Hoosier Writers 2012: A Collection of Poetry and Fiction

By Lowell R Torres

The Hoosier Writers anthology showcases the talents of writers who have, at one point in their lives, called the state of Indiana home. While the poems and stories enclosed are not specifically about the Hoosier state, a hint of the Midwest flows through many of the works. From award-winning writers who have been published many times to first-time authors, the entries enclosed create a tapestry of talent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475930924

Lowell R Torres

Lowell was born and raised in NW Indiana, he lives today with his wife and two children in Bloomington, Indiana.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Lowell R. Torres.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3093-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3092-4 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 06/20/2012

Contents

Foreword

That Kind of Love

Living Room

Tiny Spring

What Happens Now

Wild Horses are in the Room

A Poet’s Gumbo

Broken Wings

Food for Thought

A Single Piece of Paper

Between the Lines

Draconian Creation Myth

Always Goin

Something of a Dream

Silver Lining

The Biddle Hotel

Dispatch

The Moon

Seat Belts

The Nar Cotic Man

Finding The Duke in

John Wayne

Indentation

Fields

For a Dog

Pilling

The Changing

Catch and Release

Night Fishing

Bully Magnet

A shoe named Tucker

Alphabet Train

Tone Deaf

Plum Grove

The Weekend Home

Author Bios

Interior_turkey%20run4B_20120524101923.jpg

Matthew Yeoman

For Mrs. Williams, who introduced me to writing.

For Mrs. Flanigan, who politely raved over my first clumsy, clunky stories and encouraged me to do more.

And for Howard, who provided the atmosphere that allowed all of his students to progress as writers in their own way, rather than his.

Thank you.

Interior_vinegar%20hill5A_20120524101936.jpg

Matthew Yeoman

Foreword

The book you’re holding in your hand exists for two reasons.

First was my involvement in the creative writing program at Indiana State University, which led to my participation in the creative writing group Arion (rhymes with Orion). Arion, according to mythology, was a famed poet and singer of ancient Greece. On his way home from a singing competition that he had won in Sicily, sailors aboard his ship conspired to kill Arion and steal his winnings. They gave him a choice between committing suicide to later be buried on land or to jump out to sea. When Arion threw himself off the ship, a dolphin who had heard him playing rescued him and took him safely to shore.

So it was only fitting that we named our creative writing magazine The Dolphin. Needless to say, not many got it, which played into why I changed the name to The Tonic during my tenure as president of Arion and editor in chief of The Dolphin. The club used that name during the 80s and 90s, but the name wasn’t important in the end. It was the time and energy dedicated to taking the creative output of myself and others and putting it together into one unit. It was of creating art; whether the art was any good or where it ranks is as always up for debate.

The second reason this book exists is due to my current position of employment at AuthorSolutions, Inc which houses iUniverse, the publisher of this title. One of the benefits of my employment is the ability to publish two books a year for free. As you might be able to imagine from the previous few paragraphs, this was an exciting prospect for me.

I once again have the honor of taking the creative output of myself and others and putting it together into one unit. I get to create art. Whether the art is any good is, as always, up for debate. But I still had a blast doing it.

Interior_fog%20b%20and%20white-1_20120524101421.jpg

Elizabeth Dillon

That Kind of Love

Corbin Collins

That arid Midwestern summer—our fifteenth—I awoke to the applause of raindrops on my windowpane and sat up grinning in bed. After three weeks of drought the fields would be too muddy for detassling, and we would have the day off. I showered, dressed, and wolfed down cereal, offering my mother an innocent smile as she breezed through the kitchen. Suspicious when it seemed I would be idle, on her way out she handed me a list of chores. Never was a bed made faster, never was a teenager’s clutter shoveled more efficiently into the recesses of a closet. I chucked unrinsed breakfastware into the dishwasher, dumped powder, jabbed a button. I broke a sweat dusting the furniture, trailing lemon-scented vapor in my wake, and jogged behind the vacuum cleaner. I threw clothes in the washer. When I finished I sat down by the kitchen phone.

The hopeful novelty of the rainstorm and the rush of domestic activity had distracted me from my more proper state of nausea and anguish which now, in that quiet morning hour with the downpour drumming the roof, descended on me. You were not mine. My treacherous mind was always forgetting that. You belonged to someone else, a boy who had slept over at my house more than once, who appeared under a pointed paper hat in my birthday party photos. I had nothing against him. It was you who made me miserable.

Our secret flirtations were at first, of course, a source of the greatest pleasure and delight. The chance electric union of our sweaty hands in the back of the bus, the hurried brush of lips under the roaring little league bleachers (I believe he was pitching that night), the water-hidden groping in the public pool, the trembling, half-holy excitement of the church basement the night of the youth group sleepover, awkward touching, half-embraces, pretending to examine a dusty religious painting or cracked blackboard or curtain. Like an obsessed collector I cataloged and gloated over these and similarly precious scenes.

