BPthe broken plate

Ball State University Spring 2006

the broken plate

The Editors Nick Davidson Alizabeth Estep Arrah Fisher Ashley Klein Shane Lutz Jennifer Lysek Rob Monroe John Murray Tony Settineri Waylon Shaffer Mike Vermilyer

Faculty Advisor Mark Neely

The Broken Plate is Ball State’s undergraduate literary magazine. We are dedicated to publishing the creative work of Ball State undergraduates. This issue was produced by students in English 489, the Practicum in Literary Editing and Publishing. We will begin accepting submissions for our 2007 issue in August 2006.

We are grateful to the English Department and to Printing Services for their generous support.

cover photo: Arrah Fisher

Contents

5 Tears From A Dead Woman Matt Thomas

15 Imaginary Ladies in White Linen and Lace Katie Papper

17 20th Century War Poem Joshua Winkler

18 Dead Heat Pamela Krempely

19 Death By Deconstruction Courtney Elizabeth Hitson

21 Black Sweatshirt Tara Chandler

24 Dry Pen Lynn Fultz

25 I Am Fighting Courtney Elizabeth Hitson

26 Tom Waits Probably Likes Puppies Matthew Netzley

27 Reality of Writer’s Block Paul Tillema

28 Dull Better Days Jeff Rukes

38 Freckles Josh Bauer

39 In Suburbia We Only Drink Fluids And We Only Eat Food Matthew Netzley

41 The Price of Freedom Tim Birkel

56 Edith Leiber Matt Thomas

58 Contributors

The moon pierced the mist as Frank stepped into his truck. He fumbled putting the key into the ignition before starting the tow truck with a squeal from loose belts in the engine. He struggled to stay awake during the drive to his apartment so he could eat for the first time that day. But as he pulled onto Dixon Street, he turned left, away from his apartment. His eyes stared blankly into the street lamps that glistened off the truck’s freshly waxed exterior. He turned onto Jefferson Road and glanced down at a picture taped to his dash. The two were on a beach. Jane sat on Frank’s head beneath a bright blue sky; the rest of Frank’s body was buried under the sand in a cocoon-shaped mound. Tears were visible on her cheeks from laughter. Frank glanced up from the picture and pulled to the side of the road in an old residential suburb and looked across the street. He knew the house but couldn’t remember the drive. The lights were off in the blue one-story house. He stepped out of the truck, closing the door gently, and carefully walked across the pavement, glancing back over his shoulder.

As I traversed I-70, passing cars sloshed fresh water across the windshield. Tail lights of the flaming red ‘67 Chevy Malibu in front of me glared on the wet pavement. The looming glow of the distant sun seeped through the clouds and left me wondering if it did much good to breathe anyway. The road moved left; the red Malibu didn’t, swerving and skidding as its tires crossed the rumble strip, coming to rest in the ditch. I was officially off work, but I stopped the truck a few feet behind the woman, her Malibu slowly sinking down the bank of the ditch in the background. Her hair clung to her face like leaches. Her sopping dress drooped, falling from her shoulders. As I exited the tow truck, thick pelts of water crashed against my skin like warm, dead bodies falling from the sky. I made my way to the stranded car,

Matt Thomas

Tears From A Dead Woman

tilted forty five degrees, slowly slipping into the ditch, swallowed by mud. I stepped into her gaze; her eyes glowed with gratitude. She trembled, soaked with rain, as yellow lights from the tow truck flashed. The cars steadily rolled by, slowing long enough, I was sure, to check for dead bodies strewn about. Her head was tilted slightly down towards the ground.

“This your car? Now, how’d you manage this?” She shifted her weight from her left foot to her right. “I guess I

missed the turn. Can you give me some help?” “I just got off, but I can call another truck.” I removed my jacket, placed it across her shoulders and headed toward my truck as the rain ran into my eyes. She softly brushed my arm. “Frank is it?” she said looking at the name embroidered on my polo, “I’m really in a hurry. It would be awesome if you could do me a favor and pull me out real quick. I don’t have the money to pay anyone anyway.” “I can’t do that. If I use the truck off duty, I’ll lose my job.” A car flew by splashing us with water. “I’m going to be late for an appointment. If I don’t make it, I’ll lose my job.” She stepped closer to me, now gazing at the ground, her voice softening, barely audible over the drone of internal combustion. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I said. “I would really appreciate it. I would owe you.” She grabbed my arm, her fingers gently digging into the flesh. “All right, real quick.” Her smile killed my heart.

