The Timberline Review: Home | 2019

By Willamette Writers

The Timberline Review is an all-volunteer literary journal published by Willamette Writers. Our focus is on showcasing emerging talent. This issue includes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from Jeffrey Alfier, David Athey, Roy Bentley, C. W. Buckley, Brandon French, Desmond Everest Fuller, Trina Gaynon, Anne Gudger, Vix Gutierrez, Christine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willamette Writers
• Release date: Aug 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781732042711

Book preview

The Timberline Review, Issue 8, 2019

Editor-in-Chief: Maren Bradley Anderson

Executive Director: Kate Ristau

Previous Editor-in-Chief: Matthew Swihart

Associate Editor-in-Chief: Rebecca Smolen

Fiction Editor: Rankin Johnson

Poetry Editor: Caroline Wilcox Reul

Nonfiction Editor: Lawrence Powers

Copyeditors: Jennifer Zaczek and Sarah Breeding

Proofreader: Jane Hartway

Readers: Jennifer Andrea, Megan Cline, Delia Garigan, Lezlie Hall, Haley Isleib, Bess Korey, Chad Robert Lykins, Ari Mathae, John Miller, Vargus Pike, Ce Yanez

Cover Design: Lee Moyers

Design: Indigo: Editing, Design, and More

Editorial Correspondence: http://timberlinereview.com/contact/

A portion of "Yia Yia’s Garden" first appeared in Atticus Review.

Copyright 2019 Willamette Writers

ISBN Print 978-1-7320427-3-5

ISBN eBook 978-1-7320427-1-1

Contents

Letter from the Editor

Home | Maren Bradley Anderson

Dedication

Prologue

Rooms, From This Room | Eric Paul Shaffer, poem

Curb Appeal

Yia Yia’s Garden | Anne Gudger, nonfiction

No Bad Days, Just Hard Days | Casey Killingsworth, poem

Where the Fence Was | Dan Wiencek, poem

From My Window on Karmelika Street | Jeffrey Alfier, poem

Shared Spaces

How to Dust | Christine Hanolsy, nonfiction

Boxing Day | Nancy Nowak, poem

Five | Brandon French, fiction

FaceTiming with My Daughter at Night | Roy Bentley, poem

Ten Dreamers in Three Towers | Trina Gaynon, poem

Dandy Oak Acres | Don White, fiction

Upstairs Window, Rydal Mount | Lex Runciman, poem

A Chaplain, After | C. W. Buckley, poem

Building My House | David Athey, fiction

Kitchen

Ancestral Fruitcake | Amy K. W. Heil, nonfiction

Kitchen Familiar | Nancy Nowak, poem

My Mother’s Kitchen | Tricia Knoll, poem

Between the Times | Cynthia McCain, poem

Bedrooms

I Send Her to Clean Her Room | Emily Ransdell, poem

Birds in the Bedroom | Lex Runciman, poem

Relief of Quilts | Keli Osborn, poem

The Un-haunted House | Amanda Hiland, poem

Hide-and-Seek | J. B. Navarro, fiction

And Even Now, Still | Casey Killingsworth, poem

My Last Window | Stephanie Striffler, poem

Northern Lights of County Creek | Desmond Everest Fuller, fiction

Forgotten Spaces

Thursday Afternoon, 5:25 pm | Dan Wiencek, poem

Crawl | Ken Proctor, fiction

In the Crawl Space | Donna J. Gelagotis Lee, poem

The Closet of Broken Things | Tricia Knoll, poem

Winter Wait | Matthew J. Spireng, poem

Cellar Witch | Vix Gutierrez, fiction

Epilogue

Sanity’s Song: How to Un-love | Veronica Lupinacci, poem

Contributors

Sponsors

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

Home

Because this issue of the Timberline Review has home as its theme, the plan was always to put the works in order by room. I figured that slotting stories and poems into rooms would be an easier exercise than categorizing works by theme, but I thought the result would be a little cutesy.

I was wrong.

Instead, I was surprised by how elegant it is to organize these pieces by room. Why? Because a house tour ultimately leads you from the most public of spaces like the yard, through areas like the living room where we entertain people, and into the most intimate rooms, the bedrooms. Sometimes a tour even includes secret spaces no one is supposed to see, like the basement and attic. By leading you from room to room, this issue moves deeper and deeper into the home until we reach forgotten spaces, the spaces most haunted by the ghosts we don’t want to face.

What’s more, these writers surprised me with the scope of emotional expression they put into each room. I expected a theme like home to bring a bunch of warm, fuzzy feel-good stories. Really, I don’t know what I was thinking. Home is where the heart is, but it’s also where all our other emotions are born and live. These pages hold fear, betrayal, loss, shame, humor, regret—the whole gamut of human experience.

The farther you venture into our rooms, the more intimate and raw the pictures you’ll see. And so, welcome home.

Maren Bradley Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, July 2019

Dedication

Thank you to Willamette Writers for trusting me with the Timberline Review. The staff of this journal is entirely made up of volunteers, including the editor-in-chief position. If you like what you see here and want to know how it is done, consider joining Willamette Writers and volunteering to work on the next issue of the Timberline Review.

Prologue

Prologue

Rooms, From This Room

Poem by Eric Paul Shaffer

All of my life, I’ve walked through rooms, dark and light, little and large.

I’ve entered cluttered rooms by the door and left through the window,

curtains tangled on ankles or in tree limbs or bushes. Some, I’ve entered

and left through a hole in the wall, or I’ve come and gone by the door,

with a snicker or a slam, but always, I left all of the rooms, every one.

Sometimes, I left not knowing I would never return, and when I pondered

that, I could not care less to never see that still, sun-splashed room again.

Sometimes, I grieved to never see four dark blue walls in that odd contour

of ceiling and lintel again, never to open again that door of paint and glass,

never to see that narrow house or that rounded roof against a sky of clouds

or blue or stars. All of the nameless and numberless rooms I’ve entered

and departed are gone. Those doors are closed and locked; from outside

the windows now, the rooms are new, walls re-papered, floors stripped

or gleaming with lacquer and wax. I raised and lowered the windows

in those rooms. I broke one or two. Through a few was a view of the sea

or a wood or a road, an alley or a dog, a field or a wall. When I departed,

I looked long through those windows to choose the direction I would go.

Curb Appeal

Curb Appeal

Yia Yia’s Garden

Nonfiction by Anne Gudger

Yia Yia loved her outside home more than her inside home. Oh, an earthworm! she’d say. Come see. Kneeling in a flower bed. Her support hose rolled down just below her kneecaps. The blue green of varicose veins peering over the top of her hose. Her flowered housedress with the wide scooped neck—loose around her roundness. Her silver-gray hair with a halo frizz. Her hair coiled in a bun. Always in a bun except at night when she let it down, brushed it one hundred strokes, then braided one long mercury-colored braid down her back.

Outside her room was plump with flowers: black-eyed Susans, cosmos, cornflowers, sunflowers, foxglove, dahlias as big as my head. Marigolds too, as offerings for the slugs. Outside her flower beds and herb beds were weed-free from her plucking tiny weeds before they could anchor down. Outside her raspberries were velvet red and sweet, the best ones hiding under leaves. Step in the canes and look up, she’d tell little me. You’ll find the best berries. Red-stained summer hands. My dark hair warmed by the sun. Bare legs tickled by grass.

Inside her home it was stacked newspapers, a lonely vacuum often waiting at the