Notes from the Editor (Dan Golden):

Welcome to bordertown 2010. From the beginning it has been my mission to find the best and most talented writers from the students at MSSU. This has not been an easy task, and at times I felt as though I was searching through the dark. In my journey I have fallen into states of frustration, but I soon realized that my staff and the other people I have worked with are very helpful and talented and became my guiding lights.
    With the help of my staff, bordertown 2010 has become a success. There is a buzz around campus in regards to our publication, and I could not be prouder or more honored to work with the people that made this issue happen.
    I first want to thank my staff, so thank you Howie Lindeman, Stacy Heiskell, Josh Klugh, Katie Farmer, and Tasha Martin. You have all been a great deal of help in compiling, promoting, and creating this issue of bordertown. Without all of your help this issue would not have come together.
    I also want to thank Dr. Joey Brown, and Dr. Michael Howarth. Both of you have given me great advice and direction when I was lost. You two are the heartbeat of bordertown and prove that patience and knowledge are invaluable assets when creating such a work. Without both of your confidence and expertise this issue would not be.
    I also have a special thanks to Joan Kearney. You have been tolerant of my constant nagging, possess a great sense of humor when I was most stressed, and proved tolerant of my blatant misspelling of your name. Thank you for your time, patience, and help.
    Mark Thomas, you took an impossible task and put two of your classes to work on it. You have been patient and efficient, and you and your classes are as much a part of bordertown as anyone else. You took a vague idea and created wonderful cover designs. Thank you for your help and your talented students work.
    I would also like to thank Bill Hunt and Rob Surber for your help in promoting our magazine.
    Lastly, I want to thank all the contributors who found interest in our magazine and submitted their work. Not all of you were able to make it in, but these are the tough choices I must make as an editor. Regardless of your acceptance, I thank you for taking the time to submit your work.

The Origins of bordertown

This is from the 2006 edition of bordertown.  It is the staff note that was written by Charlotte Hopper.

When Dr. Brown and I began to discuss putting together this edition of the literary journal, we realized a difficult task lay ahead of us in naming the journal. The idea of finding a name may sound trivial, but really, the name sets the tone and the flavor for what readers will find inside the cover. Many meetings lay between that initial one and the one where the name bordertown was born. During that time, I lived with this task. It permeated every area of my daily life. And suddenly, there it was.

One evening, my family and I decided to watch Seabiscuit. I had seen it before but had forgotten how poetic a film it is. I became engrossed in the dialogue. At one point, the narrator speaks of a time when the country most needed a drink and its inability to get one because of the laws of this country. So they turned to the bordertown. That statement could have done one of two things--threatened my sensitivities or broadened my understanding. Thankfully, it did the second. You see, good poetry and good writing make you think. They open your mind, introduce new ideas, challenge old ideas and breathe life into dormant faculties. Literary works should serve to strengthen long-held convictions and to change outdated ones.

bordertown is meant to feel regional and look regional. It is where we are, what we are and who we are.

Thank you for the submissions.

The staff of bordertown thanks everyone who submitted works.  We have more than enough works to produce what we feel will be a quality magazine.  During the upcoming weeks, we will be selecting the pieces for the magazine and laying it out.  Final selections will be made sometime in late December or early January.  Check back for updates on what the staff is up to or to see if your work is selected.

Kimberly Sparlin

I like trees, thanks to Tolkien and...
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you as well as you deserve." -Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring Just Kidding!  I love you all!  People are interesting to me and the passionate ones are inspiring.  I wrote "All By Yourself" as a kind of a memorial for this guy I fell in love with when I was 18.  He was awesome and he broke my heart a million times.  Anyway, he was a good person, but for reasons unknown to me he was a major player.  The spark that ignited this poem came when he texted me two years later and I realized how I was happy and he was alone, just a word at the bottom of a eulogy.  Dead to me.

All By Yourself - Kimberly Sparlin

I was not expecting that.
You called on me and
I remembered long past days
of beauty.
Heavenly thoughts of faraway stars
and hard, black asphalt
frozen in the December night.
You spoke to me and I cried
as I told you how it was at home,
with her and all she went through.
I could see you cared for her
and you never even met,
but it was kind and made me smile.

I was nervous, too,
because I loved you so much
and I knew you would walk away
again, and again
leave me alone for awhile.

It was hell, waiting for
your voice.
Tragic like the
tears wasted
on missing
you.

Justin Terry

Justin Terry is an English major.

I am What I am - Justin Terry

Have you seen the man with the heart too big for his body?
The one who always loves and cares too much,
And who is often broke and melancholy?