“Thank you so much. I’m Jane, by the way.” She brushed my wet hair from my eyes, stood on her toes,

and touched her soft lips to my cheek. Her soft lips, my cheek. I fell to the ground landing in a puddle. The sky turned from grey to white-washed walls. It’d been a long time since I’d been kissed: my mother’s lips, her soft hands. My father’s fist burst through my skull hitting the poor woman’s face over and over, for years. Was that blood in my mouth? No I was lying in a puddle beside the road. I couldn’t breathe. Was that you, Mom, your brown hair, your soft lips? Won’t you sing to me again? I was choking on the stench from the closet that

6

smelled of a dead mouse when I opened the door. Was I twelve? Mom, come sing to me, get down off that rope. Mom was so stiff. I couldn’t breathe; it smelled so bad. Or was that water? I thought I felt my father’s hand on my cheek. But I looked at her face. Her eyes were the grass, a meadow that I could walk through, and I heard birds singing. Jane helped me stand. “Are you all right?” Her eyes shone with true concern. The flashing yellow lights felt like fire burning me at the stake. “Yeah.” I couldn’t forget Jane’s face. I stared, eyes shut. Finally, I winched her car out of the ditch, and buried my life in a coffin. I needed to see her face to get it out of my mind.

Frank squeezed his way between the hedges and the house. He peered through the bedroom window and made out the shape of a woman beneath the comforter, as usual. The house was dark. He looked for the key under the flowerpot holding the rhododendron, but it wasn’t there. He grabbed his spare from the glove box in his truck. Hoping not to wake her, Frank entered the house as quietly as possible. He couldn’t hurt her, wanted nothing more than to protect her. He’d once knifed a hobo mugging her in a back alley after a guy in a white Cavalier stood her up. His mind ached with the thought of never seeing her again.

I paced back and forth downtown in the bright sunlight outside the corner Starbucks. The tulips in my hand dropped their petals on the concrete. She was inside. The glass between us felt like a sheet of ice; I was underneath while she taunted me with her warmth. That kiss. What was her name? What name? What name? I pounded my head to make it drop out, accidentally ripping the petals from their stems. She sat on the other side of the window. I assume it was her lunch break, but she only bought coffee, black. She typed on her laptop. Her body was slender, barely filling the shoulders of her dark red blazer. Her hair was short and almost black, curling around her ears. One strand fell across her face, across her right eye. This was it— time to ask her, talk to her, to be her hero again.

7

I wanted to be her hero. I wanted her to be mugged, so I could run from the shadows, knife the hobo demanding cash for beer. Was that beautiful? Was that tragic enough? I just wanted to talk. But I couldn’t stand those people outside, walking around me, looking at me pound my skull while kneeling behind a black sedan.

Jane— that was her name. The black pavement imbedded itself into my knees. The sun

burnt the shirt off my back. Sweat ran into my eyes. I could see men in passing cars studying my frayed shorts, my faded black polo. Others sat on park benches, throwing Frisbees, training their dogs to rip out Jane’s throat.

“Hey, I thought that was you,” Jane said as she walked to my side of the car.

The words reverberated like a cannon in the mountains. I stood, remembering the voice and the scent of her lips. I remembered the kiss. My heart was trying to catch my mind. For an instant, I saw everything. The sun glared off of a passing man’s sunglasses. I could see his eyes beneath peeling away my skin. I knew there was a car coming behind me, and that in a second, a pigeon would crap on my shoe. I could feel the air pressure fall. I shouldn’t have come here.

“You helped me out of the ditch a couple weeks ago, right? Do you work around here?”

The sound of her voice pounded in my ears like a cannon. It would have been a better idea to roll off the Grand Canyon in a steel drum than to have come here.

“Yeah,” I stammered, “I pulled your car out, but, no I don’t work around here.”

