1. RECONSTRUCTEDSPRING 2015
Fiction//Melissa Baron/Kyle Delnegro/Natalie Helberg/Sarah Hirsch
Non-Fiction//Adan Alvarado/Sarah Hirsch/La’Kendrick Thompson/Christine Weatherby
Sarah Hirsch/Jo-Ann Ledger/Connor McQueen/Samantha Schmidt/Marko Vesin
Poetry//Shahenaz Ahmad/Andrew Besbekos/Melissa DiGrazia/Misturat Ganiyu/Claude Hill
Visual Art//Melissa Baron/Jessica Cavinder/Elizabeth Popp/Marko Vesin

2. RECONSTRUCTED
Governors State University’s Art & Literary Journal
Spring2015
Editor In Chief
Melissa Baron
Literary Editors
Misturat Ganiyu
Sarah Hirsch
Samantha Schmidt
Marko Vesin
Faculty Advisor
Dr. Christopher White
G o v e r n o r s S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y
U n i v e r s i t y P a r k , I L

3. For digital versions of this issue and past issues,
please visit reconstructedjournal.com

4. Editor’s Dialogue
Reconstructed existed at the edge of my peripheral vision when I first became a student at Governors State
University. I wrote, but I let intimidation keep me from sending any pieces in. I finally submitted work for one
semester, became involved as an editor at the beginning of my senior year at the request of Dr. White, and
accepted the position of editor-in-chief of this incredible journal in the last semester of my college career.
Joining the ranks of Reconstructed was the best decision I have ever made. The team of students running
this journal as the GSU semesters march on is nothing short of amazing. We are constantly revising, reinvent-
ing, and overcoming obstacles to keep the heart of this organization beating. Reconstructing ourselves to
meet the challenges head on and keep the creativity alive and well is a challenge we revel in. It is not always
glamorous, but it is unifying, and validating when the artistic community within GSU meets us halfway.
The act of creating is a process that has long been glorified, romanticized, and considered a feat only accom-
plished by a select, special few bestowed with the art gene, if such a thing exists. Those who actively create,
however - whether it is in the form of painting, sketching, photography, writing, what have you - will tell you
it is not any of those things. It is hard, grueling work. It is matching up the images and words in your head
with what your hands can do, and that kind of work is long, frustrating, and filled with fitful stops and starts.
Mystifying the process of creating only serves to alienate those who would have written that story or pub-
lished that art piece, but were too afraid because they assumed that the end products seen in literary maga-
zines, art galleries, and novels looked that way to begin with.
That is a lie.
The sort of lie that keeps the art and literary community of GSU a hidden gem, buried under what-if’s and
self doubt. The kind that kept me from initially submitting. First efforts are never the best ones, but through
revision, reconstructing, and enough imagination and hard work, something beautiful can come of it. Some-
thing to be proud of.
To the writers and the artists wandering the halls of GSU, creating in secret and silence – we see you. Give us
a chance to let everyone else see you, too. Nothing is more empowering than seeing your work in print.
Let us be your starting point.
Melissa Baron
Editor-in-Chief

5. Table of Contents
FICTION
Driving Through Time // Sarah Hirsch 11
Fat Linda // Natalie Helberg 24
Grief By Proxy // Melissa Baron 40
Moments Of Clarity: Destined To Be Cool // Kyle
Delnegro // 58
VISUAL ART
Chance Of Snow // Melissa Baron 5
Star Space // Marko Vesin 6
Schönbrunn // Marko Vesin 16
Molti Nemici, Molto Onore // Marko Vesin 17
Towards The Sun // Melissa Baron 21
Left Behind // Melissa Baron 22
Responsibility // Marko Vesin 36
Have Sex, Hate Sexism // Marko Vesin 37
Love // Marko Vesin 38
Untitled // Jessica Cavinder 39
Yellowscape // Elizabeth Popp 47
Belmont // Marko Vesin 56
Šumarice‘41 // Marko Vesin 62
Seashells // Melissa Baron 63
Gleam // Melissa Baron 64
NON-FICTION
Mother Knows Best // La’Kendrick Thompson 7
“If You Knew Me:”Borrowed Words and Journal
Snapshots // Christine Weatherby 28
Gleaning // Sarah Hirsch 44
The Gratitude I Owe A Stranger // Adan Alvarado 59
POETRY
I Slip Further And Further // Connor McQueen 3
Winter Haven Holiday // Samantha Schmidt 4
The Nectarine // Sarah Hirsch 13
Passionwild // Connor McQueen 14
When Hope Falters // Jo-Ann Ledger
Dream Sketcher // Claude Hill
Youth Eventually Flips Towards Its Golden Page //
Claude Hill 19
Queen On Her Throne // Shahenaz Ahmad 23
Rivet // Misturat Ganiyu 33
RE: Turn // Melissa DiGrazia 34
Exhibit_001 // Marko Vesin 48
Exhibit_002 // Marko Vesin 49
Exhibit_003 // Marko Vesin 50
Exhibit_004 // Marko Vesin 51
Exhibit_005 // Marko Vesin 52
The Clock On The Wall // Connor McQueen 53
Eternal Whisper // Andrew Besbekos 57
Untitled // Misturat Ganiyu 65

6. I Slip Further And Further
Connor McQueen
Poetry
I slip further and further into the ether.
You become a faint ghost, a foggy mist.
Everything’s a vague hazy smoke
You are a whisper, a soft hiss comes from your mouth which is
Somewhere.
Dry ice begins to swell and form your neck and torso
Cigarette smoke sways methodically, whipping into strands of hair.
You are omnipresent and nowhere to be found.
Fleeting yet encapsulating.
3

7. Winter Haven Holiday
Samantha Schmidt
Poetry
Twinkling lights wound around the railings
in this place of wonder, enchanted by the
scent of fresh-baked gingerbread and
the tinkling of ladies’voices like
distant bells across a snow-white field.
Magic was afoot, perhaps tucked away
in the branches of towering evergreens
or drip-dripping from the ice sculpture-
a willowy figure bearing a beribboned
parcel, doubtlessly bursting with love.
I peered over the lace-trimmed tables
on tiptoe; thirsty eyes drinking in
a gleaming model train surrounded
in a glittering cotton snowstorm.
You tugged at my hand and we wandered on.
The magic was routine to you.
Past wreaths of pine and rich red holly
you strolled, my tiny wrist in your grasp,
your colored heels clicking with each stride.
Graceful and chic, as always, you introduced me
to ladies neither you nor I had ever met.
You were lovelier than any silly ornament
and I your unquestioning admirer.
The whirling snowstorm had subsided
and it was time to take leave.
Mittened hand in gloved, we strode to the car:
our not-so-elegant Impala.
My brother and aunt took their place at our sides.
Minutes later, there was a terrible crash
and the wonder died.

8. Chance Of Snow
Melissa Baron
Visual Art
5

9. Star Space
Marko Vesin
Visual Art

10. Mother Knows Best
La’Kendrick Thompson
Non-Fiction
* This is a portion of a much larger body of work titled“Black in America,”which is a memoir
based on critical moments in my life. Each chapter has a separate story from the rest, but in
the end they all come together to define what it is like to be black in America.
There wasn’t much I did as a kid to anger my mother, but one incident in partic-
ular had her worried sick and infuriated. I was seven years old at the time, too young
to focus on anything other than junk food, playing, and more junk food. We lived on
North Greenwood Avenue in Kankakee, Illinois, and I loved staying there for many
reasons. There was Mr. Ben’s grocery next door, and next door to the grocery store
was a house filled with children I played with. We played everything from hop scotch,
tag, red light-green light, to kick-ball. Directly across the street from us was a house
with two more kids I played with daily. Sometimes they came across the street to join
everyone and sometimes I went across the street to play with them.
We lived in a two level apartment, on the upper level, and on the lower level
was an older black man by the name of Jim Phifer. When I first met Jim, he had physi-
cal features that were scary. He was tall and his skin was like a dark olive green. He al-
ways wore shades, but the first time I saw him without them, his eyes were huge, with
red spots in his iris. His hair was grey, like salt and pepper mixed, and he always wore
his work clothes: a blue hat, dark blue slacks, black boots, and a light blue collared
shirt. The shirt had a name tag on it that read“Phifer,”and he kept a pack of Newport
100’s inside his shirt pocket. I never knew what his occupation was but he always had
money. On top of keeping a bank roll he had a giving spirit. I’d always ask him for a
dollar or some pocket change and each time he’d give me more than I asked for.
Afterwards, I’d race next door to Mr. Ben’s to spend it all on junk food. I loved
Mr. Ben’s store but he was a mean old man, the complete opposite of Mr. Phifer. He
was also tall, but kept his salt n’pepper beard and goatee well groomed. He kept his
hair cut low with a receding hairline with a pair of glasses and an apron that made him
look professional, but like a butcher at the same time. Each time I walked up to the
counter I looked at his hands. I was mesmerized by how big and rough they looked.
They were always ashy and I wondered why he didn’t lotion them, but now I realize
they were ashy because he washed his hands before cutting meat on a slicer for his
customers. He always licked the tips of his fingers to separate the brown paper bags 7