Have you seen the man whose arms are always open?
Ready to comfort and console anyone
Who truly deserves the title of broken?

Have you seen the man who has no shirts?
Always giving and never taking,
And so has nothing to claim but the dirty?

Have you seen the man with the bleeding ears?
Who's listened to the words of all his friends,
To all their troubles, worries, and fears?

Have you seen the man with open eyes?
Who has seen the evil workings of the World,
And watched his friends and lovers slowly die?

have you seen the man with the calloused hands?
The one who fixes hearts and repairs souls,
And calls the Realm of Destruction his lands?

Have you seen the man with the permanent smile?
The one that seems real, but is always forced,
When the man is really crying, but clings to denial?

Have you seen the man with the hollow laugh?
Whose happiness is always fleeing and never lingering,
Blowing through like the wind's early draft?

Have you seen the man who has no tongue?
The man who has bitten it too many times,
To hold back the angry words of protest that surge from his lungs?

Have you seen the man with the broken shoulders?
From carrying the world for years upon his back,
Growing shorter and more defeated as he grows older?

Day by day, I've seen this man.
Day by day, he watches me in the mirror.
Day by day, it takes everything for me to stand.

Big Lie - Howie Lindeman

Parental cop-out number nine:
"This is going to hurt me a lot mroe than it hurts you."
Pick your switch,
a good one,
you don't want me to make
a trip to the back yard.
I became a mighty switch-hunter.
The snap of the Sam Browne
on my shoulders left welts
like speed bumps on a HotWheels track.
Race me out of here.
The pinch on the inside of my bicep
excavated skin in the shape of a "V".
It would take forever
to remove a pound of flesh,
but she has time.

"I will not talk back,"
five hundred times.
My penmanship excellent
as I held two pencils
to script the bogus mantra.
Backhand slaps in public,
misbehavior recompense
or merely a frustration dump.

She did not want to be
my adopted mother
any more than I wanted to be
her adopted son.
So I chose not to be.
On a dank autumn day,
fourteen years of age,
I proved her right.

Clayton Carnahan

I grw up in the country, where people can yell without their neighbors getting upset.  I climbed trees and made pillows from rocks.  I watch stars and birds, not out of knowing, but from fascination.  Recently I read that authors these days can't seem to write about death.  Death is all I write about, as well as the graceful life that follows it.

So When We Talk Of - Clayton Carnahan

So when we talk of ungraspable things

of love beauty courage
and wellness and wholeness
I'm suddenly, certainly unsure unequipped
perplexed and confounded, my tongue is flop flipped
of to as how what if wherewithal I would articulate
.
You utter something that would have been cliché
on
many
other
lips.
and that Michelangelo didn't start sculpting with the David,
or something like that
.
.
"Look at that pot, for instance"
and conceptualize its shapely limitations
.
But you don't know
,my friend, and never will
the dreams and aspirations
I've collected in that ornamental crucible
the moments I was broken and collapsed,
The fullness I so longed for
to much that I had known,
to be perfect as He is perfect*
And still yet ever I kept it most contained

For A hope is a moment
and freedom a glance
bravery mercy forgiveness a stance
if left alone without devices of men
a molded symbol
or an image drawn in
some thing where transparent virtues can stand
quabbles distractions and round about thoughts
of men women children
of dreams and clay pots
.
.
In the morning I was Dorian Gray
:a mirror full of pictures staring back at me
,But now I sit uppon my vanity
Thinking for the first time
i remember something beside myself
a hope unspeakable
a water ever flowing from an uncontainable source
.
a fullness within yet a fullness without
confidence measured,
measured but stout
.
.
Still, if language is so limited,
Why did we ever stop talking?

*Matthew 5:48

The Son Of A Land Lord

My Father is a land lord, and, when I was young,
He frequently tired to teach me to work,
by forcing me to paint smoke-stained walls
or mow overgrown yards
or hold a Monkey wrench while he repaired the busted toilets.

One house in particular holds the worst of my memories of learning to work.

The Manion house,
upon the removal of the previous occupants to a nursing home,
had new retners for the first time in years, and
'Eens' was their name.
I remember meeting matriarch Eens, the head of the household, for the first time.
She was wearing cutoff sweat pants with plastic flip-flops,
and her claw like hands and pinkish explosion of hair made her look like an
exotic bird that you would find in a trailer park.

The Eens' were numerous
and each one of them received a government check of some kind.
Cycling in and out, few of them,
other than the matriarch,
stayed in the house for more than a couple of weeks,
but there was always at least six adults living in the three bredroom house at a time.
They were like a pack of mangy stray dogs that you'd find rummaging around the Illinois river
and rolling in the remains of a dead cow.

