date	URL	artist's name	artist's biography	artist's URL title	artist's URL	title	medium	dimensions	year	statement	image url	image width	image height	category	artwork textcontent
2006-01-17	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=851	Amy Leach	Amy Leach received an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa. Her essays have been published in <i>The Iowa Review, A Public Space,</i> and <i>The Wilson Quarterly</i>. She is working on a collection of essays about Eta Carinae (a star), Love-Lies-Bleeding (a flower), the takahe (a bird), and Phobos (a moon), among other things. "When Trees Dream of Being Trees" was first published in Spring 2006 issue of <i>The Iowa Review.</i>			When Trees Dream of Being Trees					artimages/01172006.jpg	500	405	Iowa Writes	The tree decided to stop growing after it grew its thousandth leaf. “No more,” it whispered, and started throwing flimsily attached twigs and old nests down, and shaking the birds out. “I am a terrible tree! A thousand leaves is more than enough to prove that! I am slow and slight and my leaves are not lustrous. I have never made a flower, never made an apricot, never made an acorn. Go away birds! I am an impostor tree! I will be a post, if I can just shake off these redundant branches,” and the tree bounced up and down, twirled violently, and tried some catapulting maneuvers in an effort to fling off its limbs. Nothing much was flung, except for some leaves and a butterfly, and they were instantly free from its flinging force, and ended up drifting away instead of zinging through the air. And so the tree started to slam itself against the earth. Its branches were most certainly broken this way, but they were not broken off: such fibrous material does not easily come loose, does not easily separate from itself. So the tree was hung with broken creaking branches. Aghast, it felt itself growing. And, knowing it would only grow more of itself, it cried, “I must get out of the sunlight! I must get out of the rain!” It tried to sink into the dirt. But trees with their spreading root systems are even harder to push down into the dirt than they are to pull up. So the tree finally just stood there with its smashed branches, exhausted, in the late afternoon sunlight. The other trees around regarded the tree going mad without much comment. They had seen this dreadful thing happen before, when trees dream of being trees.	
2006-02-22	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=288	Debra L. Hutchison	Debra L. Hutchison spent the first eighteen years of her life on a dairy farm outside of Hampton, Iowa. "Iowa has had a great deal of influence on my sensibilities as a poet," she says. She earned a MFA from Vermont College and currently teaches Introduction to Poetry and Critical Writing at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY.			Burning the Caterpillars							Iowa Writes	Caterpillars creep up our black walnut trees,<br />Settle in crooks of branches.<br />Without eyes. They crawl out of<br />Milky veils to eat.<br /><br />A man with nine fingers<br />searches for dry matches,<br />while a stray lifts his leg<br />over the last red zinnia.<br /><br />The screen door with silver-taped crosses<br />Slams. Flies cling to it like meat.<br />Trouble, the trees don&#039;t know.<br />Small fires light.<br /><br />Pigeons on the barn roof miss <br />One color. Mother&#039;s dress strains <br />A rope nailed to a post<br />With its faded message.<br /><br />The curling caterpillars drop. <br />Across the dirt road, a cat runs low <br />Full in her mouth, a small kitten.<br /><br />Under the burning trees, I tip my cup. <br />And feel the ice. It hits <br />My lips, again and again.	
2006-02-24	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=290	Diana Penny	Dianna Penny was born in St. Louis and grew up in downstate Illinois. She completed high school in Muscatine, Iowa, and earned a B.A. in art at the University of Iowa.			Biddy: A Childhood Memory							Iowa Writes	Daddy, who was pastor of Mt. Pisgah African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church at Chester, Illinois, hosted a religious radio broadcast from station KSGM in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. With the entire family in tow, he would cross the Mississippi River at Chester, our home, and travel to the station every weekend, either to tape our service or to do a live broadcast from Ste. Genevieve. On our way to and from the radio station, we had to pass through the small hamlet of St. Mary. One day, stopping for gas in St. Mary, Daddy noticed the presence of African Americans in the town and inquired about them. As it turned out, there was a small, impoverished black community situated on the town&#039;s mud flats, part of a large flood plain. This area contained several shotgun bungalows and a small Baptist church along a dusty, unpaved road. The residents of this neighborhood expressed interest in meeting Daddy and his family, so the local black Baptist pastor invited him to be guest speaker one Sunday, and we all dined with the pastor and his congregation afterward. All the town&#039;s blacks lived on the flats--except one.<br /><br />Members of this community told us about a lady whom all townspeople knew as Aunt Biddy. Biddy, who had been a lifelong member of the AME Church, lived alone in a house situated halfway up a wooded hillside across the highway, accessible via a winding, graveled drive. We decided to call on her and introduce ourselves. A tall and stately lady with silver braids, bent only slightly by the weight of her years, greeted us on her veranda. Having been born a slave, she was now well past her ninetieth birthday. Although her vision was heavily obscured by cataracts, she was independent and moved about easily, if a bit slowly.<br /><br />Biddy, as her congregation&#039;s only surviving member, told us about her church and led us further up the hillside along a footpath through the woods to a clearing, which contained a tiny AME church of weathered clapboard. The hinges of the church&#039;s door creaked as Biddy opened it and invited us inside for a tour. Once inside, we saw backless wooden benches and a potbellied wood-burning stove standing at one side of the sanctuary just beyond the front row of benches. Although many years had passed since a pastor had last been assigned to her church, Biddy visited it weekly with broom, mop, and bucket to keep it clean and say a prayer or two. On this day, we prayed with her. Daddy assured her that the spirit of God had remained present in her little house of worship despite the long absence of a preacher.<br /><br />A few weeks later, having obtained permission from the appropriate AME Church authorities serving the Fifth Episcopal District, Daddy, accompanied by Mama, all six of us children, a fellow AME pastor from nearby Murphysboro, Illinois, his family, and visitors from the aforementioned Baptist church, conducted a Sunday afternoon service, filling Biddy&#039;s humble sanctuary with the joy of the Lord. The river of tears, flowing freely from her clouded eyes, bore ample witness to the immense joy she experienced that afternoon. As the Christmas season approached, Daddy would take us children back to St. Mary again and again to sing carols to Aunt Biddy.	
2006-02-27	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=293	Amy White	Amy White is a playwright from Mt. Vernon. Her play, "The Knitting Lesson," was produced by the Mt. Vernon/Lisbon Community Theatre in 2001. She performed a slightly longer version of "Blink" at Riverside Theatre, Iowa City, at their 2003 "Walking the Wire" monologue show.<br /><br />			Blink	a story						Iowa Writes	He couldn&#039;t live with us anymore. We kept him for a while after Mom died but he would get up in the middle of the night and try to leave the house. We could hear him going downstairs and putting his jacket on over his pajamas and going out the front door. He&#039;d be so mad when we caught him. "Damn!" he&#039;d say. He never said that before he got sick. We hid his car keys and that really made him mad so we gave him some old keys on a chain. One of them was the key to Roy&#039;s old Volkswagen and one of them was a skeleton key to one of our closets--just something for him to keep in his pocket. His car keys. He used to drive all the time, for his job, all over the state. He took us on car trips every summer, thousands of miles across the country. He led tanks into France and got the Bronze Star and the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. And now he can&#039;t go to the grocery store and come back with what I asked him to get.<br /><br />I want to tell everybody at the nursing home: look, you didn&#039;t know him, but he was so great. He took care of us. He gave us stuff. He was our dad.<br /><br />Once last spring he walked out the door and down the street and eight blocks to the highway and went right into Gary&#039;s restaurant and sat down. Of course Gary came out and brought him the day&#039;s special and sat down and ate with him and then drove him back to the nursing home. The staff was pretty upset about it, thinking about what could have happened, but I thought: Yes! Way to go, Pop! Good for you!<br /><br />In the special Alzheimer&#039;s unit there is no escaping. There are ankle bracelets and alarms and aides to guard the doors.<br /><br />I&#039;d want to escape too if I was in the Alzheimer&#039;s unit. When I go up there, I stay as long as I can stand it and then I make sure he is distracted or asleep when I make my getaway. Down that hall past the nurse&#039;s station and through the lobby and out the double doors and oh, God! I&#039;m outta there! Free! I don&#039;t care if it&#039;s a hundred degrees below zero or a hundred degrees above. I can breathe real air. I can see the sky. I can get in my car and drive home and see Billy and Roy and make supper and not be there anymore.<br /><br />I&#039;d rather get cancer. My mom fought cancer for twenty years, got down to eighty pounds and lost half a lung and she was so sick and it hurt her so much, but she was still my mom. Asking me, how was I doing? Telling me I looked so nice. Cancer is awful but I swear I think I&#039;d rather get that than Alzheimer&#039;s. You&#039;d think that people with Alzheimer&#039;s wouldn&#039;t know what was happening to them, and maybe they don&#039;t know exactly, but they sure don&#039;t like it. It makes them really mad. They forget the words for everything. The last time I was with Pop, he said, "Where is your answer?" And I thought, I don&#039;t know. Where is my answer? What is my question? What does he mean? I thought he must mean something else, but maybe he didn&#039;t. I kept trying to figure out what he was saying, and I asked him, "Do you mean where is Billy? Or Roy? Do you mean Mom? What do you mean, where is my answer? Do you mean, where is my car?" It wore him out, all those questions, but I didn&#039;t want to let it go. I wanted to talk to him. Like we used to talk to each other.<br /><br />I told Roy, just smother me with my pillow if I get this stuff. If you get it first, I will definitely smother you.<br /><br />I&#039;ve gotten to know one woman pretty well because she visits her husband in the Alzheimer&#039;s unit. She says she always watches his eyes when she talks to him and they look cloudy or foggy or something. It&#039;s like that with Alzheimer&#039;s patients. Like they don&#039;t really see you. But if you keep watching them and talking and touch their hand or their arm or their face--if you can get their attention somehow--they blink, and that clears their eyes. Then for a minute, they see you--before they cloud over again. The nurses all say Pop&#039;s calm when I&#039;m with him--he thinks I&#039;m my mom. I hold his hand and we just sit there and I want to say: Come on, Pop. Blink. You can do it. Just blink.	
2006-03-01	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=295	William Ford	William Ford lives in Iowa City and teaches distance learning writing courses for Kirkwood Community College. A designated "Iowa Poet," 2003, at the Des Moines National Poetry Festival, he has published one book, <i>The Graveyard Picnic</i> (Mid-America Press, 2002); a second, <i>Past Present Imperfect,</i> is due out from Wordtech (2006).			Distance Learning Circuit Rider							Iowa Writes	Into the soft yellow and plum-<br />Colored edges of old Bibles,<br />I&#039;m driving home, teaching done,<br />Listening to Mahalia Jackson&#039;s<br />"The Upper Room." It&#039;s a prayer<br />Anyone country would understand.<br /><br />My students would, some<br />Who actually went to a small school<br />And read parts of <i>Huckleberry Finn</i><br />Or <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>.<br />Older now, so many of them,<br />They&#039;ve left bad marriages<br />And farms for minimal wages<br />And this off-campus, part-time<br />Schooling for the next level up<br />To a little more respect<br />And family health insurance.<br /><br />When I&#039;m not there in the flesh<br />I see them in the distance<br />On the sometimes shadowy monitor<br />Tapping the keys of the keyboard<br />Or pressing down the speaker bar<br />To communicate with me<br />So many miles away<br />Hoping I&#039;ve got the word<br />To solve their language problem<br />Because the textbook&#039;s Eastern<br />Or Pacific Coast in example,<br />The middle country missing.<br /><br />Sometimes I imagine myself<br />A century earlier on horseback<br />With a new congregation each week<br />Thumping my boot on the floor<br />And clapping hands as a woman raises<br />Her sweating arms heavenward<br />For the coming of the spirit, her tongue<br />Rolling in the good King James<br />And that tomorrow I&#039;ll baptize<br />Tonight&#039;s saved in the muddy river,<br />Recalling how the Jordan&#039;s sand<br />Must have turned gold when<br />The Master himself went under.<br /><br />In this darkness I see young men<br />Picking at their faces to stay awake<br />And women who cannot hide bruises<br />And who sneak a child in<br />Though it&#039;s against institutional laws<br />And my own expressed wish.<br />Many of them work so hard<br />I sometimes wonder what it would mean<br />If their constructions could be allowed<br />To run together without punctuation<br />As though language were seamless,<br />Everything joined to everything<br />As in the best Greek manuscripts.<br />Biblical scholars have argued forever<br />Over the placement of a period<br />Lest life become one long stream<br />Of consciousness or fragments.	
2006-03-02	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=296	Carolyn S. Briggs	Carolyn S. Briggs grew up in Eldora, Iowa. She won New Letters&#039; Heartland Short Fiction Prize in 1997 and published her memoir <i>This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost </i>(Bloomsbury) in 2002. She is an assistant professor of English at Marshalltown Community College.			<span style="font-style:normal;">from the story<span> The Killing Station							Iowa Writes	Corrine entered her bedroom with a man who was not her husband, a knife down her pants, and a suffocating urge to kill. Shag lifted his triangular head from the branch.<br /><br />"I&#039;d watch it," Corrine said. "You smell like fish. He&#039;s hungry, hasn&#039;t eaten in a week." She put her hand under her shirt, gripped the handle of the knife and waited for him to bend over.<br /><br />"I think I can handle him," Swinton said. "I&#039;ll take care of him and any other business we might have back here in your boudoir." He pushed back the top of the cage. "This snake makes me weak in the knees with love."<br /><br />She had the knife out now, up in the air, ready. She moved toward him. He seemed to have forgotten she was even in the room.<br /><br />"I think I can handle him," Swinton said. "I&#039;ll take care of him and any other business we might have back here in your boudoir." He pushed back the top of the cage. "This snake makes me weak in the knees with love."<br /><br />She had the knife out now, up in the air, ready. She moved toward him. He seemed to have forgotten she was even in the room.<br /><br />He reached his hairless hand into Shag&#039;s cage and traced the body with his finger. "Oh, yeah, that&#039;s what I like," he murmured, leaning over until his lips were close enough to kiss. "This is what I came for."<br /><br />Corrine slashed without hesitation. She plunged the knife into Shag&#039;s body, nearly halving him. The ease of it surprised her, not so different from dividing a rump roast for two weeknight suppers.<br /><br />"What the?" Swinton still held the top half. The rest of Shag&#039;s body dangled by a tether of bloody hide. "What did you do that for?"<br /><br />Corrine had never seen Shag extended to his true length, no coils, no alert head watching, just dead weight with his tail curlicued on top of her pastel blue braided rug.<br /><br />"Go ahead," Corrine said. "You take half and Gerald can have the other. Sound fair?"<br /><br />"Jesus. You killed him for no reason," Swinton said, nearly crying."He didn&#039;t deserve that, that old snake. That beautiful old thing. What&#039;s the matter with you?"<br /><br />"You should probably go now," Corrine said and held the knife up, waving it at him. She felt a warm trickle down her palm and under her sleeve, but she did not look.<br /><br />"There was no call for this to get ugly," Swinton said. "It was just a business transaction, that&#039;s all."<br /><br />"Right," Corrine said, her teeth set, her voice lowered.<br /><br />Swinton laid the snake back in the aquarium, lining up the two halves. He patted the spliced place carefully and stood up. He wiped his hands on his jeans. "It&#039;s going to break Gerald&#039;s heart when he sees this."	