11. he placed the items in, and every now and then he’d cut his eyes up at me as if he had
a thought he wished not to verbalize. Every now and then I’d come in and he’d be
stacking items on the shelves and he’d always look down at me in disgust before slow-
ly walking down a small ladder and behind the counter. One day I walked in and I was
traumatized after watching him trap a small mouse under his brown loafers, before
stomping it, and tossing it out the door. He washed his hands and continued working
as if nothing happened, but to me I’d just witnessed a murder.
My mother, who was as beautiful as any woman I’d ever seen, was 5’2, 120
pounds, with a milk chocolate complexion, and a smile that could warm the coldest
heart. She was in her mid-twenties and not in a committed relationship, but I remem-
ber a man named Ron who would always come around, smiling and grinning in her
face. He was a friendly guy, and I could tell he loved my mother. He was light skinned,
with freckles in his face which was odd for a black guy to me, but he also had curly
hair. He was also goofy as hell, too. He was always laughing and cracking jokes and I
frowned at the sight of the white stuff around the edges of his lips. He drove a nice car
which symbolized success in the hood, but I don’t know what he did for a living.
There was also another guy named Matt who kept hitting on her every chance
he’d get. He was very persistent, and it seemed like he followed us everywhere! No
matter where we’d go he’d appear, making his advances. He was crazy to me. He’d
sing songs all loud in public and embarrass my mom. She laughed and I could tell she
liked it, but it was weird to me. He was tall, muscular, dark skinned, bald headed, and
he wore glasses. Unlike Ron, Matt always played with me when we’d see him. He’d
wrestle with me and pretend to be wrestlers like Hulk Hogan. Guess he figured I was
the key to my mother’s heart, so he had to win me over. For the most part he did a
great job.
Even as a kid I realized things would be bad if Matt and Ron crossed paths, but
for a while they didn’t. I don’t know why my mother entertained the both of them, but
from what I observed she enjoyed the attention. When the two men finally met, Ron
threatened Matt and warned him to stay away from my mother,“or else.” I remember
my little heart pounding like a beating drum, anticipating the first blow, but nothing
happened. Of course Matt didn’t listen; in fact he came around even more after words
were exchanged.
It was a Friday night and my mother was getting dressed and dancing around
the house to Johnny Kemp’s“Just got Paid.” Ron arrived to pick her up, and the plan
was for me to go downstairs to Mr. Phifer’s house until she returned from her night of
partying, but before they could leave there was a knock at the door as if someone was
pissed. My mom demanded that I go to my room immediately and I acted

12. accordingly. The apartment was so small I could still hear everything and by cracking
my bedroom door I could see as well. The person on the other side of the door was
Matt. I stuck my head out the doorway to see what was happening and in a loud vi-
cious tone I heard Ron say,“I thought I told you to stay the fuck away from here!”
I’d never heard Ron get loud, so I knew he was fuming. My mom tried to stand
in between the two of them, but she was too small to play referee. The two men start-
ed tussling and punching one another until they made it out to the patio, which was
highly elevated from the ground with a long flight of stairs from the ground up. After
a few minutes of brawling, they fell over the balcony with Matt landing on top of Ron.
By then I was standing on the patio looking down. My mother was screaming and or-
dered me back to my room, but I didn’t listen. I had to see the aftermath. Did they die,
I wondered? Matt was able to get up and brush himself off, but Ron remained on the
ground, still conscious, but unable to move. I thought he was dead, so I sobbed. The
cops came and arrested Matt, and Ron was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.
The next time I saw him he had a cast on one arm, a leg, his neck, and he was walking
on crutches. I guess you can say Matt won the girl, because I started seeing more of
him and less of Ron, till eventually Ron disappeared permanently. I liked Matt, but
there was one incident in particular that made me wish he went away for good.
The drama came one September evening at the beginning of the school year.
My mom worked days and I was told to go to Mr. Phifer’s apartment until she arrived.
It was hot and muggy that day, as I walked through the rugged alley with my backpack
on, looking at the ground which was filled with everything from broken glass, clothing
items, beer cans, beer, and whiskey bottles, kicking rocks along the way. Our back yard
was to the right of the alley way, and it had a table and lawn chairs where Mr. Phifer
and his friends laughed and drank almost daily.
I’d only made it a few steps in the yard when a red Toyota Camry stopped in the
alley. I turned back after I heard a voice call my name and it was Matt in the passenger
seat with another man in the driver’s seat. Matt asked me to take a ride with him, and
my first thought was to go inside, but then I thought, he’s my mother’s boyfriend, she
wouldn’t have a problem with me riding with him. So I hopped in the back seat, not
knowing what our destination was, or without considering the fact that my mother
would have no idea where I was or who I was with when she came home from work.
We went to several stores and I sat in the car with the creepy dude who had a
lazy eye, while Matt went inside. He would come out of each store and pull items out
that were stuffed in his jeans. He’d try to crack jokes to distract me as if I didn’t realize
what he was doing.
9

13. After all the stealing was over, we went to a couple houses that it took him
forever to come out of. I was really starting to worry, and I wanted to cry, because I
realized my mother was worried about me at this point. Four hours later, we pulled
back into the now dark alley way with several adults scattered throughout the area. It
was obvious that everyone was looking for me. I got out of the car and my mom raced
towards the vehicle with tears in her eyes. She grabbed me by my arm, while picking a
small branch off the ground, and struck me repeatedly.
“Where in the fuck have you been!”she yelled. Matt got out of the car, attempt-
ing to explain, and she struck him in the face repeatedly. I cried, but I knew I’d gotten
exactly what I deserved. I’d driven my mother to the point of insanity and despite my
carelessness, she sat me down and explained why my actions were wrong. “If I don’t
tell you it’s okay to go with someone, I don’t care who they are, it’s not okay,”she cried.
I learned a valuable lesson that day. It was one I’d take with me for the remain-
der of my childhood. Do exactly what my mother says, because your mother knows
best. It also made me realize how much she loved me, and I didn’t want to hurt her
again.

14. Driving Through Time
Sarah Hirsch
Fiction
The yellow November light streamed through the curtains of my bedroom in
my parents’house as I sat on the bed that once was so familiar. It was early afternoon;
after an exhausting morning, I had returned to bed to absorb the comforting sense of
nostalgia found in a place where I’d spent so much of my life. I glanced around at the
way I had chosen to decorate in high school—stickers of skateboard companies lined
my outdated television, vinyl records tacked to the space above my closet. The bright
green walls made the room glow, even at midnight. I felt so removed from who I had
been just seven years before and reached deep into myself to figure out how I’d be-
come so different.
A full day’s drive in my small, black sedan had finally landed me in my Mississip-
pi hometown. The interstate I took from Illinois made an almost straight line through
the heart of the country and into the Deep South, where the trees of my childhood
embraced me with a stoic welcome. As I began my journey in Chicago, the small Mid-
western trees, stunted every year by a long winter, had already lost their leaves; grey
skies loomed over a thin layer of frost on the ground. The long road transformed into
the tape of a video in rewind: as I drove into Missouri, I noticed the fallen brown leaves
picking themselves up and assembling on the trees in vibrant autumn colors. By
Tennessee the oranges and reds had muted into golden yellow mixed with green, until
finally the highway was overtaken with the deep, piney green that I so closely associ-
ate with home.
Each rest stop exit had built up increasing anticipation—as I got closer and
closer to home, obvious signs of Southern life trickled into the atmosphere of gas sta-
tions and restaurants. Almost immediately past the Illinois border, the yellow squares
of Waffle House signs appeared by nearly every small town lining the interstate. The
coconut cream pies sold at a gas station in northern Mississippi were reminiscent of
the ones from my family’s holiday table; elderly men gathered at faux-wooden Formica
tables to enjoy a black coffee and one another’s company. I had been stricken with
homesickness during my first year away from home, but the last two years away had
been easier to bear. The changes in scenery along my trip now made me more aware
11

15. of the remote, dull pain that existed deep in my heart: the yearning for home like one
experiences as a young child when away for too long.
Finally, the exit for Madison appeared, and I felt a jerk in my chest as I veered
my car onto the ramp. I hadn’t expected such a physical reaction to the sight of the
so-familiar landscape—the sight of banks and schools brought tears to my eyes and
butterflies in my stomach. I noticed the restaurant where I had first waited tables in
high school, and neighborhoods where my closest friends had lived. Houses that had
seen me transform from a child into a teenager passed before their eyes, and I felt that
a part of my teenage self had stayed behind within them to welcome me home, now
as an adult. The road to my parents’house was long and winding, but every curve was
still etched in my muscle memory, though I hadn’t driven it in almost three years.
Impulses rather than thought pulled my muscles to make every turn of the
steering wheel that led my car into my parents’driveway. The same muscle fibers
shook as they mechanically opened the door and stepped out of the car, looking up at
the brick house and its enormous oak tree in front. Nothing had changed. I opened
the front door for the first time in years—the same door that had brought me into that
house after all of my first experiences—and felt a rush that I could only relate to trav-
elling back in time. My mother sat on the reclined portion of the couch, with her book
in her lap; the title ever-changing, but the position always the same. Our black cocker
spaniel ran to me, shaking her whole bottom as she shook her tail. My brother came
down the stairs and hugged me with his long limbs, which seemed to have finally
reached their final length. I let more tears fall and realized that not much seemed to
have changed, and yet I felt so different.
On the way down the highway from Illinois to Mississippi, my car had acted
as a time-travelling vehicle. As I sped backward through the seasons and watched
the reassembling leaves, the clock had also rewound itself until I found myself in the
familiar home that I missed for so long. My family’s home seemed identical to when
I left for the journey that I never expected to be so long. In the space between, I had
become a wife and mother, travelled and lived throughout the country, and found in
myself the solidity that comes with adulthood. I opened the door into my childhood
home and felt a resurfacing of my former identity, who I had believed I would always
be. By returning home to my family, I was able to better unfold who I am now because
of who I once was. There is no better way to remember who I am than to return to the
place and the people who molded my identity.

