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Special Issue of the Adelaide Literary Magazine. Best essays by the Winner, 6 Shortlist Nominees, and 40 Finalists of the Third Annual Adelaide Literary Award Competition 2019, selected by Stevan V. Nikolic, editor-in-chief.

THE WINNER: Joanna Kadish
SHORTLIST WINNER NOMINEES: Ruth Deming, Hank Kalet, Noelle Wall, Michael R. Morris, Jeffrey Loeb, Megan Madramootoo
FINALISTS: Gabriel Sage, Jamie Gogocha, Jeffrey Kass, Aysel Basci, Sloane Keay Davidson, Allen Long, David Berner, Juliana Nicewarner, John Bonanni, Steve Sherwood, Christopher Major, Robin Fasano, Claudia Geagan, Peter Crowley, Clay Anderson, Megan Sandberg, Wally Swist, Royce Adams, Raymond Tatten, John Ballantine Jr., John Bliss, Cynthia Close, Deirdre Fagan, Elise Radina, Patrick Hahn, Daniel Bailey, Terry Engel, Peter Warzel, Larry Hamilton, Susan M Davis, Larry Weill, Jason James, Xavier Clayton, Elizabeth Kilcoyne, T. Harvard, Suzanne Maggio-Hucek, Marianne Song, Brianna Heisey, Valerie Angel, Janel Brubaker.

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Published by ADELAIDE BOOKS, 2020-04-07 19:46:36

Adelaide Literary Award Anthology 2019 - ESSAYS

Special Issue of the Adelaide Literary Magazine. Best essays by the Winner, 6 Shortlist Nominees, and 40 Finalists of the Third Annual Adelaide Literary Award Competition 2019, selected by Stevan V. Nikolic, editor-in-chief.

THE WINNER: Joanna Kadish
SHORTLIST WINNER NOMINEES: Ruth Deming, Hank Kalet, Noelle Wall, Michael R. Morris, Jeffrey Loeb, Megan Madramootoo
FINALISTS: Gabriel Sage, Jamie Gogocha, Jeffrey Kass, Aysel Basci, Sloane Keay Davidson, Allen Long, David Berner, Juliana Nicewarner, John Bonanni, Steve Sherwood, Christopher Major, Robin Fasano, Claudia Geagan, Peter Crowley, Clay Anderson, Megan Sandberg, Wally Swist, Royce Adams, Raymond Tatten, John Ballantine Jr., John Bliss, Cynthia Close, Deirdre Fagan, Elise Radina, Patrick Hahn, Daniel Bailey, Terry Engel, Peter Warzel, Larry Hamilton, Susan M Davis, Larry Weill, Jason James, Xavier Clayton, Elizabeth Kilcoyne, T. Harvard, Suzanne Maggio-Hucek, Marianne Song, Brianna Heisey, Valerie Angel, Janel Brubaker.

Keywords: poetry,literary collections,contest

ESSAYS ANTHOLOGY

that, shut away from one another in cubicles, someone would
email me from only one or two cubicles away. Often at the
lunch cafeteria, I’d walk past my team leader conversing with
someone. Though he saw me, he acted as though he didn’t
know me. Though I’ve come to know this same person decent,
friendly, this was the kind office the kind of office culture that
I was adapting to. Coworkers passing in the halls would usually
avert their eyes when each other passed. It was as though we
were a research scientist’s experimental mice locked in a maze,
with the scientist’s goal to have the mice remain in their cubi-
cles. Should the mice leave, they would speed to the bathroom,
cafeteria or anywhere else they happened to go, in order to
return to their cubicles more brusquely. We were exceptional
tools of production. It took me a couple years to adjust to
this new environment and develop semi-friendly relations with
some of my peers.

Just a bit after my two-year mark, as I was starting to feel
less alien to office life, a last-minute meeting was called for
the afternoon. The manager, a kind woman in early middle
age, began with a trope that would become familiar during
my tenure at EBSCO: “These meetings are always difficult for
us in management. We truly appreciate all the work everyone
does here. However, a business decision has been made to ter-
minate eight members on our team.”

For a second, we all wondered, “Are we one of the eight?”
We soon realized that because we were at that meeting,
we were among those who would remain. It was almost like
we were characters in Agatha Christie murder story And Then
There Were None, where ten people staying in a cottage began
mysteriously vanishing, one by one.
At the time of the first layoff I encountered at EBSCO, we
had been rigorously training outsourced vendors. We tried to

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

improve their A&I quality and offered feedback on their work.
But, we know what it meant: because we were transferring oc-
cupational knowledge to them and they were far cheaper than
us, our positions were in increasing jeopardy. At the same time,
we had to continue in our jobs and try to keep these reali-
ty-laden thoughts far in the back of consciousness, so we would
not go to work each day in a state of anxiety. It was key to
muffle the thought: would we retain our jobs at the end of the
day? Were we conscious of our precarity 24/7, then we’d have
a diminished quality of life – even more than if we didn’t hide
this from ourselves. We were in the back seat of a car, where
the driver could take us in any direction they chose and leave
us anywhere they liked. We had no one to protect us: we had
no union, nor did we have national politicians likely to adopt
legislation that did not primarily serve corporate interests.

After a few years with no layoffs and loss of employees
only through attrition (from 50 to 17 in A&I and 3-4 team
leads to none), we rationalized that though outsourced ven-
dors in developing countries did most of the work, the busi-
ness needed a core group in the U.S. to process high quality
work on top-tier content.

You may well think: why not find another job? If this one
has little security, get another.

True, yes, on paper and in practice we were all free to leave.
And some did leave, finding better employment elsewhere. Yet
there are three things should be kept in mind, as a social con-
text, to occupational mobility barriers. Most other jobs in the
U.S. are also precarious, as they too heavily rely on outsourced
vendors and artificial intelligence. So, even if we left, we prob-
ably wouldn’t be much better off at a new place. Secondly,
the first set of layoffs came shortly after the Global Financial
Crisis; thus, few employers were hiring at that. Lastly, even as

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ESSAYS ANTHOLOGY

the economy has started to improve, and unemployment has
reduced to healthy levels, good, nontechnical employment is
difficult to come by. Certainly, job openings abound for ad-
ministrative and service sector jobs. However, decent non-tech
jobs are relatively scarce.

A couple years ago, new upper management came in.
They wanted to shake things up. As it turned out, they would
perpetually keep things shaken up, to concoct an image for our
departmental president and CEO that they led very dynamic,
‘technology-driven’ teams. Initially, they were enthusiastic and
over a five-month period held several meetings about their ‘vi-
sion’ for the department. We would be empowered, they told
us. Tell us all your ideas on how to improve the product, they
beckoned. What can be done better overall?

We brainstormed and held many series of brainstorming
meetings. One or two ideas we came up with, very simple
ones, they adopted. I was skeptical, though at the same time
guardedly optimistic about the new ‘Lean’ way. Worker em-
powerment? Why not! By the end of the five-month period,
they canned our immediate bosses, and gassed the idea factory
and so-called employee empowerment. Certainly, they sought
to change the direction of the department, but it was only to-
wards cutting costs at whatever price, often at the expense of
product quality and job security. We relaxed standards on the
quality of product, because, most outsourced vendors couldn’t
reach our standards. Cutting cost is certainly nothing new in
business – it’s the name of the game – reduce expenses, make
profit. But at what cost? A&I employees not previously laid off
would be reduced through attrition, lower level managers were
reduced to one person and team leads that resigned were never
replaced. Goal posts were made wider, so that upper manage-
ment could awe the CEO and president with impressive stats.

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

A year after this shakeup, a new manager was hired on
an adjacent team who would soon become a rising star in the
company. With her PhD in library science and ontology, and
especially her experience with using artificial intelligence in
Indexing, she was gold. She brought along with her irrepress-
ible enthusiasm for a machine learning software called Cogito.
Once Cogito was trained, it would automatically Index and
create abstract-like blurbs we refer to as snippets. Think of the
wonder – reducing my team of 17 and an adjacent medical
team of 30 to zero. Best of all, we would train Cogito to take
our jobs. Furthermore, no more need to worry about interna-
tional outsourcing costs and low quality, as Cogito would take
the place of their 200-300 person workforce as well.

Unlike outsourcing, which management knew was a
touchy subject and would not expect us ever to celebrate, we
were expected to be in awe of Cogito, as we trained it to re-
place us. Imagine early 19th century artisans, who individually
designed their own crafts, to both train and be enamored by
the manufacturing machinery that would replace their labor.
The absurdity! As we clap with pasted smiles for Cogito, we
often glance over our shoulders, ever watchful of an impending
horizonal axe.

More recently, we had thought the axe had caught us,
when upper management called a last-minute meeting in the
afternoon. All of we underlings, largely remote workers – and
potential sacrificial lambs – had been called into the meeting.
Because there were over 50 people from several teams on the
call, some were blocked from attending. So, we switched
over to a WebEx; the delay exacerbated our anxiety. Finally,
on WebEx, the upper manager’s voice was often cutting out,
as he began, “We in management always hate to do this but
______________ betterment of the business. We want to have

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ESSAYS ANTHOLOGY

a technology _______________ that will continue to allow
us to ____________. So, ___________________________
employees. Four are in Content Management and the rest are
spread through the company. Does anyone have any questions?”