2006-03-06	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=300	John McBride	John McBride, Ph.D (English, Univ. of Illinois), MSW (Iowa), taught and held administrative posts at the Universities of Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa, has won awards from many state poetry societies, and is published in a variety of journals.			Is Grant Wood&#039;s Iowa True?							Iowa Writes	Past obliging cattle his brush maneuvers,<br />undulates easily over the crop-rich slopes<br />of industrious family farms,<br />and there is much reassurance in<br />each neat replication<br />of well-maintained farmhouse, silo, barn.<br /><br />Take yourself inside the picture, and you can stop<br />with any question, and know<br />they will give you their best shot,<br />and they will chat, as long as you want,<br />if you appear at all interested,<br />on wind and rain and sun<br />and corn and bean rows.<br /><br />And if you do step in, out of the blue,<br />into a rambling, century-old farmhouse<br />for a cup of coffee in the bright kitchen,<br />you might notice the blinking computer<br />nodding good-naturedly to you,<br />specifying yields and the seeding plan‚<br />but that was beyond his time,<br /><br />so now you look out<br />the lace-framed window<br />to the small shoots,<br />so young, so unseasoned,<br />their rustling sighs at the combine<br />are still food for the imagination,<br /><br />and then, sauntering on,<br />leave there, for another,<br />and reach one of those acrylic towns<br />where it always is<br />high noon,<br />where weather-beaten homes<br />disclose white fences,<br />and all the cats,<br />demure on front porches,<br />have that cool, do-I-care stare.	
2006-03-08	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=302	Elizabeth Duffy	Elizabeth Duffy, PhD�also published as Beth Anne Duffy�lives in Solon and is a former professor of international cultural linguistics. Dr. Duffy is actively writing, enjoys reading Russian and Celtic poetry, has written poetry about African Maasai women, and has recited poetry in Germany.			Sweet Baby Anne<br />5 Oct. 2003							Iowa Writes	Sweet Anne, little baby in my arms<br />accepting the touch of my shaking hands.<br />I stroke your forehead<br />and bless you with my kisses.<br />Ten tiny fingers I count<br />and ten tiny toes, all perfect.<br />Fine dark hair like your daddy&#039;s<br />delicate nose like your grandma&#039;s.<br />I long to hear you coo or giggle<br />but silent you remain,? because, because.<br />Your newborn skin already swells tight<br />to seal forever your lovely pale blue eyes.<br />Your daddy takes you in his arms<br />and wraps you in a satin-trimmed blanket.<br />He covers your toes and your fingers<br />and finally, your now-shut eyes.<br />He kisses the bundle that is your body<br />and with tears surrenders you for burial.<br />Never will I hold you again, my Sweet Anne,<br />my stillborn baby; except in my heart.	
2006-03-10	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=304	Jim O&#039;Loughlin	Jim O&#039;Loughlin is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. He runs the Final Thursday Reading Series in Cedar Falls and is the publisher of Final Thursday Press.	Final Thursday Press	http://geocities.com/finalthursdaypress/	The Zone	a story						Iowa Writes	The Zone is a semi-circular arc stretching from our daughter&#039;s high chair for the distance of a toddler&#039;s reach. Our daughter, Emma, though only two, understands The Zone. At least Emma realizes that all items within The Zone are eligible for play. If we try to put a bib on Emma before clearing The Zone, it is within her rights to twist off the top of a saltshaker and create an anthill-sized mound of salt in front of her.<br /><br />We respect The Zone, so after we walked into Mycanos Diner and picked out a table as far away from the smoking section as possible, we leapt into action. While I buckled Emma into the high chair, my wife took out a wipe from the diaper bag and sanitized the high chair and the table. Then while my wife took out a plastic bowl with Cheerios, I removed all objects of interest from The Zone: sugar packets, napkins, pads of butter, water glasses, and tips from previous customers.<br /><br />A waitress approached. Jennifer, according to her nametag. Jennifer smiled at us, but we could tell she did not have children because she placed a set of silverware right in the middle of The Zone. Emma immediately grabbed a knife and started waving it in the air, evading our attempts to disarm her, while Jennifer asked if we wanted anything to drink. My wife distracted Emma with a stuffed animal while I approached out of eyeshot and cleverly snatched away the knife from Emma&#039;s hands. Jennifer stood, hand on hips, impatiently waiting. We ordered coffee and attempted to restore order.<br /><br />Waitresses with children have an implicit understanding of The Zone, and they will assist us in piling up one end of the table with side orders of toast, jugs of syrup, and extra cups of juice. However, Jennifer, I realized, saw The Zone simply as available space. When she returned, she placed a coffee pot right in front of Emma. The coffee pot was a bright Day-Glo orange designed to perk us up, but in the eyes of our daughter it was a shiny bauble come rightfully into her possession.<br /><br />We lurched forward. Six hands struggled for control of the coffee pot.<br /><br />Jennifer smiled, blissfully unaware, waiting for our order.<br /><br />"Cute kid," she said.	
2006-03-11	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=305	Nan Lundeen	Poet Nan Lundeen, who grew up on a farm in Clinton County, Iowa, is a staff writer for <i>The Greenville News</i> in Greenville, South Carolina. Her poem "Crate" won best of issue in the South Carolina Writers Workshop 2002 Anthology. Her poetry has been published in small literary magazines.			Companion and Mathilda Lundeen							Iowa Writes	<i>Companion</i><br /><br />My little dog<br />keeps me company<br />while I brush my teeth.<br />Nobody else I know<br />will do that.<br /><br /><br /><i>Mathilda Lundeen</i><br /><br />The wintergreen she rubbed into her knee<br />mingled<br />with roses.<br /><br />I still see her<br />at age eighty, picking up her skirts<br />and wading through the creek<br />to search out<br />shy ferns hidden in the bluffs.<br /><br />Or gathering the eggs<br />scratching chicken dirt with her fingernail,<br />"Bosh, a little manure can&#039;t hurt you."<br /><br />She argued with her children<br />stalked upstairs, blue eyes<br />ablaze,<br />insisted on molasses in the rye.<br /><br />Her mother died<br />when she was eight<br />and Gram saw her<br />one night on the stairs.<br /><br />In her rocking chair, stitching<br />quilt blocks,<br />"That was Judith&#039;s party dress<br />and that Aunt Clara&#039;s apron,"<br />she wove<br />long stories<br />about Cynthia&#039;s cow, goblins, and British generals‚?<br /><br />Snuggled close in bed<br />we whispered late at night<br />about romance, boyfriends.<br />"I don&#039;t trust that one.<br />Eyes too close together."<br /><br />She was right.	
2006-03-14	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=308	Brian Chambers	Brian Chambers, of Eddyville, is a life-long Iowan who retired from the military with twenty years of service. He is currently attending Simpson College in Indianola, majoring in English with a history minor.			Beech-Nut, <span style="font-style:normal;">a story,</span><br />intrare per unam ianuam et ex per alia*							Iowa Writes	As I walk from headquarters across camp to the guard tower all I can think about is that there are only two weeks left. I am sick of the sand, the wind, and the dust, and the only place I want to be at is Fort Living Room. The f-ing new guys (FNGs as we call them) arrived yesterday and the Commander gave me the in-briefing detail. As the wind picks up and drives sand against my face, I remember when I was an FNG. I was scared as hell. We were supposed to run convoy security, and this sergeant by the name of Zavacki had been assigned to train us before he rotated back to the States. For some reason he had singled me out from the squad.<br /><br />"You see that sign there right there, Corporal?" he said.<br />"Yes, Sergeant." I replied.<br />"Tell me what it says."<br />"Complacency Kills, Sergeant."<br />"Do you know what it means?"<br />"Yes, Sergeant."<br />"Why do you think it is posted here, at the gate?"<br />"I&#039;m not sure, Sergeant."<br />"When you drive past this gate, that sign serves as a final reminder to keep your head out of your ass and be on guard at all times. It&#039;s dangerous out there."<br />"Yes, Sergeant."<br />"Good, now get down to the Company area and wait for me. Training starts immediately. I have two weeks left in this dump and I intend to make sure that you don&#039;t get yourselves killed."<br /><br />It couldn&#039;t possibly have been a year already. I was promoted after Zavacki left; I took over the squad. They were back at the hootch now, standing down, waiting to help train the replacements. We started with six and we were now five. Hooker took a round in the neck eight months into the deployment. He was fumbling for a piece of gum when he should have been watching the windows.<br /><br />It was supposed to be a quick run that day to Taqaddum, but the decision to take the shorter route through the heart of Ramadi made it a dangerous one. Hooker knew this; we all knew it. The debris of bombed buildings lying in the street made it slow going and the buildings that were left standing sat close to the street‚? too close. As we navigated around the debris all eyes were on the windows. I risked a glance at Hooker‚ our gunner‚? and at the same time I saw him look down and reach inside his vest. "Hooker!" I yelled, but it was too late. In the split-second that Hooker looked down, the sniper pulled the trigger. We lit the window up from where the sniper fired, but little good it did Hooker, he was already dead. I sent a letter to his father. I was told later that almost the entire town had shown up for the funeral. It didn&#039;t make any sense. A piece of gum.<br /><br />Life in the desert isn&#039;t easy but there were moments and we made the most of them. My squad, as well as a few others, built a basketball court to kill some time between missions. Three-on-three ball games, some volleyball and poker pretty well occupied the down time. And of course there was the training; it was endless. "Keep the Blade Sharp" was our mantra and, in order to survive, countless repetitive exercises were required. The result was a finely trained squad, each member an extension of the others. It kept us alive through countless convoys, except, that is, for Hooker. Gum. Why did he have to have it? Didn&#039;t he remember the sign? If he had just kept focused, I would have bought him all the damn Beech-Nut he could have chewed. I will visit his father when I get back home. I will tell him Hooker was a fine soldier. I won&#039;t tell him about the gum.<br /><br />The FNGs are standing at the base. They are waiting, and then they stiffen as they see me. I pick one out, the soldier on the end. "Corporal?"<br />"Yes, Sergeant."<br />"You see that sign right there?"<br />"Yes, Sergeant."<br />"Tell me what it says."<br /><br /><br />* Latin. Translated; "Enter through one door and exit through another."	
2006-03-15	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=309	Nicholas Dowd	Nick Dowd grew up in western Iowa, graduated from Drake, and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Though he has not lived in his home state for many years, Iowa is still the object of his affection.			Dry Gold							Iowa Writes	I scale Iowa&#039;s western rim, climbing and rappelling Interstate 29, north to LeMars then south to Missouri Valley. Harvest is in full swing, everything moving. Rail cars, mounded with corn, creak and sway among the stubbled fields, glinting brilliant blue in the unfiltered sun. The autumn sacrament is being celebrated. For the first time since moving to Tennessee twenty-five years ago, I am near home on a dry, gold October day.<br /><br />Recent months have strung together like boxcars for me, my calendar a steady stream of arrivals, departures, PowerPoint presentations, and meetings that last longer than they need to. When I miss my flight from Omaha to Nashville, I am told I can drive to Kansas City and catch a later flight. So, re-renting the same car I have just turned in, I rejoin the caravan jostling toward the Missouri line.<br /><br />I have tried to convince myself that there is a flow to this type of living, that the numbing cadence of business travel is the natural order of things. After awhile, I find that one can actually begin to draw comfort from discomfort � the Stockholm syndrome of contemporary life. Repetition becomes an anesthetic. Inconveniences, familiar traveling companions.<br /><br />Glancing at the dashboard clock, I gauge how much time I have. Barring a flat, there is time to grab a slice of pizza, fill my gas tank, locate the rental car return and ride the Avis bus to the terminal. There is time for all of that � and maybe more.<br /><br />I find myself imagining what <i>more</i> might entail.<br /><br />East of Exit 10, Iowa Highway 2 shoots arrow-straight into Fremont County, before ricocheting up the side of a bluff. On a whim, I decide to see where it leads and, in the process, discover Waubonsie State Park.<br /><br />Nosing into a graveled area, I get out of my car and immediately feel like an alien dressed in a gray suit, starched white button-down and club tie, crunching dry leaves under my wingtips. Finding the picnic table furthest from the road, I resolve to sit still � but I struggle. Mile markers continue to flash by in my mind; spreadsheets display themselves in sequential order while my petulant cell phone continually demands an audience. I finally turn it off.<br /><br />After sitting quietly for a time, I hear a sigh. Someone exhales in the soft, October sun. It is my own breathing. A breeze whispers by, insects drone and a tractor chugs somewhere out along a distant, green terrace until all sounds gradually soften into one padded, ambient hum. A deep settling comes and, with it, remembrance of what I have always known � that all sounds come from one sound.<br /><br />Then, an immense hush gathers in the Missouri River valley below me, rushes up the hill through the trees, rising a hundred feet aloft before sweeping off to the north. I am left here in its wake, stilled and yielded, left here in the unmediated presence of an Iowa autumn afternoon.<br /><br />In "My Antonia", Willa Cather writes of the happiness of being "dissolved into something complete and great." Now, hidden away in the southwest corner of the state, I enter that same boundlessness, welcoming sweet dissolution, free again and fully restored.<br /><br />After an hour lived out of time and with my spirit newly-settled, I re-enter the more immediate. Accelerating back onto I-29, I continue the journey, reluctantly re-attaching myself to the umbilical mechanism that dispenses gasoline, cash and French fries.<br /><br />Having tasted both light and air, I again bow to the tyranny of the urgent. Is there an ATM at the Rock Port exit? A McDonald&#039;s?<br /><br />Then I remember. It doesn&#039;t matter. I have just been fed.	