16. The Nectarine
Sarah Hirsch
Poetry
Eating a ripe nectarine in January,
looking out onto the snow-covered deck,
I have never felt more the duplicity of Earth.
The taste of sun-ripened, sweet flesh
Feels so distant from reality.
My pale skin is jealous of this fruit:
It has seen more of the Sun than I’ve seen in months
And likely more of the world than I ever will.
The Sun pulls the South Pole to him in their annual embrace—
A finicky lover, demanding another when I need it most.
In a few months, we will reconcile our differences,
But by mid-summer its warmth will overwhelm me
And I’ll wish again for winter’s remote solitude,
Far removed from heat’s passionate and inescapable grip.
Although both predictable in annual pattern,
We never remain content together for long.
The pit is all that’s left of the syrupy nectarine,
And in the moment, I long for enough sunshine
To germinate the life that it contains inside.
But in the reality of my blooming July garden,
I will have already grown tired of caring for the plants—
Feeling suffocated by the obligations tying me down.
Only in my subconscious remembering how I’ll miss them
Once I’m looking at my snow-covered deck in January.
13

17. Passionwild
Connor McQueen
Poetry
Bite, bite into me. Feel my lips swell with blood and
Taste, taste the bitter passion. Let me roll off your tongue
And down your chest through valleys, crevices,
Nooks and crannies.
This passion-wild embrace soothes the tension out of my pores
And I feel like dying but I am still
So alive.
You keep me breathing by poking holes and then plugging them back up.
My heart is a slave to a temptress I know all too well,
A temptress in black jeans and black leather boots
Whose brain has too much space to be filled.
I sleep with less space in my bed
Than there is space in her head, for thoughts, doubts, love and anxiety.
Her pedal is quite consistently to the metal and I think that is why
I love her.
She goes so fast, so fast sometimes she forgets to look out the window and
Enjoy the scenery. Her passion-wild heart is stronger than mine.
It is an unmatchable strength that I only strive for.
She needs only to be reminded once in a while to keep a cool head.
She is mighty; she is sharp, she is one half of a ferocious team.
So please,
Pull me in and hold me close,
Feel the light guiding you home.

18. When Hope Falters
Jo-Ann Ledger
Poetry
I envision a sudden downpour in Jackson Square
A kind Louisiana rain
blessing with a quick visit;
in and done
bringing a sweet drop in temperature
Nature’s Sno Ball.
Complex layers of city smells
briefly rise up
then are dampened down
hours ahead of the morning soapy street cleaning.
The carriage horses on the perimeter of the Square
sense it’s a short cloud burst
as the water streams off their hot backs
they shift slowly from one hoof to another
droplets sparkling on long lashes
eyes closed, they are dreaming of velvet grass
as they wait, steaming on uneven streets.
The rain cools and freshens the horses’water troughs.
tourists take shelter under dripping balconies
or in stores and bars
“Let’s get a drink”
the a/c goose-bumping already moist skin
inducing slight shivers.
The heat will return after the rain
the brass bands will resume playing
the kids, having placed new pull tabs on their gym shoes,
will launch into a newly invigorated tap routine
the tarot card readers will emerge from under their colorful umbrellas
to entice the next customer.
What will be their fortune?
15

19. Schönbrunn
Marko Vesin
Visual Art

20. Molti Nemici, Molto Onore
Marko Vesin
Visual Art
17

21. Dream Sketcher
Claude Hill
Poetry
The Observer
The fallen branch is heavied with nature’s rain
Lying backwards like a lazy squirrel.
Blending into the fabric of beauty
Arousing our senses and intoxicating our deepest emotions.
Dripping life transmitted from trees
Washing my hair with nature’s hands.
The Dream Sketcher.
An ancient breeze from Eden gives inspiration.
Mortal hopes seeking to fill eternal deprivation.
Thread whether tightly knitted eventually needs a perceptu-
al
Seamstress to keep time from visiting.
The Dream sketcher filled with the lion’s fierce breath,
Journeys to realities unimagined like a living death.
The sketcher all along has figured out the bluff.
The Creator
The innate conflict captured in a moment of courage.
Daisies impact only once.
Creating fluid memories that feeds perception’s health.
The infinite facets of our achievements is never enough.
It’s experiencing detail through perceptual freedoms learned
in spirit.
I think this brownish gray paint will finish the design
of a Delicious branch resting on nature’s spine.
I sketched with dreams and painted with imaginations
brush.
Opening myself to life’s creative rush.

22. Youth Eventually Flips Towards Its Golden Page
Claude Hill
Poetry
The‘crowning’in itself is a temporary reign,
Of the human face’s fleeting name.
What is gained is the showering...
Of luxuries
Of short lived fame.
A platform for all to become like their idol’s rise.
Upon a space of grace.
Where pride blinds us all
To be the flowing beauty from within.
Let us not pretend till the end.
When the mirror reveals our counted days.
Sagging eye lids,
Drooping lips..
And baggy chin...
Ravaged, wrinkled breasts.
Dried up raisin like balls.
Hanging in its ruins by age’s demand.
So, the lived woman and man
Now bent back
Trying..... but gave up trying to stand up straight.
Has given completely to their hereditary’s fate,
Giving away beauty
Giving away sexy
Giving away legs
Giving away and now;
Hung up for the last time their
Prancing memories and its youthful age.
For my crown has fallen from
My head to...
My neck...
And then my feet.
Is this my aging defeat?
19

23. Of course, I wish I could live those days again;
However, at my age what else do I have to defend.
For I get the spoils of an old age.
And countless grand kids,
Who are so addicted to their gadgety trends.
After all I hope that, as I come to my end;
That I become one of their trends that never ends.
In their lasting memories of me.
After I fade from this mortal scene,
I hope all those that come after me;
Will get the benefits of growing into the golden years of their collected days’wisdom’s
being.

24. Towards The Sun
Melissa Baron
Visual Art
21

25. Left Behind
Melissa Baron
Visual Art

26. Queen On Her Throne
Shahenaz Ahmad
Poetry
Tommy just wanted love Billy just wanted his picture perfect
A lost woman he thought she needed him for purpose
But she was confident and honest man
She ain’t really need him to make it to her promise land
Heaven like king said so many Kings dead
Using thy women to come up with a king’s spread
Eatin lavishly but savagely he ravage each
Woman that he come across calling them ya majesty
Except tommy she was just another masterpiece
Of black woman too strong leavin men in tragedy
Too many black men livin weak and that’s shame for ya
And heros like Malcolm built the brain for you
And held the torch try to pass on the flame for u
So we can hold our women down while we claim for em
See her beauty in a world that brought the pain to her
What’s deep is the critique of the self
It’s skewed, we only feel as deep as they felt
See black became a cliché
Disheikays and mother land talk are the only things that we praise
Couldn’t see value in the woman that was next to him
Cuz she was from the same ghetto that was a pest to him
And he assumed that she was angry rough oppressed to him
Not wine in the wilderness but unworthy to him
Take a shot when u depressed cause she’s depression
But he couldn’t see tommy was embodiment of blessins
He wanted a robot some body that wont go cop
And start asking question or make him do right when he so not
See a queen aint scared to question her king
And a good king can bear to take lessons from his queen
Deteriorated infuriated inferior
Don’t feel like we men no more so we fake superior
23

27. Fat Linda
Natalie Helberg
Fiction
Linda was a fat chic’s name. I always knew it was a fat chic’s name but it was my
name: what choice did I have but to accept it? I wasn’t always fat. Days long gone, of
course, but I remember when shopping wasn’t a big deal, when I didn’t need a handi-
cap sticker to walk into a store, when the scornful looks of people didn’t bore into my
back long after I’d walked past them. Looks and whispers that would always haunt
me.
I heard the whispers before I noticed the display of canned tomatoes I’d just
knocked over. There was a loud crash, a toppling of hundreds of cans, the hissing
sound as some of them split open, spewing their red, liquid, stickiness, but I only heard
the whispers of the people around me. Of course I had to live in a small Midwestern
college town. No, I couldn’t have settled in the big city where my fat ass would merely
be as anonymous as the cat I lived with. That would have been too simple and such a
far stretch from who I was that I laughed out loud.“She’s laughing, her fat ass knocks
over three-hundred cans of tomatoes and she laughs.”I heard Amelia Bernheart, moth-
er to my daughter’s best friend, whisper to Tina Delaney, my neighbor. Did they think
that as well as being fat I was also deaf? I turned around quickly trying to maintain
some sense of dignity when my foot slipped on some of the tomato muck that was
quickly spreading across the floor. There was nothing for me to do…
“Ahhhhhggggghhhh…NOOOO… help… me…”I screamed at the top of my
lungs. My voice pierced through the small grocery store as I reached out. My hand
grabbed a section of shelf containing coffee beans and tea. Why I had thought it
would hold my three-hundred fifty plus pounds I’ll never know. The shelf broke free in
my hand as my weight came down around me. I landed with a violent quake in a pile
of smashed tomato cans, coffee beans and loose teas coming down around me, land-
ing in my hair. The store was silent. There was nothing but a few coffee beans pinging
off the shelf and one lone tomato can rolling at the end of the aisle stopping with a
thud against another still intact shelf.
I sat there crying, my left ankle in pain, knowing that in the wet, slippery mess I
would never be able to heave myself up. What was I going to do? Amelia looked at me
with disgust in her eyes. She spoke first.“God, no wonder Andrew left you. Wait until
he hears about this.”Could people really be that cruel? Did they think I chose to be this
fat? Were they really that small minded that they couldn’t see the pain and anguish