With the return of school we seldom interacted although meeting by chance we struck up tense, double-edged conversations that stopped only by application of some outside force, the bell, the approach of your boyfriend. Fate’s cruel sentence was that I would see him far more often than I saw you—he was my chemistry lab partner. Knowing that he swam in the sea along whose shores I had merely splashed, I was amazed by his indifference and lack of agitation. In conversation your name tumbled routinely from his babbling lips, whereas I avoided it—the sound of it stabbed me. My advantage was geographic. Location, location, location! I lived a quarter mile down the road from you, whereas my provincial rival was stranded ten miles away amid hog farms.

When it rained, we could meet. Hiking mile after dusty mile of corn, I often wondered whether certain raindances were effective (mine were not). As the dry days wore on, my anxious state worsened. I had no one to talk to. Not my friends, certainly—they all knew him. And not you, for fear of seeming weak or silly or, far worse, being mistaken about your feelings. My mother came to me and said, What is it? You can tell me—is it drugs?

Was there a middle country between friendship and love? If so I had never learned its name. Sunk in such thoughts and memories, I regarded the phone. Your last words to me, in your electric, hoarse voice, had been, See you next time it rains.

Swallowing my heart, I dialed your number. After five rings you rasped a sleepy greeting.

I said, It’s raining.

You said, I know and yawned, which I visualized. I guess I went back to sleep.

The sound—the reality—of you quickened my pulse. So, are they all gone?

I think so. What time is it?

A little after ten.

They’re at work. You can come down if you want. Just come in. It’s open.

Okay, I said calmly. I’ll see you in a few.

Exhilarated, I jerked my raincoat from its hook, ran with my bike down the driveway, vaulted neatly onto the seat, and pedaled madly through the downpour, my eyes taking turns as heavy drops battered my face. The humid air reeked of damp vegetation and smashed worms.

In a hundred seconds I rolled up your puddled blacktop driveway, ditched my bike behind a bush, and let myself in.

The house was silent except for the ticking of the grandfather clock. I draped my dripping raincoat over an arm and advanced on tiptoe to the main hall, where I paused. Where were you? (The other times—there had only been two—you had met me in that hall and we had begun by moving to the platonic kitchen where we sat on bright counters before ending up in each other’s arms on the sofa.) With raised neck hair I surmised that you were still in bed. Although I had never seen your room, I deduced where it had to be.

A wet supplicant moved down the dim hall. Family portraits smiled at my passage. The first bedroom, empty but for oak bed and chest of drawers, must have belonged to your older brother who was away at military school. Then your parents’ bedroom, all powder blues and mauves, the floral duvet hugging a brass bed, the dark lacquered dresser. At the end of the hall the last door, open a crack, emitted a vertical slot of lazy, pink light. With reverence I approached it. I knocked, said a soft hello, then pushed it open to reveal your untidy, fragrant room, dominated by your enormous bed. Your head poked from a loose tumble of sheets; your messy hair spilled across a pillow. Pink curtains, drawn against the greyly lit sky, fueled the room’s flushed glow. It was like a ward for newborn flowers. I felt that what mattered most in such a place was to be quiet.

In a little while you propped up on an elbow, shook out your hair, aimed your sleep-heavy brown eyes at me, and said, Aren’t you getting in? What was my face like at that moment? It must have been all my faces at once. My life rushed up around me, roaring like sea froth, gulls screaming overhead. I may have nodded casually, as if I were asked such a question every day. My heart hammering my spine, I dropped the raincoat by the door and sat on the edge of your bed. Without untying them I forced off my sneakers, being careful to keep strain from my face, then removed my damp socks and tossed them over by the raincoat. Uncertainly I stood up in my gym shorts and t-shirt and hesitated. What one was expected to wear to your bed?

Take them off, you said.

Head ringing, hands shaking, I pulled off my shirt and wriggled out of my shorts. Biting a thumbnail, you smiled.

Underwear, too.

Peeling down my briefs meant leaving boyhood behind. I knew that even then. You swept back a triangle of bedclothes: a slide into heaven, a tumble of limbs, the inhalation of paradise, intoxication of the skin. At one point I saw an older you, amused mom supervising her son on the merry-go-round. It all seemed to be happening forever in some hidden corner of time, yet it was over as soon as it began.

Unclamping my toes, I panted at a fantastic, blank new world. You sprang up on slender knees and bounced gently at my side, an idling racecar. Then from under the bed you produced Marlboros and matches and ashtray. You lit two and handed me one, another first for me, obvious from my green-faced spluttering. Still naked, glorious, unashamed, you sprang to the window to open it a crack and stayed to hold aside the curtain.

My mom hates when I smoke in the house.

My downfall came swiftly. So, should we tell him together, or do you want to do it by yourself?

You let the curtain drop and turned, boldly displayed stood before me. What are you talking about?

