Crevice - Doug Ramspeck - Nancy Dew Taylor Poetry Award Winner

The black crow’s feather falls to the sidewalk
in what must be a dream because
there is an open gate leading once more
into the next world—not heaven
but the one where an old hunched woman
is grinning without teeth while the evening sun
bears down with its pale light of bones.
I think I knew her in another life, a life
where all day there were stones to haul
in a wheelbarrow, and at night the fire flickered
as indeterminate sorrow, but for all that the days
went on. At the grave site of my father
my youngest child doesn’t want to place the flowers
but take them home, to keep them in a blue vase
in her windowsill, to horde them in this world
and save them from the next, where the faint mist
hangs like regret above the deep pond
where we go walking later past the gated cemetery
and where I often went swimming as a child,
as though the dead could reach you only in the underwater
reeds, only where the catfish felt their way
with their long barbels. My oldest child falls asleep
in the car on the ride home, and the rest of us
are talking in whispers, as though they can’t hear us
in the next world, as though the crow is perched
again on the shoulder of an old hunched woman
I’m not sure I ever met in this life but who walked
out of the cemetery as though for the first time.

Within – Heather Magruder – Sue Lile Inman Fiction Award Winner

Glasgow, Scotland. 1966

    The Putative Father, as he will become known, waits. When the Mother, as she will be documented, spills out onto the street with the other student nurses after exams, the Putative Father sneaks up behind her, wrapping his hands over her eyes. The Mother then lets the Putative Father steer her back to his room for one last moment before they share themselves and their secret with their families over the Christmas holidays.

    “I want to watch you open my pressie here,” he whispers, letting her go for only the moment it takes him to retrieve the parcel from under his bed.

    She smiles, glad of the moment, a kind of present itself, so they won’t have to do this at one of their homes after the trail of Santa gifts for their younger siblings.

    She pushes back her dark, straight hair, letting it cascade down her back, and then she pulls off the ribbon and pulls back the tape and pulls out a robe, which he wraps around her, red and plush, a sort of shag number, velvety and perfect for 1966 and her growing body.

    “Just a wee thing,” he whispers, turning her around in his arms, there in the dingy dormitory at Glasgow University. Outside the door, the hallway is unusually quiet, most of the students having already scurried out the door towards home and holidays. Outside the window, rain spatters down as afternoon hurtles towards darkness.

    The Putative Father tightens his arms, and the robe, around the Mother. She snuggles up, feeling the caress of his wavy hair and mutton chop sideburns. 

    There, wrapped within his strong arms and within the soft robe and within herself and the gift she thinks they are, she feels their baby growing, not yet showing, but so safe and loved inside the robe and him and her, right in the center of them.

    She nearly makes them miss the train. Or he nearly makes them miss the train, but blames it on her, saying how could he resist with her wrapping herself right round him and looking so gorgeous in that red robe.

    They pack themselves back up quickly afterward, tucking shirts into jeans and presents into suitcases and running, hand in hand, down Sauchiehall Street and into Queen Street Station, panting onto the train and collapsing into their seats, ignoring the people around them.

    “That’s not good for the baby,” she whispers.

    “Acht, it’ll get him ready for the rugby.” He says it out loud, hand on her tummy, already the proud Daddy.

♦♦♦♦♦

    His mother’s words lasso around them.

    “You will not,” his mother says to him, there in the front room of his house on the other coast of Scotland.

    Behind his mother, white lace curtains hang in the windows. On the arms and headrest of her chair, and every other sitting surface in the room, white lace doilies brace for the touch of a human arm or head and all the germs and dead skin and loose hairs that come with it.

    Outside the door, his siblings scrabble for position at the keyhole. Outside the window, the sun strains, trying to slide through clouds and lace and spotless glass. All the gifts have been given and received, two days ago.

    “You,” his mother turns to him, straightening her hand-knitted, white lace cardigan, “are the brains of this family. I will not,” his mother leers at the Mother, “see him give away his future on Some Baby.”

    His mother says more, her words spattering down, syllable on syllable until the sun sinks and the lace looms, luminous and triumphant against the darkness.

♦♦♦♦♦

    The Mother wraps the yarn around her fingers and then around the knitting pins – through, around, over, out, again and again. She is making baby clothes by the front window at the Mothering Home. She is making clothes for Jayne. She chose the name after her favorite aunt; added the “y” because some of the other girls at the home said Jane was too ordinary; reminded her that the baby wouldn’t know it was her favorite aunt. Jayne, she says it to herself as she knits. She likes the feel of the word, especially with the “y” added. Exotic.

