Ghost Pains

By Eric Bennett

Dan Wolfsen is the man Mother meets where the employees take their smoke break. She’s captivated by his slow brown eyes and the way he strikes matches on the zipper of his Dickeys. The remarkable thing about that is Dan only has one arm. He’s telling the circle of smokers how the stamping machine crushed his right hand as he strikes a match on his zipper with his left, a shower of sparks near his crotch.

Mother and Dan eventually neglect the smokers to stake out a place of their own behind the Dempsey dumpster, and so it goes that their love is conceived by the factory trash-bin. With one sleeve neatly folded and pinned at the elbow, Dan moves into our double-wide trailer. About those first days, Mother says she was never happier. What she means by happy is she doesn’t have to smoke alone.

Always, I’m the one sent to buy cigarettes – Marlboros for Dan, Menthols for Mother. And though I’m barely fifteen, my characteristic expression is furrowed and serious so the freakishly tall guy behind the counter doesn’t ask to see ID. Walking home is when I pocket my right hand to see what it’s like using my left to zipper-light a match. By my sixteenth birthday, I’m proud to say, I can generate sparks using my zipper.

What seems stable often is not, like Dan for instance. Mother sits in the kitchen, fingers following the graphite design across the gold-veined dinette, when Dan says the American dream turned against him and he’s got to go and find it. Mother’s eyes go hard as she devotes herself to having not heard Dan. The next morning I wake to discover Mother shaved her name on the back of Dan’s pit-bull. In the way that we know things before we know them, I understand Dan will eventually leave.

“Come here,” says Dan to me a few days after the dog-shaving incident. Mother sits listening at the kitchen table where she’s arranging cigarette butts in the thick glass ashtray.

“Have I ever told you about my arm?”

“You lost it in the stamping machine at the factory,” I say crooking my fingers one by one feeling the resistance in my knuckles.

“Yes, but have I told you about the ghost pains?” Dan stares at my hands while I’m playing with finger fat and then drones on in a faraway tone, “Since the accident, I get aches in my arm even though it’s missing. Sometimes I can even feel the fingers moving, but nothing is there, not really.”

From his wallet, Dan then pulls a worn and folded picture and hands it to me. The image of his pit-bull fills the frame, a hand resting on the dog’s head and another on his back, but the body to which they belong is just beyond the edge of the picture. Dan leans back saying, simply, “Those are my hands.”

My eyes roll slowly from Dan to the picture and back while he’s saying, “Sometimes I feel what isn’t really there.” He asks me if I understand. “Yes,” I say. I say yes, but I’m not certain if he means what he’s saying or if ghost pains are a metaphor for something. Without a word, Mother upends the ashtray and leaves the room.

The next day Dan and his dog are gone. And later that same evening I have my first ghost pain when I arrive home with Mother’s Menthols – and a pack of Marlboros.

Eric Bennnett is the Dean of Students at the King's College and lives in New York with his wife and four children. He loves trees without leaves and the silence between songs on vinyl records. And beginning sentences with the word "and."

Lost and Found

By Rosie Jonker

I’ve lost a grain of sand, a book,

A cup of tea.

Yes, life has taken from me, took

All I loved most, a song, a look…

I think that life is all a sea

Of losing; I can but amass

A negative. Is hope to see

The lost, at last,

A vanity?

Rosie Jonker is a junior in the House of Truth. She has a twin brother and she hates olives. Her favorite shade of lipstick is Maybelline #425.

A Story of Three Persons

By Jess deRivera

Majora Pickle sat on the 1:50 pm train from Trenton, staring at the ceiling above her. It was nothing interesting to look at. She realized this with a start and turned to stare out the window. Ads about stock alternatives and heart transplants passed slowly. For some reason, nothing repulsed Majora more than a bad advertisement, especially one that is bad simply because it was out of date.

On a bus headed to Long Island, Bego Garrond realized with a start that he had been staring at the pretty girl sitting across his aisle for quite some time. She was racially ambiguous and this made Bego feel uncomfortable. Ever since he was told that Aeropostale became cheaper because black people started shopping there, his unspoken fear of discrimination embittered him towards girls like Across the Aisle Girl.

In a small town between Trenton and Long Island, Jeremy Baker sat in his car impatiently tapping the steering wheel with his pointer finger and middle finger. Traffic was stopped up only a couple blocks from his next class, Spiritual Development and Discovery. An image of his professor’s stout belly flashed in his mind and he frowned. Jeremy decided he could not afford to be late to class again. He exited his car and locked it there in the middle of the street and began walking.