2006-03-17	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=311	Curtis Bauer	Curtis Bauer earned his B.A. from Central College, in Pella, IA, and London, England; and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, NY. After several years based alternately in Mexico, Spain, and Iowa City, he now teaches Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. This poem is from Bauer&#039;s collection <i>Fence Line</i> (BkMk Press, 2003), which won the 2003 John Ciardi Poetry Prize.			Landscape: Galicia with Two Figures							Iowa Writes	There is a church,<br />there are women<br />sitting in a circle<br />making gossip and lace.<br /><br />The waves welcome then<br />turn us away.<br /><br />There are always clacking hammers<br />in the distance, gulls and salt in the air<br />outside the bars<br />where we share <i>cafe con leche</i><br />while boys play<br />a football match the future<br />of the world depends upon. Somewhere<br /><br />in this I became the man who took<br />the hand of the woman you became,<br />a loaf of bread under his arm, in her hand<br />empanada wrapped perfectly by a woman<br />who left her shop to watch them walk away.	
2006-03-19	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=313	Mani Rao	Mani Rao was born in 1965 in India, and moved to Hong Kong in 1993, where she has mostly lived since. She is the author of six poetry collections. A Fall 2005 participant in the UI&#039;s International Writing Program, Rao is back in Iowa as the 2006 UI International Programs Writer-in-Residence. This story is from the book <i>H.K.I.D: Stories from the city&#039;s hidden writers</i> (Hong Kong: Haven Books, 2005).	Writer in Residence	http://intl-programs.uiowa.edu/outreach/writer_in_residence.htm	Junket	a story						Iowa Writes	Remember the lions outside the Bank of China tower? And how we used to use their jaws to staple extra-thick bank documents? One day, when a security guard went to relieve himself, the teeth disappeared and the Hong Kong stock market crashed.<br /><br />According to rumors, the teeth got on the list of an auction and the seller was an antique shop really in the business of antique-style furniture. But when the police wrenched open crates in the storerooms on Hollywood Road and Cat Street, they found nothing but ivory, tons of ivory. The shop-owners claimed it was old stock from the 90s; there had been no new deliveries since it had been made illegal to trade in ivory. As for missing teeth, they pointed at the China Resource Centre, try the medicine section, they said.<br /><br />When the stock market went under it was not a big deal because the really rich turned to Plan B, the really poor lost nothing, and everyone else had jobs. But newspapers and internet sites were still uncensored, and as a result, things were loose and a lot was said. One newspaper looked at their archive of the annual horoscope for the city, which had clearly indicated change beyond control. A legislator (a newcomer), showed off in a radio interview by pointing out that the sound of the original Chinese word for teeth had a syllable that was reminiscent of another Chinese word which sounded similar to the sound of the word for energy; Hong Kong had lost its energy. A Chinese proverb about the impossibility of pulling teeth from a tiger&#039;s mouth did the rounds, and if you considered the lion as a kind of tiger, then the impossible had occurred. One proverb said: If you cannot bite, never show your teeth. Another proverb said: When fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your teeth. Hyped, people soiled themselves. Sewage emptied into the harbor faster than the efficiency rate of the effluent recycling system, the water level rose and the streets were flooded. The water measured five-people deep and would not recede. The death toll was not too bad, numbers somewhere between India and Iceland: Iceland where every single person was rescued from lava by using choppers, India without enough escalators and elevators. Hundreds of security guards died when the water rose and people murmured in private that it was retribution for the negligence over the teeth. Many of the guards were Gurkhas, the same community that fought for the British army.<br /><br />While the city&#039;s lowlife escaped into the hills and fought it out with the illegal immigrants, wealthy construction companies with directors who lived on the Peak flew in cheap labor from Shenzhen and built walkways connecting the high floors of Hong Kong buildings. New airports, car parks and flyovers went up in a matter of weeks. The MTR re-invented itself and turned trains into submarines.<br /><br />Commercial, shopping and housing infrastructures were already in place. Food was already being imported. Clothes and money were already made of plastic. Having watched what happened in Mumbai monsoons, many buildings had already launched Crisis Management Solutions. This meant that when the bowl of the South China Sea spilled over, there were no expensive assets at the street level anyway, and MIS had already relocated servers to higher floors.<br /><br />It did not take long for the city to return to business as usual. The stock market recovered. Hong Kong Tourist Association got a new lease on life with an advertising campaign. Two ad agencies competed, one multi-national and one Beijing-based. The gweilo agency recommended "City of Sails" and felt that the controversy about plagiarizing Auckland&#039;s tagline would help amplify the impact of the budget. The China agency recommended "Hong Kong Junk City" and proposed retaining the existing campaign with the logo of the Hong Kong junk; they would simply change the text everywhere and save HKTA millions of re-branding dollars. The China agency won. Embankments were built all along the harbor to ensure that the risen waters would stay in the city. Chlorinators and cleaning systems were installed to maintain a beautified waterscape. Hong Kong was hailed as the "Venice of the East" by Dr. Condoleezza Rice. China was proud of the sobriquet. Singapore was now mud.<br /><br />A memorial was constructed for security guards in Chatter Garden, and HSBC opened a Premier account for each of the surviving families. One artist set up a lounge with tall chairs, a coffee machine and scalloped cookies in case the ghosts of the security guards dropped in. Another artist erected a figure in guard uniform, as if walking on water, and called it resurrection.	
2006-03-21	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=315	Terry Savoie	Terry Savoie&#039;s work has appeared in more than 130 literary journals, anthologies, and small press publications, including <i>Poetry, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner</i>. He lives in Davenport.			Ventriloquist							Iowa Writes	Between pencil-<br />thin moustache<br />& lower lip,<br /><br />his limp<br />smirk<br />harbors a city<br /><br />of gold-capped<br />clenched<br />teeth & a pot<br /><br />of honeyed<br />language<br />hidden<br /><br />in the hollow<br />of his Adam&#039;s<br />apple.<br /><br />He&#039;s<br />a comic <br />who wants<br /><br />us to think<br />his life&#039;s<br />merely lip<br /><br />service,<br />idle chit-<br />chat,<br /><br />answering<br />when spoken to,<br />never (never?) making<br /><br />much sense.<br />&nbsp; In<br />his world the other&#039;s<br />always the soured<br /><br />dummy while<br />he stays<br />the straight.<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; His life<br />even God<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; (given Time)<br />might grow<br />to love.	
2006-03-23	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=317	Bob Tremmel	Bob Tremmel grew up in Sheldon, Iowa, graduated three times from the University of Iowa, and since 1989 has been teaching in the English Department at Iowa State University. Most semesters he has lunch once a week with his friend and colleague, Mary Swander, in Mary&#039;s luxurious office suite. Bob is the author of <i>Zen and the Practice of Teaching English</i> and a recent book of poems, <i>Crossing Crocker Township.</i>			Lunch With Mary							Iowa Writes	Today, you have squash<br />soup, a can of sardines<br />and a bag of seaweed<br /><br />little reddish green<br />leaves that taste<br />like dried bluegills.<br /><br />It&#039;s called<br />"dulse"<br />as if it were<br />much, much sweeter.<br /><br />I have my usual<br />cheese, three mozzarella<br />sticks, some slices of dried<br />apple, apricot, peach.<br /><br />I tell you<br />about the t-shirt<br />I got for Christmas<br /><br />the white one<br />with the illuminated<br />map of Trinidad<br />and Tobago<br />on the chest.<br /><br />You tell me<br />about the leaky glass<br />bottomed boat, how<br />you all sang<br />"dah bucket is gone<br />and dah water come in"<br />and how you swam<br />to safety‚ twice‚ wearing<br />your flipflops and balancing<br />your camera bag<br />above the water<br /><br />about the deep drumming<br />rain on a thousand<br />metal rooftops<br />and finally the flash<br />flood and the mountain<br />flowing through the streets.<br /><br />not to mention<br />the Muslim bull calf<br />who escaped<br />the knife just<br />in the nick of time, ran<br />through the Bingo game<br />on the beach, straight<br />to the Hindus and his own<br />little slice of Nirvana.	
2006-03-24	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=318	Kristin Hall	Kristin Hall was recently married and lives with her husband and two cats in Iowa City where she enjoys gardening and fixing up her very old house.			A Long Ride to Ottumwa							Iowa Writes	Flower me in the Day Lily underbelly,<br />but briefly because the alley is busy<br />between those of us scraping the fence<br />and those of you calling it a labor <br />of love‚ ?like flame like fire,<br />I&#039;m glad that&#039;s not me<br />smoking the boundaries.<br /><br />On gameday, an intergalactic highway<br />painted into our yard prepared for you<br />with unseasonal sweat motivating down<br />the stone alley and rounding the corner<br />to the new white fence you can see<br />from blocks away. You are drunk<br />from your Huck and Tom genius,<br />passionately applied like another major<br />development in the landscape that has<br />stopped just for a while<br />before the blank defeat and long ride back to Ottumwa.	
2006-03-27	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=321	Ina Loewenberg	Ina Loewenberg has lived in Iowa City for more than 36 years. In addition to her most recent career as a photographer, she has been an internal auditor at The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, a tax preparer for H & R Block, and a philosophy teacher at Coe College.			Mission Statement							Iowa Writes	I&#039;m not a look-out-of-the-window poet.<br />Oh, yes, I love what we call nature but don&#039;t know what<br /><br />To do with it. Beauty in the plump fields of Iowa<br />Dressed in a mismatch of greens silenced my camera<br /><br />When it was my instrument; I stood dumb,<br />Insightless, before what others earlier had done.<br /><br />This landscape, shy and unassuming, sits<br />For its portrait patiently but doesn&#039;t tell what its<br /><br />Meaning is. I do only a little better in New York:<br />Its delicious debris nonetheless can&#039;t talk.<br /><br />I need my percepts bound to concepts as Kant<br />Demanded, I need allusion & illusion, I want<br /><br />Speakers from poems and myths and my own<br />History to inhabit my landscapes, not land alone,<br /><br />Not even sky and water, clouds and birds.<br />My landscapes are composed of words.	
2006-03-29	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=323	Dian M. Gottlob	Dian M. Gottlob works in the University of Iowa&#039;s Center for Credit Programs, where she coordinates two extended learning undergraduate programs: the Bachelor of Liberal Studies and the Bachelor of Applied Studies. She also has an adjunct teaching appointment with the College of Public Health. She resides in Kalona where she writes both fiction and nonfiction.			The First Return							Iowa Writes	Even in the midst of a midwinter storm when scattered piles of white slide across my driveway and down my rural road and when the wind snaps brittle tree branches, I remember that first return. Summer images, recorded decades ago, are cloudless.<br /><br />Coils‚ ?green, yellow and red‚ ?speed down the line; wires wrapped in color that I carefully dip into a hot pot of wax. My clothes are crusted with circles, which I peel from my pants each night. Within the Connecticut Audio Dynamics Factory, machines, voices of authority, and chatter between stations manned by women briefly interrupt the incessant loop of top-forty music that repeats itself for eight and a half hours. I await the 15-minute break; I think about Iowa City.<br /><br />"It&#039;s the coldest place on earth," I&#039;d said to my brother who lived in Oswego, a blizzard-ridden town that abuts Lake Ontario. Even for an upstater like me, who&#039;d skied down the icy Adirondacks, my first December on the plains seemed monstrous. By the end of spring, when I could afford only breakfast charged to my university bill, I considered abandoning the frigid landscape.<br /><br />"You&#039;ll need to get all &#039;A&#039;s&#039; to get any money," the department chair had told me, and I did, so that summer when the Audio Dynamics bell rang and the line briefly shut down, I called him.<br /><br />"Where are you?" he asked, as factory clatter filtered through the phone. When I explained, he fell silent. "There&#039;s a teaching assistantship available, but it&#039;s only for the first semester."<br /><br />Early morning the following Thursday, too early for factory work, I boarded a crowded commuter train with my green duffel bag, canvas backpack and jean jacket. Dumped onto a long platform in Grand Central at 7:30, I walked across the street to the LaGuardia bus stop where cars, cabs, people and a humid August day folded in around me.<br /><br />I released a smile only after the plane had landed in Cedar Rapids, when I was swallowed up by rows of crops and friends who raced east towards the Mississippi River. In the evening as we sat on a fractured concrete wall, we cast out fine blue fishing lines into the darkening water. The sun set behind us without a nibble, but when I caught sight of the barge‚ lights that brightened down an iron side as the engine sent splashes of water towards my feet‚ ?my memory became photographic. I flipped from a morning to an evening print, from a chaotic Grand Central to a composed Mississippi, and I was illuminated. Like a shed skin, I peeled away the summer and floated the summer sights and sounds south towards St. Louis, a tumble of troubles that I deep-sixed.<br /><br />"I&#039;m staying on this side of the river, forever," I stated, a promise that wasn&#039;t kept. Years and a degree later, I moved to New York, the Twin Cities and again, Connecticut. Yet always when in doubt, when life forced a change, I returned to Iowa. Even after my last foray to Texas, when I&#039;d retreated from success along the north/south route in my little red sports car, cats in the back, friend in the front, I marked home by the number of miles it took me to place myself between the Missouri and the Mississippi.<br /><br />My last arrival in early October I was greeted by golden fields. I rolled in all directions during the twenty-mile drive from an I-80 exit to my new Kalona home, as my friend inhaled the hogs and horses while tractors and buggies scrolled across the windshield.<br /><br />"Why would anyone ever leave here?" she commented, after we surveyed my new Amish neighbor&#039;s garden‚ ?the autumnal lines of fat, fresh vegetables and fruits.<br /><br />And like the first return, the last one has ended in a promise. When road ice keeps me housebound, when summer skies blister the back of my neck, I try to retrieve the evening snapshot of the Mississippi from my mental scrapbook. I dredge up that image of a brilliant barge and relax, remind myself of the first return and renew my commitment to a place and space just west of the Mississippi.	
