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Western Carolinian Volume 61 Number 07 (08)

items 26 of 44 items
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Item’s are ‘child’ level descriptions to ‘parent’ objects, (e.g. one page of a whole book).

  • 16 invisible academy I 10.19.95 Meschach McLachlan: 4 Poems "here the cocoon begins and ends with the silkworm's death what is said and what is not in all that was said and was not" —Emmanueal HocquardfTranlation by Michael Palmer) We will be unseen in something, in some place where buildings arrow paradormic streets with cubic hearts the color of light. There will be trees a little ways off. There will be sounds only noticeable from the way the unspeakmg feels: uncomfortable with what it will do—with the sadness and the trouble of when people are together and it is terrible not to talk. There will be grains of dogs, off the lawns straying like colorless misshapen pots from the third grade. The third grade is now a mean eyeball with gigantic knees, its fat toes corned with learning to draw from cheap sandal feet with scabless skin—I think my teacher had hair like indistinct smells from another room, my mother standing in the way she sometimes cooked: beyond my sight. It is the smell and the toes I remember. In another arm of the town out of ken there is a funny blob like a boiled peach that pulses and stinks and has no lips, no way in. It is panting the pave. It is tired of growing sleep. There are awkward cans beside, pretending to move. The frightened boy is standing outside of eating inside somewhere in another nipple of what is now a city. He has dyed his hair red because of a splotchy girl, invisible to the city also. He enters and barnacles a table. Pays for coffee in nickels. I think of him in the town that sips on neither of us any longer because of his being cigarette breasted and coughing. A dog collar around his neck he said he was too skinny for god anymore, while I fumbled through my backpack for a book, barely listening. He would always know the waitresses by name and leave them poems for tips. I would sit, shifting a little in the menopausal air of after midnight, being too close to tired to do anything but laugh like a drowning bee from when I was three during a summer like not many, memorable, when I took the muffled black and yellow from an apivorous wet to the tiny pool's partitions and felt the first sex, the painful penetration, the crying. It was the last time I was to see him closer than the cities we are ageless in when I stopped laughing and said goodbye near the first phenomena of day. He had set out walking with a made up girl, funny in less life than she deserved, over a fragmented silver that ruined shop signs along the curdling streets, a bruised sky beneath the odor of them. "McLachlan Poems" Continued on Page 17 Ryan Wilkinson's: The Church type "AH those kids think they're so holier than thou 'cause they go to that big church," Johnny said. His lip snarled in disgust. "Man, I go to church every Sunday." I laughed because I thought he was joking. He stopped walking and just stared at me. The smile slowly faded from my face. I didn't want to piss him off. Johnny Stevens was one of the meanest kids in the eighth grade and it made me nervous just standing near him much less talking to him. "What are you laughing at," he said. "I don't know I guess you just don't look like the church type." I hadn't been to church in four years. Not since my parents got divorced. I think after the divorce my mom, kind of, lost the faith you might say. "Yeah, well I guess not," he said. "I guess when you think of the church type you think of them." He motioned to a group of about ten or twelve kids. They were what kids like Johnny referred to as "snobs". "Look at 'em. With their cute, little button-down shirts and their brown loafers. God, gimme a break. I bet they all think they're going straight to Heaven when they die. Man, are they gonna be in for a surprise." "Why wouldn't they go to Heaven?" I asked. He snarled his lip again and looked at me like I was crazy. "Do you think you're going to Heaven?" he asked. "Well, I just figured that if you're good to people and you believe in God then you went to Heaven." Johnny smiled. "Man, it ain't that easy. I wish it was, but its not. Those kids don't go to church for the right reasons. It's like the fucking social hour for them. Do you really think they talk about different stuff when they're at church. No, they talk about the same kind of stuff they're talking about right now. Guess what so and so did. Guess what so and so did with so and so. That's blasphemy." "Don't get me wrong but how do you know how they act in church?" "You know April Sherril?" "Yeah I know of her," I said. April Sherril was one of the best looking girls in the school and she hung out with the snobs. "What about her?" "Well, I used to go out with her. I'm sure you never heard about it because we, kind of, kept it undercover. She didn't think her parents would approve. I finally got so sick of sneaking around. I told her that we had to tell her parents. So, she told him then her old man thought it would be a good idea if I went to church with them. So, I went and we sat with all her preppy, little friends and they all looked at me like I was shit. But anyway, do you think religion came up once in their stupid little conversations." "Well I—" "Not once," he said. "You know my dad has drug me to church by my fucking ear. If I acted up in church he would make me memorize passages from the Bible. Those kids don't understand that it's a losing battle." "So why do you even go if its a losing battle?" I asked. "Because it's the only thing you can do. At least He'll see you're trying." "You think He's up there taking roll or something?" My tone was sarcastic. I was getting angry. His comments about eternal damnation were giving me the creeps. "Why not? He's God isn't He?" "Well, all I'm saving is if I was to go to church, I would rather go there 'cause I wanted to instead of somebody making me go." "Well who are you to judge?" Johnny said. He was angry. He was looking in my eyes but I could tell he was thinking about something else. He was trying to remember something. A sly smile crept across his face and he raised his index finger to my nose. "Judge not, lest ye be judged," Johnny said. "My old man made memorize that one for screwing up." "What did you do," I asked. 1 *»'. remember."
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).