I messaged my co-worker on Skype, “Were we just laid
off?”

“No,” he responded, hesistantly, “I don’t think the layoffs
were on our team.”

The takeaway, after the upper manager clarified and an-
swered a few questions, was that, despite training Cogito to
remove any value we held for the company, we had better
become more ‘technology-focused’ to help our [not our sala-
ries] business grow. And, much like Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, we
should remain positive because laying off 40 people is ‘all for
the best’.1

With increased worker precarity and the weakening of
unions, American workers – and, to a degree, many workers
throughout the West – are ready to accept whatever condi-
tions or abuse they may suffer to maintain their livelihoods.
Outsourcing and artificial intelligence always looms around
the corner, forcing employees to accept lower wages and con-
ditions they would not have otherwise agreed to. One result is
a 40-year period of increased wealth inequality, with the famed
‘one-percent’ and the rest. Another consequence of precarity
is the need for a scapegoat, to which Americans often turn
to Latino immigrants and Muslims. An additional method of
releasing socioeconomic anxiety is perpetual war, as the U.S.

1  James Cook, “Uber’s leaked internal chart shows how its driver
rating system actually works,” Business Insider, last modified
February 11, 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-
charts-show-how-ubers-driver-rating-system-works-2015-2.

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

has been engaged in since 9/11. A more immediate result of
precarity is lowered living conditions of Americans, as seen in
stagnant wages, diminished living conditions and middle-aged
whites’ heightened mortality rates from opioid abuse, alco-
holism and suicides.

Peter F. Crowley is an independent writer and scholar with
a M.S. in Conflict Resolution, Global Studies from North-
eastern University. He works as Content Specialist/Production
Coordinator for a prominent library science company. For fun,
he plays in bluesy rock band around the Boston/NYC area.
His writings can be found in Boston Literary Magazine, Mint
Press News, (several publications in) Wilderness House Lit-
erary Review, 34th Parallel Magazine, Counterpunch, Foreign
Policy Journal, Work Literary Magazine, Znet, Opiate Maga-
zine, Truthout, Green Fuse Press, Antiwar.com, Peace Review
(forthcoming), Mondoweiss, Visitant, Peace Studies Journal,
WINK: Writers in the Know, Adelaide Magazine, Ethnic
Studies Review, Libertarian Institute, Middle East Monitor,
Dissident Voice, Inquiries Journal and a periodical publica-
tion of the Brookline, MA Historical Society. His poetry book
Those who hold up the earth is scheduled for publication by
Kelsay Books in the first half of 2020. He is currently working
on finishing up the nonfiction book with the working title
The American Condition: Essays on Zeitgeist, False Dilemma,
Worker Precarity, the Blitzkrieg Event and Foreign Relations.

204

The Heartbreak Kid

by Clay Anderson

We go to church as a refuge. Our shelter and sanctuary. A sa-
cred place to escape the horrors of the world. To keep unmiti-
gated wickedness at bay. But what happens when evil’s already
there? Incubated within those hallowed walls? Is God too busy
with the outer dark? Does he forget his children who come and
lay prostrate before him? Or, is it just another building? Just
wood, paint, and stone. Nothing less than an opening into the
devil’s playground?

The boy’s obsession with live wrestling bordered on the
fanatical. His fervent devotion to the WWF (WWE) and
Shawn “The Heartbreak Kid” Michaels encapsulated most of
his eight-year-old life. He knew by heart HBK’s entrance song
and practiced almost to perfection Michael’s finishing move:
Sweet Chin Music. Monday Night Raw was the pinnacle of
his week. Most kids dreaded Sunday night, but the boy ea-
gerly anticipated the next wrestling event that was less than
twenty-four hours away. Wondering who the Heartbreak Kid
would face in the squared circle. The boy’s love for HBK was
only overshadowed by the boy’s intense hatred for his idol’s
rivals: The Hart Brothers and Razor Ramone. He’d stay up on
Monday nights watching Raw until his 9:30 bedtime, at which

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

point he’d push record on the VCR and watch the remainder
after school on Tuesday.

The worst trouble the boy had ever been in was when he
took his baseball pants and drew huge, red broken hearts all
over them. Stenciled HBK in block letters across the rear. He
figured himself pretty official. Little did he know at the time
that his father felt very differently about ruining his baseball
uniform. The boy’s small world turned upside down when he
was grounded from watching Raw for six weeks. He also had
to perform all his chores without the benefit of his allowance.
And, in an act of pure evil, his father threw away his home-
made Shawn Michaels’ wrestling outfit.

There weren’t many people who shared the boy’s obsession
with the WWF or the Heartbreak Kid. No one in his family
had anything but borderline contempt for what his father
called a “redneck soap opera.” There was a no wrestling talk at
the dinner table rule. His sister complained bitterly whenever
the boy tried to bring it up, so the topic was mostly off limits.
That was alright though because every Sunday morning the boy
ran into Richard, who played the trumpet in the church choir.
He was a super fan of WWF just like the boy. Before and after
the service, Richard and the boy would sit in a corner of the
choir changing room and discuss last week’s Raw and what to
expect from the following day. They’d often be the last ones
there and have to sprint to the sanctuary so neither would be
late. Whenever the orchestra wasn’t playing, the boy would beg
his parents to let him sit with Richard in the balcony, where
they’d pass notes about their hatred for Razor Ramone or play
tic-tac-toe games on the bulletin. Overall, the boy found a
compatriot who enjoyed live wrestling as much as he did.

Then one day, something changed. There was a big Easter
concert coming up so the choir and orchestra stayed after the

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ESSAYS ANTHOLOGY

service to practice. The boy stuck around to wait on his parents
to finish the rehearsal. Thankfully, the orchestra finished early
and he met his friend in the changing room. Richard had a
surprise for him. So, after everyone else left, the two sat in the
corner as the trumpeter brought out a WWF magazine with
Shawn “The Heartbreak Kid” Michaels on the cover. The boy
could have it if he did something in return. Staring at the pic-
ture of his hero, the eight-year-old readily agreed.

Richard placed the magazine on the floor and unzipped
his pants. He took out his member and began touching
himself. He told the boy to watch what he was doing because,
if he wanted the magazine, he’d have to continue rubbing his
member for him. So, the eight-year-old did just that. It wasn’t
long before something came out. Richard then took the boy by
the hand and walked him to the bathroom. Delicately leading
the child. Crooning encouraging words. Richard then washed
the boy’s hands very thoroughly. Making sure the water wasn’t
too hot or cold. The smiling adult dried them with care. They
walked back to the choir changing room and Richard gave the
boy the magazine. Then, the trumpeter left without so much
as saying goodbye. There was no swearing to secrecy or even
a conciliatory gesture. Just a confused boy sitting by himself
looking at a wrestling magazine.

Some might say that must’ve been the scariest moment of
the boy’s life, but they’d be wrong. That masturbatory episode
was the one and only time. Richard quit being the boy’s friend
and moved on to another kid from the church. The boy’s only
feelings were sadness that he no longer had anyone to talk to
about the World Wrestling Federation and Shawn Michaels.

It wasn’t that much longer until Richard stopped coming
to church. One day a little bit after that, the pastor, associ-
ate-pastor, and children’s minister came to the boy’s Sunday

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

school room and took each child out one-by-one to ask us ques-
tions with our parents. The boy was nearly the last one. He sat
feeling alone between his crying parents as the preacher asked
questions about being touched. They told him that a member
of the orchestra had been arrested for child pornography and
molestation. Had Richard every touched your private parts? The
boy felt a wave of paranoia overcome him. Was he in trouble?
Did he do something wrong? They asked him again if trumpeter
ever touched him inappropriately. The boy remembered the day
in the choir changing room and answered truthfully.

No.
About two years later, the truth came out. The boy and
another kid from the church struck up a friendship and shared
what happened to them. The two then told their parents, who
told the preacher, who told the police. By that time, Richard
was in the penitentiary. Statements were given, but no criminal
charges were filed. The whole situation was surreal for a ten-
year-old still unsure what exactly happened. The boy still wasn’t
scared. He just knew that what happened was wrong and that
fact was burned into his psyche. He’d jacked off an adult. He’d
been the one who’d touched Richard inappropriately.
The moment when the boy felt the most visceral fear oc-
curred many years later. He was twenty-two years old and a
college junior. He and his friends were day drinking down at
the apartment complex’s pool. The sun was blistering and white
hot, but they didn’t have a care in the world. It was a week-
and-a-half before the Fall semester started, so the debauched
crew was making the most of it before returning to the grind
of academia. They all lived in a seedy apartment complex thats
only redeeming quality was that the rent was cheap. The young
man had just funneled a natty light when his best friend ca-
sually mentioned that several pedophiles lived in the complex.