Innumerable children were part of the cycle too.
I remember one of them in particular.
Crystal,
who, upon our first meeting, was wearing a t-shirt that read,
"you make me throw up a little."
A nice enough girl who collected bibles and had a baby cousin who'd been born without a brain,
she had a rash on her scalp and was constantly scraping through her blondish locks
with dirty broken fingernails.


The Eens' replaced all other forms of entertainment with bizarre and wonderful tales of living in a state
of self-inflicted hysteria;
-This week the uncle wrecked his golf cart in the woods again.
-The next week the brainless baby's mother had a seizure.
-The next week the goldfish was euthanized because it had cancer,
-and the next, matriarch Eens won $1000 on a scratch card, all of which would be devoted entirely to Christma
-and then one week,

They were gone:
-Perhaps their luck ran out,
-perhaps some tragedy had taken place,
-or perhaps they just got tired of living in their own filthiness.

Whatever it was, when we found the house abandoned they appeared to have been taken by the rapture:
-a pot of chili sat cold and solid on the stovetop.
-piles of clothes and random shoes decorated the corners and floors.
-dog feces were scattered throughout the house.
-urine stained the carpets in every room,
-and legions of roaches charged down the walls in an assault on cleanliness they were clearly winning.

After we overcame the shock, my father,
again teaching me how to work,
allowed me to rip out the carpet, and appropriately enough,
it made me throw up a little.

Ashley Brooke Polley

Ashley Brooke Polley has been writing emphatically since her senior year of high school.  She wants to make a mark on the literary community.  Ashley has been published in San Antonio's Dreamcatcher and by the Live Poet's Society of New Jersey.

The Relapse - Ashley Polley

 I swallowed your sword,
swam through your sweat,
and at the stars: the freckles
between your shoulder blades.

We were reincarnated.  The proof
for our skeptics?  Our silver sutures
punctured the light.  Scissors
that danced in the sun.

My skin was a map; raised bumps
like Braille.  You always knew
the way to shattered teeth
and glass appendages.

And then you went; the sinking
of my moon.  Your moans
I could hear across the desert.
The ones we used to rule.

I blew away the ashes
of your hair.  And soon collapsed
under your palms,
moaning like thunder.

Nanda Nunnely-Sparks

Growing up in an interracial family during the 70's and 80's had its difficulties.  The poem "Beautiful Day" is about an attack by members of the KKK after a track meet in Martinsville, Indiana.  While difficult to write about, that even helped shape me into the person I am today.  "The Mustang" is a simple remembrance of my childhood.  My family was called "salt, pepper, and a little bit of garlic" when I was young.  I'm so thankful that my parents had the courage to spice the world up a bit!

Beautiful Day - Nanda Nunnely

It is a beautiful day.
Wind rusing by me,
each hurdle easier to overtake.
My legs no longer need the ground.
Earth is a hindrance, and
I want to fly.

Later,
looking down on the field,
I remember the gun.
The sound gave me power.
My body sprang into action,
but now I can't move.
I hear the sound,
releasing someone else from their stance,
but I'm fixed.  Alone?
Powerless.
Why can't I run?

White encircles me,
familiar colors
but a different design:
shape of a dragon.
I have no right to be here.

I look up at the sun
trying to remember
it is a beautiful day.
Words spit at me are replaced
by quiet,
and the sound of the gun.

Now
I know why I didn't run.
It was easier to lie still.
Pretend it wasn't happening.
Find power in stillness.
Survive.

After the blood,
the fists,
and the fun,
it was a beautiful day.
I won.

I'm a Racist - Hillary Fogerty, Ph.D

I'm a racist
, he says, all casual-
Like it doesn't matter.
I'm sorry
, i say, astonished-
because it does.
it isn't just
my president
he's talking about
, or the other people
in the room-
the white ones
, the black ones.
he's talking about
my family
my brother Craig
my Uncle Earl
my cousins-
my white black, Cherokee, mixed race cousins.
Well think how it was
, he says,
a skinny gay white boy like me
, in prison,
with all those black me
, who aren't having sex.
i don't answer.
I have a swastika tattooed on my ass
, he says,
by way of clarification.
i want to ask him
if he had it before prison,
if the mark of hatred bound him to his lvoers,
or if he'd had to explain it
to every man who sought to hold his naked body.
i want to ask him
if he got it in prison,
if the mark of hatred stopped potential rapists,
or if it had served to incite
every man who wanted to punish his pale body.
i want to ask him
, but i don't.
i promised this was a safe place
to be out,
to be honest
and it isn't his fault,
i thought he was a queen
, not a racist.