2006-03-31	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=325	John E. Archer	John E. Archer is an Iowa native, born in Centerville, who lives in West Liberty, Iowa. He has authored technical articles while working for several industrial firms. His latest project is a first-person account of growing up in Muscatine and Davenport, Iowa, along the Mississippi.			Lemon Meringue							Iowa Writes	Just five years old and no one to play with; the new place we had moved to on Maiden Lane in Muscatine was not remote, but I hadn&#039;t met anyone my age yet. It was a warm morning in 1944, a good day for a walk for a bored five-year-old boy.<br /><br />I decided to walk downtown. I knew I wouldn&#039;t get lost because I had done it once with Mama and Paul. It was about a mile and I would walk slow. I would go down Maiden Lane towards Roscoe, which I knew would lead me to Eighth Street, where I had to turn at the bottom of the hill onto Cedar, and Cedar would take me right downtown.<br /><br />It was simple.<br /><br />I was about two blocks from our house when I saw a man fixing his car. Daddy had said his name was Johnny and he was a good mechanic. I walked by blowing on my little harmonica that Paul had got for me by sending in ten cents and a Cheerios box top.<br /><br />"Hey bud!" he yelled, "Can you play that thing?"<br /><br />"Sure," I replied. I crossed the street to where he was working.<br /><br />"Let me see that harp." he said, as he spit a stream of tobacco deftly over his shoulder. "Here&#039;s how you do it." Taking the harmonica from my outstretched hand, he pointed out how you had to hold your tongue over the holes you didn&#039;t want to play. He spit again and stuck out his tobacco-flecked tongue and covered two holes and blew on the others. The sound was a single note, not the jumble I had been playing.<br /><br />"See bud," he said, "Now we&#039;ll see if thing&#039;s got any music in it." With that he played a short version of <i>Yankee Doodle</i> and then <i>Oh! Susanna</i>. He was really good. "Now you give it a try, bud."<br /><br />I blew a few notes but the sweetish aftertaste of his tobacco made it hard for me to think about playing.<br /><br />"Well, you just keep trying," he said, and he turned back to his car.<br /><br />I blew a few notes and walked down the street. When I was out of sight, I stopped and spit several times to get rid of the tobacco taste. I wiped the harmonica off and put it in my pants pocket. Maybe I&#039;d give it to Paul when I got home.<br /><br />I watched squirrels playing tag on Eighth Street. They ran away when I got too close. On Cedar, I passed a postman who said, "Hi son," as he walked by. A fat lady smiled at me as she pushed a baby carriage past me. I wasn&#039;t tall enough to see the baby.<br /><br />I came to the first traffic light of downtown. It was green. Mama had told me to only cross when it was green. The green one is on the bottom. I walked to a restaurant just past the Courthouse. It was painted red and white and had a big sign out front but I couldn&#039;t read. Paul had told me that it said "Maid-Rite." I could smell hamburger cooking so I went inside and sat on one of the high stools at the counter.<br /><br />I was looking at the pies in the pie case behind the counter when a lady came up with a glass of water and set it in front of me. I took a long drink.<br /><br />"Can I get you some pie, Hon?" she asked.<br /><br />"What kind of pie is that with the white stuff on top?" I asked as I drank some more water.<br /><br />"That&#039;s Lemon Meringue, Honey."<br /><br />"I don&#039;t have any money," I said, "but I sure would like some of that pie."<br /><br />"I can&#039;t give you pie without money, Hon." And she added, "Don&#039;t you think you should go home now, son?"<br /><br />As I walked back up Eighth Street hill I wondered if Mama could make a pie like that. I was picking up buckeyes from under a tree about a block from our house when a police car stopped across the street.<br /><br />"Hey kid! Are you John?" the policeman yelled.<br /><br />"Yes I am!" I said proudly. I really liked my name.<br /><br />"Well, you better get home quick. Your mother&#039;s been looking all over for you. She thought you were lost."<br /><br />"I&#039;m not lost," I replied. "I just went for a walk."	
2006-04-02	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=379	Mary Vermillion	Iowa native Mary Vermillion pens mystery novels and teaches English at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids. Her first novel, <i>Death by Discount</i>�a finalist for two Lambda awards�portrays Wal-Mart&#039;s impact on small towns. Her second novel, <i>Murder by Mascot,</i> features Hawkeye basketball.	Mary Vermillion&#039;s website	http://www.maryvermillion.com	<span style="font-style:normal;">Excerpt from the opening pages of</span> Murder By Mascot							Iowa Writes	My face hurt from fake-smiling through the game&#039;s first half. The source of this pain came from the seating arrangement in Section A, Row 5 of Carver-Hawkeye Arena. My ex, Anne, had the aisle seat�which I didn&#039;t mind, given her legginess. What I did mind was her new partner, Orchid, who wedged herself in between us and made it nearly impossible for us to talk. She bumped my right side every time she turned to whisper in Anne&#039;s ear or to grab a handful of their organic popcorn. Things were no better on my left where I was saving an empty seat for Neale, my long-distance girlfriend. She was supposed to meet us for dinner before the game, but still hadn&#039;t shown.<br /><br />Our mascot, Herky, paced the court&#039;s perimeter, his huge plastic hawk&#039;s head bobbing atop a tall, spindly body. His beaky grin looked every bit as stiff as mine felt, but that didn&#039;t stop the hordes of children who wanted to high-five him or hug him. He flapped his arms�or wings�as we scored, and Orchid clapped along.<br /><br />Narrowly dodging her elbow, I adjusted my glasses and checked the scoreboard: Iowa Hawkeyes 45, Missouri Tigers 41.<br /><br />"We should be way ahead by now," Orchid grumbled.<br /><br />"It&#039;s the first game," Anne said. "We&#039;re just rusty."<br /><br />At least that&#039;s what I thought she said.<br /><br />"We don&#039;t have much depth." Orchid nodded toward the bench, which was directly in front of us. Orchid&#039;s season tickets are much better than mine, as are her luck and her job. She is the program director at the alternative radio station where I work. In other words, my boss and my constant reminder that life isn&#039;t fair.<br /><br />She jabbed me in the arm�on purpose this time. "I wonder what&#039;s keeping your girlfriend," she asked. Her eyes were the same color as her steely buzz cut and vulva-shaped pewter earrings.<br /><br />I shrugged and summoned another fake grin before grabbing my cell phone and punching in my own number. If my housemate Vince answered, I&#039;d inquire about his Persian, Norma Desmond. That was our code for <i>get me outta here</i>. Alas, Vince did not answer, so I left a message for Norma and turned my attention to the game.<br /><br />Coach Bridget Stokes waved a clipboard in the air and yelled at her team to play defense. Technically speaking, Bridget was not the coach. She was Carol Oliver&#039;s most experienced assistant and therefore in charge while Coach Carol visited her dying brother in Pennsylvania.<br /><br />Our standout point guard, Win Ramsey, dribbled the ball downcourt and heaved it to our only freshman starter. She squared her feet to the basket and nailed the three.<br /><br />"Jessie March," Orchid said. "She&#039;s gonna be good. Check out that jump shot."<br /><br />What I noticed about the freshman was that she was the only player with auburn hair. For the most part, that&#039;s how I keep track of the players�their &#039;dos. Granted, it&#039;s not foolproof given all the faux-blond ponytails.<br /><br />"The rookie is family," Orchid said. "Elaine saw her at the Alley Cat with our shortstop."<br /><br />For Orchid, no women&#039;s sporting event is complete unless she determines which players are lesbians. Me, I have better things to do than ponder the sexual orientations of nineteen-year-olds.<br /><br />After the Tigers scored an easy two, our center, Kate Timmens, set a nice pick for Varenka White, who drove to the hoop and got hacked by the Tiger center. It was the fourth foul on their top scorer, so the crowd erupted, hushing only when Varenka stepped to the free-throw line.<br /><br />After she sank the front end of her one-and-one, there was no triumphant riff from the pep band. Except for some scattered applause, the arena was freakishly quiet.<br /><br />Anne gasped, her eyes fixed on the other side of the arena. I followed her gaze past the players lined up at the key for Varenka&#039;s second shot. There, sprawled in the front row�right across the court from our women&#039;s bench�was the infamous hoopster, Dave DeVoster. With his disconcertingly blond hair, the star forward looked like a Nordic model for Abercrombie and Fitch. His outstretched legs grazed the out-of-bounds line as he laughed with two guys who looked like linebackers.<br /><br />Why shouldn&#039;t he laugh? Not only had the senior forward just avoided jail, but he had also gained an extra year of eligibility when the university granted him a red-shirt season and the remainder of his scholarship. This, after being charged with raping one of its female athletes.	
2006-04-04	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=381	Tim Trenkle	Tim Trenkle is a resident of Dubuque, Iowa, where he writes a column for the <i>Telegraph Herald</i>. "My people have all been farmers and meatpackers," he says. "I write human interest pieces about Iowa and the values of our world, seen from the banks of the Mississippi."			Echoes of America							Iowa Writes	The train rumbles the ties that hold the rails on the bed of stones. It moves sound up from the earth into the chairs at the long, green-topped tables where the veterans sit in the conference room of the newly decorated restaurant. A round-faced old man touches his gold-rimmed glasses as he listens to the conversation above the rumble that holds his chest at his throat.<br /><br />Tables are pushed against each other across the length of the room to form two rows. Veterans are seated along one of the rows and friends and family at the other. A splash of food graces the tables in color on dozens of plates. Little rolled fingers of chicken are set by taco shell salads and French soups. Ham dinners are ladled upon mounds of potatoes. Potato soup steams above the rich napkins, and the silverware is long and heavy enough to accommodate the biggest hands.<br /><br />The banquet honors the passing of an old soldier.<br /><br />A speaker places his hands on the table. He&#039;s talking to several of those acquainted with the departed. He wears a tie striped in red, white and blue that moves diagonally up the knotted cloth. The tie is held to the white shirt by a gold clip. He looks down the length of green and turns to his left where a bounty of food covers thirty feet of tables. On his right is a window that gives up a view to the flashing, red railroad crossing lights.<br /><br />He shifts his weight from his hands and as he stares down this last supper the lights from the window extract a gleam from his eyeglasses.<br /><br />Some of the people are red-eyed.<br /><br />One of the men seated with the veterans shifts in his seat and his suspenders shift on his shirt while the train rumbles past in the yard next door.<br /><br />The words of an earlier service today still hang in the air. The talk is about the old days of Dubuque and service to country. Many of the attendees remember the man they&#039;ve come to celebrate. The veterans have spoken about sacrifice and commitment at the final passing of the flag. The salutes are gone and the rifles are silent.<br /><br />The old gentleman at the table&#039;s edge wears an American flag on his right shoulder. One of the women comments that it appears backwards. "Shouldn&#039;t it be turned the other way?" she asks. "The blue field of stars is leading," she says.<br /><br />In the quiet of the moment a veteran says, "The blue leads because it symbolizes peace."<br /><br />One of the old men wearing blue trousers with gold stripes trailing down the sides, the man who clicked his black boot heels upon transferring the flag at the casket, is bustling, preparing to leave. A shaded light covers the tables and makes shadows on the plants that hang at all four corners of the ceiling.<br /><br />One of the people at the table of friends says that the flag was probably made in China. At this a silence, like death, like the funeral procession, like the smoke of the guns before taps, fills the room. Heads turn, one to the other.<br /><br />Each of these last to pay respects to an old friend is left with their thoughts of him and of America.<br /><br />Echoes of the lonesome train roll out beyond the bluffs.	
2006-04-05	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=382	David Mitschelen	David Mitschelen&#039;s boyhood home was Madrid, Iowa. He earned a Master in Library and Information Science from the University of Iowa in 1993 and currently provides answers at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.			The Almost-Noon Whistle							Iowa Writes	An extended mechanical moan accompanied by our dachshund&#039;s mournful descant and Mom&#039;s call to lunch: that&#039;s how I remember noon as a boy. The noon whistle was a part of growing up in a small town. There was no reason to it. If it marked the beginning of a lunch break, why didn&#039;t another whistle mark the end? It certainly didn&#039;t mark the end of a work shift. There weren&#039;t any businesses in town big enough to work in shifts. Besides, it wasn&#039;t a factory whistle; it was the noon whistle. It was a fact of life like green grass, blue skies, and chewing gum on the bottom of school desks.<br /><br />I&#039;d forgotten about noon whistles and other facts of life while busy learning more important facts at college and various other places far from home. I was reminded of them after settling down in small-town Iowa again.<br /><br />"What&#039;s that? Fire? Police? Ambulance?" But the siren had stopped before my wife finished the question.<br /><br />"That&#039;s the noon whistle," I answered. Providing answers is what I do best.<br /><br />"But it&#039;s not noon," she said. My wife is Swiss. Time is an absolute.<br /><br />I looked at my watch. It was 11:52. "Noon isn&#039;t really an exact time. It refers to the time when the sun is highest in the sky," I informed her. Some answers need elaboration.<br /><br />"When is the sun highest in the sky?" she asked.<br /><br />"At 12 o&#039;clock," I replied. I had no intention of trying to explain daylight savings time.<br /><br />"But it&#039;s not 12 o&#039;clock," she repeated.<br /><br />I tried a different approach. "The noon whistle isn&#039;t to set your watch by. It&#039;s a tradition. A person at the town hall turns it on as a kind of signal that it&#039;s time to go to lunch," I explained.<br /><br />"Today he must have been really hungry," she said.<br /><br />I couldn&#039;t swear that the whistle always blew at exactly 12:00 when I was growing up. Kids didn&#039;t have watches, and time wasn&#039;t important back then. Noon was whenever the noon whistle blew. But now I had to look at my watch to see when hunger struck the designated town official. It generally ranged from five to ten minutes early, though occasionally it was as early as twenty till and once it was five minutes late.<br /><br />Then, without warning, it sounded at exactly 12:00 for a full week. Was the person on a diet? Had the clerk been fired and replaced with a more efficient bureaucrat? Had the fallible human been replaced by an automatic timer?<br /><br />On Monday the whistle blew at 11:48. My wife and I looked at each other.<br /><br />"Back from vacation."	