Jeremy had taken seventeen steps when a bus started creeping across seemingly empty train tracks and was immediately run straight through by an oncoming train. As pieces of metal debris flew into dangerous and beautiful arcs, Jeremy was struck in the head by the emergency exit axe that had been in the bus, and was killed instantly. His organs would eventually save the lives of both Bego Garrond (kidney) and Majora Pickle (heart valve). Bego and Majora went to the same counseling class together and eventually got married. Their son was named Jeremy, who, upon obtaining his driver’s license, decided not to be an organ donor.

The end.

Jessica Lynne Primo de Rivera was born in Philadelphia on July 22, 1991. She has four brothers and no cats. Her favorite writer is Joan Didion and her favorite food is waffles. After moving to Spain in 1999, she returned to the US to attend Bodine High School in Philadelphia. She is currently a sophomore at The King’s College majoring in Politics, Philosophy & Economics. If she were a character from Harry Potter, she would probably be the house-elf known as Winky.

Untitled

By Ivania Rivas

Oh, hear that crunch

That melancholic crunch.

As Eve bit,

We were.

Digested in a frenzy of acids and ashes.

Ashes and ashes

And ashes to

Dust. And dust

Compacted into blocks.

Buildings begotten by blocks,

Always approaching the

Absolute acme,

Petitioning past perfection.

Oh, hear that crunch

That crushing crunch?

Beneath our feet,

We were.

The cusp of a cracked creation crumbling.

Crumbling and crumbling

—The crumbling and

Rattling knees

Of alpinists with canes.

Whom avarice drove to Everest;

Whom hubris humored with incompetence;

Whose fickle functions yielded sinusoidal grief;

Who climbed and fell and fell and crawled.

Oh, hear that crunch

That autumnal crunch.

Beneath our feet,

The leaves are.

The foliaceous reflection of our calamitous collapse.

Ivania Rivas is a freshman from Houston, Texas. Her favorite book is Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis and she enjoys drawing and photography.

Imagine

By Alli Walker

Rain battered the windows. Evie hummed to herself. Outside was a warm summer shower, the kind that rolled humidity through the whole house. Inside, the child couldn’t settle on anything. Evie wanted an adventure and nothing less.

I was, unfortunately, a babysitter by profession, not a magician. I had to admit to Evie that I could not produce even a mere elephant from my bag. Since I was failing so miserably at conjuring, she decided to become the creator of the adventure.

“This is our ship,” Evie stated, pointing at the canopy bed. I obligingly spread out a sheet for our sail and we were off on an ocean voyage. The humid air would do for salt spray, the lazy strum of tree branches on the walls of the house was the melody of waves, and the raindrops on the window became the taps of mermaids on the hull. Captain Evie began to order me about the ship, which grew larger with each passing moment. Soon I was swabbing the deck in the dining room and hauling in the jib sail in the linen closet. A dragon arrived for a brief visit and Evie got into a spirited argument with him over the toll on the waterfall bridge that had sprung up in the foyer. The dragon, who was introduced to me as Dean, soon settled on a cookie as payment. Evie thought it a grand idea if we all had a cookie together. The captain, dragon, and I had our feast on the upper deck that sat on the top of the stairs.

After Dean left, we had the pleasure of meeting one of the tapping mermaids. Evie learned that her name was Ardita and that she was princess of the mermaids. She chattered with Evie about seaweed and stingrays until a cloud swept across the horizon. Fearing a storm, the captain sent me scurrying to batten down the hatches and prepare for the worst. At the last moment, Evie ordered the storm into time out, where it spent its fury on the punching pillow before going about its way glumly. After the storm was gone, a celebratory juice box was in order. The juice boxes made the captain a bit sleepy, so we settled down for a nap and left the ship at the dock, ready for another day.

As she dozed off, Evie hummed to herself. Rain battered the windows. And the day sank slowly into night as the captain slumbered.

Alli Walker is a freshman this year. She is an MCA major and hopes one day to be an author. She has lived in six different states and loves to travel. She enjoys summer. Alli was once the conductor of a well-reviewed kazoo orchestra and had a pet lion. The beach would be her ideal place to live. She plans to spend her time at King’s learning how to be a better writer and influencer. Yellow is her favorite color.

Fallow

By Emily Miller

When farmers plant a seed

—More often, a field of seeds—

There comes time to let the land lie.

Of course it’s not a time that suggests itself to the hardworking

The planner

The pinstriped soul;

But the studious who know what they grow

Know the time.

It was God who taught men to study, when He said,

“Rest your land every seven years”:

To study their own hearts

And what it might be that fiddling by the fire would do to them.