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ESSAYS ANTHOLOGY

The word struck him like a blow to the gut. He’d long
pushed the experience out of his mind. Always tried to disas-
sociate himself from the act. Embarrassment and shame were
the dark emotions which resided there. The occasional flash of
remembrance occurred only when his Sunday school compa-
triot’s Facebook posts flashed across his timeline. He’d look at
his profile and wonder how he dealt with what happened. Did
he think about it? Does it affect him to this day? Whenever his
friend saw his own posts, did he remember? He’d not talked
to him in person for years. Yet, they shared a bond that was
unimpeachable. Brothers in tragedy.

The young man’s best friend continued talking as he
pretended like the proximity to pedophiles was no big deal.
His friend said that there was a website where one could
look up sex offenders in the area with a registry that maps
out their crimes and where they live. The young man sat on
a cheap poolside chair drinking a beer very slowly. A wave
of emotions came over him. For the longest time he’d con-
sidered himself lucky. Nothing happened to him. He wasn’t
sexually abused. Now, he’d slowly come to grips with the
fact that he was, but that realization was a long time coming
and something he’d still catch himself rationalizing or ex-
plaining away. Like there was some hierarchy of molestation.
You doing something ranked lower than to something being
done to you.

Once the young man finished his beer, he made up an
excuse to leave. There were protestations from his friends, but
he feigned sickness. Too much booze and sun. The young man
drove back to his tiny apartment, walked slowly up the stairs,
and entered. He felt like his feet were encased in concrete.
Every single cell in his body told him not to do it. But, of
course he did it anyway.

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

The young man sat down in front of his computer and
punched the pedophile’s first, middle, and last name into the
database. He wasn’t sure if Richard was still in prison, but,
when the search found a match, he knew the pedophile was
back amongst us. There he was. Living outside of Carrollton
in Carroll County, Georgia. A red dot on a map that showed
his exact location. The young man moved the cursor over and
left clicked. Slowly the page pulled up.

There was Richard. Smiling into the camera. He’d grown
much older than the young man had remembered. He’d also
remembered Richard seeming huge and larger than life, yet his
statistics showed a man far smaller. You’d think anger spilled
out. That he’d drive to Carrollton and beat Richard bloody.
But, that wasn’t what happened. An electric current of absolute
terror shot up from the young man’s feet to the top of his head.
He was shaking and couldn’t stop. His heart pounded. He felt
like he couldn’t breathe. He’d never been more scared in his
whole entire life. It was a primal fear completely beyond his
control or comprehension.

Instead of being a twenty-two-year-old who went to the
gym every day, the young man was a confused and scared eight-
year-old grappling with something he didn’t understand. He
cried for a long time. Not small tears but full on and uncon-
trollable. He’d made myself sick and threw up in the sink. Kept
retching until black, bitter bile was all that was left. Finally,
some form of coping mechanism kicked in and he thought
about Shawn Michaels. The young man went to YouTube and
spent the next several hours watching HBK’s old matches. In
a strange way, the Heartbreak Kid saved him again.

That night, the young man woke from a dream or dream-
er’s dream that he couldn’t remember. All he knew was that
he’d wet the bed. He laid there next to his girlfriend looking at

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ESSAYS ANTHOLOGY

the ceiling fan, covered in sweat and urine. A terrified eight-
year-old masquerading as a grown man. He was covered in filth
and felt a strange sense of peace in that. Right at home. That
was the least of what he deserved. After a long time, he woke
up his girlfriend and stripped the linens. She was understand-
ably upset. The young man made up the excuse that he’d had
too much to drink, but that wasn’t true. He’d not touched a
drop of alcohol since leaving the pool at 2:00 pm. The fact of
the matter was that he’d regressed back to a time where his
innocence was stolen. He got in the shower and cried again.
When he got out, he’d found that his girlfriend had gone into
the living room and was asleep on the couch. When he laid
down next to her, she whispered something about how much
trouble he was in.

That was fine, he thought, he’d had more trouble than
anyone could name.

Clay Anderson is an Adjunct Professor of History at Reinhardt
University in Waleska, Georgia. He received his BA in History
from Kennesaw State University and MA from Mississippi
State University. He is currently an MFA student in Creative
Writing at Reinhardt University. The Palms is his first novel.
He lives in the mountains of North Georgia with his two dogs.

211

The White, the Black,
the Blue

by Megan Sandberg

I don’t trust my memories. They filter in like vintage snapshots
spit up from a Polaroid, snatched by the birthday girl with
greasy hands before her mom can string them into a collage.
They are disjointed, unreliable, too fingerprinted to be salvage-
able.

But the black and blue is in every photo: the blue, V-neck
tunic clinging to my unformed ten-year-old frame; the black
leggings covering up knobby knees and muscular, gymnast
calves. The shoes must’ve gotten cut off.

I remember laying on the bed while my dad stood against
the wall, his elbow bent, a finger skeptically atop his mus-
tache. I think he wore something nicer than usual, a button-up,
maybe because he came from work. My mom must’ve been
there too. She always came to those kinds of appointments, the
ones with the pseudo doctors.

I had spent most of my childhood suffering from extreme
nausea and vomiting, and my parents felt helpless. My mom
tried to stay awake night after night as my sweaty hair touched
the bottom of another pan, blinking through another midnight

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ESSAYS ANTHOLOGY

screening of Freaky Friday or Princess Diaries. When she gave
into sleep, or called the advice nurse, needing new guidelines
for a trip to the emergency room, my dad would stay awake,
sitting on the couch, head in his hands.

My dad made me feel safe. He was the one rushing to the
hospital, child limp in his elbows, managing to grab a vomit
bag from the nurse in time, pleading with anyone who would
listen. But the doctors had already run out of tests and pre-
scribed a year’s worth of Prilosec, which meant I would take it
342 days longer than you were supposed to. My parents had
to resort to trying everything.

In the photo with the pseudo-doctor, I don’t remember
my mom standing next to my dad, or in a chair, which is why
I don’t trust it. My mom was always there. I think my dad
had left, hesitantly. It’s common for doctors to ask parents to
leave the room, but I was ten, only there for nutrition response
testing and other homeopathic remedies.

I remember the pseudo-doctor more sharply: a white,
middle-aged man with glasses who wore a white lab coat. He
stood in front of a rustic-looking medicine cabinet full of min-
iature glass bottles while I laid on a medical bed in the carpeted
exam room. Then he lifted my arm above my head.

I remember the bottles rolling down my body, starting
from my chest then sliding down, like a miniature bowling
ball rolling down a lane. I’ve looked up images of this testing
now, and all I find are photos of a patient’s arm lifted, a doctor
at their side. I’m still not sure what is actually supposed to
happen.

One by one, he let the bottles roll down my stomach,
then finally in between my thighs. He picked up one or two
bottles there. When he grabbed them, I remember stiffening,
my hands sticking to the thin, white sheet on top of the bed.

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

Then, a rip in the memory. The next snapshot includes
my dad shaking his head at the receptionist, saying he wasn’t
going to buy anything. In the car, my mom is there again, and
her and my dad discuss the man’s diagnosis, that the lining of
my stomach is deteriorating. My dad says something about not
trusting him. I don’t remember saying anything.

Later that day, I went on a walk with one of my best
friends around her neighborhood. I cried and cried about my
deteriorating stomach lining. I clung to those words. I thought
I would be damaged forever, that my stomach would hurt for
a long time.



I wiggled my skinny jeans up my legs, pushing against the back
of the front seat with my right foot to be successful. Then I
leveraged against the back seat to get the tight fabric to my hips
and rebuttoned my jeans.

My boyfriend readjusted his shirt. It was pitch black out-
side, and we had once again parked my car on a random street,
ducking whenever headlights hit the window. We both lived
with roommates and this was usually the only place we could
have sex. Once we started making out, he would break away,
start the car, and drive way beyond the speed limit while I nav-
igated him through different streets with dead ends, laughing,
steering him clear of houses where my college friends lived.

I stayed on my side, against the beige fabric, not wel-
coming any further touch. He knew by now I hated that after-
wards; I just wanted to be alone, a seat-length away.

“I think I might’ve been molested when I was ten.” I don’t
know why I said it then, right as he was still getting his pants
back on. Maybe I wanted acknowledgement that I had been

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ESSAYS ANTHOLOGY

through “something,” that our relationship had evolved to the
sharing of dark secrets. Or maybe I thought by describing the
photo aloud at a random moment in time, it would become
less fuzzy.

He stopped pulling up his pants. The tops of his jeans
stayed wrapped around his knees, and he kept his hands on
them, sitting in his boxers. He looked at me, but I didn’t look
at him. My eyes focused above the passenger seat, staring at a
dim porch light across the street.