Tasha Martin

Tasha Martin is a double English major earnign degrees in Professional/Technical and Literary Studies.

A Woman's Roaming Mind - Tasha Martin

I often feel so small,
Like a child here, cradled
In the warm crevices of your arm.
It curls around my body;
You're holding me to
Protect me.

I feel safe like a child,
But you're not my father;
You've taken his place.
And I have to admit I feel
Slightly jealous of our daughter.
You'll protect her in ways

I am beyond saving
With your arms covered
In skin too soft to be
Dangerous or frightening;
Skin too soft for this old soul
That lives in your young body.

There are things that weigh
On your mind that I wouldn't
Wish on any kid our age.
But we have to be adults
Without the luxury of acting
Foolish.  Until I find myself

Drawn up in these strong arms
And am reminded of how
Inviting they can be when you
Tighten them around my body
Or carry our sleeping babes

Off to bed so we can at last
Be foolish.

In these arms where
I often feel so small.

Charles Solomon

Charles Solomon is an undecided major.  He enjoys chocolate milk and beach volleyball.

Late Night Television - Charles Solomon

"I'm sure this is the finest filet knife they've ever used,"
says the figure projecting from the television's half-light.
7 elderly women in Greensboro just relinquished $39.99 of their
soul so they might master a salmon like those thick Alaskan hands
that summon, from the spirit's forgotten chasms, images of lost husbands.
If I look close enough, I can see these eyes, bloodshot, in the excessive
shine of 3 payments of $13.33.  Even so, there is much inside me that longs
to pick up the phone and, after 10 strokes with precision fingers,
be the proud owner of enough razor-edged lethality to slaughter
a Plains-worth of Buffalo with the necessary fervor of my sacred ancestors.
Mine will be a tragic figure, home-shopping addict, head full
of the kind of false emotion that Snodgrass warned about, home full of
multi-purpose mechanic bliss.  "Call now, your time is running out,"
says the man.  This is truth, I think, as I fall asleep to
the whir of miniature blenders.

Evolution - Luke Smith

I should've asked you to dance
when,
in my mind,
I saw your red dress of slick silk melting off your body like plastic
revealing your beautiful olive skin and perfect breasts.
I was just a boy, and with no idea I ran to get a beer for some words of wisdom,
a Miller High-Life, "the cham-pag-knee of beers."
You came over and I was as tight as a chastity belt,
but my left hand, fearing Carpal Tunnel Sundrome
and an entire life of flapping my jack,
kept ordering and shoving brews down my throat,
until my clothes melted off of my body
like a chimp's fur melting off in evolution.
And I, naked and completely unashamed, tasted like beer,
and you tasted like margaritas.

Escape from the Things (OR Why you should let your kids sleep with the lights on) - Bonnie Amanda Gardner

I told you once about the 'Things'---they drive me so insane.
The demons, the goblins, the hideous hulks...They're causing me such pain.
The light comes on; they vanish away; I hear the Queen Beast yell,
"TURN IT BACK OFF!"  My mother storms in, striking fear in my every cell.
"The 'Things!' The 'Things!' The HORRIBLE 'THINGS!'  Those creatures are driving me nuts!
I cannot sleep with them prowling like that! I'm not just being a putz!"
Mom groans an angry groan and storms back out the door again.
I'm thinking "They're gone! The 'Things' are all gone!"  and begin to rejoice,
but then...

A thundering step echoes in the hall---In the doorway my Daddy appears.
"SPEAK UP!" he yells, and I begin to beg through terrified tears.
"The creepers!  The Crawlers!  And all else that follers!  I'm telling the truth to you, Dad!
The goo-dripping ghouls and whatsits with wings...they really are driving me mad!"
In a rage, he slams down the switch, and jerks out every light.
Never in my short little life have I ever received such a fright.

"I'll tell you what, these 'Things' have GOT to be more tolerable than
Waking to see the lights on every night, despite the nine o'clock ban!"
"But Dad, the Queen Beast with her stinky green slime comes out when the lights aren't on,
And she and the devils and beasties so many torment me till the dawn!"

I run from the room, a huge hairy fist he slams into the wall.
I cower and cry in a half-empty linen closet in the hall.
I slam the door, turn on the light, and in a corner sit,
Wishing that I was old enough to just pack my bags and split.
"I'm sorry, my Daddy, but now they will get you, and torture you through the night.
You really should have listened to me...I TOLD you I was right."
There in the dark of my little room, my daddy sits on my bed
Wondering why I'm seeing these 'Things' and if I've no brain in my head.