“I thought that was you. Do you want a cup of coffee? I still owe you.” Her voice was smooth, a babbling stream running through my ear canal.

“Yeah, a cup of coffee would be good. I’d like that.”

Once inside, Frank slipped off his shoes and dropped his pants, careful not to let the belt clank against the floor. He sat on the suede couch for a few minutes, dug his toes into the carpet, rubbed them fast back and forth on the carpet so they would tingle. He picked up a

8

glass from the coffee table with red lipstick in a half circle on its rim and matched it to his bottom lip, sipping the warm orange juice. He sat in the dark for hours with the lights off. It was thrilling to be inside his home again. He usually sat outside in the cold, waiting.

On our third anniversary, the lights beaming down from the catwalks slowly dimmed once, twice. The crowd’s chatter subsided, and then it was black. A single spotlight lit up the side of the stage where a small man, dressed in a frayed tux, slowly walked to a microphone in front of the curtains center stage. “Tonight’s performance is dedicated to Jane. I have missed you,” he said with a French accent. “I know you’re out there in the audience somewhere. I know you’re listening. I love you. Please forgive me for not being perfect. If you’re here after the show, I’ll come find you. Love, Frank.” As the man spoke, he glanced directly at me. He then read the letter while looking into Jane’s eyes who sat beside me. I watched her as tears welled and streaked down her high cheek bones. She had an enormous smile. She reached over, pressed her lips tight against mine. The softest, warmest lips I’ve ever touched. Our red velvet seats were in front of center stage, three rows back. Jane’s eyes glistened and watched the short man wearing the tattered tuxedo. A brick wall fell inside her eyes.

“I love you.” She spoke in whispers every day, but I said it in tongues, never in English; some things language can’t handle.

The man exited stage right. A petite woman in a mangy white wedding gown crossed after him, face veiled, almost dead. A rhythmic thud started as she exited. The curtains rolled back to reveal a large muscular man throwing axes at a stump, and yellow light lit the stage. A fiddle and accordion played in the background. I held Jane’s soft hand. My palms were wet. I swallowed hard as my right thumb rubbed a velvet coffin in my pocket, holding a single clear stone on a metallic ring.

“Why are your hands so wet? You haven’t sweated this much since our first date,” she said during intermission. Jane pierced through me and actually saw me, letting me know what it felt like to genuinely be naked. “Do you remember the day we met, sweetie?” It

9

was our third anniversary. I thought of how her hair had clung to her face in the rain, outlining her cheekbones, how she’d shivered while I strapped the winch to her car. Her green eyes reflected the clouds.

She smiled at me, ran her fingers up and down my thigh. My father’s fingers ran up my thigh. I looked into her eyes as the lights dimmed. They matched the grass outside our apartment. They were my mother’s eyes. I died in her eyes.

The show passed with me staring at Jane’s face. My hands dripped wet, and my foot would not sit still. A woman and a man stood on stage. Water rained from behind the curtain as the man picked up the woman, moving her around him as if she were a bed pillow. A violin and cello played music that brought tears to Jane’s eyes. A bright light was turned on from the back of the stage, lighting the entire audience. The stage lights were dark, leaving only a shadow of the two figures. The curtains rolled shut, dimming the theater to black. The woman in the mangy wedding gown trudged slowly in front of the curtains.

Oh shit, I almost forgot!“I’ve got to use the bathroom,” I whispered standing to leave.“But it’s almost over.”“You can tell me what I missed.” In a rush, I tripped over

someone’s purse on my way out the back door. I made my way to the back of the theatre to a black steel door

where I showed the scrawny security guard a pass. The stage manager ushered me into the dressing room, scolding me for being late.

“After this we’re straight?” the stage manager said smiling.

“After this, I’ll owe you.” They dressed me in a beat-up black tuxedo with an over-sized top hat that hung low, almost covering my eyes. I walked on stage, which was now pitch black. A soft violin played in the background with piano accompaniment. I stopped in front of the microphone, a light turned on directly above my head, shadowing my face. I could feel the thousands of eyes scanning me.