“Really?” He pulled his jeans all the way up.
“I think so.” The image of the blue tunic had been popping
up in my head lately. It was never accompanied with an emo-
tion, it was more like a nagging thought on replay. I decided
to explain what happened with the weird doctor.
He turned to face me and put out a hand that sliced
through the air. “You’re not kidding?”
“No.” As if I regularly joked about being molested.
“Wow.”
“I mean, I’m not like traumatized or anything. I’m not
even really sure what happened. But I just have this feeling
something happened,” I said.
“But you remember feeling something?”
“Yeah.”
“Was that your ‘sexual awakening’?” he asked.
“Um. I don’t know.”
We remained silent. If we were in an indie film, we
would’ve leaned back in our seats, taking a drag of our ciga-
rettes. Epiphanies would’ve surfaced between exhales, spirals
of smoke filling the void of noise. Instead I stole glances at
his face. His lips were partly open, the expression of his pale,
white face empty. I started to worry he was reevaluating me,
erasing the fun, spontaneous girlfriend and replacing her with

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a promiscuous one, one who lived out her sex life concurrent
with a medically explicable storyline.



My sister’s laugh crackled through my car’s Bluetooth speaker
as I put my elbow on the window sill. I stopped behind a car at
a red light, then clicked on my turn signal to get in the lane for
the on-ramp, barely moving in the Los Angeles rush-hour traffic.

“I swear, Jenna. I swear it was a plate.” I swear, Jenna had
become my catchphrase when attempting to get her to agree
on our shared childhood memories.

“I don’t remember a plate. I just remember the remote,”
she said.

“Dad threw a remote at us?”
“At you. You don’t remember that?”
I sat back, putting both hands on the wheel and merging
onto the freeway. “Dad threw a remote at me?”
“Yeah, it whizzed past your head. I remember your look
of horror and then you screamed and cried and ran upstairs to
your room. You don’t remember me going up after you?”
“No.”
“Yeah. I remember being so mad at him.”
I turned the Bluetooth speaker up so I could hear her over
the freeway noise. “What was he mad about?”
“I don’t know.” I could hear the shrug. “Maybe your mind
replaced the remote with the plate.”
“No. It was both of us. We both ducked. And there was
like, a book. Which is why I get so confused.”
We laughed. It shouldn’t have been funny, but trying to
sift through memories with my sister always felt ridiculous,
like trying to build the engine of a car with only foam parts.

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“A book?” she asked.
“Okay. So you know how Mom always got those peaches
in the Costco jars? In the syrup? And she always rationed two
peach slices per fruit bowl like we were starving or something?”
Jenna laughed. “Yeah.”
“Okay, well, we were being brats and mom asked us to set
the table and we gave her attitude. And I guess she just had it,
so she left the house and sat in the front yard and cried.”
“Okay.”
“So Dad went out to comfort her, then when he came
back in he was so angry. And we were standing up against the
couch. And I swear. I swear, Jenna, this is the confusing part. I
remember a book sitting on one of the plates at the table. And
when he was yelling at us, he slammed his fist down on the
book, which was on the plate, right, and then the plate slid
out from underneath the book and flew at us. And we both
screamed and ducked. But how is that physically possible?”
“I mean, maybe there was just the one incident,” she said.
“He’ll deny it either way.”
“Oh yeah.”
“All he’s said to me is, ‘I’ve only gotten angry at you two —
really angry — once in your life.’” I braked. “I wonder which
time.”
“I guess we all lose it at least once.”
“Yeah. I definitely remember the peaches though.”



I sat on another thin, white sheet besides a male doctor in
glasses. This doctor had tan skin with round glasses and grey
hair. He took long breaths, pursed his lips, and wrinkled his
nose between every sentence. I thought he was weird.

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After I graduated from college, I had a tonsillectomy, and
this doctor was trying to figure out what was wrong with my
tongue, why it felt burnt, why it looked white.

“Now, I think...” He took his arm, which had been crossed
with the other, and extended it, placing his hand on my arm. I
immediately looked down and frowned. He withdrew it. “That
your tongue actually got damaged during surgery. We have to
put a lot of pressure on it, you know to clamp it down. And
it’s a lot of stress on it.”

“But will it go away?”
“You could have symptoms indefinitely.”
I sank in the chair. Great.
He turned to face the computer, smacking his lips again,
then pulled up my chart. For some reason, someone some-
where had written “Major Depressive Disorder.” He circled
this with his mouse on the screen. “Ah, and the symptoms can
be worsened by stress.”
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling behind his back. As if my
tongue changed after oral surgery because of my non-existent
depression. Then I scanned through my other apparent prob-
lems on the screen. Everything I described to doctors had to
fall under those pre-diagnosed umbrellas to be believed. I felt
like a textbook case study, symptoms only applicable to what
was already in the index.
I thought I would get a similarly unfounded epiphany
from my therapist if I told her about the blue-shirted memo-
ries, if I was even a reliable narrator of my own past. Everything
would probably piece together for her, as if you can attribute
two minutes on a bed with a single, sterile sheet to all of a
person’s disorders. But to her it would make sense: all of my
problems stemming from being molested, if that’s even what I
deserve to call the fleeting moment of an inappropriate touch

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I can barely remember. Maybe everything would fit in a nice
little bow for her, another package to stow away. Case solved.

But I didn’t want to tell her. What if the fragments I
pieced together were like the ones me and my sister discussed:
disputable? What if the rip in the memory meant my parents
never left the room?

I’ve yet to confirm my story with them. I’m too afraid
they’ll say something contradictory and further tarnish the
photo I thought I took. And if I told my therapist, it could
become another addition to my chart, the one filled with an
exceeding amount of doctor’s visits and inexplicable ailments.
Confused by the left side of the chart, the one showing my
young age and healthy vitals, maybe the doctors wanted ex-
planations, justifications to prescribe what that man couldn’t.
Another thing for them to hover their mouse over and say, “Ah.
That’s why.”

But I didn’t want my memory to explain anything. I
wanted the damaged photo to be exclusively mine—a froth of
unreliable pixels, popping up in my head as colors only I can
see: the white, the black, and the blue.

Megan Sandberg works as a Communications Coordinator
at a private school in Seattle, WA, and continues to pursue
creative nonfiction when not running or dancing. Her work
has also appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books and
The Curator. She holds a BA in Screenwriting and a minor in
Women’s Studies from Chapman University.

219

D.H. Lawrence’s Women
in Love

by Wally Swist

D. H. Lawrence addresses love in many of its permutations in
this inconoclastic novel of ecstasy and tragedy. The four main
characters in the novel both soar and struggle in their relation-
ships with each other and seek higher resolve in a myriad of
ways despite their failures in achieving the relationship they seek.

The Brangwen sisters, Ursula, the eldest, and Gudrun, the
youngest, are emblematic early 20th century women in search
of love and freedom, not particularly in any specific order.
They are hardly time-bound in the Edwardian era, as the novel
takes place circa the early teens, since contemporary 21st cen-
tury women also struggle and yield to the same issues which
are framed within a more modern context.

Lawrence interjects one counterpoint after another in
Women in Love. It is a novel of many contrasting pairs of re-
lationships, all running parallel to each other in that they are
dysfunctional, on some level, but never quite the same ones.
Whereas Ursula and Rupert are more psycho-spiritual mates,
Gudrun and Gerald are more drawn to the raw sexual ener-
gies in each other. With that said, Ursula proclaims herself as

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a woman who wants to feel the sand between her toes, who
needs to be sexually satisfied, but one who also responds to
Rupert’s more ephemeral predilections.

In contrast to these two main couples, Lawrence also in-
terjects the counterpoint of Ursula and Gudrun’s parents who
struggle after years of marriage. However, it is this couple of the
long-married variety who are able to dodge and weave enough
in their own separate lives to save their relationship, which they
both deeply value, as much as it is often intolerable. In this,
Women in Love is a novel of one dynamic juxtaposed against
another: Gerald’s high station in society versus Gudrun’s arche-
type of a pure aesthetic, Ursula’s earthy sexuality versus Rupert’s
intellectualizing and nearly quixotic search for ideals.

Seeking resolve in the modern age is an essential journey
for the characters in this novel. They not so much search for
relief of their burdens and the choices they have made but
they look to possibly integrate the results of their life decisions.
Lawrence’s portrayal of these struggles evoke the painful inter-
action between the sexes in the modernist period and beyond,
in a timeless relevance in our own contemporary society.

Gerald represents the prototypical male archetype. He needs
to fix what is broken. His strength and capabilities are formidable,
even heroic. Rupert, on the other hand, seeks a tautology for his
philosophical and spiritual dialectic. He seeks what is possibly
beyond the realm of what is human and what is humanly divine.



Gerald Crich, the wealthy industrialist, and Rupert Birkin, the
ideologue, become the lovers of Gudrun and Ursula, respec-
tively. Gerald is haunted by the deaths in his family, including
his accidentally killing his brother as a boy; the tragic drowning

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of his beautiful sister, Diana Crich, at a water party; and his
father’s culmination after a long sickness.

Ursula meets Rupert after a brutal love affair with a British
soldier of Polish heritage, Anton Skrebensky, as depicted in
this novel’s prequel, The Rainbow. She is attracted to Rupert in
opposition to the animal passions of Skrebensky.