With a puff of green smoke, the Queen Beast appears, and she looks quite indignant.
"Now the lights are all gone, you've nowhere to go...Do you really still think I'm a figment?
Oh, Daddy, don't cry, for I'll tell you why....Without YOU it would be the girl.
And to be quite honest, the flesh of the young really makes me want to hurl?
Now come out, you monsters and phantoms and ghosts, tie him up nice and tight.
We don't want him getting away, you know...we're having a FEAST tonight!
You see you old dot, what the little girl thought really just wasn't true.
We were waiting for you to come and save her, 'cuz we were after YOU!"

I'm sorry this talk I told you, Daddy's fate so ghastly and grim,
But I'm glad that he's gone, 'cuz we moved to Taiwan while The 'Things' were still fat off of him.

Patricia Pham

Aspiring filmmaker, passionate photographer, lover of her dog Ubu, enjoys loud music.

Exam #4 - Patricia Pham

Exam #4
Name: Katie Boxer

Directions:  Summarize your individual life experiences into short phrases for each area.  Please separate using commas.

Part 1.  Childhood.
Answer:
1.     Fingerpains, Sesame Street, scared of Barney, four-leaf clovers, babysitter's meatloaf, Happy Meals with chicken nuggets, mud cakes, mean big brother, Saturday mornings, tea parties, grape flavored bubbles, fireflies, flowers, bunk beds, riding in the shopping cart, Kool-Aide mustaches, waves in the bathtub, bounce-ball, afraid of the jungle gym, treehouses with bugs, bike rides, bike accidents, swimming at the Y, making bed sheet forts, plastic lunch boxes, afraid of the dark, horrible braces, poofy bangs, Bible camp, roller blades, pink bandages, thumb wars, Indian rug burns, dad's piggy back rides, getting sick on the swings, chocolate ceral, water balloon fights

Part 2.  Adolescence.
Answer:
2.     Text messages, locker combinations, black guitars, boys with acne, girls with lip piercings, cigarettes behind the shed, tears blur the road, dirty bathrooms, fireworks in the trees, beers in the cemetery, coolers full of rum, bongs in the bathroom, shoes dangling from one foot, dime sacks, burning incense, lava lamp that never works, hamburgers at #:00 AM, Waffle House haze, catholic school uniforms, sinus infections, addiction, police, orange condoms, MDMA, methamphetamine, LSD, ketamine, psilocybin, Boones Farm, treadmills, short skirts, car accidents, egging houses, ugly prom dresses, stealing music, hair extensions, push-up bras, sparkly lip gloss, moisturize, exfoliate, tattoos, lip rings, cocaine, skippuing class, smoking outside concerts, loneliness, betrayal, STD's, miscarriages, mothers crying at funerals, overdose, dad's pills, climbing over fences, mom's screaming, no seat belts, broken windows, expensive shoes, jail cells, vomit on the steering wheel, never got to say goodbye, black eyeliner, annoying ringtones, random road trips, sneaking into movies

Part 3.  Adulthood.
Answer:
3.     Deadlines, interest rates, monthly statements, down payments, deposits, W-2s, W-4, 1040EZ forms, gas prices, stamps at the post office, schedule conflicts, time cards, receipts, shopping for pens, Grandpa's dead, half hour breaks, pink and yellow highlighters, no parking spots, fold the whites, 10% tips, sleep deprivation, black coffee, take out the trash, nicotine patches, mandatory, keep the thermostat at 68, coupons in the newspaper, parking tickets, dirty dishes, insurance cards, oil changes, resumes, waiting rooms, stupid printer, overdraft protection, prorate, meeting rooms

Part 4.  Find the sum of all parts.  Show work.
Answer:
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
a

Exposition On The Way - Hillary Fogerty, Ph.D

Tell me, dear one,
Are there signposts
On the way to a man's heart?
Might one find marked
"Here lies thy way"
Across a recipe for pecan pie-
Kentucky Bourbon,
Brown sugar and butter,
Corn syrup and molasses-
Leading me like
Cholesterol precursors
Through your arteries and veins?
Would a postscript to Cinnamon Rolls
Tell me how to catch your eye,
Drenched rich in vanilla,
Spread smooth in cream cheese,
Bubbling spices bursting
Through the luscious folds uprising
In the sweet soft yeasty bread?
Could a calculation exacting
For a sinful chocolate mousse
Gauge the temperature of reception,
Whipped, full-bodied cream, atop
The spoon upon your tongue?
Is the path to a man's heart
Dusted by confectioners
And lined with apple tarts?
Is his lust gustatory
A Candyland of grown men,
A Gingerbread house of joy?
Tell me, dear one; do not lie.
     For the cookbooks are ready,
     Greased are the pans,
     The oven door is open,
     I'm waiting for the man.