I named him. Your smile plummeted. It was like being slapped. At once I understood that this scene too would become another piece of the puzzle. I thought of a tassel, tugged from the stalk, left in the dirt. I was sucked back, a genie returned to his bottle.

Why is it only when we’re sneaking? I demanded, jaw atremble. You have me. Why don’t I have you? Oh, how simple I was! Don’t we belong together?

Not like that. Your brutal reply ballooned into the room, crowding out the air. Hell opened up, and I fell in. My burning eyes stared down at your disordered sheets, my lips twisted uncontrollably, my throat swelled, my mind fought off a crowding red wall of fear.

When I could breathe again, I heaved out, Why not?

Anxiously you scanned the room, as if you’d mislaid the answer, as if it might be written in a wadded receipt on your dresser.

I love you—yes, of course—but I’m not the one for you.

The word love was an anchor, and I tried to cling to it as best I could, but the rest swept me away again. I was almost getting a joke, but not quite. It was too much. Misery seemed preferable. I had to get away from you. I jabbed out my cigarette, swung my feet off your bed, and grabbed at my cold, clammy pile. Violently I drew up my shorts, struggled into my t-shirt, snagged a soggy sock on a toenail, fiddled with my shoes (I had to unlace them first, red-faced, exasperated).

You were a small figure then, mysterious and remote, watching my failure unfold. I snatched up my raincoat with a sigh of fury and started for the door.

You don’t know the half of it, you said. You don’t know anything about me.

I stopped. I know something about you.

What do you know?

Innocent me! Now I was in a movie, and it was my big scene. I know I love you, I said, feeling power returning to my voice. I know we are great. I know we should be together and ride roller coasters and go to ballgames and parties and have dinner at each other’s houses and go skinny-dipping in the reservoir and watch Fourth of July fireworks from your roof and go to the prom— I paused to catch my breath, but then was lost in my own drama.

You floated to the bed, sat with your back against the headboard, hugging your drawn-up knees, a pained look of pity in your red-rimmed eyes.

Look. We have it, but we don’t have that kind.

I fled, slamming the door behind me and blustering out of the house. Blind with rage and sorrow, numb to the grey drizzle that pricked me, I grimly pedaled home. Back in my bed, which had never felt so cold, I glared at the bruised, weeping sky out my window.

I carried our story like a sickness. In every woman I sought you. Even now, when it rains in the morning, I think of you. It’s a shame I never got to tell you what you taught me, that only a fool dares imagine the mysteries of a woman’s heart that memories are all we end up with, that there are as many kinds of love as there are lovers.

Living Room

Anna Spydell

Where cats lie languid in windows and stare, insolent and cool, to neighbors and cars.

Where children curl into warm, golden-pink balls on the couch, long eyelashes fluttering on flushed cheeks.

Where books and magazines collect like sheet pastry in piles, shut or open-leaved in corners, on the ottoman.

Where dust motes ride the light lazily through the big windows, curtains drawn back.

Where I slide, fox-sly and flirting, under your arm, tip my face up for a kiss after children have retired noisily to toy-clogged beds.

Where we collect in the heart, like cells, to congeal before rushing out madly once more.

Tiny Spring

Anna Spydell

Clover in the new grass,

A miniscule army

Of green-hatted brownies

In rank and file,

Lifting their heads

To sing down spring rain:

Oh, cumulonimbus!

Interior_IMG_1629_20120524101625.jpg

Elizabeth Dillon

What Happens Now

Liz Ference

It’s a Tuesday, so draped in ordinary that Lydia thinks someone might light it on fire, just to watch it burn. Poof, sizzle, gone. Lydia thinks that someone might be her.

But it’s Rogelio who calls to tell Lydia her agent is dead. Cocaine, Rogelio says. A cliché.

Lydia says it’s a hazard of the job, thinks she’s being clever.

They talk a little more about what happens now. They make threats they’ll never make good on—threats to get out of the business, to go back to who they used to be or become more than what they are.

Do you ever think of doing something good? Lydia says.

Never, says Rogelio.

When they hang up, Lydia feels the little pieces of herself slipping through someone else’s fingers. She’s less than what she was when she answered the phone, but Rogelio can hardly be expected to notice.

A pot of tea on the stove, the gas burner crackling to life underneath. She taps a Marlboro Red from the crinkled pack left by Chanel on the sill. Cowboy killers, Lydia calls them. Chanel tells her she doesn’t appreciate being called a cowboy, but says nothing about the killer part and Lydia’s not one to press.

The kettle whistles hysterically, it’s too much. Lydia pulls it from the stove and pours a glass of wine instead. Red, white, something, into a plastic tumbler. No crystal glasses, no bottles of brandy for Lydia. She carries the wine, the cigarette, her portfolio into the bedroom closet and sits on the floor in the dark, how she likes it. She clicks on the flashlight and there are the Lydias.

Lydia the tennis pro, Lydia straddling a candy apple Triumph, Lydia the powerful executive in charcoal Dior and rectangular glasses with frames the size of school erasers