2006-04-07	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=384	Claire Kean	Claire Kean lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She is twelve years old and a sixth grader at Harding Middle School. "I like reading just about any type of story, but I like to write non-fiction the best," she says.			Tap Tap, Knock Knock							Iowa Writes	"Click, tap, tap." I glance out the French doors lining the plain white living room walls. My dog Blaise, a gigantic, fluffy, loving collie, is smiling in at me. "Click, click, tap." Once again he gently taps on the glass doors, just like a little gentleman. Part of me wants to go out and face the blistering cold, to take my dogs out for a beautiful walk to the river. Yet, another part of me wants to be lazy and sit at home and sip tea all day.<br /><br />"Click, click, tap tap." With Blaise&#039;s big, warm, brown eyes staring through me, I melt and go to the laundry room to get my shoes. The dogs go crazy. Every 30 seconds there&#039;s a loud, anxious whine at the door. "I&#039;m coming," I assure them. Another loud wail. I open the door and they prance around the garage. Blaise sounds as if he&#039;s singing, he howls so long and loud. "Let&#039;s go for a walk!"<br /><br />We walk out the side door, and while walking across the yard to the woods, FLASH! I see a blur of deep brown and beige. Here comes Ted, the neighbor dog, rocketing by to join us. We head down the deep, white, untouched, snow-topped trail into the large, frozen meadow. The dogs occasionally run off to dig up an innocent mouse to eat. Luckily the mouse usually escapes through the grass. The dogs still stand there sniffing as if thinking, "Huh? Where&#039;d he go?" They always trot back to me to make sure I&#039;m still there, wag their tails, and then trot off again.<br /><br />A stand of trees looms before us. We enter the woods. The tall dark trees stand like people watching us, but they never speak, or follow us. I hear a cracking noise. Bailey, the middle-sized dog of the three, is sliding on the ice ahead of us, cracking the ice in some spots. Now I hear a splash. Over one hundred pounds of dog plunges in through the ice. Blaise just lumbers up and seems to say "I did that on purpose," and saunters off. He gives Ted a dirty look, as if he&#039;s jealous that Ted never falls in.<br /><br />After an hour of this, three wet, dirty dogs walk back to the house. The wind is whipping my hair. I am no longer cold. It was great to get out, and now I have earned my hot tea, in my bright red velvet armchair by the fire.	
2006-04-09	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=386	Mary Iber	Mary Iber is Consulting Librarian for the Sciences at Cornell College, and teaches in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa as an adjunct assistant professor. She has lived in Iowa for 23 years.			Shoveling or How Long to Delay Shoveling?							Iowa Writes	Fresh<br />light<br />pure<br />white<br />snow.<br /><br />Petite<br />paw<br />prints<br />define<br />edges.<br /><br />Erase<br />traces<br />of the<br />pathfinder.<br />Shovel<br />But<br />Remember.	
2006-04-11	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=388	Kristy Parker	Kristy Parker was born and raised in Waterloo and is currently an Art Education major at the University of Northern Iowa. She has been writing poetry since she was 12 years old.			Gaia&#039;s Cave							Iowa Writes	Rattled rivers of fear glide through her thighs<br />Her own glimmering scarlet waters course to the center of her Underworld<br />To the forbidden fruit left untasted, the essence of Gaia hides in her cave<br />Waiting for Orpheus, with his sweet music of abandon<br />To unlock the entryway with echoes of song and mirth<br />His hands that so deftly plucked Cupid&#039;s harp, will make the walls tremble<br />And eyes that could see through Athena&#039;s biting armor<br />See what lies at the end of the living tunnel<br />That welcomes its warrior home...a place inviting, warm<br />Full of the truth that lies hidden behind the shadows of her eyelashes<br />That she can cast down no more....because Orpheus would never let her look away<br />From love so real, it makes the gods jealous	
2006-04-13	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=390	Walter Richard Knupfer	Walter Richard Knupfer received his B.A., M.F.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Iowa. His work has appeared in <i>The Paris Review, The Antioch Review, Ploughshares, The Ohio Review, Turnstile, The Great Lakes Review,</i> and elsewhere.			In the Bed of Iowa							Iowa Writes	where you and your brother were born<br />in the rolling landscape of corn, beans, rivers<br />and fogs of fireflies where you can&#039;t tell<br />the fireflies from the stars, born in an ancient<br /><br />seabed that became topsoil layered and layered<br />until shoots of grassland filled with meadows<br />of phlox, Indian paint-brush, daisies, blue asters<br />and lavender sunsets and purple thunderstorms.<br /><br />We used to race under the rainbows through clapping<br />lightning storms, breaking through the waves of color<br />of showers again, dousing ourselves when the line moved<br />through pouring streams, the soil draining down-river<br /><br />to the muddy blues&#039; oily muck. A conch, a coral reef,<br />a whorl, an aching noise when the earth burst into the sea<br />and all swirled into all, a calamitous, cacophonous blast,<br />a chorus of noisy crickets, a cochlear shell that amplifies<br /><br />nothing but the whistling wind and tinnitus, a petrous<br />hardness, an undulating crust of shaken blankets of tin<br />soldiers who die and die in crusted paint in pink flesh.<br />From there you were reborn, from word from word,<br /><br />in a cloudy world under the Iowa sun, fistula, fistula,<br />burst into another word, another word, another word.<br />I love you, my son, who has taken me from the gentle<br />speech through the left hemisphere in another life of my own,<br /><br />the map of the heavens through the fourth sign and beyond<br />through unbalanced semi-circular canals, losing our balance,<br />from watershed to watershed. We can wait for the shoe to drop,<br />like the flat Missouri fault buckling, bubbling and blistering<br /><br />in fissures and cracks, tremors and temblors in rolling land<br />pounding the flat table, shaking the tablecloth with crystal vases<br />and ground glass and sand, correcting the plate of earth<br />of petrous rock that calcifies into a limestone escarpment,<br /><br />but everything pales like your ossified petrous inner ear<br />glued by flaps of skin that connects you with the world,<br />and the light of your eyes on campfire, transfixed<br />in flickering embers, stupefied by the mystery of the stars.	
2006-04-16	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=393	Sheena Smitley	Sheena Maree Smitley was born in Des Moines, Iowa. She is 20 years old and a sophomore at Simpson College. An English major, she plans to teach high school after graduating.			Porcelain Memory							Iowa Writes	Who gave you right<br />To call yourself Daddy?<br />I remember the pressure<br />of your large palms<br />like wind on a black umbrella tent<br />smashing my skull<br />into the thick, dark, crimson carpet.<br />Your dry, paint-stained fingers<br />wrapped firmly &#039;round my shoulders<br />as my frail body, shoved<br />through air, finds a wall<br />tough as your fist<br />that used to scrape<br />itself across my cheek.<br />Who gave you right<br />to call yourself Daddy?<br />The sting of alcohol<br />in your breath,<br />burning beneath the blood<br />stained cuts on my skin<br />and causing my tears to well.<br />Your forceful roar, so close to me<br />that I could feel your droplets of<br />alcoholic saliva landing upon my freckles,<br />blending with the tears of blood<br />that dripped helplessly down<br />the side of my face.<br />I remember your head would shake<br />in complete rage<br />until your voice no longer existed.<br />It thundered through my home<br />what used to be our home,<br />and the walls began to tremble<br />as your beer-stenched self<br />made way through the front door.<br />My tiny feet were left with no choice<br />but to hide and pray<br />that someday an angel would come<br />and carry me away.<br />The fury in your eyes<br />seeped into me<br />like hell&#039;s tempestuous black hole<br />and eventually swallowed me whole.<br />Who gave you right<br />to call yourself Daddy?	
2006-04-17	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=394	Savanna Snead	Savanna lives in Cedar Rapids. She enjoys reading, riding her bike and hanging out with her mom and friends. Savanna dreams of becoming a president, judge, lawyer, writer and actress.			The Beast							Iowa Writes	Ever since I was ten I have been afraid to go to my grandparents&#039; house.<br />I remember one particularly horrifying day when I was forced to spend the night there.<br />My mom opened the screen door and knocked hard on the cruel red wood door.<br />My grandma opened the door and smiled. It was terrifying.<br />Her yellowish-green teeth glowed in the moonlight, her eyes were squinty, and I swear they were turning black!<br />I half expected to see the numbers 666 appear on her wrinkled forehead!<br />I clung on to my mom but she pushed me away into the hands of evil.<br />"No! Don&#039;t leave me here! I don&#039;t want to die!" I screamed, but she just walked away.<br />My grandmother shut the door and locked all eight locks.<br />"It&#039;s feeding time," she said in her scratchy voice.<br />She led me into the kitchen and pulled off my only protection from evil, my coat, and hurled me into a cold wood chair.<br />There it was. The monster.<br />Its titanium skin gleamed in the yellow light. Its sixteen eyes flashed red. The monster&#039;s mouth was wide open and I could see its glassy tongue.<br />My grandma pulled open the white refrigerator door, reached in, and grabbed a frozen cheeseburger.<br />What would she do with it?<br />She placed it on a plate and on the beast&#039;s tongue.<br />Ugh! She was feeding it.<br />She pushed on its eyes and it screamed in rage and pain!<br />What evil and madness was this?<br />She closed its mouth and touched another eye.<br />"Mmmmm," went the beast as it fed.<br />I sat paralyzed in my seat.<br />After a minute or two of shock, the beast roared loudly three times and my grandmother opened its mouth and took the cheeseburger out of the beast&#039;s mouth.<br />Disgusting!<br />She set the plate down in front of me and smiled again.<br />"Enjoy, my little angel," she cackled.<br />I was sure she had fallen off her rocker and could not get back up!<br />I poked it. Ugh! It was soggy and damp from being in the beast&#039;s mouth.<br />I picked it up and sunk my teeth into it.<br />Well, it could have used some ketchup, but oh well!	
2006-04-19	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=396	David Zollo	David Zollo is an Iowa City-based singer, songwriter, keyboardist, and the founder of the music label Trailer Records. His CDs include <i>The Big Night, Uneasy Street,</i> and <i>The Morning is a Long Way from Home</i>.	David Zollo&#039;s website	http://www.davidzollo.com	Parnell							Iowa Writes	They said I&#039;d never hold your arm,<br />They said I&#039;d never hold my head up high;<br />They said I&#039;d never hold the nighttime in my hands,<br />So they said, and they was right.<br /><br />They said the pills and liquor would not raise me,<br />Such a shame to see a young man die.<br />They said my emotions were the distance between two points,<br />So they said, and they was right.<br /><br />If I make it back to Parnell,<br />I ain&#039;t never coming back here;<br />Where my dreams were tossed like whiskey across the bar<br />And the whole place smells like my fear.<br /><br />I took off west with both legs running<br />To find myself some of your happiness,<br />But my hopes were scattered like husks in the field;<br />I&#039;ve given up on life I guess.<br /><br />If I make it back to Parnell,<br />I ain&#039;t never coming back here;<br />Where my dreams were tossed like whiskey across the bar<br />And the whole place smells like my fear.<br /><br />So baby, if you see me walking,<br />Back home, all alone, in the moonlight,<br />Then you&#039;ll know that place got the best of me,<br />So they said, and they was right.<br /><br />If I make it back to Parnell,<br />I ain&#039;t never coming back here;<br />Where my dreams were tossed like whiskey across the bar<br />And the whole place smells like my fear.<br /><br />© 1999, David Zollo, BMI, all rights reserved. From the CD <i>Uneasy Street,</i> on Trailer Records, Iowa City, USA.	
2006-04-20	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=397	Tom Snee	A Duluth, Minnesota native, Tom Snee now lives in Iowa City with his wife and son. His work has appeared in the <i>Wapsipinicon Almanac, The Long Story, Elysian Fields Quarterly,</i> and <i>Exquisite Corpse</i>. His story, "First Start," was recently included in <i>Fenway Fiction,</i> an anthology of stories about the Boston Red Sox. He works in the University News Service of the University of Iowa.			Venus Banging on the Windshield							Iowa Writes	<i>Hey, you OK in there?</i> I fought the day-old whiskey and scotch and cheap tequila to pry open my eyelids, gasped at the rancid sour smell of myself, squinted through the summer sun high in the sky to Venus banging on the windshield. Stunned, I mustered only a thick and bubbly-throated ungh and gawked at her startling beauty, hair that flowed like a golden river, eyes blue as icebergs that chilled my skin, a body I would have paid to see naked, right then and there. She needed only to stand in a giant open clam shell to complete the picture.<br /><br /><i>You&#039;ve been in there all day, we&#039;re starting to get worried,</i> she bent over so her shirt fell open to me and only me and when I peered down, making no attempt to hide where I was looking, I knew I would marry her, I knew I would never leave this town of Wherever I Am and marry her and she would become Mrs. Venus Robinson, and I would get a job at a hardware store, the one right across the street with the hand-lettered help wanted sign in the window, and work my way up to manager, maybe some day buy the place when the owner retires to Tucson, and we would have two children, Romulus and Roy, and become scions of this town of Wherever I Am, known by everyone, friends to all, benefactors, civic do-gooders. We will sing songs at Rotary, slice frozen cod at the Lion&#039;s fish fry, lead the Pledge at PTA meetings and hack away at the Chamber of Commerce golf tournament, and at night we will retire to our three-bedroom ranch in the nice subdivision on the edge of town and put our kids to bed after a story and count our blessings and then make love, wild animal love, sweaty and intense, loud and passionate, the kind that brings you closer to God, the kind that solves all the riddles of the universe and makes sense of the pain of it all so broken hearts can be endured and dashed lives put back together.<br /><br /><i>So where you from, anyways,</i> she pushed her collar up to close the gap and I looked up to her face, soft as a pillow, warm as the midday sun, eyes bright as jade and teeth white as stars, and I said would you marry me. She laughed like it was the silliest thing she&#039;d ever heard, a sharp you-can&#039;t-be-serious laugh, just like I&#039;d heard the day before, on bent knee, a diamond that cost me two month&#039;s salary (just like the ads said it should), a laugh that revealed to me the profound understanding that my destiny was to spend the rest of the day in a bar and drive all night to Wherever I Am to marry Venus banging on my windshield.<br /><br /><i>Take it easy and I hope you get home all right,</i> she laughed and walked away, her jeans a half-size too small for her sparrow body, but I knew we would be married, I knew it was only a matter of time.	