28. I lived in every day.
Yes, actually they were…
Through the haze of tomatoes and coffee beans I could see people starting to
move. They went around me, one of the grocery boys mopping up the mess of toma-
toes but no one helped me. No one even offered. As if I’d have let them try to help
“Fat Linda”up off the floor of Gibbon’s Grocery. I was still crying, big shaking cries, my
shoulders moving up and down as I sobbed on the floor, the smell of stewed toma-
toes, Jamaican coffee beans and green teas starting to create such an odor that I was
ready to vomit. It occurred to me in the fall that I may have also urinated on myself.
But God wouldn’t be that cruel would he?
“Oh my God, Mom! ... What happened? Why are you on the floor, oh my God,
why?”I heard Gabby’s teen angst through my tears and embarrassment. Gabby would
help me, my own daughter was here now, she could figure out how to get me up.
“I had a little fall honey, no big deal; I just need some help getting up.”I at-
tempted to get off of the ground.
“Don’t move…just don’t…”Gabby said to me in a tone of such disgust that I
stopped, my ass halfway off the ground, my hand supporting my stomach as it jiggled
around me.
“But…”I fumbled on my words. Why didn’t she want me to get up? I couldn’t
sit her all afternoon. The grocery boys were coming closer with their mops and old Mr.
Gibbons was approaching.
“Linda Vogt, little Linda, not to so little anymore, eh?”Mr. Gibbons spoke in a
cheery voice. He was such a nice man. He didn’t spend much time at the store any-
more but when he did an air of happiness permeated the store much like the fresh
baked goods that I never could resist. There was no malice in his voice; he wouldn’t be
cruel to me like the rest of this po-dunk town had been.“Well now…”he said thought-
fully and scratched his chin much like Santa Claus would.“How are we going to get
you out of that mess? I don’t know about you but I never heard of a tomato bath being
good for anything except getting rid of skunk smell.”And he laughed a big booming
reassuring laugh and for an instant I didn’t feel so alone.
“She can’t get up, Mr. Gibbons, can’t you see how fat she is. Why she’s probably the one
that knocked the cans over, she’s so gross!”Gabby spoke over me, through me and
around me all at the same time. Her tone of voice was so much like her father’s that it
was all I could do to not burst out into another round of sobbing and tears. Oh dear
God, my own daughter hated me too. My own little girl, the last of my children to even
maintain some contact with me. I knew I couldn’t count Jacob, that wasn’t his fault,
but Jonathon…
25

29. “Linda?”I looked up to see Andrew approaching. I couldn’t take it anymore. They
were all here. Between Andrew, Gabby, Amelia, Mr. Gibbons, the neighbors, and what
felt like the whole town of Marion, Iowa, I was surrounded by people that hated me.
I heaved myself up. Where I found the strength I’ll never know, how I didn’t slip back
down into the tomato, coffee bean and tea infested mess I can’t figure out but I didn’t.
I stood up on what I was pretty sure was a broken ankle, used the shopping cart for
support, and started to hobble out of the aisle. They all stood there, their jaws dropped
in disbelief. I heard Amelia laughing,“God, I thought we were going to have to get one
of the boys out here with a forklift. ”Thankfully, no one else said anything.
I saw Gabby shaking her head at Andrew furiously and whispering loudly,“No!
Please, you have to tell her I can’t.”Andrew came up behind me; I sucked in my breath,
how often had he touched me that way in the past?“Linda, wait… we need to talk.”
By this time I was sure I’d pissed on myself… at least the tomato sauce covered
up any other wet splotches on my disfigured body. I was a mess and he wanted to talk
to me. I kept walking.“Linda, don’t walk away…”He grabbed my arm.“WE NEED TO
TALK, NOW!”Andrew, my sweet Andrew who rarely raised his voice was yelling at me,
as I dripped piss, tomato juice and coffee grounds; my long, thick, once beautiful hair
covered in goop, my face streaked with tears, my pride wounded beyond anything I’d
felt in a long time. The fat of my stomach peering out slightly as my shirt hitched itself
into my waistband but I wasn’t stopping. They could come to my house, he could call
me, hell just have that damn lawyer that handled our divorce call me. Better yet, why
not just have that skinny, college bitch he was now dating come over and“TALK TO
ME!”
I knew I was ridiculous looking. I knew my life was pitiful and yes, even dis-
gusting by most standards. I knew I’d gotten lost in a well of depression, self-pitying,
self-deprecating behaviors. I also knew I could not stop. I knew that the loss of Jacob
was not something I’d ever come back from. Slipping and falling into a pile of tomato
cans was disturbing to say the least. However, nothing would ever feel like it did that
day they lowered my baby, mine and James’baby into that ground… the baby Andrew
loved as much as he’d loved me, never once questioning his place in Jacob’s life, nev-
er once belittling the only little boy James would ever have, the little boy he’d never
know. I’d lost James, then Jacob, Andrew, Jonathon, my entire life was reduced to boxes
of Hostess Cupcakes and frozen pizzas by the freezer full… Gabby was next. It was only
a matter of time.
I looked at Andrew, pleading with him with the blue eyes he’d once said“were
like pools of everlasting comfort…”I moved my arm away from his.“Not here Andrew,
come by the house in an hour, let me collect myself, please.”

30. I said this last word with strength. I looked over to the group of people now staring at
us, my daughter, anger in her eyes, arms folded across her chest, tapping her foot, little
sprays of tomato juice shooting onto Amelia’s red leather penny loafers, none of them
noticing any of this, too intent on my humiliation.
Andrew backed away, looked over at the assembly mocking me… quietly he
said,“Okay Linda, yes, later, I’ll be by later… this isn’t a social call, it’s…”He hesitated,
looking at my intently…“It’s business…”He looked at Gabby his voice trailing off.
“Gabby…”I sputtered everything with Gabby and custody was settled, she was
just 15, she was the only one I had left…“Gabby… okay…Gabby…”The crowd staring
at us was too much for me. I knew I’d regret him coming into our home later but better
on my turf than theirs.“Okay, I’ll see you later.”
With my head held high I walked out of the grocery store, leaving my cart at
the front, not buying anything, knowing from now on I’d venture an hour away into
Des Moines, to a large chain store where I’d never run into anyone I knew again and
if I knocked something over it wouldn’t matter who saw me… Fat Linda… Linda was
always a fat chic’s name… that was me, that was I, who else could it be?
27

31. “If You Knew Me:”Borrowed Words and Journal Snapshots
Christine Weatherby
Non-Fiction
These are a few short pages from my travel journal to Rwanda, Africa in 2011 where I
spent time during a two week internship, partnering with World Help.
A church where 5,000 were killed
Emotionally attempting to move passed a background with rows of skulls:
“Go back to your Universities and tell their stories”– Bishop John Rucyahana (paraphrased from a lec-
ture given at the Bloom Hotel, Kigali, Rwanda, 2011).
Our group tugged up to the curb in the white bus, the one with the faded
Bob Marley sticker clinging to a back window that could not open well, and a clutch
that convulsed as it tried to stop. Deep purple and dirty white crepe tissue streamers
adorned the carcass structure we were about to enter. Taken aback, I remembered
the places we had been, though it was hard to make sense of these surreal carcasses
of structures, these mosaics of stained broken glass, these artistries of artifacts, and
these watercolors of emotions that lingered too close for words- but not too close for
Lily Yeh1 inspired art! Outside the smell of coffee and bananas adorned the lush green
plants and unearthing rich soil that seemed bursting with life. I garden at home and
envied this lush soil. I wanted to stick my hands deep and plant something. We had
been driving and everyone was excited to finally get out of the vehicle.

