Paper Cuts

Lauren Roberts, Rockhurst University

Clipping the obituaries,

I am very careful

not to cut

through any

of the text.

Not even the text

of the obituaries

surrounding the one

I am cutting

out.

I use tailoring shears

and barely breathe.

Pages stain fingertips

like moth wing dust

newsprint curling softly onto tabletops

or pinned on cork.

Respect for the dead

takes many forms,

comes instinctually as prayer.

I tuck it into my wallet

where the dead

outnumber the living

in plastic photo slots.

Sometime

when I go to pull out

some change

or my MasterCard

it will be gone.

And I will feel afresh

the loss.

So many things.

Lost.

---

A Denis Johnson Imitation

Theodore Waldbillig, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

The sidewalk down the strip is fair. It’s hard and unforgiving, but it is to everyone. Still I woke that Tuesday afternoon wondering how it had made my body feel the way it did, and why it had made the wild grass part in this particular spot. At least it was warmer outside than it was the previous month. We ride the weather, you see, whereas folks with time and money and kids don’t need to. This way, spring lifts us up and summer carries us closer to the world than we otherwise get.

It was early in May, and the sun was getting hotter and longer. Birds were calling to each other early in the mornings. Huge tortoises of snow sat around like lumps beside parking lots where plows would have piled it thick in January. There was also snow I couldn’t explain lying outside of bars here and there. I looked up in time to see a woman and little girl walking past. The girl was straining toward me on her mother’s arm. “Where you from, mister?” she asked.

“The city,” I said, and dug out my eyes with my thumb. The girl kept looking back at me as they crossed the intersection, and they disappeared on the other side as a van stopped not soon enough at the red light. Then Sev appeared.

“You can’t stay there,” he said. I could smell his breath even in my half-consciousness. “What. Is this the drive-up?” We must have looked like a couple of warning signs, except one had been hit and runned. We both looked down the street in unison. It shrank into a hot jumble of parked cars and two rows of buildings facing one another. Then we turned in the direction where the girl and her mother had walked.

“I’ve got to call my daughter,” I said. I felt a sudden urgency and stumbled trying to get up, so Sev helped me, stumbling as well. “Just hold on one second.” I jogged across the intersection and stumbled some more. I was very, very tired, physically, and hadn’t slept enough. At the other end of the crosswalk, I looked into the neighborhood and saw that the mother and her girl had not disappeared. They were walking just a few blocks away. I took off after them and pushed myself to a limit that I could reach out and touch. It was quick enough. When I was close so that the mother could hear me approaching, she turned to see what I was out of the corner of her eye. I called out to her.

“Hey miss, I need to use a phone! Do you have a cell?” As I said this, the woman had turned to her girl and bleated something and now they were running away. As soon as I saw it was no use, I stopped and stood. What an inconsiderate, hypocritical bitch. If only she knew what I needed to do, she would have at least let me talk for five minutes. She must have been one of those people who watch too much TV and get scared thinking about the world.

As I panted and heaved, something frightening happened: darkness started hovering in the sky until it was purple. The houses on each side of me went next, turning to ash, and then the sidewalk went out from under me. Sev walked up next to me. I felt his hand grab my shoulder and hold me suspended above the hole like a magnetic crane in a junkyard.

“They have a phone in the bar. Come on.” That was the last thing I heard.

Not far away, I was reclined in the passenger seat of Sev’s crumbling Chevrolet. The door was open and my legs hung outside. He was patting my chest softly and repeating my name, “Dan… Dan.” I listened to this and let it go on for a long time. It was doing enough to comfort me now that the heroine had evaporated. It was actually getting dark.

“Is it time to eat yet?” I asked. I coughed a few times so hard that in between, I was working to pull enough air in to fuel them. When I had settled down, I looked at Sev. He was smiling and beet red.

“Of course. Yes,” he said, handing me an aluminum flask with turquoise paint flaking off it. I took it from him and drank while keeping my eyes on his, a trick I learned from the movies. Whatever liquid he had stored in there tasted like celery and had a crunch to it. I chewed on it until I found there wasn’t anything in my mouth. Then I began coughing again. “It’s spiced vodka,” said Sev.

“No that isn’t,” I told him, catching my breath, “it’s more poison. Frickin-A, I need to call my daughter. What in the hell were you thinking?” My daughter lives with my wife still, and I can only make calls – no visiting – until I show Judge some documentation that I’ve cleaned up and everything is official. This really is the best of both worlds, though, so I continue shooting.

“Now we’re ready for grub,” said Sev. He started the engine and I brought in my legs and shut the door. We pulled out of wherever we were and hit the street with a thunk. I don’t think Sev had any suspension.

“Can’t we go into the bar? That way we can eat and I can make my call,” I said.

“No no no. Don’t be silly. We’ll eat at my place and you can make the call from my phone. That way, I can show you I’m a fine cook,” said Sev, “and she won’t know who’s calling, too.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. I noticed Sev had already drifted over and we were running over yellow line after yellow line, and it only accelerated as he stepped on the gas. But we made it out of the strip and away from people, so I relaxed. We wouldn’t kill anyone that evening.