    Outside the door, other girls sob against the Home Mother’s rhythmic, “This is best. This is best. This is best.” Outside the window, light and dark dance, the dark losing ground day by day until her daughter comes, two weeks early, a sunny afternoon in April. She wraps the baby, in the clothes she knitted.

    She gives the baby; she gives Jayne away.

    She keeps the robe; wraps its shag-style softness around her loss; tucks it into its box, leaving the loss cradled in the center, the way her daughter once was in the middle of the robe and of her and of him.

Mirror Glimpses - Randon Billings Noble – Linda Julian Essay Winner

I.

    “[M]irrors, which seemed magical in their properties, … were composed of only two primary materials: a plane of glass pressed up against a plane of silver … When a mirror was broken, the glass could be replaced. When a mirror grew old, it only had to be resilvered. It could go on and on. It could go on forever.” – “Mirrors,” Carol Shields.

    Over the sink in the bathroom of my grandparents’ summer house was a smallish round mirror and directly opposite it, over the toilet, was a medicine cabinet with a mirrored door. These two mirrors reflected endless images of myself when I stood between them. I tried to see into infinity with these mirrors, but it got too blurry.

    The small round mirror across from the medicine cabinet was wreathed in wooden roses. The face that looked back at me from this mirror was also round and rosy, framed at the top by a precise line of straight-cut bangs. My eyes were wide and dark, unshadowed by disappointment or compassion. My teeth were new and awkward, the two front ones serrated at the bottom like a bread knife, but I was too young to try to smile with my lips closed or laugh behind my hand. I never thought this face would change. I thought my childhood would go on forever.

    Instead, I grew out my bangs and grew up.

    Over the sink in the bathroom of the hotel room was a large flat mirror that spanned the length of the wall. Directly opposite it was the shower with its skimpy cloth curtain that somehow managed to block the shower’s spray. Everything in the room was cold and white – the tiles, the curtain, the walls, the lights.

    The face that looked back at me from this mirror was round and blotchy, framed by a white towel wrapped around my wet hair. The skin below my eyes was puffy and dark, shadowed from tossing and turning on scratchy hotel sheets, and my shower had done little to revive me. My mouth was closed, tight at the corners, wondering that the day would bring.

    That afternoon I would start my first day at college, four states away from the place I called home. I tried to spy the future in my reflection, but my eyes were too dark to see anything in them.

    Over the four sinks in the bathroom of my dorm were four square mirrors bolted to the wall. Fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed from the ceiling and a steady drip came from the third shower stall. The face in the mirror was always turning away, on its way to something else; the mirror was too scratched to really see anything anyway.

    Every morning I showered early and then twisted my hair into a braid that nearly reached my waist. By late October my damp braid froze on my way to my early-morning French class and when I returned to my room I unraveled its crispy kinks to let them dry. When my mom came to pick me up in December I told her that I had made straight A’s but that I felt like nothing existed below my brain stem. My body had become a cup to carry around my brain.

II.

    “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” – 1 Corinthians 13:11-13

    I knew that I would leave X. that night. Our affair had been just that: an affair, not a relationship. But before I met up with him at the bar, I had dinner with a friend at the Odeon. I was dressed up for something else – a Christmas party at work, perhaps – and my heels clicked on the tile floor of the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of someone in the mirror and in a split second my brain thought, She looks like a woman. She was wearing a black sheath dress and had her hair swept up in a smooth twist. In the second half of that split second I realized, Wait – that’s me.

    Was I surprised by my own reflection because I was wearing a dress instead of my usual jeans? Or had something happened as a result of the decision I had made to end my affair? I was no longer a girl playing with romance; I looked like a woman.

    That night I broke off my affair and the next day I made the long drive to my parents’ house. In the boredom of crossing three states on route 95 I remembered my first thought when I saw my reflection – “She looks like a woman” – not “She is a woman.” Funny how I had used the word “like.” Maybe I still had some growing up to do.

    I did. I only thought I had ended my affair that night. It would take me three more months to make it final. What I caught that night in the mirror at the Odeon was only a glimpse of the woman I would become. I wasn’t her yet. I only knew in part.

III.

    “Vanity” comes through Middle English, Old French and Latin; through vanitas from vanus, meaning “empty.”

    Yoga class. In a room full of mirrors it’s almost impossible not to look at yourself. E. looks at herself all the time. She’s maybe 40, beautiful in a careful yet exotic way, perfectly turned out in tights and a tank top, always a different combination but always some shade of blue. In a conversation her eyes slide off your face to her own, over your shoulder, behind you, reflected by one of the ever-present mirrors. I fight this urge, which is another form of vanity: not to appear vain.