Gerald pays Gudrun a visit after his father’s death by
covertly entering the Brangwen family home where he and
Gudrun make love is revelatory and bold, at once. It is some-
what shocking—by its not transcending boundaries but by
vaulting over them, even in the world of today. However much
Gerald is comforted by Gudrun, and as much as their relation-
ship escalates and deepens, there is also the intimation that
Gerald’s embattled psyche and resilient masculinity may not
survive Gudrun’s innate love and need of freedom.

When Loerke, a diminutive, but brash, artist from Ger-
many, enters Gudrun’s life, as the two couples travel to the
Tyrolean Alps, Gerald’s rage only encourages Gudrun’s attrac-
tion to Loerke. This psychological vortex engulfs both Gudrun
and Gerald: as he rages she only rejects him more. Gudrun’s
bitterness emerges in wounding Gerald verbally, which leads
to his attempt to strangle her. In relinquishing his hold on
Gudrun’s throat, the two are irrevocably separated: Gudrun in
self-righteousness, Gerald in his abject aloneness.

In response to the loss of Gudrun, Gerald takes to the path-
less snowy mountains, where he is found frozen to death. Ursula
and Rupert, who had left earlier to try to give Gudrun and Gerald
space to work out their relationship, are called back by Gudrun,
who is coldly contemptuous in light of what Gerald chose to do.

Gudrun decides to travel to Germany after Gerald’s death
to continue on with her Bohemian lifestyle, pursuing an ethos
of unbound freedom and pure aesthetic. Earlier in the novel,

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there is a wrestling scene in which Gerald and Rupert are por-
trayed in a homoerotic fashion. Ursula would like to be ev-
erything to Rupert; whereas, Rupert resists in reciprocating to
Ursula in this way because he holds Gerald’s friendship with
equal respect and reverence as his love for her.



Following the saga of three generations in The Rainbow from
the post-industrialized age to the industrial era, the main
characters in Women in Love are loosely based on personages
Lawrence knew well, especially in his portrayal of Rupert, as
himself, as a man in search of ideals but one who was also
physically weakened, as he was, by various maladies.

The fact that Lawrence himself was conflicted sheds much
light on the characters in Women in Love. He was an early propo-
nent of women’s liberation and sexual freedom; however, in nearly
complete opposition to this he was politically far right of center.
Described as not quite being a fascist but believing in the value of
an authoritarian over a social construct, for instance, put him in
the direct line of fire with the philosopher Bertrand Russell, whose
far left of center ideologies fueled his intellect and his passions.

Similarly, as with Lawrence’s own conflicted character, the
response to Women in Love has been historically a forceful one:
either laudatory or vilified. Martin Secker, Lawrence’s London
publisher initially backed out off publishing the novel in 1920.
Thomas Seltzer, an American publisher, first published the
novel in a limited edition of 1,250 copies. It was not until 1921
did the novel find publication in a trade edition in England.
This began a civil suit brought on by Lady Ottoline Morrell
who claimed her likeness was too obvious as the character Her-
mione Roddice in the novel.

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However, that is mild in comparison to reviewers who
criticized Women in Love for its steamy eroticism. One early
reviewer referred to the book as “dirt.” Later critical appraisals
included renown authors such as Simone de Beauvoir, who
found, despite the novel’s liberal and progressive treatment of
women, Women in Love to be “chauvinistic” and overly focused
on the psychologically and physical aspect of the male phallus.

Although, surprisingly, contemporary feminist and critic,
Camille Paglia, has praised Women in Love in the early influ-
ence it had on her own literary coming of age. She even has
compared the significance of the work to Edmund Spenser’s
The Fairie Queen, first published in 1590. Paglia’s support of
the novel is in her approbation of male sexual relations.

Imminent literary critic and scholar, Harold Bloom,
mainstay on the faculty at Yale University, considers Women
in Love to be among the most influential novels in the canon
of Western literature.

Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions
of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by
Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard
Series Open Poetry Contest, and A Bird Who Seems to Know
Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature (Ex Ophidia Press,
2019), the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize.

His recent poems have or will appear in Commonweal,
Rattle, and Transference: A Literary Journal Featuring the Art
& Process of Translation.

Recent books include The Bees of the Invisible (2019) and
Evanescence: Selected Poems (2020), both with Shanti Arts.

224

The Day of the Jaguar

by Royce Adams

I was told I must go, that there is nothing like it. So, one
Sunday while on sabbatical leave, I visited Chichicastenango
in the Guatemalan highlands, a few hours north of Guate-
mala City and home to one of the largest, most colorful na-
tive market places in Central America. Sundays and Thurs-
days bring together not only local Maya vendors, but scores
of artisans from all over Guatemala hawking mixed-matched
woven textiles in anomalous color combinations; ornately
carved wooden masks and costumes depicting various Mayan
gods and animals; pottery of various shapes and purposes; ma-
chetes, knives and other tools; exotic candles; incense; medic-
inal plants; myriad grains, fruits and vegetables; pigs, goats
and chickens; and small eateries offering anything that would
fit in a tortilla.

The thick air swirled with greasy cooking smoke, mixtures of
strong incense, and the residue of fireworks from rockets and fire-
crackers exploding periodically for no particular reason I could
discern. The smells volleyed from putrid to sweet and back again
as I made my way through the market, all my senses entertained.

I meandered through the city with my heavy-lensed
camera slung over my shoulder at the ready, though no device

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could have captured my visceral enjoyment of the thriving for-
eign life and cacophony of languages and music surrounding
me. There, at the top of the eighteen worn rocky steps leading
up to the entrance, sat the 400-year old Santo Tomas Catholic
Church that housed Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya,
before it was stolen. Men and women in their vibrant indige-
nous native dress, some selling flowers, some waving burning
incense and chanting, some burning candles, one scattering
something on a small fire, together commandeered the steps as
they meshed their thousand-year old traditional Maya beliefs
with those the Spanish brought hundreds of years ago.

I started to climb the steps to enter the church, but had
difficulty making my way through the crowd. Someone spoke
to me in a melodic language I took to be K’iche’ Maya, a soft,
soothing sound. I smiled, not understanding, and attempted
to continue through the mass. Halfway up, I was stopped by a
native Spanish speaker who told me the Church was a sacred
place, and that I could not go inside with my camera. Best
to obtain a guide, he suggested. I looked around and sensed
everyone on the steps was watching to see what I would do. I
saw myself as a trespasser and turned back down the steps.

As I continued to roam the streets, an inexplicable
feeling of apprehension and premonition came over me. I
can’t say why or describe it. But something compelled me
to wander deeper into the narrow market streets as though
on a quest. Like a magnetic force, I felt drawn to something
yet unfound.

I stepped aside at one point as a procession of men, some
dressed in jaguar face masks and spotted costumes, others in
simple everyday clothing, marched by, a ragtag group, not par-
ticularly in step with the sounds of wooden flutes and drum
beats. I almost started to follow them, but I held back. Moving

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on, I stopped at various stalls half-heartedly examining the
offerings of each and became aware of the market’s organiza-
tion: all wood merchandise in one area; all pottery makers in
another; condiments in another, and so on. At one point, a
vendor dressed in simple dark pants and a white, opened-neck
shirt, held out a small, plain pottery cup to me.

“¿Quieres una bebida?”
I peered into the cup of brown liquid he offered reminding
me of the kava I drank in Fiji, a numbing, narcotic-like drink.
“¿Qué es?”
“Una deliciosa bebida.” He smiled, nodded and pushed the
cup further toward me.
I looked at the drink, then back at him, my skepticism
obvious.
“¿Qué hay en ello?”
“Una bebida de Maya,” he said with pride.” Ixcacao con
guaro.”
“¿Qué?”
“Ish-ca-ca-o.” He gave me a wan smile. “Chocolate and
sugar rum.”
“You speak English?”
“Some.” He continued to hold out the cup. A small man,
as many Maya are, he made me feel tall. At the same time
he made me feel small in my being. I don’t know why. His
face was dark Mayan chocolate itself. His black, cat-like eyes
seemed to search for something in mine. I felt a slight unease
and reticence to accept.
“How much?” I asked, stalling.
“Nothing, señor. An offering.”
I didn’t want to seem impolite and felt compelled to take
a taste, even though all travel books warn tourists to be leery
of such drinks.

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I took the cup and sipped. Not unpleasant, I sipped some
more. Slightly sweet, yet peppery. My mind told me I would
regret drinking this muddy water, but my taste buds encour-
aged me to take more.

I took a few swallows, then handed the cup back, feeling
I’d finished my unnecessary obligation.

“Very…different. Graçias.” I wasn’t sure what I was sup-
posed to say.

“Ah, de nada, señor. A pleasure.”
I started looking in my pocket for some quetzals to pay
him. “¿A como?”
He waved his hand. “Nada. Nothing, señor.”
Odd, I thought. “Well, graçias again.”
I started to walk away wondering when I would begin
throwing up, when the vendor called back to me.
“Señor, I show you something.”
Of course, I thought. Now comes the reason for the drink.
What does he want me to buy?
“I don’t know,” I hesitated. “I need to get back to the city
before dark.”
“I promise, takes not long. And never you forget what
you see.”
Before I could answer, he offered his hand and name.
We exchanged a loose handshake.
“Sorry, say your name again?”
He repeated his name. Ish something. It did not sound
Spanish.
I still had trouble understanding him, and decided the closest
I could come to pronouncing his name was to call him Ishmael.
“Follow please,” he said as he slipped into the crowd.
Things were happening too fast. I thought he wanted to
show me something in his stall. Where was he taking me?