I wondered what Sev’s house looked like. I remembered him telling me it was a quaint place and he had two fish, a pug, and some other mammal for a pet. He lived in an apartment project called Fidelity Springs, with a woman he suspected to be a hooker-junkie to his right and a couple of college-aged lovers to his left. The rent, he told me, was twenty-five dollars a month, and on that price, he told me, one could do almost anything one wanted to. Sev worked part-time at a hardware store where he did nothing but here and there filch dollars from the register and tell people about what was in his dream toolkit. It was enough to keep him alive and high, in which he spent more time than he did sleeping and working. Sev once told me: “We need more play time. All we do is work and then die and then work some more.”

We pulled up to the apartment in darkness and got out. I felt a tearing inside when we reached the door. At that moment Sev turned to me and said he didn’t have the key.

“Well, what do you expect?” I said. He just shrugged, and bit his lip. We stood there for a bit before he said he was just kidding, and started smiling some more. Soon, he couldn’t contain himself any longer and burst out laughing and laughing, doubled over and holding himself. As this went on, I felt my insides really churn, like there was a string from Sev’s teeth yanking at my belly button. He went on until I told him to quit for the fourteenth time. Some residents of Fidelity Springs were at their windows peeking out. Then we went in.

Inside it smelled like paint and carpet. It was quite clean. “Keep quiet,” said Sev. He was damned near tip-toeing and I don’t know why. I wondered how a unit there could possibly be as much each year as my old place was for just one month. I decided Sev was lying to me. He didn’t really live next to a hooker-junkie and a couple of young lovers. He was sneaking around his own apartment building for no reason. “I know it doesn’t look it, but it gets rough in here,” he said.

“What’re you acting like a little child for?” I said. “There isn’t anyone in here going to be trouble for us.”

Sev turned to me and blinked. “Look, I live here. You don’t,” he said. “Don’t you think I ought to know myself?” He let us into his unit. It was nearly in an unlivable condition.

“What is this?” I asked. I made my way through piles of garbage, only some of which were in bags. Then I noticed the bags didn’t contain garbage at all. The good smell was replaced by one of day-old ketchup and ranch nearby on a roommate’s plate at the table while you try to eat your lunch. “Sev, you can’t live like this. This is just ridiculous.” Normally I wasn’t so forward about peoples’ situations, but I couldn’t imagine how we were supposed to have dinner.

“I have spaghetti with meatballs and sauce,” he said. His pug came out from somewhere and heeled whimpering at his feet. It was fidgeting and could hardly sit still.

“Why don’t we go have something nice back at Ginger’s, huh? I’ll pay.”

“Nonsense,” Sev replied, he was distracted searching his cupboards. “I’ll… go… find–“

I had to go to the bathroom. “Something with vegetables? Do you have fruit, any vitamins?” I asked, moving into the hall. I found the bathroom upside-down underneath a pile of computer parts and twine. I went in and shut the door, and could hear Sev talking to me – or was he talking to himself? – back in the kitchen/living room.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and put my hand over my heart to be sure it wasn’t going to beat right through my chest. I was pale; nearly pure white. I didn’t have to go. I didn’t have to go anywhere.

Back in the kitchen, Sev was nowhere to be seen. He must have trailed off. This poison of his was really hitting us over the head now. “Sev?” I called out. He didn’t answer, but I looked down and saw his pug, making noises and jiggling on an island of tile floor.

I picked up the dog under my arm and for comfort, stroked behind her ears. I thought about making the call to my daughter, but instead made my way to the door with the pug and left as quiet as possible, rushing downstairs and out into what I remember being fresh daylight.

---

West Side Girl

Lauren Roberts, Rockhurst University

I wear my skin like some reject from the Tribes of Ham,

Pale and transparent as skim milk.

I can never go home.

My father imparted to me like a curse:

"You're just like your mother. You'll never

be able to live more than thirty miles from the West Side."

And I think, Of course. He's right.

He's always right when I don't want him to be.

And I wonder if it's this curse, his curse,

Which also gifts him to be able to see into me,

And I to endure the pain of being seen. After all, my skin is his skin.

Ah, Maria, Maria, Maria, las tres,

Great-grandmother, grandmother, mother,

And I am the break in the rosary beads.

I think of the placenta from my grandmother's birth buried on the hill,

The hill, which I can never go back to.

Instead, I toe the thirty-mile mark.

"¡Bolilla!" They say. "¡Gringa!"

At nine, I saw myself as naked as Eve,

And hurried to cover up my whiteness.

Now I go, bearing my flesh like shame,

And the neighbors ask who the white girl is who comes and visits.

Someday, I will take a grater to my skin.

I shall cast it off. Flayed, I shall anoint myself with cominos and cilantro.

In blood I shall make my pilgrimage.

On the Boulevard, I shall hail, Maria.

---