32. There was an eruption of noise as we chaotically departed making our way to our new
destination from our travel itinerary.
Across the street were people wearing bright blue and yellow patterns. They
strolled along the curvy red dirt road. Some were riding rusty bikes while balancing so
many objects to sell. Some seemed to be smiling at us and even shouted,“Muraho”to
which we replied,“Muraho”trying hard to copy the language and to mirror back the
same kindness packaged with bright smiles. Outside a gardener was hacking at the
landscape with a machete.“He is keeping it beautiful.”We are told to honor those that
died at this church. Our group walked passed a sign, Ntarama Urwibutso Rwa Jenoside.
There is also a stone wall with the names of those that died here. We know the facts
about what has happened – 5,000 died in the massacre- however, I am not prepared as
I enter through the narrow entryway of broken bricks and collected collages of chaos.
Incidentally, it is the shelves and shelves of skulls staring back that catch me off guard
as if looking through a glass darkly, in reverse.
29

33. Memory Mosaics in Honor of the Women of Rwanda:
“When Western countries can make themselves feel good about their virtue by offering“relief”to others,
they will do it. But when help calls for sacrifice, as it did in 1994, the West seems to prefer sacrificing
Africa to putting any of its own resources or people at risk”– Emmanuel Katongole“Mirror to the Church:
Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda, p. 44).
Talking softly now is a beautiful older African woman. I huddle to the front to
hear her speak in spite of the scary skulls, tightly packed in little rows. I get as close as
I can without defying my western social conventions by being impolite to those in my
group. As I listen and embrace her words, I just feel like I have been punched in the
stomach. I can’t move. I can’t speak. I am trying to hold back tears. My legs are shaking.
She pulls back her long hair, she pulls back her dress, and she pulls back her shirt to re-
veal multiple machete scars like maps of wounds to her body. Behind her, these skulls
of those she once loved in her community - rows and rows of skulls. On the other walls
are hanging clothes of the dead that have been splattered in blood. Shoes, church
pews, pans that should be filled with umutsima, isombe, and mizuzu. There is also this
heavy lingering sadness like the ghosts of many people who can no longer speak with
words, just the etchings of these displaced artifacts. In contrast to the collages inspired
by Yeh, these are not yet arranged artfully to resurrect hope and community. In con-
trast, these artifacts reveal a more horrific story of those that died here. The woman
talks about coming to this church for protection; protection from those she used to
know-from those she called neighbors. Many of the men fought outside with stones
and rocks. Overtaken, crash, and running to hide. Her worst scars are no longer visible
on the body-they are etched in her soul. Someone grabbed her baby that she was
carrying on her back. She watched the whole thing. Somehow, she has survived the
whole thing.
With respect, why do you stay here? Is it healthy to stay in such a place?“To
honor my loved ones, to care for the grounds here, and to tell their story so the world
may know.”It seems that there is a belief that their stories could help bring forgiveness
to the global community in the hopes of creating a world where this would not hap-
pen again.
She narrates amid these chaotically arranged artifacts. She reads a poem writ-
ten by a boy who stopped to write while the church’s outer body was being broken
and attacked.
I don’t remember the exact words, but they are similar to:“you don’t know me
because if you knew me, then you could not do this to me.”It sounds better- more ele-
gant- in Kinyarwanda. There is a broken stained glass window that reveals a snapshot

34. of what this structure was like when it held different contents and memories. In other
places in Rwanda, many people had come to worship together before the killing start-
ed. Now, something different in the architecture of churches and many unanswered
philosophical and geopolitical questions remain along with these tightly packed rows
of skulls.
She took us to another structure in the back. We are told this used to be the
Sunday school room. I can’t breathe. There is fractured wood and more artifacts splin-
tered on the floor. It is hard to emotionally look down so I absorb as much as possible
using my peripheral vision. On the wall are stains of blood and chunky splattered
brains. There is an object we are shown, like a pool stick or a pole, but I don’t under-
stand at first all the logistics. I ask questions later during the debriefing when I am
alone with other women. We are told this object was used to hurt the women. They
died bleeding slowly. It may have taken hours to die. The last images they must have
seen were of their children smashed against the wall and splatters of blood. This used
to be an architecture and body of faith and community. I would hear similar stories
when we visited the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. There is a young man who works
there whose mom was systematically murdered in a similar way. I would see more
rows and rows of skulls. I would see pictures of children and more women whose lives
were cut short by machetes, by rape, and/or by mutilation with a long spear.
I am a mother and I have trouble emotionally leaving this place and the widow’s
village where I sang songs with a survivor for hours on the dirt floor of her home. We
just held each other as we appealed to a higher power. It is hard to imagine surviving
something like this and deep down I know that I would want to die too. I doubt I would
have the same courage as these beautiful women of Rwanda. I am unable to under-
stand how my country and how the global community could let this happen. I do not
want to leave. How can I go back to my country and how can I relate to people that
I know? Our group is told by many Rwandan Nationals we meet that it is important
to tell these stories when we get back to our Universities. I want to honor the bodies
and spirits of those that passed here- by telling their stories- so, that the people of my
country may fall in love with the people the way that I have fallen in love with them.
Could there still be a resurrection, a forgiveness, or a hope to change things? Could we
really prevent something like this from ever happening again, anywhere? How can we
protect those that are being oppressed without imprinting and imposing imperialisms
and ideologies that cause harm? There are so many stories of courage, of compassion,
of survival, of forgiveness, and of rebuilding to live life well. Much better than I have
seen of those in my country. There is still much I am continuing to learn from the peo-
ple of Rwanda.
31

35. Such profound beauty colliding in nature and in people unlike anything I had
ever experienced. Memories equally mixed with pain and a resilience to repair what
broken bodies and spirits could still be mended. You don’t know them. If you knew
them then you could not have let it happen.
1-Lily Yeh is part of Barefoot Artists, an organization that uses art to rebuild distressed
communities.
2-Ntarama Urwibutso Rwa Jenoside. A small Catholic Church about 25 km South of Ki-
gali. About 5,000 people were killed here. Women were systematically raped. Violence
against women was a strategy of war.
Kinyarwanda Words:
Muraho: Hello
Umutsima: Corn with Pasta
Isombe: Cassava Leaves
Mizuzu: Fried Plantains

36. Rivet
Misturat Ganiyu
Poetry
Demolish your home.
Sculpture my Atheist belief.
Paint your God.
Filter Her truths.
Omit your lies.
Lock our pessimistic worries.
Place his masculine tools next to her heels.
No, next to her lipstick.
No, next to our blurred definition of masculinity and
Femininity and sexy and beautiful and ugly.
Gaze at this chaos
Look at our creation.
Wedidthis
We-Did-This
WEDIDTHIS.
33

37. RE: Turn
Melissa DiGrazia
Poetry
My other half went missing.
Perhaps you have seen him?
He wears a smirk and hangs around
dirty bars with loose women.
My daughter and I have been waiting…
Nearly a year… for his
Return.
Return me to when times were new.
When love was new,
When feelings were mutual,
Though in your mind,
never mutually exclusive.
A time before I KNEW.
I turn and face the mirror.
That’s me, right there, right here.
More thin, but….
Still here.
I turn to look at our daughter.
She is lovely and beautiful and brilliant,
And she is half you and half me.
She is growing quickly and she is
Still here.
All that is missing is you.
You are missing so much,
As much as you are missed…
And your visits are becoming less and less.
Can you not see that I am trying to show you what is important?
She is. She is love.

38. She is number one in my life,
But you treat her as a job,
And you call me with your bullshit excuses to cancel,
When I AM THE ONE who sees her disappointed face,
And I am the one who sees her tears and hears her cries.
She’s six. She doesn’t understand.
Either fix it or leave. Completely.
Turn and walk away for good,
instead of charming us with your niceties.
Turn and walk away from us and I will reap all of the benefits,
And you will die alone.
Still loved by us, but still alone.
I tried to tell you.
35

39. Responsibility
Marko Vesin
Visual Art

40. Have Sex, Hate Sexism
Marko Vesin
Visual Art
37

41. Love
Marko Vesin
Visual Art

42. Untitled
Jessica Cavinder
Visual Art
39

43. Grief By Proxy
Melissa Baron
Fiction
She cries for a man I spent the better part of my childhood hating.
My friend, my flaxen sister of all these years, sits in front of me with her family,
and I watch her thin shoulders shake. Her narrow shoulder blades jut with each bodily
wrack, liken to cut through her translucent skin, and I wonder –
I wonder who those tears are really for.
I want them to be for herself.
I feel my own throat close in a grief by proxy, but it is not grief for this man.
My heartache is a puzzled, confounded thing as I try to understand why he deserves
this kind of reaction from them. All he did was die. All he ever did as he lived was hurt
them, in a million stinging ways. Sometimes with near-fatal wounds.
“The Williamsons would like to thank everyone for coming,”the priest says. He
looks mildly uncomfortable, like I feel sitting in the cold funeral home, dressed for the
summer heat outside instead of the room’s February temperatures. I don’t know him;
I know very few people in this room, except for Ava, her mother and sisters. And there
are very few people.
He leads the room into a prayer. Ava’s shoulders hunch as each supplication
acts like the whip of a willow branch. I reach forward and twine my fingers through her
hair, resting my hand against her back, hoping to ease some of the pain bowing her
spine. She sniffles as her back subtly relaxes.
“Henry lived a full life,”the priest tells the room of mourners.“He loved his wife
and daughters.”
Now I feel as if the willow branch has been lashed out at me. My back stiffens
with disbelief, although I knew it was coming.
“He enjoyed…”
Terrorizing his daughters, my mind supplants in place of Henry Williamson’s
favorite pastimes. As well as his wife. Sharon sits dry-eyed by the youngest crying Wil-
liamson daughter, staring straight ahead toward Henry’s heavily made up face in the
casket at the front of the room. The room that reeks of too many cold flowers.
It took her years to leave him. After it became so terrible that she changed the
locks while he was gone and called the police when he hammered at the front door
and bellowed like a sick bear with its foot in a trap. And then she took him back when

