Tag Archives: prose

“Life of a Narcissist’s Daughter” – Jessica Kitchens

22 Apr

0500 hours

The sound of the alarm pierces my eardrums. I had been muting out her yelling the night before by swiveling the volume knob to “max” on the portable CD player. I had chosen something intense like Nirvana. Her voice is still in my head, and I can’t recall how I had angered her last night. Maybe I accidently used a possessive pronoun again. She can’t stand it when I say I’m going to my room. Or maybe she misjudged a glance. She looses it when she thinks I looked at her forehead wrinkles. She now sleeps soundly on the couch. She hasn’t been there long, because she was fuming with insults from 1:00-3:00. Background arguments on Jerry Springer sound like calm discussion.

0506 hours

Time for lunges, crunches, and push-ups. My body runs on nothing but the adrenaline given from the drum beats in my headphones. I have become an expert at working like this. My energy looks strong. It’s not natural. (more…)

“Duck, Duck, Noose” – John Carr

22 Apr

The last time i saw my father he was standing beneath the rafters from which he’d later hang. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in September, it was the last day of summer. He was working in the garage. I remember lumber laid across wooden work horses, and an electric saw; he was building something. The picture painted in my memory places the four of us standing portrait-like looking in on his work. Mom has my little brother in one arm as she holds my hand with the other and on the other side of Mom, my sister stands: her tiny hands clutching something, a doll or a pair of flippers maybe.

“Honey are you sure you don’t want to come?”

He smiles, “No, you guys go ahead without me, I have work to do.”

* * *

We got home and the garage door was closed. We were herded inside by my mother who set the pool bag down by the door and the keys on the kitchen counter as she absent-mindedly picked up a note from the kitchen table. She gently shook as she held the phone to her ear. Almost before she could hang up the phone, our next door neighbor thundered through the door. He caught her before she hit the floor and guided her into a chair at the kitchen table. She was trying not to cry, I wanted to give her my bear. We were taken next door to play with our neighbors kids while necessary services were called. I remember the lights of the ambulance exploding like fireworks on the 4th of July. (more…)

“Columbines” – Gavin Cross

22 Apr

As they sat cramped together on the little taxi speedboat, the two of them smug behind the driver, Colin never looked at his wife, his eyes glued to the red reflection of the setting sun against the Pacific. This was just another job. Some millionaire’s summer cottage that needed a facelift. Lacey didn’t look at him either, pressing her dress to her knees in the wind.

They pulled up to the client’s island, a spoonful of dirt in the sea, and stepped off the boat. The cottage was tall. Four floors, each staggered smaller than the one below, with a tiny room at the top. Pots of various shapes littered the island, each with a single blue flower, a columbine, standing tall.

“I’ll be back to get you in four days,” the driver said.

“Thanks.” Colin paid the man, grabbed their things, and walked up to the house as the speedboat pushed back to the mainland.

“The key’s in the porch light,” Lacey said, her eyes fixed straight ahead.

“I know.” Colin slipped the key in the door. It felt a bit like walking up to their honeymoon villa in Santo Domingo. When he had opened the door that time, he had feigned surprise at the dozens of candles lighting the room. But there were no candles here, just a dusty chandelier above the entryway. He flipped it on. The home had that ancient, lived-in smell, like butterscotch and cigar smoke. (more…)

“How Not to Break Your Mama’s Heart” by Rachel Sauls

22 Apr

When you grow up in rural West Tennessee knowing you’re gay and go off to college five hours east where you meet the perfect guy, don’t come out to your family members one by one. Go home on a long weekend and gather them up in the living room Sunday after lunch. Tell them all at once. That way if it goes badly, you can just go back to your own apartment in Chattanooga and pretend it didn’t happen.

If you don’t, you’ll meet your dad at Chili’s in Nashville one day after his business meeting, and he’ll trick you into telling him first.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” he says after you tell him. “I know that it’s just the way you are, and you can’t do anything about it. But not everyone feels that way.”

(more…)

Tess and Jeremy – Karla Evans

7 Dec

We had made up our minds to never be afraid; like Scott and Zelda or Bonnie and Clyde. Jeremy thought we should run away now, to Spain or France. Become writers or actors, spend our evenings with artists on sidewalk cafés. I wanted to wait until graduation or until I got my driver’s license. We had to wait for passports, at least.

Jeremy stood on the outside of the swinging bridge, bouncing slightly like he was too bored to jump. His arms threaded through the ropes that made up the side of the bridge. Jeremy liked referring to his “washboard abs,” but his stomach was more like a soap dish, curving under his ribs. Because he was thin and gangly, he looked tall.

