
my uncles are career Navy. The one who has lent me the television 
had served as attaché to then Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. 
The other had roomed at Annapolis with Thomas Moorer, Chairman 
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Nixon.  I remember when Adm. 
Moorer had to explain to Congress how we came to bomb our Air 
Force base at Danang by mistake. I mentioned feeling sorry for him 
in a phone call home.  Relations were strained but we kept in touch. 
The TV is now showing the protests at home. I was in some of 
those. They don’t mention the Gutknecht Decision, but I feel again 
the profound relief I’d felt when I’d heard of it. The Supreme Court 
had ruled that the Selective Service could not cancel a deferment or 
speed up an induction solely because someone had returned his draft 
cards. My husband’s conviction was invalid and I could escape a 
marriage I was unhappy in without feeling so guilty about abandon-
ing a draft resister. He was to once again refuse induction and spend 
six months in a minimum-security prison, but by that time he was 
married to someone else.  
The scene flashes to US Marines on a search and destroy mission 
near a village. I think about meeting up with my old boyfriend, home 
on leave. We went out drinking and he told me about being an Acting 
Company Commander in Vietnam; told me about a village he and his 
men had stayed near. The villagers had offered them food and, not 
wishing to offend them, he’d let his men take it. Two days later, after 
they’d left the area, the Viet Cong killed the children in retaliation.  
He’d wished he’d known: he would have refused the food.  
So much agony. A difficult time in my life, but so much more agoniz-
ing, terrifying, horrendous for others. So many dead: my neighbor’s 
roommate, shot down, his bride, a suicide, while he completed his tour 
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The Prairie Light Review, Vol. 40, No. 1 [2017], Art. 44
http://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol40/iss1/44
48Prairie Light Review  Fall 2017
of duty. The boy whose funeral we sang for, another suicide, found 
dead beside his induction notice. So many wounded: my brother’s 
friend in the full body cast, that hot Fourth of July. He was walking 
point when a landmine went off. The arguments, the pain, the suffer-
ing, the endless delays in the peace talks, the politicians who lied, who 
callously used those young men, all the horrible means of destruc-
tion. I would always respect the men and women who served there, 
but never, ever the men who sent them to die. For what?  Saigon has 
fallen, those hearts and minds are lost, so many forever. 
The war’s officially over now. It’s late and I have an early class, 
Group Theory. I turn off the TV and remember that in returning 
back to Math, I’d rediscovered a world where there are certainties. 
Things can be proven to be correct. “Ratios” recall rational numbers, 
not “kills.” Irrational numbers are pi or e, not those ever mounting 
numbers of dead and wounded. “Complex” means merely the square 
root of negative one, not a deadly, irreconcilable disagreement with 
right and wrong, honor and dishonor, valor and greed, on all sides. 
My classmates look at me blankly the next day when I tell them 
why my problem set isn’t complete. They’re younger. I’ll find that, 
through the years, certain people will cautiously share what they 
did during this war. What their lottery number was. Whether or 
not they served, in Vietnam, in the service, in a hospital, or in jail. 
I always listen, wanting to hear all sides. My family and I, however, 
tacitly agree never to mention it again; neither do we forget it. 
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Owen: Fall of Saigon, 30 April 1975
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