2006-04-23	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=400	Chris Kilgore	Chris Kilgore is an Iowa writer. He was born in Dubuque but has lived in Iowa City since 1997 (with a 10-month hiatus in Missoula, MT). He has a few stories posted on online journals, one of them published in an e-zine called <i>Johnny America</i>.	Johnny America	http://www.johnnyamerica.net/	How Man Came to Know That the Merilles Fish Was Poisonous and Inedible							Iowa Writes	One morning in the summer of a year before years were counted two men with brown leathery skin waded out far into the cold waters that stretched away to Hedvana, the land of the dead and unborn spirits. Armed with long spears poised high above their heads they scoured the glassy waters for food. The one called Bu tè flung his spear at a blue fish with yellow spots, impaling it. Bu tè retrieved his spear, raised it and examined the bright blue and yellow creature on the end of it. This was a fish that no man had ever seen before and Bu tè&#039;s heart became full, he rushed back to the beach at once, splashing and flailing. The other, called Bu yà, noticed this unusual behavior by his friend and so came ashore to see what the matter was. Bu tè had already gutted and splayed the fish, and was now making an obeisance over it. Bu yà beheld the fish before Bu tè and was awestruck by its brightness. He took his seat next to Bu tè and also began making an obeisance. Bu tè looked at his friend and made a grave expression. He then made guttural noises in his throat. What Bu tè said to Bu yà was: "You can&#039;t have any."<br /><br />"What do you mean," asked Bu yà, not a little offended. "There is enough for both of us. We are great friends you and I. We share everything."<br /><br />"I&#039;m sorry, Bu yà, but this fish I cannot share with you because it is a gift from Hevis, the lady of Hedvana and it was sent to me. If you were meant to have some, Hevis would have sent you your own Merilles fish." At this Bu yà became suspicious, wondering how Bu tè knew that the name of this fish was Merilles, which in their guttural tongue meant &#039;magic fish for a great warrior.&#039;<br /><br />Bu tè began to devour the Merilles fish while Bu yà watched jealously. When Bu tè had gorged himself he lay back on the sand, his lips shiny from the tetrodoxin-containing oil of the Merilles, secreted in the ovaries, eggs, blood, liver, intestines, and, to a lesser extent, skin. Bu tè began to moan and mumble in ways Bu yà did not understand. Bu yà jumped to his feet believing that Bu tè was having a divine vision.<br /><br />"What do you see!?" Bu yà hollered. Bu tè looked up at Bu yà with blood-red eyes that then rolled back into his head as he vomited and soiled himself many many times. When there was nothing left inside his stomach he was left heaving and convulsing on the sand. For about twenty minutes Bu yà sat next to him and watched intently as the tremblings of his friend&#039;s body and the rise and fall of the chest grew less and less until at last Bu tè became still. Bu yà, upon examining the body, found his friend to be without spirit.<br /><br />"Truly," Bu yà thought, "this was a fish sent by Hevis to bring Bu tè back to Hedvana. Indeed, Bu tè must have been the greatest warrior in the life of the land."<br /><br />Bu yà gave a great tribute to the body of Bu tè, he built an altar and a pyre on the beach and bid him good speed on his journey to Hedvana and then returned alone to his village. Bu yà related with great ceremony the story of Bu tè and the Merilles fish. His story became known to all people for many miles around who, from then on, always did two things: they exalted the memory of the great warrior Bu tè and were wary of the Merilles fish and knew not to eat of it, lest they should be carried away to Hedvana.	
2006-04-25	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=402	Aliona Hairetdinova	Aliona Hairetdinova, originally from the Republic of Moldova, is a sophomore at Drake University majoring in international business, finance, and English. "I write both prose and poetry in my spare time�usually both are in the abstract or lyrical form," she says.			The Corporate							Iowa Writes	She chaotically pulls out metallic sounds of a packaged wooden trapezoid through a round plastic hole. Maybe ten, she stands alone. Blue cashiers rush boxed Pepsi cans and White Stag socks across the laser-jolting X. It beeps in recognition of each set of barcode lines. Barcodes on childhood pinks. Rainbow clouds. Even ponies and butterflies are laser-ed in. She checks her left hand. Bites the pinkie nail. Pulls on the strings behind the plastic. Scratches her nose. Everything in her life is barcoded. She has no control over the numbers, as long as spiders crawl on the bathroom walls and the ladybugs slip through windowsill cracks. She could crawl and slip, if she wanted. If only barcodes wouldn&#039;t sting her under the sheets. Oh, she just ate an oatmeal cookie! Lights would turn up on the road and she wouldn&#039;t pay attention because she plucks metal out of plastic and polished wood.<br /><br />She will ring a terribly unkempt turnpike somewhere in Tennessee or Colorado and would never reach the bell. Or the phone for that matter. Or any other sort of communicable disease. She washes her hands before meals with soap and water and brushes her teeth at night to avoid gingivitis in ten years. It is the Pepsi that causes cavities�she knows, but she hates going to the dentist. That swooshy-wheezy thing hurts her teeth in the bright light. Metal on human bone. Like raw steel, or oxidized hemoglobin�all metal in a plastic bag, so who gives a damn.<br /><br />She has to eat broccoli and spinach because they say so. When she grows older, she&#039;ll indulge herself in overcooked carcinogens from Teflon pans and bright yellow boxes of Arm & Hammer baking soda. Clean like a squid, she&#039;ll be another ringing barcode. Singing in a digital downpour. Lost souls, found bodies, and deep black eyes in orange veils with golden bracelets from the East. They used to call it the Orient and shun the name now�orient yourself within pi and pick the right line of spices. And some religious Confucianism. Somewhere in Shambala or Jerusalem, squared away, she&#039;d divide her awls into water and corn and build little people in shattering sand castles.<br /><br />She might just stay at the strings behind the plastic cover. In the electric lights of the optical clinic. Searching the floor for the right speck. It would search for her too and she&#039;d be lost in tall dry grass, hugging her knees, hoping, counting bugs in the air. Twenty or thirty. Who would pay for them all? The ice cream is running all over and she can&#039;t help the heat. She could run away to the mounds and play in the dirt. There are rocks there, after all.<br /><br />She knows how to plant beans. It doesn&#039;t take much�grandpa&#039;s earth grows eternally with plenty of water. It&#039;s not your Chia Pet. It needs care. She grew into it and turned around to find her sneakers hanging from the door handle. Striped. Like endless barcodes. The calendar tells her about her own�own�beans. The date. Time. Place. It is all a set of empirical calculations. In moon years. She learns about them in school, wearing her sneakers, wet from the water in the garden. Forest, tall dry grass. Muddy shoelaces and a lonely dandelion on the kitchen counter top. She already forgot about them. She already lost herself, as she has done before, to the Cartoon Network.<br /><br />Tomorrow, she will plant the tree�she knows, and she won&#039;t even have to take out her shovel. It already grows outside her window, on the corner. Yes, she will plant it tomorrow. And set two corn people in its shade�it wouldn&#039;t be lonely that way. She will play for them the corporate barcode. String after string. Her ponytail tick-tocks, as she pulls on the metal under the plastic. She turns around. Quizzically flows beyond the blue cashiers and beeping lasers, still somewhere in the dry grass, with squeaky sneakers, still reaching for that bell at the turnpike.	
2006-04-27	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=404	Robert Dana	Robert Dana is Poet Laureate of Iowa.			Taking Down the Christmas Lights							Iowa Writes	Our neighborhood&#039;s gone dark again,<br />all its Christmas lights down now.<br />We unclipped from our eaves, two<br />weeks ago in the unseasonable, late<br />December warm, thirty yards<br />of blue icicles, accordioning them<br />into fist-sized bundles, securing them<br />with green plastic ties, the kind<br />meant for staking up garden<br />plants in summer, then packing them<br />neatly in a box marked <i>Outside</i>.<br />Our P-E-A-C-E sign with its mad<br />racing combinations and slow fade-<br />out-fade-in hangs blankly green<br />once again for another whole year<br />with the tools in the garage: crowbar,<br />loppers and pruners, step ladder.<br /><br />And tonight, the season at last grown<br />wintry, knuckles cracking with cold,<br />my wife coils up snaking extension<br />cords and dismantles our white,<br />skeletal, antlered reindeer, Horatio,<br />�he of the moving head�last<br />and best of show, folding him down<br />and packing his separate parts<br />into his proper carton for storage<br />in the basement, along with boxes<br />of bulbs, strings of lights, tree<br />ornaments, some with family histories.<br />And the two small, robin sized,<br />feathered birds, one red, one white,<br />that top our tree as shining spikes<br />and stars and archangels do others&#039;�<br />the one descending, the other rising.	
2006-04-30	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=407	Kim Bridgford	Kim Bridgford is a professor of English at Fairfield University, where she edits <i>Dogwood</i> and <i>Mezzo Cammin</i>. Her third book of poetry, <i>In the Extreme: Sonnets About World Records,</i> recently won the Donald Justice Poetry Award and will be published by the West Chester University Poetry Center in spring 2007.			The Most Ferocious Freshwater Fish							Iowa Writes	The piranhas like their appetizers plain�<br />A scent of blood, a frantic human splash.<br />A school of fish will gravitate to pain<br />And turn the naked body into hash.<br /><br />They race for food, and gobble up their meals:<br />The make a dietitian shake her head.<br />Of course, one is distracted by the squeals<br />When making a nutrition pyramid.<br /><br />They pick bones clean, with single minded ease;<br />And in this sense they are easy to please.<br />No fancy food, just flesh and flowing blood:<br />And these ferocious fish will call it good.<br />Like diners who&#039;ve survived the Great Depression,<br />The piranhas eat with little hesitation.	
2006-05-01	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=408	Jean Marie Hall	Jean Marie Hall is a feature story writer and columnist for the Clayton County Register in Elkader, Iowa. Her column is entitled "Flora, Fauna and Folks." She has worked for this weekly newspaper for nearly twenty years.			Life as a Creek							Iowa Writes	I am water and moss and sand and rock and mud. Water primarily, rock always, moss in late summer, mud along my banks, and sand when floods roll it down my path.<br /><br />I don&#039;t know how old I am. I don&#039;t remember how or when a gush of water, rockslide or just plain erosion caused me to break away from my mother, the Turkey River, and find my own path in life. At first I wandered wide and shallow trying to decide where I wanted to go. But by and by, the soil under me washed away and banks began to form at my side and my fate for centuries was decided.<br /><br />Animals love me and depend on me. Deer and turkey come to me for drinks. Birds come to drink too and they eat the bugs above me and the seeds on the weeds that grow on my banks. They decorate me with bright colors. Raccoons live close by and use my water to wash their food, persnickety as they are about that kind of thing. I used to have muskrats that would do their water ballet in my deeper parts and live in my banks. I haven’t seen them here lately. There have been possums and other animals, even an occasional nasty-looking snapping turtle.<br /><br />If the water is just right in the spring, the fish called <i>red horse</i> swim down me. I have pools filled with minnows.<br /><br />A hundred years or more ago, Indians crossed me or pitched their tepees beside me. Indian women carried my water to their cook fires and washed their clothes here in my water and on my rocks. Indian children played with twigs for arrows and sticks for ponies along my banks. They swam in me when they were hot. When they were teenagers, they flirted and courted beside me.<br /><br />Later people built a wonderful bridge across me that took them in their vehicles down a road across the country. Under the bridge, I grew very deep and people came to swim in those depths and dived off that bridge.<br /><br />Now I am old and lazy and just roll slowly along my path. For the most part, I am gentle although when winter snows melt, it sometimes causes me to become angry. One time when the big waters came I went a long way out of my path and caused a lot of damage to my banks and nearby trees. Giant boulders crashed down through my water. I left some of the trees bare-rooted and they will die. For that I am sorry, but I couldn&#039;t stop the big water.<br /><br />One year I lost all of my water. It was called a drought, but when the rains came, I got well again.<br /><br />The bridge is old and rickety and the people do not use their vehicles on it anymore. Many of the rocks that help hold it up have washed away. But sometimes the people walk across it or sit on it and just watch me. I think it brings them peace. Sometimes they even have picnics on it.<br /><br />It&#039;s quiet for the most part but sometimes those same people bring children in the summer to paddle around in me. Those children don&#039;t mind getting moss between their toes. Sometimes the children come in the winter to walk timidly on my ice. I love to hear their laughs and squeals. It makes me feel young again.<br /><br />Some people love my rocky bottom because I have fossils that tell of a time long, long ago, much longer than I can remember. They make me feel that my story is important and that I should keep rolling along this old path for many more centuries.	
2006-05-04	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=411	John L. Kies	John Kies, his wife of fifteen years, Emerita, and their two children, Clarice and Luke, live in rural Jackson County.			The Curator							Iowa Writes	It was a graveyard of sorts, a place where worn-out machinery rusted quietly under the summer sun. My grandfather picked his way, stopping occasionally to point at an ancient haymaker or a broken harvester. I was not listening. I resented watching grandpa. There were many places a boy my age wanted to be on a summer day, that day I remember.<br /><br /><i>Star Wars</i> was a smash hit and every radio I passed taunted me with the theme song. I chafed under daily farm chores and the injustice of being too young to possess a driver&#039;s license. My older brothers would not allow their younger brother along on their evening escapes from the farm. I sat in those evenings, after milking and chores, and I dreamed of attending a fantastic movie event.<br /><br />My salvation came on a stifling summer morning, while the sun beat on rows of corn. The animals lay sheltered in the shade of oaks and maples; and by midmorning I lay sheltered in the basement of the farmhouse. I left the coolness of the stone foundation to take a call from my brother&#039;s girlfriend. She invited me to the movie theater and I accepted immediately. It did not matter that she was only ingratiating herself with the family�I was going to see the movie!<br /><br />The old man changed all of that, the old man who came home from the hospital. He needed "watching." The movie needed watching! Not this feeble stranger.<br /><br />He prattled and moved stiffly through the machinery. Tall thistles did not impede him, nor did the honeybees that erupted from flowers. I hoped the old man would get stung. I was sure several thistles stuck him.<br /><br />I approached him, picking my way past the weeds. He was standing next to an ancient machine once pulled by horse and harness. He was explaining how the complex contraption worked, how he had worked long hours in the field with it. What more he said was wasted breath.<br /><br />I found an old wagon seat and climbed upon it, pretending I was piloting an interstellar craft. As my grandfather droned in my ear, I saved the galaxy, beating back tyrannical forces and rescuing captive women. He called for me and I motioned for him to wait�one second more and I would have the enemy!<br /><br />I found him among the weeds and tall grass. He was tired and had lain down for a nap. I knelt to help bring him to his feet. Steely fingers dug into my shoulder and I cried out in pain.<br /><br />"Did you hear me, boy? Did you hear what I told you about the old days?"<br /><br />I told my mother he had died at once, but in fact he lived almost the entire time I carried him back to the house. He asked several times, as I carried him, whether I had heard him. I lied and his eyes told me he knew.<br /><br />I went back a week later, to the spot where my grandfather stood among the thistles and honeybees. Here was an old plow, there an iron-wheeled manure spreader. There was nothing of any interest there, nothing exciting. I sat on the wagon seat nearly the entire day.<br /><br />That machinery is still standing out in that field, still rusting, safe from the covetous eyes of scrap dealers�I have seen to it.	