“Jane,” I spoke in my best French accent, “I know you’re out there listening to me. I know you remember all the mornings we spent in bed together, doing nothing for hours, the walks late at night. For all

10

the times we spent together. Thank you. For the way you look at me in the morning, the way you jump into my arms and wrap your legs around my waist when I’ve only been gone a day, the way you lightly run your fingers across my back at night. Thank you. If you could forgive me for not being perfect . . .” The music crescendoed and the lights turned red. I removed the hat shadowing my face and knelt down. “Will you marry me?”

Frank went quietly into Jane’s bedroom to watch her sleep. She was so beautiful. Her black heart beat beneath her red nightgown. They’d been together for three years, but he still hadn’t recovered from her beauty. He went to the oak dresser, pulled out a pair of silk lace panties—the ones he’d found that night on the floor in the living room—and a small velvet case with a ring inside. Eyes watering, he ran his hands around the back of the drawer pulling out an envelope filled with pictures. On top sat a black and white photo of Frank smiling on a beach, looking over his shoulder with the ocean waves crashing behind him. He sat beside her bed and watched her face while she slept. He pulled out his father’s switch blade, opened it quietly and talked to her in whispers.

I was late that evening. The red sun sank just above the rows of houses as I drove home. It looked as if hell was opening before me, and I was driving into its mouth. I pulled into the driveway and parked my truck beside a white cavalier. Jane must have been entertaining company from work. I stepped out of my truck and into a puddle from the hard rain that drenched every inch of the earth. Our cat came to me, sopping wet. I stooped to pick him up, and his claws dug into my arm.

I turned the handle to the door. Locked. Jane always left it unlocked. I picked up the rhododendron pot beside the door where we kept the spare key, but it wasn’t there. I returned to the truck and grabbed my spare. My hands were sweaty. I put the key in the brass deadbolt and unlocked the door. The house had been ransacked. A shirt was flung across the back of the love seat, socks were strewn about the floor, and a coat was crumbled beside the front door. White

11

lace panties—which Jane had bought for Valentine’s Day—were resting carelessly on the suede couch. The cat jumped from my hands, hissing, clawing an unfamiliar leather loafer that lay on my living room floor next to a pair of khakis. A wallet had fallen open on the beige carpet. Then I heard noises from the bedroom: a repetitive knocking. Exiting, I slashed the black tires of the white cavalier.

Later that night I sat on our bed, smoking a cigar, drinking whisky. She sat in the closet, legs bent, head hanging towards the floor. My head shifted back and forth as I smoked my life away, inhaling every cigar-filled breath, holding it in, letting the tar fill every crevice of my lungs. I sat the empty glass next to the empty bottle of whiskey on the night stand and lay down over the comforter. She stood and walked toward me like a mobile corpse. She crawled in beside me and ran her hands through my hair. I said nothing, remembering how her hands had always reminded me of my father’s. She unbuttoned her shirt, slid off my pants. My father’s hands ran up my legs with no resistance. She still wore her skirt. I lay motionless, emotionless, useless, meaningless. I felt her warmth slide around me, but for the first time it made me cold. Mascara streaked down her face with the tears that fell from her cheeks onto my eyes, one after another. I walked out of the room and into the cold biting wind, struggling until I wasn’t numb. I was sad because I was not sad.

Frank sat beside Jane’s bed on their plush white carpet, the cat shredding the flesh on his bare toes. He ran his fingers across his father’s switch blade, rolled up his shirt sleeve and placed a small cut beside the other scars on the inside of his left arm, feeling the pain rush through his body so that he could feel something again, so that he would be in control of something again. He stood over Jane, looked into her eyes, dead eyes. My mother’s eyes. She was exactly like his mother. Those lips. That voice, oh please, he thought as the room spun, please, please don’t take those lips from me again.

Sing to me. Why did you stand on that chair inside my closet, put the rope around your neck and fall? Why did you leave me, Mom? Why, Jane? I remember that day so well. I was twelve. The smell was coming from my room, through the door, into the hall. My father was

12

taking a bath and listening to Coltrane. I thought a mouse had died in my room. I had just gotten home from camp and wanted to sleep, but I hadn’t seen you, Jane.