For resting is the hardest work of any

When the sun springs early and the moon rises late

Over fields where fireflies drift like cottonwood

Instead of dizzy grasshoppers fretted by the plough.

Meanwhile the children squeal about their feet

Delighted that daddy’s home

And a once-young wife lights joy in her eyes again

And love in the move of her midnight hands

While the old songs and stories grow lovelier by the day.

Strange that the sharing of one’s self,

That tricksy, much-renouncéd thing of the devout,

Should, too, be one’s best gift:

How strange that God would make it so

When, by all accounts

(including His),

The world seems made for working.

Emily Miller is a senior PP&E major. At leisure she explores things: thoughts, foods, books, streets, and areas of the country, preferably with family or friends. She works hard, listens closely, laughs (too) readily, remembers details. She loves country dancing and golden retrievers, and hates pickled beets.

Somatic Deities

By Elsa Wilson

Little idols sold with cigarettes and tea

If I were one of them I’d be a little angry

Candles lit for sacred prayers

Divinity for certainty

But did you know that plastic melts?

You tell yourself you need a god

You say you need someone to understand

But when you make your god with your own hands

Could it be some of your neediness

Gets poured into the mold with the dirty gold?

But other gods have diamond eyes

And there are more expensive tries

And then you start to realize

Religion’s gotten so superficialized

Then you feel like you’re back in school

Pretending, trying to be cool

But there’s always something showing through

And is it sacrilegious to use glue?

Some pray facing the other way

Elsa Wilson has always wanted to be in the musical Cats, but now she is thinking that something along the lines of film critic/photo journalist might be a more realistic goal. She came all the way from Anchorage, Alaska to major in MCA. Originally from Tallahassee, Florida, she has always wanted to live in New York City since middle school. She has a monkey named Green George.

A Manhattan Workout: Dear Upper East Side Mothers

Start with the neck:

Slowly move it side to side,

And watch the people

You all too often ignore on your daily walks

To the store.

A stiff neck will serve you worse than aching joints

When age has finally caught the express to

Your body after years of

Traveling on the local.

Remember that those are mothers on the sidewalk—

Not obstructions.

And those are students in the station—

Not pests.

And those are conversations you are hearing—

Not static noise.

There is a world of lives surrounding yours.

For better neck muscles,

Start noticing it.

For stronger biceps and forearms,

Pick up your child.

Lift him up each time his hands reach for yours,

Clutch him close enough to smell the lingering scent

Of Cheerios clinging to his body,

And rock him to sleep each night

As if it's the last time you will ever

Get to hold him.

There will come a time when—instead of picking him up—

You will only get to pick up after him.

And those will be the days when you wish

You could have held his small body

Just a little

Longer.

For your abdomen,

Laugh until your sides hurt.

Crouch down to talk to your child—

On his level.

Roll on the floor with him,

And see the world from the only angles he knows.

Chase after him with smiles,

Scoop him up off of the sidewalk,

And swing him around and around and around

Until his laughter ingrains itself in your ears

And you cannot help but join in.

Do not let his younger years

Be spent wondering

What joy sounds like.

For better posture,

Play dress up on occasion, and dress for you—

Not for fashion week.

Wear your confidence like you where your bra:

Make sure it fits and holds you up,

But let it pass unnoticed by the people you meet on the street

Who are led to believe

It is natural.

And instead of jogging on a coldly calculating treadmill,

Take a walk down Madison with your husband.

Don't forget what you've learned so far—

Realize you are not alone in this world.

There are other stories being intertwined with yours.

Walk with purpose,

Not impatience.

Remember you have already got to where you are going

Just by standing

At his side.

And to exercise the rest of your lower body,

Well,

You know what to do after that walk.

For elegant hands,

Practice hearty handshakes.

For healthy feet,

Use them to go to the places you actually want to go.

For fuller lips,

Smile every morning before you leave your home.

And for younger skin,

Let your husband leave his kisses along your

Neck and your shoulders and your elbows and your hands.

Let the vibrancy of his affection serve as the blush for your cheeks.

And if you yet need radiance,

Remember,

You are loved.

By Danielle Perkins

Absalom by Adam Smith

They say your hair was long,

as the years are long in passing;

and memories are long

and stretched thin,

like too little light of a gray dawn.

You remembered every wrong

as you sang a marching song;

and where have all the good men gone,

can you reach them, Absalom?

I remember when you stood there

with the yellow sunlight on your face.

And I forgave you, as I forgive you,

but you, Absalom, you forget no wrong.

Your heart grew like the roots

of a gnarled – of a twisted –

patriarch oak. And you never forgot

even when the earth had forgotten,

but you became rich and black like the soil.