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Should I trust him and follow? I hadn’t felt comfortable around
him, yet here I was being led to…where? And to what?

I trailed behind him through and around many vending
stalls, almost losing him on occasion in the crowded streets,
then realized we were leaving the market. I caught up with
him as we headed across a clearing and up into a wooded area.
“How much farther?”

“Soon.”
Whoa, wait, I told myself. You’re walking into a trap,
stupid. Turn around. Some gang is in the woods waiting to
take your camera, your money, your clothes, maybe your life.
I tried to shake off these negative thoughts and noticed I was
feeling a bit lightheaded. Was it the mountain air? Or, maybe
it was something in the drink he gave me. That was it! He’s
drugged me!
I stopped walking. He stopped and looked at me with a
face that offered no surprise, no danger, no threat.
Ishmael looked me in the eyes. “You have fear.”
“Yes, I have fear.” I wasn’t about to pretend I didn’t.
“Si, entiendo su posición. As I would, also.”
We stood in quiet a moment.
I still felt a bit dizzy and my tongue felt tingly.
“Did you drug me?” I blurted out; then felt a little silly.
“Where are you taking me?” I must have sounded pathetic.
“Señor, how to tell you…no quiero hacer daño. No hurt
do I make you.”
His face seemed innocent, but those deep, black cat eyes
seemed to hold me.
Should I believe him? Who is he, anyway? I should go
back. Be sensible. But if I turned around now, what would I
miss? I might never have an occasion to witness something off
the tourist track like this again. Is my paranoia unwarranted?

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I’m physically bigger than he is. But if there are more of them
in waiting? Oh, come on. Ease up. You’re being overly cautious.
Go with the man! Maybe this is that expectancy you felt earlier.

As if not in control, I nodded. “Okay, okay. Let’s go.”
Showing no emotion, he continued walking, his footsteps
making no sound.
I stayed on my guard as we went deeper into the woods,
never seeing another person. He stopped at a small clearing
just outside the opening of a small cave entrance and pointed
to the remains of a fire. From my various readings in prepa-
ration for my travels, I learned that Maya shaman used fires
for all types of sacred ceremonies, believing fire is a living,
breathing organism, some saying fire is God itself. Shamans
make a circle of sugar or grains around the ring of the fire
and divide the circle into various parts, placing items like in-
cense, corn, cocoa beans, copal, or whatever they deem useful
for a particular ceremony. Four tall candles representing the
four directions are often placed within the circle. Then smaller
candles of different colors are placed flat around the center of
the fire. Yellow candles represent peace; red, love; green, earth;
white, purity and so on. No doubt I was looking at a recent
ceremonial fire, certain of it when I noticed feathers around
the circle and dark spots I assumed to be dried blood, candles
burnt to the ground.
The grey ash still let off an occasional bit of smoke. As I
stared into the ashes, I saw the lively, crackling fire, the blood
of the sacrificial fowl being dripped into the sugar around the
fire, the melting colored candles oozing into the wood beneath
them, a shaman chanting something.
I saw it all, but understood nothing.
His voice brought me back from wherever I was.
“You have stood here before.”

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“What?” In a flash I awoke to where I was. “No. Never.
This is my first time in Guatemala.”

“Si, you have been here before,” he insisted. Then he said
something unintelligible I assumed was K’iche. “I am told to
bring you back here.”

I breathed a nervous laugh, but the way he said it made
me shiver, and my skin felt pricked; my breath skipped. What
kind of fraud was this turning out to be? I looked around and
saw nobody. What was he talking about?

“Who told you to bring me back?”
“The I’x-Balan spirits.”
Right. Spirits ready to jump out of the woods and attack
me now while drugged.
We just stood there, each of us looking down at the ashes.
No spirits or human bodies came running out of the woods
or cave at me. Baffled, mesmerized, I just waited for his next
move.
Slowly, in a low voice, eyes closed, he again started to
mumble in K’iche or whatever. He repeated what sounded like
sound, “Ish. Ish.” He kept blowing his breath into his hand.
What was that about?
He’s got to be setting me up for something. Why did he
say I’d been here before? Spirits told him. Does he expect me to
believe that? The only spirits are the ones in the drink he gave
me, and I foolishly drank myself into a world that’s playing
with my perception.
While my mind groped for normalcy, I remembered my
camera. I needed pictures to prove this incident was real. I
started to take a photo of Ishmael standing by the fire, but he
stopped mumbling, raised his hands and shook his head.
“No pictures.”
“Why?”

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“Sacred place here. No pictures.”
“Well, can we go in the cave? See what’s in there?”
“No. A shaman must cleanse you first.”
“What’s in there?”
“The spirit of the black jaguar.”
Oh, boy. Can this get any more preposterous?
“Well, can I take a picture of the outside?”
“No.”
I relented, too baffled and annoyed to argue.
But through my travels I had learned to take hip shots of
people who didn’t want to be photographed or who wanted
money for a snap shot. Never raising my camera to focus, I
just aimed the camera from my hip which self-focused when
I clicked. And I wanted proof of what was happening to me,
so I managed to snap six pictures on the sly as I questioned
him.
“I don’t understand. Why do the Spirits want me here?”
“They have reasons.”
“But why me?”
“You are of the number twelve of the Day of the Jaguar.”
I knew the jaguar held a special place in Olmec, Aztec
and Mayan traditions. In many of the places I had traveled,
Chichen-Itza, Palenque, Uxmal, Tikal, jaguar symbols were
etched in stone, formed in ceramics, temple mantles and wall
paintings. A totem animal, the jaguar represents power, con-
fidence and energy. It has the ability to live not only on the
flatlands and the mountains, but also in the trees and in the
water. No other animal can kill it, only man. Its spirit, Maya
believe, can enter a person and give that person power.
But it was his reference to the number twelve that caught
me up. My birthday is December the twelfth. How could he
know my birthday? Just happenstance? Maybe no connection

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at all. I wanted to know more. “What does that mean, the
number twelve of the day of the jaguar?”

“Is one of the 20 days of the sacred Mayan calendar. You
are of the Day of the Jaguar.”

“How do you know?”
“The Spirits.”
This fiasco was getting nowhere. I no longer felt drugged,
just in some way duped. Unsatisfied, yet intrigued, I wanted
him to get on with whatever scam this was leading up to, cu-
rious as to why he picked me to bring here. He could not know
my birthday. This was one mysterious carnival con, and I was
more than ready for it to come to an end.
“You must allow the Nawales to enter your being, or you
will become depressed, angry, mean, jealous. You no find road
to wisdom. Look. Up in that tree. The black jaguar looks at
you. Accept her spirit.”
I looked up where he pointed. I saw nothing. I searched
the trees around. There was no jaguar in the trees.
“I see nothing.”
“Allow it. Then you will.”
Unsettled by Ishmael’s insistence the Spirits wanted me, I
decided I’d had enough. His clever deceit pushed my discom-
fort button. “I think you have me confused with somebody
else. It’s getting late. I need to get back to the city.”
He did not seem to want to hold me there. In a steady
voice of confidence, he said, “The jaguar sees you. You will see
it if you allow it.”
We started back to ChiChi. I followed. He didn’t look be-
hind as we walked, but seemed to read my mind. “No photos.”
When we got back to the buzz of the market, Ishmael
disappeared into the crowd. I tried to find his stall again, but
it was impossible in the market melee. I felt cheated somehow.

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Who was this Ishmael? Why had he picked me to dump all
that business about sacred Mayan ceremonial places, spirits,
a jaguar in a tree? I felt confused and unsatisfied, even used.
On my way back to Guatemala City, I tried to convince my-
self that I’d been entertained in some way, but had no idea
why I had been picked to participate. And participate in what
exactly? Then I began feeling foolish and wished I had stayed
and asked more questions. I’d missed an opportunity to learn
more. Why was I in such a haste to get away? It wasn’t like he
wanted money.

Over the weeks, as I finished my travels in Latin America,
the experience faded into an acceptance of being mind seduced
by a clever Guatemalan, whoever he was and for whatever
reason. That is, until I got home and examined my collection
of photos. Every single photo I took on my trip came out fine,
except for the hip shots I took at the so-called “sacred place.”
All six came out black. Never one to believe in the supernatural,
I admit the black, not just blank, six photos gave me pause.
Coincidence? Perhaps. Still, my mind wanted to make sense
of it.

My beliefs were further tested a few months later when
I was on a night safari in Botswana and I took a photo of a
leopard sitting in a tree. Because of the lighting at the time,
I wasn’t certain the picture would reveal much. But in the
enlarged photograph, the leopard’s shining eyes seem to be
staring at me, and I shivered when an unforeseen image of
Ishmael came to me. Instead of a spotted body, the animal in
the tree could pass as a black jaguar.