I went to my room, and my mouth went dry. The smell was ten times worse. I put my duffle bag on the bed, opened the closet door and fell to the floor, but I couldn’t cry. I stared at her soft red toenails—the ones I had painted while we sat on her bed before I left for camp—her head pointing down towards the floor. Why didn’t you take me with you? Why did you leave me here? All those nights you swore you were going to leave him, take us away to someplace warm, someplace safe. What about that day when you took me to the hospital after I was knocked unconscious? Mom, get down off that rope.

He stood in Jane’s bedroom; blood from the cut on his arm

dripped down the tips of his fingers. He walked across the room and sat inside their closet on a pile of dirty clothes. She rolled over. Her hands grasped her pillow, pulling it to her chest. They were my father’s bloody hands. He saw a belt hanging in the closet and felt it lash against his back. Frank grabbed the knife by the blade and squeezed, dripping blood onto the white carpet, onto the white tile of my father’s bathroom floor. It seemed like days before I pushed the bathroom door open, steam rolling from beneath. I held my dad’s switch blade open. The sound of running water echoed off the walls. Dad’s stereo blared from beside the bathtub. I couldn’t see. The light was so bright. I just wanted to be free. I handed him the Trojan horse, vodka and Coke.

Frank stood grasping the switchblade, staring at his father’s hands, at his heart laying there on Jane’s bed grasping her pillow. He watched her soft face, traced his eyes down her neck, her arms, her hips, thinking of the life they could have had, seeing their two blonde children smiling with dried jelly on their faces. They asked him why they were never born. Because I killed your mom. Tears streamed down Frank’s cheeks. The knife blade was inches from her face. Her eyes opened wide as Frank pulled the knife into the air, pointing the blade at her heart. Her thin hands twitched, my father’s hands twitched, catching his eye, catching Frank’s hand in the air.

13

I placed my hand on my father’s portable stereo sitting beside the bath, while handing him the glass of vodka and Coke.

When I shoved the stereo into his tub, slit his throat, it was romantic— it was justice. When I grew the balls to put rat poison in his vodka, to cut his break lines, I thought I’d erased all the hospital trips, the belt marks I couldn’t show the teachers, the years of therapy they claimed I needed and the stomach pumps in high school. I thought it was romantic, beautiful, tragic, and nothing would hurt.

Jane was motionless as Frank’s heart raced and his hand bled onto the white sheets. He felt curled into a ball inside, crying, naked and alone, eyes recessed and bloodshot. But Jane was there stroking his hair. “It’s okay. I understand,” she said, with her fingers cupping his head, slightly pulling on his matted locks. And Frank finally understood what it meant to be naked. Tears dripped from his cheeks as he closed the blade and placed it in Jane’s delicate palm. He turned and walked out of his mind, out of his memories, left them behind with Jane sobbing in that room as the morning sun shone red through the windows before turning yellow.

And it was beautiful, but it still hurt.

14

Katie Papper

Imaginary Ladies In White Linen And Lace

I return home. And “home” is where I went to find you, Mother, but you were gone and I didn’t know. You had moved to slabs of stone cold doorways, no doorbell, just two dates at the bottom and a Bible quote above. I find it ironic: Sunday mass was always a quiet hangover after you drank Saturday night’s dinner. I nursed you back to sober while you mumbled fantasies of being one of your imaginary ladies in white linen and lace on Sunday afternoons, enjoying the life of your millionaire-husbands.

I loved the lush in you, though. You never minded my bigger dreams and when college came, you let me celebrate my N.Y.U. after triumphant S.A.T.’s with a little J-O-I-N-T you and I smoked steadily that blissful day.

Your southern charm always washed me clean on Christmas vacations, the Manhattan hanging off my body like bag-lady clothing. It was practical, but didn’t fit. And when others said I had airs, you knew my accent was not the pretentious kind, or at least you let me tell myself that. God, I was never ashamed of you, Mom. Mama. “Dollybaby,” you’d say in your sweetest southern twangas you cupped my face in your hands and a single tearrolled down my cheek. Humility boiled inside me; I would never tell those snobby village idiots I wasn’t southern bred.

15