Elizabeth Fry

Writing has always been an escape for me.  It is far better than any food or drug to release the inner workings of your own mind.  Even if others do not understand it I have released a small bit of my soul for consumption.  Purging that small place allows me more room for growth.

Inside The Act - Elizabeth Fry

His hair, her hair, I like it.
I'll go to the store and get it later.
I go ouot and buy it so I can be just like them, yet I yearn to be different.
I hear them whispering behind me.
They include me just to berate me and in some demented way I'm okay with taht.
At least I'm not forgotten.
I spend so much of myself trying to make a difference to others, that I've forgotten who I really am.
I remember being a runner.
I'm a professional at starting over, abandoning bits and pieces of my soul along the way.
Knowing I will morph into something they will like better next time.
Who could love the real me?
Who wants a beaten broken girl, now grown into a woman with no way to heal the scars?
I hide those scars with comedy; the laughter helps people not focus on my imperfections.
Maybe just focus on the imperfections I choose to shine the light on.
Inside I'm just so insecure and incomplete.
I've done so much and accomplished so little.
Half my life is over and I have nothing to show for it, other than the lies I've allowed others to believe.
"Oh, she's so funny, happy, and energetic."  I'm really so tired, lonely, and scared.
I'm always turned on so others can find happiness in me, just once I'd like to dim the light and put out the "no vacancy" sign.

Amanda Osburn

Contrary to the cynical tone of my pieces, I'm actually a quite upbeat and good-natured sort of person.  I enjoy foisting my opinions on unsuspecting strangers and singing obnoxious songs with my children.  I think the key to happiness in the home is good taste in music and a good sense of humor; I'm happy to report my husband and I have these qualities in common.  We try to stay informed on politics, music, and technology.  I'm looking forward to constatly learning new things through a career in education and I'm also sorry for offending any future would-be employers and/or school board members.  So, hire me...I'm harmless...I swear.

Shine - Amanda Osburn

I glow to blind you and
Í smile so you won't see.
I glimmer so I'll appear true
when everything's fake
inside of me.
I brightly sparkle but
I have no blood.
I'm an empty
shapeless cell.
So I shimmer
like I know I should,
and shine my
way to Hell.

Kayla Fultz

I have always been intrigued by a writer's ability to turn an idea, or a moment, into words that evoke a reader's imagination.  It amazes me when a writer deeply explains a character's emotion or physical reaction within a sentence.  Chopin's "Story of an Hour" is one of my favorites because she says so much with so few words.  "Six Months of Silence" is incomparable to Chopin, but I hope readers will at least understand the depth of confusion within Maura and her overwhelming need for understanding and closure after her dad died.  I would like to thank my husband, Kevin, for the tears he wiped away while I wrote this story and my children, Dawson, Garrett, Hope, and Charity, who, unfortunately, will never know their grandpa.

Silence - Kayla Fultz

This poem is an imitation of "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou.

My face will never know
Thee feel of tears
Drip-dropping down my cheeks
Still I cry

My smile will never know
The turn of a frown
Hanging from my lips in agony
Still I cry

My arms will never know
The healing hugs from hearts
Hoping they can help
Still I cry

My ears will never know
The words of comfort
Spoken by a close friend
Still I cry

My shoulder will never know
The warmth of a hand
Laid lovingly upon it in understanding
Still I cry

My mind will never know
The peace and comfort of
Letting you go
Still I cry

My soul will never know
Where you are until
I let you go
Still I cry

I cry for all the memories we lost
I cry for all the words we left unspoken
I cry
I cry
I cry
Because you didn't

Bonnie Amanda Gardner

From the 2009 edition of bordertown.

Poetry is a pursuit of great emotional involvement, and luckily, has many benefits...as illustrated by both poems I submitted.  It can help you express what prose cannot, [Metamorphosis] and even lighten your mood. [Escape from the 'Things']  Take, for instance, a challenge for the depressed: Think up the most serious topic you can and use poetic forms and such to cast a more humorous light on it.  Or, get melodramatic about something absurd.  It works just about every time...and you may wind up rolling with laughter...it works for me all the time, and can really turn your mood around for the better.  After all, you feel what you read!