Maybe I’m making too much of these oddities. But taken
together, I’m having trouble denying what Ishmael told me,
because in a way he was prescient. As he said, I never will
forget what he showed me. The forbidden photos had not been

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permitted. His mysterious reference to the number twelve,
my birth date, still puzzles me. And I eventually did see what
looked like a black jaguar in a tree. In an awakened, spiritual,
metaphorical way, as I write this, I find myself returning to that
sacred place in the hills near Chichicastenango.

As Hamlet says, “There are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

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Getaway

by Raymond Tatten

Warm air with the scent of the Aegean blew across the beach.
A silhouette of brown, rock hills surrounded the shore cre-
ating a bowl, a cove that made a fine place for summer holiday
getaways. The blue-green tide persisted to its highest, its in-
sistent breakers arriving in rhythmic sets, pounding the shore,
reaching before flattening and returning into itself.

Above the high-water, on soft, milky sand, hot, mid-day
sun punished a woman whose body offered the only shade for
her companion, a tiny girl who crushed close. An older boy
stood near and while the woman’s attention remained with
the girl, his gaze followed a gaggle of men who surrounded an
empty rubber raft that slapped and bobbed on the surface of
the water, restrained only by a rope held by one hand.

Sprinkled across the sand, other women sat, some with
a child, others with two or many. Surrounded by bags, they
seemed contained in their own groups, but together, while the
men near the raft moved with purpose and gestures, conversing,
looking sometimes toward the women, or at the hill behind the
beach. The only sound was the constant crush of waves.

Money passed, and men pointed. A man waved, and a
woman stood. Another man yelled and then another, waving

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to the women who all stood, gathering bags and children and
themselves before hurrying with awkward gaits toward the men.

As the people crushed inside, the crowded craft settled
lower into the water before two last men guided the vessel into
the retreating surf, then struggled onto the rounded sides and
began to row.

A lone man who’d remained on the beach scampered up
the hill where he turned and watched as the tide pulled the
swollen raft west, out into the Greek sea.

Raymond Tatten is a life-long New Englander whose work in-
cludes numerous personal essays and articles published in The
Bolton Independent, Meetinghouse News, Harvard Press, The
Landmark, MUSED Literary Review and The Worcester Tele-
gram. Current projects include an historical ficton account pri-
marily for the YA reader, as well as a memoristic novel for the
middle-school reader. Raymond participates in classes, work-
shops and critique groups with the Seven Bridge Writers´ Col-
laborative in Lancaster, MA. and GrubStreet in Boston, MA.

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The God Question

by John Ballantine Jr.

“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread…”
“The Way It Is,” William Stafford

I.  The boy questions
What is the thread holding the patchwork scenes of my life
together? I have wondered about the blue-green thread tying
together the young boy questioning Einstein as he wandered
to work at The Institute for Advanced Study, he with wild hair
questioning God’s games and teasing us kids as he walked. My
sister and I were troubled, too, by all these adventuresome
gods my father, and Homer, told us about on Sunday eve-
nings. The Greek gods were much more engaging than the
stern Christian edicts of Sunday school. We chose Odysseus
traveling far in a rocky boat after Troy while Penelope spun
tales to keep suitors at bay. And what, we wondered, became
of those without gray-eyed Athena by their side, and why, I
asked my father, was Jesus forsaken?

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Why so many gods? Why the struggles?
I was happy when Pan died, letting the Greek gods fade
into myths to entertain, not pyres upon which I should wor-
ship. Those gods were dead and I, as a young boy, only had to
deal with the stern Old Testament man who cut boys in two,
or the more forgiving New Testament God who sacrificed his
son for the sins we inherited from Adam and Eve. Questions
persisted; who should I pray to? Homer’s Greek gods were
much more fun, fickle, and dangerous if you crossed them.
Poseidon consumed many more wayward sailors than God’s
disciples, turning their backs on Jesus, crucified on the cross.
How could I cover my base with head bowed watching
the sun set? Who would save me when I went astray? At 12, I
was stuck with the Christian God as I biked to school. All the
fire and brimstone spouted by preachers, pretending to know.
They did not ask the most obvious question that plagued me—
until Time Magazine plastered it on the cover in 1966—“Is
God Dead?”
He died for me in 1961 when I lost a small thimble
in the living room rug and could not find it. God took it, I
swear. When I pedaled fiercely to Witherspoon School in sev-
enth grade, Carl and I debated God’s existence, to and from
school—how to prove, what did you know about the gods,
were those miracles real? And what about those other more
mercurial gods? What proof do you have? Some fuzzy belief, a
temple, cathedral spires, hieroglyphics etched in stone, a Dead
Sea palimpsest—and what about that lost thimble?
These fierce ontological debates raged as we pedaled faster
and faster to school. Serious questions that kept us up late at
night. Like Einstein, we did not rest when life’s forces did not
compute. Later I learned of my atheist grandfather and his
minister theologian father writing daily letters about God’s

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ways—my grandfather turning to commerce, law, and soph-
istry, and my great-grandfather embracing music, mystery,
and love. Carl and I debated the same questions—why God
did so little. How could he leave us a world turned upside
down by nuclear bombs, war, and poverty? Why did the gods
play with our fate? Testing us, some argued, then asking us
to believe.

II.  A long family debate

The God question was a long family struggle with real conse-
quences. My great-grandfather, Reverend William Gay Bal-
lantine, was thrown out—or asked to leave—several colleges
when he explained in written words how Darwin said we crea-
tures evolved slowly, testing fundamentalist tenets. He traveled
to Palestine in the 1880s, surveying what was to become the
hotly contested Promised Land. The books in Greek, Hebrew,
German, and Latin lining his shelves told him there were no
seven days, no forbidden fruit, and no Satan crawling like a
snake near the Euphrates. He dug deep into scripture, trying
to show how evolution fit into a creation story. His students
and parishioners nodded skeptically at his spin on how seven
days stretched out to a millennium before Adam and Eve wan-
dered, lost, in the Garden of Paradise, falling finally to birth
us. He preached of questioning souls with no imperious god,
or one way to salvation.

My great-grandfather argued with true believers—those
that could burn you at the stake—about our existence, our
purpose. William Gay was tossed out, almost sacrificed be-
cause some enlightened souls saw the apple fall and believed
it was God’s doing and not the birth of empiricism with Isaac
Newton. He wrote daily letters from his Professor-of-Theology
chair to his son, my grandfather, the legal scribe, who said

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pahh to such sophistry. Long, passionate letters from father to
son and son to father.

Our laws do not say how to love, or why there is no peace.

III  Again, the God question

I knew nothing of these family conundrums, or why my an-
cestors were itinerant ministers. Questions about God were in
our bones. The Vietnam War, divorce—sex, drugs, and rock
‘n’ roll—protests, raised fists, and civil unrest turned my family
upside down. The spinning gyres could not hold.
• My sister found solace as she wandered in Anglican clois-

ters with Christian prayers, as she donned the cloth and
worried about my lost soul.
• I held to my swearing off God for taking that thimble. But
at 19, I tried to say no to Vietnam, lying in my conscien-
tious objector essay that I believed in some supreme being.
“Do Not Kill” thy enemy; do not send me to Vietnam. But
those rumpled draft board men with enquiring eyes looked
directly through my deceit. There was no way I was a con-
scientious objector if I did not believe.

I knew my goose was cooked when I sat in the Unitarian
Church on Brattle Street one Saturday evening with other draft
dodgers. We donned assorted God rationalizations, some su-
preme being invocation for “getting out of Vietnam.” No truth
or God in our words. I would fight in World War II, but not
Vietnam or Iraq. Going to war was my choice, not theirs or
some god’s. I danced with the God question at 21, but the
draft board stared back at me and said, “No.”

God and country. My way or the highway.
Skepticism was part of our family conversation—ques-
tioning back and forth over wine, my ancestors on bended

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knees, and me pedaling to school, furiously debating the shape
of the earth. Like Galileo, my family thought this mattered
and that Popes would not excommunicate us. God did and
did not matter. As I stared out my dorm window on tear-gas
streets, I did not see gods stopping bad wars, helping addicts in
back alleys with needles in arms, or giving a hand to mothers
wailing in the dark. I turned pages, searching for answers, slip-
ping into casual atheism.

IV.  Death almost

The God question stayed with me as I crawled 60 miles through
the Craters of the Moon desert at 21 with my girlfriend. We
did not pray for salvation, or ask for forgiveness when we were
about to die. I looked at the sky, the planes overhead, and
thought of the fickleness of fate. And much later when my
prostate was full of cancer—discovered just in time. No, no
turning to God, or the gods, when death raised the scythe’s
shadow high over my head. Asking for help from God was
not in my cards. Yes, I saw those that believed prayed and were
kind. But I did not give in. So stubborn.

What is the meaning of your life?