2006-05-06	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=413	Nicole Rae Hancock	Nicole Rae Hancock is 14 years old. She lives in Ames, Iowa, and goes to Ames Middle School, where English is her favorite subject. "I started writing when I was in sixth grade and haven&#039;t stopped since," she says.			Drowning							Iowa Writes	No windows or doors. The room begins to fill with water and you&#039;re afraid of drowning. Then the walls begin to move in and there&#039;s nowhere to go. You see a dark hole in the bottommost corner. "May I only reach it in time." You suck in a deep breath and plunge down hard. Fighting the water rising. Swimming far below to learn you have not moved at all. Air is slipping from your lungs while you&#039;re stuck in a whirl. "Am I upside down and dying or simply asleep?" Your body becomes weightless, slipping so deep. You open your eyes to see the hole one last time, right in front or you.	
2006-05-08	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=415	Christine Dale	Christine Dale is a nontraditional student currently pursuing her B.A. in English, with a minor in Creative Writing, at the University of Northern Iowa. For the last year she has been working at the <i>North American Review</i>. One of her poems, also about Iowa life, won third place, college division, in Lyrical Iowa 2005.			Claustrophobia<br /> after Annie Dillard							Iowa Writes	Those who say Iowa is flat have never really looked around. Say rather that Iowa is not flat, but wide open. Try standing outside alongside a country road an hour or so after sunset. There are no orange sodium street lights to protect you from the night sky that stretches from east to west, north to south. There are no trees whose leaves and branches hide parts of the sky like fingers over your eyes during the shower scene of <i>Psycho</i>. There is only you and the unnerving whisper of the wind through the corn. Add to that the ghostly green of the northern lights, shifting silently in the sky above you. Or perhaps meteors shoot across the night in bright orange streaks at the rate of one hundred per hour. Maybe a total lunar eclipse is turning the full moon an unearthly shade similar to that of dried blood. Truly awesome sights, in every primitive sense of the word.<br /><br />Is that why you joke about Iowa&#039;s flatness? Is it that you are afraid to stand in the open spaces under the sky? Most city dwellers have forgotten the night sky. In the light-polluted cities, there is no longer a need to tell either the season or the direction by the stars. No need to know that Orion rises in the winter or that the Big Dipper is in the northern part of the sky. You have clocks and day-planners to do that for you.<br /><br />Do you even remember what the Big Dipper looks like? Can you find the North Star? Don&#039;t you feel disconnected? Come with me out into the openness that defines Iowa&#039;s night. We&#039;ll leave the tree-crowded city streets behind; leave the overbearing protection of the orange sodium lights. I&#039;ll hold your hand, if you like, to help you shake loose the agoraphobia that city life has burdened you with. It is long past time you learned to see the sky again.	
2006-05-09	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=416	James C. Perley	James C. Perley was born in Iowa and lives with his wife on their farm in Little Sioux. After serving in the Air Force, he earned an MA from the University of Iowa. "We raised two children. My wife teaches school. And I chase storms," he says.			Homecoming							Iowa Writes	I was coming home. It was 1970, and the United States was in turmoil over the long Southeast Asian war. Some anti-war protesters vented their frustration on returning soldiers like me. Jeers and tomatoes greeted troops. I had been gone for two years and did not realize how much the country�and I�had changed. It was too much to absorb. All I wanted was to once again set foot on Iowa soil.<br /><br />Earlier that day, I had been on a small Air Force base as medics loaded a bleeding woman onto a helicopter. Hours later, I was on a plane bound for Iowa. So much had happened it was difficult to distinguish dream from reality. Civilian life was minutes away, but my mind remained on my old base.<br /><br />Then I saw her. She was a young flight attendant, only six months on the job. Her sparkling eyes and ready smile invited conversation. We soon learned her uncle worked where my wife and I bought our wedding rings. We compared landmarks until we realized we knew people in common.<br /><br />The flight attendant returned to chat during free moments, and during her break, she took me to first class. We talked, and then we talked some more.<br /><br />I relived my adventures, and she told me of the places she had visited. My spirit brightened as the night wore on. It was as though we were the only two people on the plane. Neither realized how far our voices carried.<br /><br />Finally, it was time to leave, and my new friend returned to her post. After we landed, I stood to leave. As the flight attendant gave me a Disneyland balloon and wished me luck, someone behind me began to clap. Then another and another did, until all of the passengers gave me a standing ovation.<br /><br />I didn&#039;t realize that given the national mood, my experience was close to unique. As I basked in the good feelings, I silently thanked the woman whose conversation made it happen.<br /><br />Ten years passed. I thought of the woman and what the evening meant to me. I wanted to thank her and know if she was enjoying a happy life. Several halfhearted attempts failed. I didn&#039;t even know her name.<br /><br />Two years ago, I accidentally found one of her high school classmates. She was certain my description matched the girl she knew in school, a girl who had become a flight attendant to see the world. Were they still in touch? I could thank her at last.<br /><br />I can still see her sitting in the seat ahead that night. Her infectious smile shows her teeth well, and her eyes sparkle like diamonds. She loves her job. It takes her to interesting places and she enjoys meeting people. The woman tells me, "Oh, you should see..." this place or that, and I promise to try. We laugh at a bad joke.<br /><br />I want to break through the years and thank her, to ask about her life, but I can&#039;t. She died of cancer over twenty-five years ago. I was too late.	
2006-05-12	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=419	Lidija Dimkovska	Lidija Dimkovska participated in the 2005 International Writing Program residency at the University of Iowa. Born in 1971 in Skopje, she has lived in Bucharest, where she attained a doctoral degree in Romanian literature, and now lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia. "Nail Clippers" is from her first collection in English, <i>Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers,</i> which was published in 2006 by Ugly Duckling Presse.			Nail Clippers							Iowa Writes	Since I took their nail clippers abroad with me by mistake,<br />my family&#039;s nails have been growing out of control and unevenly,<br />their toes and fingers are lengthening rampantly<br />and breaking out through their shoes and handshakes with strangers,<br />and the horrified neighbors no longer try to eavesdrop.<br />I call them from far away wishing, between two surges of shouting,<br />to mollify them, singing them popular newly-written folk songs,<br />begging their forgiveness with the great thoughts of small nations.<br />So what are long nails compared with my thirst for the truth,<br />don&#039;t you see you&#039;re becoming immortal already?<br />But you take it so hard.<br />The nail clippers gape at me from the bedside table,<br />just as unhappy with the change of environment.<br />This is madness, I scream, I&#039;ll mail them to you,<br />but then they all shriek on this and that end of the line:<br />"No way! Customs confiscates nail clippers!"<br />When crossing the border, I hid them in my right sneaker.<br />My family threatened to cut their nails with the kitchen scissors.<br />No matter what, they weigh on my conscience like a plaster collar.<br />All night I dream of them with bleeding fingers and fainting.<br />The next morning I woke up with hemorrhoids,<br />and desperation plugged my spirit.<br />Claustrophobia is more powerful between a nail clipper&#039;s blades<br />than among people who have forgotten God.<br />The rainbow colored peacock on the clippers<br />murmured in a human voice:<br />"Life is the choice of nails, hair and skin,<br />but manicuring, that&#039;s the choice of divinity.<br />You&#039;ve been biting your nails all your life,<br />but brought me here just to spite me. Get me back.<br />I don&#039;t care how, you godless no-nail, or get your family here<br />to trim their nails like human beings." And come they did,<br />and never even looked at me, but settled cozily on the bed<br />and trimmed and manicured their nails with the clippers,<br />throwing the parings on the floor and smiling contentedly at the peacock:<br />"A little while, and we&#039;ll be going home."<br /><br /><br />translated by<br />Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid	
2006-05-13	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=420	Sarah Prineas	In addition to working at the University of Iowa&#039;s Honors Program, Sarah Prineas is a writer whose stories have appeared in <i>Realms of Fantasy, Paradox,</i> and <i>Cicada</i>, and in the Hugo-nominated online magazine <i>Strange Horizons</i>. Three of her stories have been honorably mentioned in <i>The Year&#039;s Best Fantasy and Horror</i> edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin Grant.			The Dragons of Fair D&#039;Ellene							Iowa Writes	The cliffs of Fair D&#039;Ellene blush pink in the evening, just as they did when the dragons dropped from them like falling stars, flaming in the last darts of light from the setting sun, falling until the wind was caught within the great sails of their wings, and up they soared over the sea, the last of the sunset gilding their bellies.<br /><br />Too heavy to launch themselves from the ground, they had to live on the cliffs, you see. They had to fall before they could fly.<br /><br />When I was young, my mother took me. We borrowed a dory and sailed around the headland. My mother&#039;s strong hand guided mine on the tiller; the wind made the boat buck like a pony and I licked spindrift from my lips. In the water below the cliffs, we turned the boat into the wind, dropped the sail, and waited while the sun rolled down towards the horizon. When the rim of the sea took its first nibble of the sun, the dragons began. Only a few at first, then scores, falling and flying, until they filled the sky like�like nothing else at all. You had to have seen to understand what they were, and now they have gone and you can see them no longer.<br /><br />When they finished, when the sun was gone, we sailed for home, my mother and me. We rowed when the wind died. The sea cradled our boat, humpbacked waves rolling around us. Clusters of stars gathered in the sky, flocks of glittering birds that guided our way home.<br /><br />My mother is gone now, as the dragons are.<br /><br />Atop the cliffs now stands a battlement. Stark, gray, slotted with cannons and dotted with squat towers. Soldiers bearing arms pace the wall, their bleak eyes turned outward, seeking enemies.<br /><br />We are safer, now. But the dragons have gone from the cliffs of Fair D&#039;Ellene.	
2006-05-15	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=422	Floyd Sandford	Floyd Sandford is a Coe College Professor emeritus of Biology. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, he does marine biology research in the Caribbean, enjoys world travel and long-distance hiking, and works to encourage habitat preservation and increased biodiversity for wildlife and other entities with no voice on an acreage in Northeast Iowa.			Like Two Old Trees							Iowa Writes	There they go, arm in arm, my two companions Jiri and Marie,<br />at night along the unlighted street covered with leaves wet from the snow<br />Life partners for over half a century.<br /><br />Jiri&#039;s steps flag and falter. "A circulation problem in my legs," he says.<br />And yesterday at tea I was surprised to see the Marie I&#039;ve known for years<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  suddenly disappear behind a mask, stolen away by some obscuring<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  neural veil<br /><br />"Alzheimer&#039;s," says Jiri.<br /><br />But here they are, lurching and laughing, like two children at a game.<br /><br />I look at my friends holding on to one another as they weave and falter,<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  and think of two trees in the woods.<br />Each bent and leaning against the other, with roots partly exposed,<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  less strong and secure but still upright, still putting forth leaves<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  and embracing the sun.<br /><br />Here they go, my two old friends Jiri and Marie, linked arm in arm,<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  like two old trees, weaving their unsteady and uncertain course <br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  on rough cobblestones and wet leaves.<br />Heading home up the narrow darkness of Glinkova Street<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  on this cold, moonless<br />November evening in Praha.	
2006-05-17	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=424	Robert Berner	Born in Council Bluffs in 1940, Robert Berner was a student in the Poetry Workshop in the 60s, working with Don Justice, Marvin Bell and George Starbuck. He currently lives in New Haven with Cecelia, his wife of 40 years, and publishes poems occasionally in literary magazines.			The New High-Tech Telephone Number of the Muse<br />(With Thanks to Donald Justice)							Iowa Writes	It&#039;s unlisted now, but years ago<br />you could find it, even on the wall<br />of the men&#039;s room of a certain tavern<br />in Iowa City: "For a good rhyme<br />call 1-800-843-<br />6873." Dial it<br />today, you&#039;ll get a standard "The number<br />you have reached is not in service."<br /><br />I tried to call her on my wife&#039;s cell,<br />but, like a maiden in a tower, she couldn&#039;t<br />hear me, and I took a roaming charge.<br /><br />Used to be, you could get her anytime,<br />if she was in, but she&#039;d never call back<br />if I left a message on her machine.<br />And when I tried again, last night,<br />her end-carrier cut right in:<br />"This number is on the no-call list."	