44. we were in high school. That was the first time I ever witnessed real anger from Ava.
Ava, who possessed the sunniest disposition of anyone I know, much less someone
from her background. Ava, who then left home, and floated from house to house until
she met her future husband at my father’s fortieth birthday party.
“…he had a weakness for sweet tarts…”
If sweet tarts were an alias for cocaine. I found out about the drugs much later.
Sharon called them“episodes”when we were kids. Ava’s house was a ranch, and the at-
tached garage had been remodeled as an extension of the house. Her room was in the
old garage, along with a small area for the computer, washer and dryer, a dingy little
bathroom, and her mother’s sewing room. It was colder in there, but miles away from
her parent’s and sister’s bedrooms at the other end. I hardly ever saw the younger girls’
room. Ava and I spent all of our time either outside or in her room playing video games
as her hamster explored by our feet. I used to set that warm little body on my stomach
and feel her tiny clawed feet tickle over my shirt.
Sharon would come to the door sometimes and tell us to play outside. Build a
snow fort, go down to the creek, ride your bikes to the library; Daddy’s having an epi-
sode. Be back before dark.
“…sociable. Henry had a lot of friends over the years.”
I never saw any. When I did see him, he had ambled his way out of his dank, cig-
arette hazed cave to the living room. He was the tallest man I had ever seen. He walked
with an odd slump to his shoulders, his neck craned forward and down, encumbered
by all that height like a tree with heavy fruit weighing down its limbs. He never wore
enough clothes in the house. When he wasn’t in the living room, he was in the bed-
room, hollering for Sharon or one of the girls like a bedridden tyrant king, ordering the
servants to bring him sustenance. They scampered to comply, to please and placate,
and then scattered like church mice, Ava sweeping me out of the house with her. She
didn’t like to have me in a room near him for long.
None of that makes it into the priest’s eulogy.
My father met him once. Ava went away to band camp when we were in eighth
grade. We both played trumpet in the school band – that was how we met - but a
week-long stay at a camp spelled disaster for my socially inept, shy heart. Ava, though,
desperately wanted to go, and saved every dollar she earned mowing lawns, deliver-
ing papers, and babysitting to pay for it. The Williamson brood was driving the hour
and a half to pick her up, and I wanted to go. I could endure Henry Williamson to see
Ava. Dad wanted to speak with him before they headed out with me as cargo.
Dad did not want me over at their house any longer after that.
I never went into great detail with my parents, how things were at Ava’s. Not
41

45. when I was a child. I didn’t fully understand it when we were ten, eleven; nothing overt
happened when I was there. He was good at what he did. Ava was always sparse on
details, naturally cheerful, peacekeeping; she was a master at downplay. But my dad
saw something in Henry’s face that afternoon, heard it in his voice. Ava would play at
our house – any time she wanted. She could stay however long she needed.
Ava loves my parents.
They’re not here for the funeral. We moved away when I was in high school, and
Ava’s visits became sparser. She moved so frequently to avoid her home that I couldn’t
keep up. She hadn’t emancipated herself, and she wanted to finish high school at the
same school. I was relieved she was no longer at home, but I worried when I didn’t
know where her temporary home was and with whom. She was so good at downplay-
ing. Too trusting, sometimes, too willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, and
so pretty; but she wasn’t with the Williamsons. Ava’s ethereal beauty put her more at
risk at home than anywhere else. We graduated, she found a live-in nanny job, and my
heart eased. I knew where to find her.
Every time I could see her then, and now as adults with different lives, the long
weeks and months of separation fall away like little nothings. We’re children again,
telling each other things no one else has the capacity to understand.
Much less a priest with no idea of the sickness that lived inside the man in the
casket.
I understand why we feel the need to say positive things about those who have
passed on. It has long been considered a crass practice to speak ill of the dead. But I
was the only friend of Ava’s, or any of the girls, who had that much exposure to the
house on Theodore and what lived in it. The only person Ava felt comfortable telling
the things that went on when I was not there, when we were much older and she had
the strength to say them out loud. If I were to go up there and speak, the message
would be a little different.
As a child, I could not stand to be in the same room with this man.
Today, my fellow gatherers, is the only day in which I can comfortably share a
room with him.
“Henry would appreciate seeing those he loved here, wishing him well into the
next life. Seek and receive comfort from one another as we mourn his passing.”
The priest finally finishes delivering platitudes that set my teeth on edge, and
the family rises to say their final goodbyes. I stay in my seat and only rise when Ava is
done. She walks away slowly from the casket, toward where I stand.
She looks far fresher than the dying flowers around her, despite the tear tracks
running down her cheeks. When she meets my eyes, her blue ones well with

46. fresh tears. I embrace her and Ava squeezes me tightly, her frame shaking as she buries
her head in my shoulder. As I’m stroking her hair, she whispers something in my ear
that opens the floodgates of my heart.
“It’s finally over.”
43

47. Gleaning
Sarah Hirsch
Non-Fiction
My entire childhood was spent in the Southern United States, a place aptly
named the Bible Belt. At least three times a week, I attended church: twice on Sun-
days, once Wednesday nights, and occasionally for a Thursday bible-study in a con-
gregation member’s home. As I grew older and began to question my spirituality, my
attendance at the gigantic United Methodist church began to drop, but I was able to
hang onto one of the most important principles I obtained while an active member—
the importance of becoming immersed in a community so that it may flourish. My
mother, who I now know identifies herself as agnostic, prioritized the church in my and
my brother’s childhoods so that we would walk away with the experience of a loving,
connected community, regardless of what we would confirm as our religious beliefs in
adulthood. While we were young, probably no older than elementary school, she took
on a leadership role in an area of the church’s contribution to the community through
agriculture in a dying practice of gleaning—the collection of leftover fruits and vege-
tables leftover from a farm’s harvest. Because Harry and I were still young, the activity
was also mandatory for us, and although I did not always enjoy the obligation, it was
absolutely essential in the construction of who I am today.
Early mornings and damp conditions were an extremely unattractive prospect
as an adolescent being pried from my warm, dry bed. Regardless, Mom pulled me
and Harry into the kitchen for a quick breakfast and heavy clothes before loading us
into the car and heading for the cornfields. In a group of about twenty members of all
ages, including other children brought against their wishes, we made our way through
the thickets of corn, grabbing any ears missed in the earlier harvest. We stuffed the
corn into large, black trash-bags which overflowed by our return to the car. The cold,
drizzling rain made us children even more disagreeable. After we stripped away the
layers of soaked-through jackets and leggings, we again climbed into the car and were
treated with watery hot chocolate on our ride to the church. Located in downtown
Jackson, Mississippi, the church was surrounded by a population experiencing desper-
ate hunger and need. We unloaded the corn from the cars into the church gymnasi-
um, and sat in a circle shucking it, careful to remove as much of the silk from the ears
as our quick fingers could manage. The corn continued on its journey to Stewpot, a
local soup kitchen dedicated to the hungry citizens of Jackson, where it made it was

48. thankfully able to provide nourishment to people rather than rot in that cold, emp-
ty field. Although I was young, I remember vividly grasping the concept of waste as
we took the“leftovers”from a field that would lie dormant until it was cleared in the
spring.
Pecans trees are abundant in many parts of Mississippi, and in one venture of
gleaning, we were allowed to gather pecans from a farm south of Jackson. It may have
been early fall—I remember the leaves crunching beneath our feet—but it was warm
enough to play freely. My brother had now become good friends with some other
mischievous boys whose mother and mine also hit it off. I strolled and picked pecans
with the women while the boys disappeared into the fantasy always created within
woodlands. A good amount of time passed—we could hear the boys playing so knew
they weren’t far off—and they returned before long, covered head to toe in mud. We
all had a good laugh over their silliness, and our industrious mothers decided to utilize
the huge garbage bags as protectors for the car seats. They tore a hole in the tops of
the bags and on each of the sides, and then pulled them over each boy’s head to wear
until we got home. During the hour-long drive, the mud began to dry, and the boys
screamed and cried that they itched under the garbage bags. We skipped going back
to the church that day in favor of returning home for a fresh change of clothes. The
pecans did make their way to the church, ultimately, and I always hoped they’d been
turned into pies.
In all of our experiences with gleaning various foods, without a doubt, the most
difficult to harvest were turnips. The tricky root vegetables held their grip on the earth
with unrelenting force; although pulling with all of my energy, I was only able to get
a few out. The adults had better success with the purple and white orbs—seemingly
innocent, but undeniably sinister. Again, we found ourselves in an unpleasantly cold
and damp terrain, and I was entirely unpleased with the situation. Turnips are a staple
in Southern cuisine, though, and in reflection, I believe that these may have been one
of the most appreciated items that we were able to donate to the community. In many
households, braised turnip greens are found at every Sunday table, and I hope that
they were able to provide many people with the warmth of sentimentality that comes
along with a deliciously familiar meal.
The last gleaning trip that I can remember was by far the most pleasant; in stark
contrast to the turnip harvest, our trip to a local blueberry farm was incredibly pain-
less and fruitful. The joyful farmer, happy to have someone to relieve him of his overly
abundant crop, joked with the children as he pointed to the scale and insisted that he
wouldn’t let us off the property until we gained five pounds. We did our best to ac-
complish just that. Walking through the bushes, I grabbed branches from their source
45

49. and pulled it toward my basket, allowing the berries to drop in bunches. Every time it
filled, I returned to the boxes that held the overall harvest, dropped the berries in, and
returned for more. As I worked, I ate my weight in berries; my hands and mouth were
dyed blue when we departed. This specific harvest left a very significant imprint on
my memory: as we drove away, I noticed we weren’t heading to church, and instead
we arrived at the headquarters of a local children’s shelter. I helped my mother unload
the boxes and boxes of blueberries, all the while contemplating the small bodies that
they would ultimately nourish.
As an adult, I occasionally describe my experience with gleaning, but I have not
met anyone with similar knowledge of the practice or experience with it. It’s impossi-
ble to emphasize how much I appreciate its influence on me: it provoked within me,
even at a young age, the understanding that our bodies are nourished from foods that
grow from the earth. The comprehension that it is a personal responsibility that I must
undertake to participate in my community. Appreciation of the work that actually
goes into each step of a single meal—from the growing of the foods, to their harvest
and shipment, and ultimately, their readiness to be eaten. In my adulthood, especially
as a new parent, I have encountered many skeptics of the church and its influence on
children. Its ability to integrate citizens within the community is undeniable, though,
and I can only hope that I will be able to provide my own children with the same expe-
riences that my mother made available to me and my brother.

