Inklings from Cape Cod

SNEAK PEEKS ... some six word stories ... more of Life’s Challenges … Velvet green lawn, chemicals in air. — Lydia Burrage-Goodwin Ha-ha, funny; yeah, you too. — Wisima “Sam” Nipatnantaporn We’re World Series Champs - Go Sox! — Megan Cronin Death by her own piercing voice. — Ashleigh McEvoy Sorry. I thought that was chocolate. — Tosh Mihesuah Six words is way too short. — Katrina Malakhoff Papelbon is Dancing Red Sox maniac. — Wisima “Sam” Nipatnantaporn Rain falls after twenty dry years. — Rebecca Harris I love Papelbon; he’s my idol. — Wisima “Sam” Nipatnantaporn No glue? Don’t break me then. — Ashleigh McEvoy I call her name --no answer. — Rebecca Harris Good thing this shirt is black. — Tosh Mihesuah Story excerpt The Hunting Adventures of Tosh Mihesuah by Tosh Mihesuah It was mid-November in Duncan, Oklahoma, right before Thanksgiving. That means it was deer season, and it was very early in the frosty morning, around fi ve o’clock. Some houses still had pumpkins on their front porches, while other houses already had Christmas decorations up. I sat in the back seat of my grandpa’s pick-up truck while Dad drove. As we rode over the bumpy dirt road toward the land where we hunt, I heard a rattle in the motor. Dad said not to worry, that it always makes that sound. We were hunting for white-tailed deer on the opening day of deer season. My dad was raised as a hunter on his dad’s allotment in southern Oklahoma. We’re Comanche, and Grandpa got his allotment from his parents back in 1902. Now every time I go onto his land I feel like I’m going back in time. There are no power or telephone lines. You can see where the old houses used to be all around his property. Those old farm houses are now just piles of gray, dry, and rotten wood. No telling what is living in the mounds of rubble. Lots of animals run around the area. My mom is Choctaw, and her grandmother sold her allotment in the 1920s. That land is in southeastern Oklahoma and is really pretty. It would be nice to have that land. But just like other Indians can say, that land is gone forever. Grandpa had a two-room house. He was born there, with no doctor to help his mother. All his brothers and sisters went off to school, but grandpa only has a sixth-grade education. When he turned ten his mother died and his dad was sick and had to live with one of his daughters. So Grandpa was left on the land all by himself. He once told me that he broke his ankle and had no way to get to a doctor. So he just limped around until the bones healed. Grandpa also shot squirrels to eat. He fi shed and grew a small garden. Sometimes he got money from one of his sisters, and then he could buy bread and coffee from a local store. I don’t think I could live like that. Grandpa had no television and no books. There were some friends in the area that played basketball with him. His hoop was just a basket with no bottom nailed to the barn. One time Grandpa played ball with a kid who had a glass eye. The eye fell out and the boys had to look around in the dirt for it. I first saw his old house when I was just a baby. It was like the other old houses in the area. It collapsed years ago and is just a pile of rotten, splintered wood. The cellar is still there, but the door is gone. He told me not to go into the old cellar, because snakes live in it. Grandpa says he feels sad to see his house ruined, but on the other hand, he likes to tell me about his life. He lives in Duncan and drives the nine miles to the “Home Place” several times a week to watch for turkeys and deer and to make sure no one has come onto the land to hunt without his permission. Deer, turkeys, opossums, snakes, bobcats, and huge pigs that we call hogs live on the Home Place, and Grandpa loves them all. Mom’s tribe calls the pigs shukhushi. Dad hunts on his father’s land because there are so many ... The Tea Room by Rachel Liu The Tearoom was always smoky with steam and burnt toast smoke. It was the one place on the entire city campus devoid of a set, diehard purpose. The Tearoom. It sounded like a place for old ladies, but only the students visited there. (The professors had their own homes and lounges.) On a rare day, a student could make and sip a light breakfast of tea and toast with, maybe, a romance novel—a refreshing change from the usual egg and cheese McMuffi n or cereal bar drowned in coffee and chemistry notes. Ali had visited the campus in the summer of her junior year. Back in the summer, the hallways were empty and the surrounding city was, Ali now realized, peacefully deserted, its many occupants at some beach or foreign shore. The one thing that attracted Ali the most was the big, burnished bronze church bell slightly to the right of campus. But now, people swarmed the streets in cars and bikes. The once-impressive bell no longer shook the ground and hallways with musical splendor but nagged meekly, cast into shadow by the chaotic city around it. Now, the bronze knobs of The Tearoom were all that gleamed in Ali’s eyes. The Tearoom today was busier than usual but still not busy at all. A couple of the professors were out sick, so those who really cared retreated to The Tearoom while the others disappeared into various restaurants, bars, and malls around the city. Ali sipped her orange herb tea and pulled at a page and fl ipped it. She always read romance novels, the books with the muscular, dark-haired man supporting the spineless damsel on the cover. The man always wore a shirt, unbuttoned, so it served no practical protection against the harsh wind, and he always had gleaming eyes matching the stormy sea behind him. He probably had a British accent. Ali considered the romance novel to be, biologically, the most natural book for Homo sapiens to read. If anyone were placed in a room alone with a choice of a book of any genre, everyone would choose the romance novel. Human nature.“Excuse me,” a voice, reverberating in the caverns of Ali’s right ear, interrupted. Reluctantly tearing her eyes from her book, Ali attempted to trace the source. A couple of pieces of blackened toast were shoved under her nose.“Your toast burnt.” Ali could smell the burnt toast now, the bitter smell tickling her eyes. “I … yeah, thanks.” Setting her tea down and switching hands holding the book, she reluctantly accepted the charred toast. Unsure of what to do with the blackened objects, Ali attempted to nibble at the toast, eyes watering as the bitterness fl ooded through her partial CONTENTS Prose Students’ Work Inspired by Others 3 *Selected Longer Piece: Brandon by Kaitlin Meiss Six-Word Stories 20 *Selected Longer Piece: Better Side of Rapunzel by Miranda Burrage-Goodwin Terrible Two’s 26 *Selected Longer Piece: Gold Rush by Lydia Burrage-Goodwin Rowing 37 *Selected Longer Piece: Lydia’s Nightmare by Ashleigh McEvoy Bits and Pieces 43 *Selected Longer Piece: Ruby-Quartz Glasses by Andrew Roiter Settings and Characters 54 *Selected Longer Piece: Letters Home by Miranda Burrage-Goodwin Prompted by Bonnie Neubauer 66 *Selected Longer Piece: Time Machines Don’t Work by Niki Bousquet Poetic Dabblings 76 *Selected Longer Piece: A Screen Play - My American Dream by Andrew Roiter Two-Sentence Rotating Story Creations 107 Short Pieces 110 Untitled, by Andrew Roiter 110 The Mutant Wasp and the Window, by Maret Gable 111 The Tower, by Jessica Schiffman 111 The Three Calls Preceding the Event, by Hannah Van Sciver 112 Poetry Students’ Work Golden Nuggets 252 Portfolio Selections by Zach Burrage-Goodwin 252 Two Poems by Khalia Parish 261 Poetic Triptych by Taylor Holland 263 Two Exploring Nature by Alicia Pollard 267 Poetic Perspectives by Nicolette Gendron 269 Two Selections by Joan Tavares-Avant, instructor 274