(more…)

Toy Story 3: Political Allegory? – Virgilio Gozum

7 Dec

Perhaps I like to make things up. Nevertheless, I’ve seen Toy Story 3 three times now, and each successive viewing further convinces me that this Pixar film can be construed as an American political allegory. First to be discussed are the characters and their representations. Then, I will attempt to synthesize these representations.

Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen the movie and intend to see it, don’t read further. (more…)

Remain Silent – Katrina Clark

7 Dec

The last time I really talked to my grandma was three summers ago.  Since I was only nine years old, I had to stay at my grandparents’ house during the day while my mother went to work.  It was better than having to go to camp with a bunch of kids I didn’t know even if my grandparents’ house did always smell like cleaning supplies. I loved my Grandma B dearly.  We didn’t have much in common, except we liked to watch Chuck Norris kick ass on Walker, Texas Ranger.  My Grandma B could probably take on Chuck Norris, or at least she would have tried.  I liked to listen to her stories about the battles she won as a child.

(more…)

Instructions for an Exorcism – Hattie Stubsten

7 Dec

1. Recognize that any illness results from evil shifting through your brain like silt through mesh. It enters the body through the nasal membrane or the porous flesh between your fingers. Physiologists will tell you this is paranoia. Don’t believe them. They’ll question your sanity, survey your feelings, ask you to check the relevant boxes. It always ends in lobotomy.

2. Don’t be shy. Muscle’s just meat, and stains can be removed with a mixture of lime juice and calcium. Be sure to rinse eyes thoroughly if fluids are present. It is suggested to ingest the Holy Spirit so that molecules of all the saints can fuse with your blood by way of hemoglobin. Scientifically, this is the best defense.

3. Wash your hands.

4. Remember that Christians, unlike Buddhists, are inherently rectangular. They are framed in the light of creationist theories that promised a god younger than the discovery of corn in the Yucatan. Corn, of course, was domesticated before the dog and slightly after the push of vomit behind your teeth signals a convulsion to expel those demons.

- Hattie Stubsten is a senior at UTC.

The “No” List – Rebecca Cook

7 Dec

Please, please no poems about the moon. No luvey-duvey-moony-eyed, circling round the outside of the gym, looking for a way in. We know everyone hated you, so let’s have none of your poems about her limpid eyes, pools of blue water you thought you’d drown in. No poems about how much you loved your grandmother and no little girls’ ribbon bows, the ends of your poems as tidy as folded laundry, and we’d like to put a stop to your sloppy similes because life really isn’t like a lawnmower gone astray. Life isn’t like a puppy smashed on the road or how unsettled you were when she kissed you good night and there was a little rise in your britches. Who cares, really, at the end of a hard day, if your first kiss was in a game of truth or dare and Tammy Elliot only kissed you because she lost? Let’s have no poems about kissing or that tangle of backwash at the back of your throat. Who cares if you squeezed that kitten, just to see what’d happen? Who cares if you’re sorry, if your despair (don’t call it that!) leads you to write an I’m-so-sorry poem, which leads you naturally to the blood on the Kleenex after the fight and all your now-forbidden teenaged angst welling up in a poem about the meaning of the universe unveiling itself on a shadowy night, inky black, and weren’t you listening to the instructions? No black poems, no white poems, no cookie-cutter hearts or muffled moans of pleasure. No going gently into that good night and definitely no stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. Just keep it simple, keep it plain, and please, please, no poems about your dead mother, how the clods of red Georgia clay hit the top of her coffin, thuck, thuck, thuck. Just take it easy with the alliteration and please, for the love of all that’s holy, no onomatopoeia.

- Rebecca Cook is a professor of creative writing at UTC.

Being Quiet – Laurel Jones

7 Dec

Do you remember the day we were in the backyard, laying in the hammock together? You had just finished reading me a book and for some reason, it makes me think of apples. The sky was the clear blue color of water that day, and the heat sank into my skin. I remember the hammock seemed old even then, cream-colored and dirty, and I liked the way it left pale pink criss-crossing lines all over my arms and calves.

I was sleepy and had my head nuzzled into the crease of your underarm. You stroked my head and we stayed there together, quiet and still. I think that’s the reason it came. Because for once we were so quiet and still.

A butterfly.

It landed on your knee, all orange iridescence and soft, delicate feet. It was beautiful and had come just to the two of us, to join our small spot of holiness we had found in the backyard, under the big trees with silver bark and the single low wire that ran from the house to the barn.

I didn’t notice it at first, not until you spoke, saying,

“Laurel, look.”

It stayed for longer than it should have; maybe it thought we were flowers and it was trying to collect nectar from the pink birthmark that covers the underside of your leg. I just remember thinking it was beautiful and trying not to breathe.

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