50. Yellowscape
Elizabeth Popp
Visual Art
47

51. Exhibit_001
Marko Vesin
Poetry
see the violets afire
nailed to walls of granite
three virgins walk the desert
their arms cut lengthwise
their wrists bound
and they will see
know
trust
reveal
be
crow
lust
feel
bestial passions
celestial sacrifice
walking on dead steps
fighting for burial mounds
speaking in foreign tongues
dancing on hallowed ground1
1 Lyrical extract from ‘Walking on Dead Steps’ by SPK.

52. Exhibit_002
Marko Vesin
Poetry
as we laid beneath the
street lights
you held me
held me
held me
held me
held me
held me
hold me
held me
held me
held me
held me
held me
hold me
held me
held me
held me
held me
held me
peace
49

53. Exhibit_003
Marko Vesin
Poetry
i sat there, watching
her dance
her shine
her kill
her cum
her become
beauty looms over our hearts
death shines from within
fixed
manageable
the lights of the cop car / television static
the scent of her perfume / blood smears the screen
the feeling of completion / hip bones and cigarettes
infinite rose / this is what you paid for
pray for us / we want it
ineffable virgin / the all-american spectacle
echo our sorrows / kill it, man, kill it
The gods of fortune
lay raped on a bed of roses

54. Exhibit_004
Marko Vesin
Poetry
the edge fades
never without
i can see
i am become
lucifer, doux sauveur!
vous connaître, c’est vous aimer
de preference à tout.1
il est dans le cœur
il est dans le cœur
il est dans le cœur noir2
as we are washed away by the sea
beneath the gray sky
in our embrace
our ecstasy
1 Lucifer, sweet savior! To know you is to love you and to prefer you above all.
2 It is in the heart. It is in the black heart. 51

55. Exhibit_005
Marko Vesin
Poetry
black stars rise
τὰ πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει1
ménage à trois with Persephone and Atë…2
…joy! Oh, sweet, wretched joy!
ite, missa est3
bull forth with your somatic undulations
sidereal birth gives way to an irascible dream
on the edge of love we see hell
altars of marble, strewn with dead loti and covered in snow
angels of sin imbue my heaven-bound dream
none other than the black stars above receive my orison
death blossoms in military temples; drowning in snow
guerre-chic est devenu la nouvelle héroïne-chic.4
केवलज्ञान5
1[Greek] “Everything flows, nothing stands still.”
2 (Persephone) – Greek mythological figure, daughter of Zeus and Demeter; queen of the underworld. (Atë) – Greek goddess of mischief,
delusion, ruin, and folly; refers to heroic action as a result of hubris that results in either ruin or death.
3 [Latin] “Go, the dismissal is made.” Phrase signifying the conclusion of the Mass of the Roman Rite; official translation: “Go forth, the Mass
is ended.”
4 War-chic has become the new heroin-chic.
5 evala Jnana. Jain notion of omniscience – absolute or supreme knowledge; believed to be intrinsic trait in all souls, achieve by ridding one’s
soul of karmic particles (suffering, pain, etc.).

56. The Clock On The Wall
Connor McQueen
Poetry
There is a clock resting on my bedroom wall.
It broke some months ago and I thought nothing of it.
Obviously, I had many other means of telling time so I went about my life,
as if nothing had changed because really,
nothing had.
It was such an insignificant event in my life that
it was put out of my mind immediately.
The hands rested upon each other,
both pointing to twelve,
midnight.
Days have passed and I notice I’m beginning to lose track of myself.
I sit in my bed staring endlessly at the patterns on my sheets and walls.
Some sort of wire has snapped in my brain hurling me into a frenzy of hurriedness.
My attention span is suffering and I lack drive.
I feel I am losing it.
I read four pages of a book, put it down,
I write a half of a poem and quit.
My eyes slip to the clock.
Two hands unused.
Just like me.
“Move, damnit, move!”I think, trying to push my eyes out of my head.
I put two fresh batteries in it not two minutes ago, and nothing has happened.
I tell myself that it is just a clock. I laugh and carelessly toss it to the ground, rolling my eyes.
“Forget about it,”I think as I lay down to sleep,
“Time still goes on either way.”
I am all alone in a large field and I am walking freely along the blades of grass.
Out of nowhere I hear a faint clicking sound, like a far-away clap.
It begins to get louder and louder, filling my ear drums.
It is a crescendo of cacophony.
I can hear nothing else.
53

57. I am completely unable to drown the noise out.
Two distinct clicks over and over again, driving me insane.
It has now become apparent to me, after screaming and covering my ears,
That it is the sound of a clock.
Tick tock, tick tock.
I am paralyzed and screaming and writhing and kicking and dying.
That clock, that clock will be the death of me.
I try to give it one last chance,
I scream loudly and
I wake up.
In a cold sweat, I sit up, slouching in my bed, dead eyes staring into the pitch dark.
Yet I notice that after seconds of confusion and fear that there is a deep silence in my bedroom.
There is no ticking, no tocking. Everything is as quiet as the moment before you are born into the world.
I am soothed and relieved from this silence and I ease back into slumber,
trying to put that dream out of my memory for good.
After that night my life begins to be more monotonous than before.
I am becoming a recluse, a hermit, a castaway.
It feels like a very deep depression.
I eat, breathe, sort of sleep,
And I barely live.
I haven’t seen another soul in weeks and I am so alone.
I have developed very odd compulsions and habits in recent days.
I have painted my walls white and gotten rid of most of my possessions, and
I felt no need to have anything anymore, I had no attachments.
Well, except for that clock.
It just sat there on the ground, lying uselessly just waiting for a purpose.
This is how I felt. I felt broken, hopeless, ineffectual.
This is what my life was reduced to.
Lying in bed for days, just
staring at the clock.
I could feel my eyes becoming bloodshot and I could sense my mind deteriorating.
Becoming so fixated on one thing leaves no room for caring or being self-aware in life.
Deep down I knew this, but no thought could surpass my overbearing, undying obsession with the clock.
Was it going to lay there, dormant and unmoving forever, until I waste away into nothing?
Was it going to sprout legs and begin walking all over the walls? I have no clue.

58. All I know is that I cannot take my eyes off of the goddamn thing.
I haven’t showered, eaten or even gotten up in days.
I can almost feel my muscle’s atrophy.
But obviously, I do not care.
It matters not.
My mind has become just as useless as my body now. I have narrowed my obsession to,
“This clock needs to start working. How can it not work? It has given up! Why? Just work, just work.”
I feel the needlessness of it attempt to creep in but I actively squash any helpful or necessary thoughts.
I have nothing but time to wait for the time to start again. It will, it must.
As my brain is getting too heavy…tick tock, tick tock.
Alas! The hand, it is moving! The piercing click of the clock is blowing my eardrums to bits.
I have waited and waited and it has finally happened! I am waiting no more.
The clock is ticking like the day that it was first hoisted onto the wall.
The beautiful melody of the machinery lifts my spirits
and I attempt to lift myself up from my bed.
My right arm gives out under the pressure and my deadweight slowly begins to slip.
I am falling and am expending all my remaining energy to attempt to grip the sheets or anything.
My effort is to no avail and I am forced by gravity off of my bed and my temple is struck by my end table.
There is a quick rush in my head that I must have never felt before. White specks of paint on my floor
are covered by a steady flow of red that I am seeing through one eye of blurry, sideways vision.
I am in pain, I still feel broken and there is a large chance that that is now actually true.
What was, seconds ago, a sweet symphony of bliss and happiness and relief,
is now a discordance filtered through matted hair and flowing crimson.
What a sight I must be, a red mess with a fatal gash and a smile.
Am I at peace or has my brain finally been detached?
I lay, next to lifeless on my bedroom floor, with nothing left but my waning focus.
It is all put upon the ticking. I cannot see it but I hear it and it is all that exists in these moments.
I have lost all feeling. I feel no disappointment, no fear and I am fairly certain my body is shutting down.
My vision is all red and the ticking seems to be slightly fading. I have tried to yell but I figured,
“What is the purpose, seeing as this ticking is really all that exists or has ever existed?”
The fear, the confusion, and all the endless waiting,
Summed up to these two hands ceasing to move.
I am stiff and the hands lay upon one another.
It is harmony, it is death, it is the end.
And it is midnight.
55

59. Belmont
Marko Vesin
Visual Art

60. Eternal Whisper
Andrew Besbekos
Poetry
Deep Within Our Skin
Our Own Breath Draws In Too Thin
Like Breathing in Fire
Bewildered To Us
We Cannot Hear Beyond It
Knots through Our Own Ears
The Tighter It Goes
The Brighter We See Beyond
The Eternal Sense
The Tear through the Sense
I Hear What Cannot Be Heard
A Voice in the Wind
A Wind Eternal
Through The Mists of The Beyond
Through Twists of the Void
We Now See the Truth
Through Thee We Do Realize Now
We Can Taste Freedom
57

61. Moments of Clarity: Destined to be Cool
Kyle Delnegro
Fiction
I just found out the show“The Voice”involved singing. I thought it was about a paranoid
schizophrenic.
Whenever I see a fire, I immediately throw a brick though a window because all of those
signs say“In case of fire, break glass.”
I was running two miles a day for a while, but then they chained up that damn dog.
One day, the internet will become real life and real life will become the internet. Mothers
everywhere will yell at their children to quit playing outside and get back to Facebook.
I may only be one man, but I could eat enough chicken nuggets to feed like 30 little kids.
Hemingway vs. Faulkner was the first Biggie vs. Tupac.
I’m trilingual. I’ll try any language once.
Isn’t it weird that street-sweepers are really just big toothbrushes for the road?