Metamorphosis - Bonnie Amanda Gardner

I was so carefree once...
Like a butterfly, I fluttered along,
my wings glinting in the sunlight.
The I was noticed, and something changed.
I changed.
I became a firefly,
flashing my brilliant golden glory to an endless night
and my shadowed admirers.
I don't know how it happened, but I changed again...
Right when I was caught.
Now, a Cicada in a jar,
I crawl in circles, chattering,
wearing my legs to rawness.
I fling myself against the invisible barrier,
trying ever more to climb the slick glass walls
and escape my stifling prison.
I'm suffocating.  I'm starving.  I'm lonely.
Why won't they let me go?
Why won't the set me free?
Free to buzz in the fields of clover,
flying up to Dover...
But soon, my life will be over.
No one notices the despairing Cicada lying in her jar,
weak in body from lack of oxygen,
weak in will from lack of love.
No one notices at all.
They're busy watching butterflies.

Hillary Fogerty, Ph.D

From the 2009 edition of bordertown.

My writing process differs dramatically, depending on the genre.  For creative writing, especially poetry, my process is relatively organic.  Generally, the impetus is a line-a phrase, an idea, an inspiring though-and if I have paper and pencil handy I write it down immediately.  I then try to push the line as far as I can, right in that moment.  I prefer to "finish" a poem once part of it is in my head; in this way, I'm a bit like Coleridge, always hopeful the work is a "Kubla Khan" and always worried that an interruption will ruin it.  My academic work tends to involve copious research and necessitates a more formal approach, whereas my poetry is generally more playful and quirky: it's more like me.

We Send Them Home Broken - Hillary Fogerty, Ph.D

We send them home broken,
shards of shrapnel in their sides,
skin puckering white over old scars,
Semper Fi and company pride
inked across the aches left
in their bodies and their minds.
We send them home broken:
bullets lodged in their hips
bulging disks in their backs,
crippled and paralyzed by pain-
standing by sheer tenacity,
still duty bound to walk like Marines.
We send them home broken:
alone, they recall horrors in the quiet,
tears dancing on the edge of lashes,
silencing the everlasting Ooo-Rah
to show you their wounds.
We send them home broken,
still coughing up creosote,
eyes burned by oil fires,
ever bandaging their damaged souls.
They drop place names like grenades:
Kuwait.  Fallujah.  Baghdad.  Home.
And we send them home.  Broken.

Luke Smith

From the 2009 edition of bordertown.

My father was a park ranger and a land lord.  I owned a beebee gun by the time I was 7 and a cell phone by the time I was 18.  I hope one day to own a couple of llams or yaks or something that I can shear because I want to make my own clothes eventually.  I recently got a haircut and I am soon to be married.

Family Reunion - Luke Smith

When I was younger,
every few months or so, my brothers, sisters and I
would pile into my Dad's maroon Ford club wagon
and drive on an overly curvy road for hours to a park
where a pile of hicks and decrepit "soon to be..."s sat waiting,
like a pack of cultures to catapult theemselves from their lawn chairs and
picnic tables
onto a cornucopia of casseroles: Green Bean, Corn, Rice, Regular Bean,
Broccoli,
and that weird one with the chips on top.
We ate on paper plates and spooned dish after dish
including that thing my aunt makes with a few pieces of lettuce
floating like icebergs in a bowl of ranch and cashews.
The adults drank tea and the kids Kool-Aid
and after the feast, the bigger ones played basketball
and the younger ones played in the water spigot.
Someone always fell prey to a wasp, and the rides home always smelled like
vomit.
We'd stop at a gas station halfway,
and then the van smelled like vomit and circus peanuts.
With our legs and backs glued with sweat to the polyester seats, the rest of
the trip was spent pleading for our father to turn the AC on high,
but he never would.
Now that I'm older,
we don't have reunions anymore,
but the family got together again last week when my grandmother's last sister
died,
and after the wake, we went to the church basement
and there the same casserole dishes carried my childhood
in the form of green beans, cashews, and broccoli.  The adults drank coffee
this time,
and my brother and I smoked a cigarette behind the church playground
and reflected that
funerals had now become
our family reunions.

Jessica Low

From the 2009 edition of bordertown.

Hi!  My name is Jessy Low.  I was born and raised here in Joplin, MO.  I am close enough to thirty years old to round up the number and just say that I am thirty.  I have been married for seven years, to Rhett, and I have a beautiful, and wild, two-year old daughter named Emma.  I will graduate in May 2009 with a B.A. in English Literature and a B.A. in General Writing.  I plan to attend graduate school soon and to concentrate on Irish and Middle-Eastern post-colonial literature.  Hopefully, someday, I will teach literature at a university and retire in the Peace Corps.