2006-05-20	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=427	Margaret Horn	Margaret Horn works at the Center for Credit Programs at the University of Iowa and helps students register for Guided Independent Study, Saturday & Evening, and Distance Education courses. She has written a novel on domestic violence and lives in Iowa City.			Cat and Mouse Game							Iowa Writes	the cat snarls<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; flexes its claws<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; strikes out at the mouse<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  the unsuspecting mouse<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; just sits there<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; unprotected<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  the swift feline<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; pounces and<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; easily snares<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; the mouse in its paws<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  the mouse is confused<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; it doesn&#039;t know what hit it<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  the cat plays with the mouse<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; tossing it up in the air<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  this way<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  that way<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  the mouse is diverted<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; by the crafty cat<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; into thinking something<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  it did<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; caused the situation<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  the cat laughs to himself<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  the silly mouse<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; he says scornfully<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; never catches on to my game	
2006-05-21	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=428	Courtney Staudacher	Courtney Staudacher is in the eighth grade in Harding Middle School. She wrote her poem last year.			Living Withing A Circle							Iowa Writes	Not knowing what lies beyond<br />No courage to go and see<br />Nothing but space ahead<br />Space that will always be there<br /><br />No beginning to start at<br />No end to be found<br />Nothing to look back on<br />No memories to cherish<br /><br />Your mind is wiped blank<br />There is nothing to know<br />Each step only brings you back<br />Nothing to choose from<br /><br />As sameness surrounds you<br />And no way to escape<br />What is holding you back<br />Your life that goes in a circle	
2006-05-23	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=430	Ezzat Goushegir	Ezzat Goushegir, a playwright, author and film critic, received her M.F.A from the Theatre Department of the University of Iowa. In 1990 she was a Fellow in the UI&#039;s International Writing Program. Currently she teaches at DePaul University. "Gang Lu Bought Two Guns," which Ms. Goushegir began writing in 1992, is based on the 1991 shootings of six UI faculty and staff members by a former UI graduate student.			Gang Lu Bought Two Guns							Iowa Writes	Scene 3<br />WHO AM I?<br /><i>(Music is heard. Gang Lu unskillfully dances with one of the cardboard soldiers from up the stage. There is a row of Chinese soldiers down stage. He puts a blonde wig on the soldier&#039;s head.)</i><br /><br />Gang Lu:<br />You like it ha? (pause) I like it too...Do you have a good time with me? (pause) Me too...(He touches her breasts) You have big ones!... Chinese women don&#039;t have big ones, but you...yeah...you do, you have big ones...<br /><br /><i>(Suddenly music stops. He stops dancing too.)</i><br /><br />What&#039;s wrong with you? We both are having a good time...Don&#039;t we? (pause) Don&#039;t be ridiculous!...Don&#039;t we have a good time? (pause) No?...(pause) Why?...Because I touched them?...your...What&#039;s wrong with that? All right...all right...all right...Don&#039;t leave me alone...please...don&#039;t...(pause) sit with me and have a beer...(pause) Have a beer with me!...Don&#039;t leave me alone...ok?<br /><br /><i>(He replaces the cardboard soldier down stage. Then brings a pitcher of beer and two glasses.)</i><br /><br />Oh damn it! She left me!...O.K....Go away bitch...you stupid bitch!...(pause) No...it&#039;s not the way of my talking!<br /><br /><i>(He sits and drinks alone, talks to the audience.)</i><br /><br />It&#039;s like a movie to me at least!...It didn&#039;t really happen to me...I&#039;m trying to imagine things in my mind...Because I&#039;m trying to make another character of myself. If you want to be accepted in a new society, you have to be a part of them.<br /><br />I can&#039;t be relaxed...I don&#039;t know how to act...Perhaps I&#039;m so relaxed...I don&#039;t know...I just don&#039;t know...I don&#039;t know what I&#039;m saying! But I know that those who lie, make me vomit...<br /><br />I left my Chinese friends, because they&#039;ve lost their pride...They&#039;re licking between the Americans&#039; toes! (pause)<br /><br />I can&#039;t act like Americans...It&#039;s so far away from me...far away from me!!...<br /><br />I feel I&#039;m not a MAN anymore...I&#039;m a WOMAN...The way Americans talk to me...they talk to me like I&#039;m stupid...They smile at you like this...<br /><br /><i>(He makes an artificial smile.)</i><br /><br />And talk behind you like this...<br /><br /><i>(He makes a face.)</i><br /><br />He is so boring! So polite...His English is awful...His accent...oh...and they laugh!...He so polite, it bores me!...He is nice...but you know...He is CHINESE!...You know...<br /><br /><i>(He drinks beer.)</i><br /><br />I chose loneliness because people make me depressed...<br /><br /><i>(He stands up.)</i><br /><br />What&#039;s my real character?<br /><br /><i>(He looks at the mirror.)</i><br /><br />Who am I? LU GANG, born in 1963 in Beijing, China...No...I&#039;m not LU GANG. I dont know myself anymore!<br /><br /><i>(Light shows two rows of cardboard soldiers down stage and up stage.)</i><br /><br />I&#039;m between these...I&#039;m not Chinese and I&#039;m not American...Who am I? What am I doing here? Where is my place? China?<br /><br /><i>(The voice of protesters are heard: "WE LOVE RICE, BUT WE LOVE DEMOCRACY MORE." As the voice grows, down stage we read on a screen: "JUNE 1989, TIANANMEN SQUARE." Then a slogan: "WE NO LONGER TRUST DIRTY PUBLIC SERVANTS, WE TRUST DEMOCRACY." The voice is gone.)</i><br /><br />The end of the dictatorship of the proletarian...The dictatorship of the proletarian...Proletariat!...My parents! They are not able to dictate any thing! They are still living with a dream of chairman Mao...They are just an ignorant couple who some day used to believe in communist movement. Time has never changed from 1948...Even though Deng Xiaoping tried to make a reform. (As Deng Xiaoping): "It doesn&#039;t matter a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." But still our tables are empty and the world goes forward very fast...and I&#039;m a bullet of energy who is leaping in this corner of the world...and my voice has no sound for the deaf...and my hand...<br /><br /><i>(He moves his hand on the air.)</i><br /><br />No sound...because it&#039;s just one.<br /><br /><i>(He claps and makes a melody with two hands.)</i><br /><br />Two hands together make a sound.<br /><br /><i>(A shot is heard from distance, the other shot closer...Repetition of several shots. Then the sound of marching soldiers and tanks and screaming and shooting, after a moment, silence.)</i><br /><br />The goddess of democracy collapsed. The huge statue of the goddess, because you...you...made it of paper not of the stone!<br /><br />Where am I? Wait a minute...<br />Where am I?<br />Not in the U.S. Not in China!<br />Where do I belong to?<br />Nowhere!...<br />Hanging between the sky and the ground!	
2006-05-25	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=432	Mike Chasar	Mike Chasar lives in Iowa City where he is a frequent contributor to "Poetic License," a Monday feature of the Iowa City Press-Citizen&#039;s op-ed page. More of his writing is available online at <i>Poetry, Word for/Word, The Cortland Review,</i> and <i>The Iowa Review Web</i>.			Song for the Manatee							Iowa Writes	Humble, homely, whisker-snouted<br />recluse&mdash;you<br />were no sultry mermaid and I,<br />alone in that rented canoe,<br /><br />was no scurvy Blackbeard<br />keeping a lookout for you.<br />Aye! You were a silent passerby,<br />some strange sea-shape I<br /><br />did not see swim so much as glide,<br />nor glide so much as fly.<br />And yet, O blubber!<br />What was there to identify?<br /><br />You were a thought, an endangered<br />nautical motion<br />crossing that bare expanse<br />and headed, it seemed, for the ocean.<br /><br />You were the legend that the snook<br />could never be&mdash;a silent arrival,<br />a postmodern sailor&#039;s<br />map to survival,<br /><br />a Weeki Wachee woman<br />and reminder of land,<br />the desire of seeing a shoreline<br />and seashells, lines in the sand.	
2006-05-26	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=433	Susan Glaspell	Susan Glaspell (1882-1848) was born in Davenport, Iowa, graduated from Drake University, and worked as a journalist at the <i>Des Moines Daily News</i> before moving to Cape Cod, MA, where she wrote drama and fiction. 	The entire text of the 1916 play Trifles is here.	http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/trifles.htm	<span style="font-style:normal;">from the play</span> Trifles							Iowa Writes	COUNTY ATTORNEY. Well, Mr. Hale, tell just what happened when you came here yesterday morning.<br /><br />HALE. Harry and I had started to town with a load of potatoes. We came along the road from my place; and as I got here, I said, "I&#039;m going to see if I can&#039;t get John Wright to go in with me on a party telephone." I spoke to Wright about it once before, and he put me off, saying folks talked too much anyway, and all he asked was peace and quiet�I guess you know about how much he talked himself; but I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked about it before his wife, though I said to Harry that I didn&#039;t know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John�<br /><br />COUNTY ATTORNEY. Let&#039;s talk about that later, Mr. Hale. I do want to talk about that, but tell now just what happened when you got to the house.<br /><br />HALE. I didn&#039;t hear or see anything; I knocked at the door, and still it was all quiet inside. I knew they must be up, it was past eight o&#039;clock. So I knocked again, and I thought I heard somebody say, "Come in." I wasn&#039;t sure, I&#039;m not sure yet, but I opened the door�this door <i>(indicating the door by which the two women are still standing),</i> and there in that rocker�<i>(pointing to it)</i> sat Mrs. Wright. <i>(They all look at the rocker.)</i><br /><br />COUNTY ATTORNEY. What�was she doing?<br /><br />HALE. She was rockin&#039; back and forth. She had her apron in her hand and was kind of�pleating it.<br /><br />COUNTY ATTORNEY. And how did she�look?<br /><br />HALE. Well, she looked queer.<br /><br />COUNTY ATTORNEY. How do you mean�queer?<br /><br />HALE. Well, as if she didn&#039;t know what she was going to do next. And kind of done up.<br /><br />COUNTY ATTORNEY. How did she seem to feel about your coming?<br /><br />HALE. Why, I don&#039;t think she minded�one way or other. She didn&#039;t pay much attention. I said, "How do, Mrs. Wright, it&#039;s cold, ain&#039;t it?" And she said, "Is it?"�and went on kind of pleating at her apron. Well, I was surprised; she didn&#039;t ask me to come up to the stove, or to set down, but just sat there, not even looking at me, so I said, "I want to see John." And then she�laughed. I guess you would call it a laugh. I thought of Harry and the team outside, so I said a little sharp: "Can&#039;t I see John?" "No," she says, kind o&#039; dull like. "Ain&#039;t he home?" says I. "Yes," says she, "he&#039;s home." "Then why can&#039;t I see him?" I asked her, out of patience. "&#039;Cause he&#039;s dead," says she. "Dead?" says I. She just nodded her head, not getting a bit excited, but rockin&#039; back and forth. "Why�where is he?" says I, not knowing what to say. She just pointed upstairs�like that <i>(himself pointing to the room above)</i>. I got up, with the idea of going up there. I walked from there to here�then I says, "Why, what did he die of?" "He died of a rope around his neck," says she, and just went on pleatin&#039; at her apron.	
2006-05-29	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=436	Hamlin Garland	Hamlin Garland (1860-1940) was born in Wisconsin and grew up in homesteads in Winneshiek County and Mitchell County, Iowa. "Under the Lion&#039;s Paw" appeared in his short story collection <i>Main-Travelled Roads</i> (1891). 	Read the full story here.	http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Garland/paw.html	<span style="font-style:normal;">from</span> Under the Lion&#039;s Paw							Iowa Writes	When night began to fall, and the geese, flying low, began to alight invisibly in the near corn-field, Stephen Council was still at work "finishing a land." He rode on his sulky plough when going with the wind, but walked when facing it. Sitting bent and cold but cheery under his slouch hat, he talked encouragingly to his four-in-hand.<br /><br />"Come round there, boys! Round agin! We got t&#039; finish this land. Come in there, Dan! Stiddy, Kate, stiddy! None o&#039; y&#039;r tantrums, Kittie. It&#039;s purty tuff, but got a be did. Tchk! tchk! Step along, Pete! Don&#039;t let Kate git y&#039;r single-tree on the wheel. Once more!"<br /><br />They seemed to know what he meant, and that this was the last round, for they worked with greater vigor than before. "Once more, boys, an&#039; then, sez I, oats an&#039; a nice warm stall, an&#039; sleep f&#039;r all."<br /><br />By the time the last furrow was turned on the land it was too dark to see the house, and the snow was changing to rain again. The tired and hungry man could see the light from the kitchen shining through the leafless hedge, and he lifted a great shout, "Supper f&#039;r a half a dozen!"<br /><br />It was nearly eight o&#039;clock by the time he had finished his chores and started for supper. He was picking his way carefully through the mud, when the tall form of a man loomed up before him with a premonitory cough.<br /><br />"Waddy ye want?" was the rather startled question of the farmer.<br /><br />"Well, ye see," began the stranger, in a deprecating tone, "we&#039;d like t&#039; git in f&#039;r the night. We&#039;ve tried every house f&#039;r the last two miles, but they hadn&#039;t any room f&#039;r us. My wife&#039;s jest about sick, &#039;n&#039; the children are cold and hungry�"<br /><br />"Oh, y&#039; want &#039;o stay all night, eh?"<br /><br />"Yes, sir; it &#039;ud be a great accom�"<br /><br />"Waal, I don&#039;t make it a practice t&#039; turn anybuddy way hungry, not on sech nights as this. Drive right in. We ain&#039;t got much, but sech as it is�"<br /><br />But the stranger had disappeared. And soon his steaming, weary team, with drooping heads and swinging single-trees, moved past the well to the block beside the path. Council stood at the side of the "schooner" and helped the children out two little half-sleeping children and then a small woman with a babe in her arms.<br /><br />"There ye go!" he shouted jovially, to the children. "Now we&#039;re all right! Run right along to the house there, an&#039; tell Mam&#039; Council you wants sumpthin&#039; t&#039; eat. Right this way, Mis&#039; keep right off t&#039; the right there. I&#039;ll go an&#039; git a lantern. Come," he said to the dazed and silent group at his side.	
2006-06-01	http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=439	Octave Thanet (Alice French)	Alice French (1850-1934), whose pen name was Octave Thanet, was born in Massachusetts but lived in Davenport, Iowa, from the age of five until her death. She wrote seven novels and seventeen short-story collections. "The Face of Failure" is from Stories of a Western Town (1893).	It can be read online here.	http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2949	<span style="font-style:normal;">from</span> The Face of Failure							Iowa Writes	"Well, I know one thing, that Uncle ain&#039;t EVER going to make money. He�" The last word shrivelled on her lips, which puckered into a confused smile at the warning frown of her brother. The man that they were discussing had come round to them past the henhouse. How much had he overheard?<br /><br />He d