62. The Gratitude I Owe A Stranger
Adan Alvarado
Non-Fiction
My pre-adolescent summers were spent watching baseball games. Not at
Comiskey or Wrigley, but at a local field. Twice, sometimes three times a week my Mom
dragged me to my Sister’s games. I was one of the most vocal yet reluctant supporters
of the Alley Cats. Perhaps I should explain the team name. As one may expect, in our
park district the baseball teams got most of the attention. Baseball fields had announc-
er booths and digital score boards, while the Softball fields had a fold up table and a
few ten year olds who worked the manual board for a cup of RC. So when it came to
uniforms and team names, the Baseball teams wore button ups with the names Brew-
ers and Phillies across the chest, while the Softball players were reduced to pullover
polyester and cheap script spelling out some sort of feline, e.g. Wild Cats, Black Cats,
Jungle Cats, etc.
I remember a multitude of moments spent at those fields; moments ranging
from trivial to pivotal. I remember huddling under the field house almost every year
on“picture day”because like clockwork on that day a monsoon would sweep through
the Midwest for an afternoon. I remember the sound of my Sister’s cracking fibula after
an aggressive slide into home plate. I can recall how I spent half of some games chas-
ing around a young girl named Katie after she would grab my trusty Hornets cap from
atop my head and throw it as far as her arm would allow. I also remember the sour face
Katie made when I tried to kiss her under the awning of the concession stand.
But amongst the memories of broken bones and broken hearts there is one day
that stands out, that remains garishly vivid, yet surreal – a nightmarish archival singu-
larity. As I mentioned, my Sister was an Alley Cat; a fitting team for my sister to end up
on because her gritty play was the stuff of legends around the fields, and at times a bit
controversial. My sister was a back catcher and embodied the traditional mold for the
position, which is to say she talked a lot of shit behind the plate. On numerous occa-
sions she caused players to cry as they stood in the batter’s box. This halted play for the
issuing of warnings and consoling of young girls who were just told they swing a bat
like their“snatch was clutching the handle – choke up!”I tell you this because it was my
Sister’s style of play that set the circumstances for the witnessing of an event that still
haunts me two decades later.
Watching my sister typically consisted of two reliable scenarios.
59

63. 1) Dicking around with“field”friends who were either waiting to play a game,
or also“watching”older siblings.
Or
2) Buggin’the shit out of my Mom with one of the following questions:
a. When I was hungry –“Can I have money for a hotdog?”
b. When I was thirsty –“Can I have money for some pop?”
c. When I wasn’t hungry –“Can I have money for a Cow Tale?”
d. “Can we go now?”
This is to say I paid very little attention to the actual game. Unless of course
I had done something foolish: throw rocks at porta-potties, hit rocks with an alumi-
num bat, anything really regarding rocks typically landed me on the bleacher next to
my Mom. However, this day was a bit different. On this day it wasn’t my“dicking”or
“buggin’”that had me sitting on the bleachers went it all went down, but my Sister. I
remember my Mom shouting my Sister’s name. It seemed a little out of place because
the tone being used was usually reserved for when my Mom shouted my name. When I
went to investigate I saw my Mom shaking her head in disappointment and my Sister’s
coach leading her back to the dugout as she randomly glanced back and hurled the
kind of epithets at the ump that would most surely get her grounded once we got
home. Once the scene concluded and the game resumed I found myself sitting next to
my Mom worrying for my Sister’s safety.
It was at that point that my vivid recollection of the day really begins. I noticed
a man walking up the white gravel that paved the paths to the baseball diamonds.
He stood out to me in the crowd (relatively speaking) because he looked remarkably
like Marty Jannetty of World Wrestling Federation fame. Jannetty was one half of the
perennial tag team championship contenders: The Rockers, a favorite of mine at the
time. He had long feathered hair, and he was wearing a waist length leather jacket over
a t-shirt with an abstract design comprised of the neon colors that ruled the era. He
climbed to the top bleacher on the Alley Cat side of the field. I had forgotten about my
Sister’s outburst, and my worry for her dissolved with every glance I sneaked of this
cool looking stranger.“Marty”sat there, solemn, looking out onto the diamond.
The manners my Mom worked tirelessly to instill in me quickly fell to the way-
side, and my clandestine glances became a shameless stare, but Marty didn’t notice.
After a good few minutes of staring at Marty he began to fall out of focus; my attention
suddenly directed elsewhere; toward a quartet of men making their way toward mine
and Marty’s bleachers.
One of the members picked up his pace heading to the front of the pack. He
had smashed his long coarse hair under a hat yet strands still hung over his eyes and

64. against his stubble laden face. His cheekbones pointed to the heavens and his eyes sat
deep in his narrow skull. To this day I am not sure if it was intuition or the re-imagining
of history, but I seem to remember, even feel the churning of my stomach as his prox-
imity grew closer. There seemed to be a nastiness to him; in this man existed a part of
humanity that I had never seen, nor had ever wished to. Again, this may just be editori-
alizing on my part for what was to follow.
The man reached up grabbing the shoulders of Marty’s leather jacket. He
yanked back with gangly brute force and let out a howl in the process. Marty had
turned completely over the back bleacher and now lay on his belly dazed; desperately
attempting to shake the embedded gravel from his beautiful face. Those sitting on
the bleachers jumped up, and some yelled, but I just sat. The pack moved in quickly
delivering one malicious and hateful blow after another. The man with the stubble and
high cheek bones back peddled - laughing as he moved. After fifteen seconds or so
he called for the rest of the men to follow. They vanished from the fields amongst the
threats of called police.
I still remember the fear in his eyes as he went over. It was a heightened version
of the fear I noticed when he first sat down. A fear I had mistaken for sadness. At that
time I couldn’t comprehend fear like that. Sure, my Folks verbal fights would induce
some pretty strong fear in both my Sister and I. It was also never fun receiving one of
those looks from my Mother when I was misbehaving in public; those car rides home
were full of fear. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand fear; it was that I didn’t understand
fear that was free or detached from some kind of love. When my Parents fought,
regardless how vicious it got, I knew love existed between them. When my Sister or
I really screwed up, and we got physically punished; I knew our Parents still loved us.
In fact, I think a part of me knew that the act itself, despite the momentary pained it
caused, was out of love. This wasn’t the case for Marty, for his eyes were full of fear
without love. And to find out that such a fear was caused by another human being was
simply incomprehensible.
A couple people helped Marty to his feet, but any further assistance was met
with resistance. Marty brushed the tiny rocks from his palms and wiped the blood from
his face. He departed in the same direction as his attackers. It was at this point that I
finally moved. I swung my legs to the left and off the wooden plank and placed my
feet on the gravel making my way around the back of the bleachers. I looked as Marty
made his way down the path and over the white dusty horizon, and as he disappeared
into the forest that surrounded the baseball field, he took with him any desire I’d ever
have for acts of violence.
61

65. Šumarice‘41
Marko Vesin
Visual Art

66. Seashells
Melissa Baron
Visual Art
63

67. Gleam
Melissa Baron
Fiction

68. Untitled
Misturat Ganiyu
Poetry
This is not my life!
I will witness the sun rise.
I am not your meal!
65

69. Spring 2015

70. 67
SubmittoReconstructed
Reconstructed, GSU’s online literature and visual arts journal, is currently accepting
submissions for its next issue.
If you’re a GSU student and would like to see your own work of short fiction, creative
non-fiction, poetry, short film, or visual artistry get published, send it via email attach-
ment to:
Reconstructed@govst.edu.
Submission Guidelines:
Literary submissions should be attached as Microsoft Word .doc files.
Visual art should be submitted in jpeg format.
Short films should be 3-5 minutes in length. Submit a link to your film hosted on You-
Tube.com or Vimeo.com.
Students may submit one work of short fiction or creative non-fiction with no more
than 5,000 words, 6 poems, or 5 visual art images.
Please include your name, email address, phone number, and your GSU major in your
email.
Each individual submission is reviewed by the editing panel and is elected for publi-
cation based on its artistic merits, as well as overall fit into that particular issue. This is
based solely on the opinions of the editors for each issue.

71. Spring 2015