In college, the existentialists left too many words rico-
cheting around my head with no clear answer. Being and Noth-
ingness was Sartre’s way to bed Simone de Beauvoir. Beckett
too wanted someone to warm him at night while he waited for
Godot. For me, the Renaissance was full of too many priests
selling favors and supporting the tyranny of the Church, while
saints burned at the stake. Still, I stayed with the God ques-
tion as Dante journeyed deep into the depths of Hell with
Virgil, trying to unravel the persistent, sometimes deadly, sins
of man and woman. Why so many circles? Were our sins so

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neatly catalogued? And who meted out the punishment? And
the great spinner of tales, Shakespeare, confounded me with
Hamlet’s musing and Prospero’s tempestuous dreams.

I left college confused with bookshelves of learned tomes.
Poets played better with life’s riddles than prophets. Better to
walk barefoot in the desert, lost, than wait for the burning
bush to speak.

“I prefer moralists
Who promise me nothing…
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order ...
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
That existence has its own reason for being”

“Possibilities,” by Wislawa Szymborska

V.  Don’t you believe in the spirit of Life?

No, of course not. I knew that for years, since I was four, maybe
five, when I saw Einstein wrestle with the God question—hair
on end, not able to tell us why God played dice with the uni-
verse, or why his quantum theory did not quite work. If Ein-
stein could not get the God question right, why should I?

Later, when I was not so young—with my father reading
on the window seat in the evening light as he walked us through
the myths in the Golden Bowl, and Homer telling of the trials
of Odysseus—I prayed to all the gods. Such capricious, jealous
gods, fighting wars over Helen, a woman who loved too many
great warriors. Hector and Achilles were vulnerable men and
not gods, manipulated by spirits beyond them.

The capricious fates unnerved me. Why, why, why? No
Old Testament God struck me down for praying to golden
images. I had no proof for those miracles, those stories. At 11,
Carl and I argued about the order of the world. There was no

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turning back and no one burning at the stake in my town. I
was free to say no. I was lucky.

Early on, I felt the God question was a trick. Ministers
and elders gathering their flock to do deeds for them. Of
course, I didn’t believe in those myths, those wars, that set of
tablets, or Abraham sacrificing his boy, the sea separating for
Moses, and Jesus turning water into wine. How could a young
boy who heard such stories—whether by my father or preacher
on high—how could I believe in God? The questions were a
ruse to lead me astray.

Like Galileo, I drew circles of the moons and knew we were
not the center of the universe. No, God made the world in seven
days. Still, I read the stories and marveled at Satan’s cleverness,
his sophistry. I read how Dante descended through the circles
of Hell, a lost man at 40, sliding down and down with an in-
scrutable guide to places he could not see, searching for Beatrice.
I saw this Hell pictured on church walls, across frescoes and
framed paintings in patrons’ palaces, and brothels full of fun.

And John Milton, justifying the beheading of King
Charles I, sang of the beauty of Paradise and the reasons for
our fall. He argued that it was better to wallow in our free will
than taste the fruit of God’s imagined garden in a place with
no seasons—no wind, snow, or rain—just sun, and no sin or
death. Better to fall and try to believe, I muttered.

Milton’s blind protestations resonated. Where was God?
How do we love? I wandered with these tomes hoping for light,
for a way to break my disenchantment. There must be some
way out of here.

VI.  How did you escape purgatory?

At 20, in dark theaters, I saw men, forlorn, walking down
black-and-white streets, muttering to passersby about the

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meaning of life. My movie characters were happy to play chess
with the grim reaper or cavort with the devil. Injustice and the
hard, mean ways of the world were broken by wistful eyes; the
ties of tyranny and cruelty did not strangle hope, wars played
out on the screen, the sun rose.

ART moved my heart. Michelangelo’s finger pointing.
Van Gogh’s starry night. And a late-night trumpet breaking my
blues. Many wrestled with the God question and why bad stuff
happened. Cinema did not serve up easy answers. But even
lost in the movies and the castles of learning, I could not say I
believed in the Supreme Being, or some master of the universe.

Why did it matter? Why the existential questions?
I knew that killing was bad, that going into a senseless
war in Vietnam was not for me. But this was me, not God
speaking. I pretended some voice said, “This war is bad,” but
this didn’t work. No communism for me, no peace from them
that want war. Better, I muttered, to run from the bad wars
that my elders, my parents’ friends guided and then say okay
to God. Better to choose what war, what fight is right, and
what war is not.
So when asked point blank, I could not say I believed in
God. I saw, instead, the destruction that such beliefs bring. I
felt the opprobrium of them that believed, the patriots, the
fighters and the soldiers going to war. Maybe they had God on
their side, yet I saw the casualties of war.

“I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces…
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead…
Are changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born.”

“Easter 1916,” by William Butler Yeats

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VII.  And what about death?

It was easy for me—at 5, 11, and 20, I could say, “No, I don’t
believe in God.” But at 70, the question rises again. An arch-
angel, one of the diaphanous ghosts, tells me of cancer and
my fate—death not so soon, but closer than I imagined. Yes, I
visit the dying, take serums and pills, am poked with needles.
Around me pallid figures, brave hands holding fast, and the
light of day shines on all who greet the waning light. Sadness
and brave, happy smiles fill cancer wards. There is no surprise
here; all our days are numbered. But no god will save me, or you.

Kind, soft hands, pills, and “How are you today?” greet
me. The smile of caregivers fills my heart.

I am lucky to have come so far without God, to have
sidestepped bad wars, and to have learned what? To be kind,
thoughtful, and not mean? To breathe and listen to the spirit of
the morning. The sun, the birds, the cold winds of winter snows.
To take in the love offered and be thankful for love so close.

Why the smile? Why the bounce in your step?

Standing atop the mountain, I see not the struggles of men
and women oppressed or diverted from goodness. No, I see more
mountains, hills, and valleys, peaks painted with snow, the wind
howling, and the hardness of each day. I see the early morning
rays reflecting light from broken branches. I feel the rain, shifting
jet streams, and the April weather ushering in spring. I hear the
hawk up high, the bear crashing through the forest, and the
coyote howls. I see, hear, and feel the shifting fortunes of nature
surrounding me, not the honking horns or impatient looks.

I see me, a tiny silhouette against the mountain, the plain
stretching to the sea—calm and heaving with much effect. I
imagine all the creatures trying to make their way. I pause and
hold my breath. What are we doing here? I feel the breath
nearby, next to me.

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How is it that I am so important, so special, waiting for
the forces—gods, if you will—that made earth, sea, sun and
moon, day and night to do better? We spin the stories, make
myths that explain why we are, why I am, so important; but
this is not so. I am a speck standing in our great universe. I
know little more than the hawk above, or bluebird signaling
another magnificent spring. I am barely visible.

Now that you have walked and played chess with death, do
you not believe?

No, not yet. I touch the harsh beauty that surrounds. I
ask questions, find words, and see all that surrounds me. I
breathe in and am quiet. I walk lightly, ask fewer questions,
have no answers. I do not gasp as the air fills my lungs, and I
give thanks. I hold the love that surrounds.

Even when death stares at me from afar, even as others
fade, lost to memory, I do not bend to the God question. Like
a stubborn child, I cannot say, “Yes, I believe.” I try to do good.
One day I am here, the next gone. A stone, a memory, even a
picture smiling, but then we are gone.

So why do I continue to wrestle with the God question,
to pedal faster on my bike, to stare at the draft board men, to
be touched by the dying, the brave, the caring? Why do I read,
listen to music, and recite poetry? The puzzle of each day has
walked with me since I rolled out of the crib and watched
Einstein wander. Why did I just not say, “Yes?” I stay up late
at night, wondering still at the questions that persist. I am
amazed each day as the sun rises and the songs fill the air. I
embrace the unknown.

“Someone who does not run
toward the allure of love
walks a road where nothing lives”

Rumi

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

I am a professor at Brandeis International Business School. I re-
ceived my bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard Univer-
sity, then earned my master’s degree and Ph.D. in economics
from University of Chicago and NYU Stern, respectively. My
economic commentary has appeared in Salon and The Boston
Globe, among others.

My writing is a longstanding avocation and reflection of
being in the world of my family, the equations I discuss in
class, the books I read, and the films I watch. Every month
for the last fourteen years, my family and I have held “poetry
potlucks” at our house. I have taken workshops through The
Writers Studio and the Concord-Carlisle Community School
with Barbara O’Neil, following the “Writing Down The Bones”
method. My work has appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine,
Apricity Magazine, Arkansas Review, Bluestem, Carbon Cul-
ture Review, Cobalt, Crack the Spine, Existere Journal, Forge,
Green Hills Literary Lantern, Lime Hawk, Manhattanville
Review, Massachusetts’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of
Nonfiction, The Penmen Review, Oracle Fine Arts Review,
Ragazine, Rubbertop Review, Saint Ann’s Review, Santa Fe
Literary Review, Santa Clara Review, SNReview, Slippery Elm,
and Streetlight Magazine. My essay “Half of Something” is a
finalist in The Adelaide Literary Award Contest for The Best
Essay 2018.

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