And blood!

Did blood stain your long dark hair

and seep into the conscience of the land?

Did Abel cry out? Did the cattle cry out in horror,

the horror of uncivil war?

But still I forgave you, as I now forgive you,

though you, Absalom, you forget no wrong.

They say your hair grew long,

and they say the branch grew low:

the branch of the oak tree in Ephraim,

and that you hung in the arms of Father Oak

when all your foes surrounded you.

Then they lowered you into the earth

and you stained the soil red.

They covered you,

and they buried you

as if they were planting a seed.

Above the din of empty war,

and above the battle’s dying moan,

rose from the poet king’s raw throat

not an elegy, but a cry:

“My God! My God! My son is dead!”

Promised Land by Abby Bean

The weaker, the weakest.

We left our hearts in Egypt.

Our sandals encrusted with

Blood, and dust,

our hope with rust.

Our faith the kind

That shapes minerals into idols,

Melts gold into mold,

strikes rocks, and holds

its tongue.

Our wonder is our worship,

And our doubt shouts

From the lips of our enemies.

We close our eyes to remember

The living burning –

Open and realize our turning

Away.

Our wander is our war

For the Promised Land.

Analysis of Dover Beach by Sara Blum

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, 1867

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straights; — on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! You hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and crease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach is a poem mournful and somber in tone, almost like that of an elegy[1], but with the personal nature of a dramatic monologue. The poem begins with naturalistic metaphors full of sound, describing the beach at Dover in the moonlight: “Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,/Listen! You hear the grating roar.” The beach is empty and lonely, with only a hint of a light that “gleams and is gone.” The seashore at night painted by Arnold in this poem is a dark, melancholy scene, giving the poem a smooth but brooding tone.

The remarkable thing about this poem is that each formal function of it consistently identifies with sea. Arnold’s words roll slowly into each other, like waves breaking on a sleepy shore. The third stanza employs a series of open vowels—“Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”—creating a verbal flow and roll through assonance.

Even the shapes formed by the uneven lines in each of the four stanzas reflect the image of waves reaching and retreating on a shore. There are a variable number of syllables in each line, as well as an uneven amount of lines in each stanza; the first stanza has fourteen, the second six, the third eight, and the fourth nine. The meter is also rather unpredictable but seems to follow a general iambic pattern. With the irregular amount of syllables per each line (they range from 6 to 10), the meter won’t be pinned down as simply pentameter or tetrameter.

Not even the rhyme scheme of Dover Beach is consistent; the first stanza (abacdbdcefcgfg) is a jumble of rhymes that, at the moment they seem like a consistent pattern, jump into a new sound. The second stanza, considerably shorter than the first, is a little tighter in its scheme (abacbc), with its first four rhymes mimicking that of the first stanza (abac). The third stanza (abcdbadc), however, shows no coherency at all, its rhymes stretched over several lines. Finally, the fourth stanza (abbacddcc) seems to be toying with the idea of forming into a Petrarchan sonnet[2], but quickly changes its mind, coming to a stop as neither an octave[3] nor a sestet[4], but with qualities of both.

Arnold is also brilliant in his use of alliteration; it is neither too heavy nor too light, but naturally flows mimicking the open sea gently swelling. The sounds of this poem are smooth and watery, pushing against the irregularities of its form. In the first stanza Arnold uses the “g” and “l” sounds in “Gleams and is gone,” reviving the sound in the following line with “glimmering.” A few lines further down in that same stanza, he alliterates “l,” “s,” and “m” in “sweet is the night air! /Only, from the long line of spray/ Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, /Listen!”

In the fourth stanza Arnold writes in a list, underlining a series of denials: "…neither joy, nor love, nor light/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;" The repetition of “neither…nor” also seems to mimic the constant beat of waves washing onto a shore. Moreover, waves beating on the shoreline seem to be the only true constant in this poem, again pushing against the erratic rhymes and syllables. This “turbid ebb and flow” of the sea in the second stanza, however, also draws in the melancholic tone into the poem, reminding Arnold of Sophocles’ musings of “human misery.”

From the poem’s formal structure to its themes, the sea is the most prominent image and metaphor. In the first stanza, the sea “meets the moon-blanched land” and the waves “draw back and fling” the pebbles onto the shore, bringing the “eternal note of sadness in.” And in the third stanza, the sea becomes the “Sea of Faith” which “was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore /Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d. /But now I only hear /Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, /Retreating, to the breath…” This waning sea of faith suggests change for Arnold, possibly religious change; indeed, something that was once full is now emptying and retreating.