    But when doing the poses I look – greedily – at myself. I bought tights and a tank top of my own to better see what my body looks like. This, however, isn’t vanity. It’s stunted curiosity. I don’t know what I look like. I haven’t known for some time.

    That spring, when the biopsy results came back bad, I was so angry at my body for betraying me that I wanted to divorce it. But since I couldn’t, I ignored it. It reminded me of my first year of college when I was so consumed with studying that my body felt like a big cup to carry around my brain. March and April felt like a return to that. I dressed up to teach, put on lipstick for Wednesday morning meetings – but none of that had anything to do with me. It was all just keeping up my former image, behind which I hid.

    I never looked down when I changed my clothes or took a bath (before baths were forbidden), I never “took stock” of myself in my full-length mirror. I was in denial of my own physical existence. All the compliments X. had given me (thrilled by everything his eyes and hands encountered) evaporated. I became an alien to myself. An alien in my own skin.

    After the surgery, after I realized that I was indeed going to live, I started trying to reclaim myself – my physical self – my body. This was slow going. I thought I would relish my first bath: I didn’t. I was repulsed by the sight of the body that had insistently occupied my peripheral vision. I still didn’t want any part of it. Dr. D. prescribed yoga classes as a way of getting mind and body back together. After only two weeks of these classes, it started to work.

    Sure, I “inhabit” the poses, I’m conscious of my thoughts and breath, but it’s the mirror that’s really doing it. I see myself – the internal self within my external self – and for the most part I like what I see. But it’s more than liking (long lines, light skin that turns pink wherever I’m spending energy, dark eyes, a kind of grace), it’s recognizing. I am that. We are the same thing, “that” and me. I am – in all senses of the phrase – full of myself.

IV.

    “Mirror” comes from the Latin mirari, “to wonder.”

    I used to play a game with myself called Get to Know Your Profile. I’d stand in front of my bathroom mirror with a hand mirror and tilt my head, talk, chew – all in an effort to see myself as others saw me. I didn’t realize how often – when I’m writing, for instance – I’ll get up and look at myself in a mirror until I was at my first writing residency. My studio had no mirror. Instead, I’d catch a glimpse of myself in my computer screen whenever it went dark to save power. It was as if I was checking in to see if I was still there.

    In the documentary film Playing the Part, the filmmaker and narrator Mitch McCabe practices phototherapy. During a difficult time she takes a series of self portraits and as we see them flash on the screen her voiceover tells us that she took these photographs to “get some perspective on things and let me know that I wasn’t alone.” Is that what I was doing, trying to feel less alone? And what is a mirror but a temporary self portrait?

V.

    “We use the expression ‘look into a mirror,’ as though it were an open medium, like water.” – Carol Shields, “Mirrors”

    The verb “to reflect” comes from the Latin flectere, meaning “to bend.”

    In my bedroom there is a closet with two mirrored doors. Each folds out like a sharp elbow, and my reflection slips away and disappears as the doors slide open. Sometimes, if I don’t close them completely, the doors bump out just an inch into the room and I can walk up to them like Dracula and never see my reflection. Only when I am very close can I see my shoulders or maybe an arm, but the bulk of me is invisible within the seam. It’s unnerving.

    If the doors are half closed the angle adds five extra inches to my width. My waist thickens and one leg nearly doubles. I’m less worried about looking fat than I am about not looking the way I think I look. It’s like having a mistaken identity.

    My outsides don’t match up with my expectations.

    When I am at work, just before I walk into my classroom, I often stop in a bathroom to check my reflection. The light is institutional, ungenerous. It reveals the shadows under my eyes, the blotch on my cheek, the bright red capillaries threading through the whites of my eyes. Is this what I really look like? I teach my class with this image in mind.

    But then, after class, I might stop in the same bathroom. This time the shadows under my eyes might be lit with exhilaration, the blotch on my cheek hidden by a flush, my eyes bright with success. When did my face change?

    We are always trying to claim our fleeting image. Like Narcissus on the riverbank we strain to see ourselves but there’s always a ripple of distortion, sometimes in our mirror image, sometimes in our memory of it. Usually we are pulled away from this reflection and hustled back into life. But if we linger by the river and reach into the water to catch ourselves, we break up entirely.

    Time and time again we have to learn that our image is fleeting for a reason; currents change; tides shift. It’s hard to hold onto water.