A Forgotten Doll - Jessica Low

Miniature familiar hands of
tender, olive skin
ungracefully grasp
the plastic baby doll
to her little chest.

They twist
artificially shiny,
wax covered hair
with tiny fingertips.

Ireland,
a reissued Volkswagon,
old, new
never the same again.

"Would you like to
take your baby home?"

"My baby,"
she asserts and tosses her baby
to the ground.

Jessica L. Smith

The 2009 edition of bordertown author biography for Jessica L. Smith.

I'm a nineteen-year old dreamer with stars in my eyes, and I'm learning that I can translate those dreams and stars onto paper with a stroke of the pen.  I'm also learning that my greatest fear-aside from soggy paper-is allowing my work to be read, whether it be by the eyes of peers and teachers, or family and strangers.  This fear is my concrete trap, and with time, I will learn to sprout free from it.

Sidewalk Struggle - Jessica L. Smith

With no thought to consequence,
The seed,
             abandoned in the bustle,
sprouts through the concrete trap,
tender and unabashed.

The happy green,
            stark against the steel garden,
sways in the exhaust breeze.

The lonely green,
            foreign in the global buzz,
dodges clattering heels and whipping coattails.

The dying green,
            drowns in shadows,
            burning in thirst,
perishes, unnoticed.

Kayla Isaac

The following description of Kayla was published in the 2009 edition of bordertown.

I am a junior pursuing a Bachelor's of Secondary education in English with a minor in psychology.  I wrote my poem "The Dollar" as an assignment in Dr. Joey Brown's Creative Writing class.  At first, I experienced difficulty finding topics to create this poem, until I decided to write about experiences being a waitress at a Chinese restaurant.  I am 22 years old and I have been affiliated with this restaurant since I was 17 years old.  So, I have experienced my share of frustrating customers, endless nights, and the permanent smell of food.  Despite my negative experiences as a waitress, I have the opportunity to meet and befriend interesting people.

The Dollar - Kayla Isaac

Waitressing defines insanity
at a Chinese buffet.
The smell of General Chicken
leaves permanent skin stains.
English, Korean, Spanish
a chaotic mix of languages.
Savage pot-bellied pigs
squeal over a dollar.
Friday night,
wasabi hell.

Jared Sanders

 The description of Jared Sanders from the 2009 edition of bordertown states that "Jared Sanders is earning a degree in English: Literary Studies."

Traffic - Jared Sanders

Bleary, sunless morning.
Calm and lucid in my car.
I merge, a tiny drop
in a mighty river.
Someone cuts me off.
I'm tempted to yell,
but I don't.
I'll get where I'm going,
either way.

Howie Lindeman

This is the description of Howie Lindeman from the 2009 edition of bordertown.

"I write like I speak about what I know, think, or observe.  Oh, and I'm big on word economy."

It Takes A Big Dog To Weigh A Ton - Howie Lindeman

Things my 81 year old father will NEVER say:

Here son, let me get your bar tab.

We're meeting at Ink-Atak at ten.  I'm getting a butterfly.

Let me have twenty wings with Blazing Sauce.  And a pitcher.  And keep 'em comin'.

We was just chillin' with some Tech9ne.

Slugbug blue! No slugbacks!

¿Cómo está, señora?

Hey man, how much for a peach blunt?

BCNUQT :-))

Yes, I'd like to place a collect call.

Of course I passed...I wrote the answers on my shoe.

Only six bucks for a triple espresso?  What a deal!

I like big butts and I cannot lie.

Can I crash on your couch?  I think the cops are watching my place.

You want fries with that?

Look, I got these Christian Louboutin python pumps for $1000!

Shit, I swallowed an assload of gas siphoning an Escalade at the mall.

SHOTGUN!

Hey, check out my new beer pong shirt!

Fly?  Not me, I'm goin' Greyhound.

I got the high score on Guitar Hero!

My other car is a Bugatti Veyron.

COP...throw it out the window!

Oh look!  Katie just poked me on Facebook!

You've never climbed Everest?

How about ChuckECheese for a change?

Yes, Your Honor, I completed my SATOP!

Pass me the ball.... PASS ME THE BALL!

I wasn't doing NOTHING, mama, he pulled me over 'cuz I'm BLACK!

I had an erection for more than four hours, so I called my healthcare professional.

How much for an eight-ball?

Bring me two red-headed sluts, a Cosmopolitan, and a Fat Tire.

Check this dope TBG shirt!

GIVE ME THE MONEY I HAVE A GUN*

I think I'll get a kitten.

Blow me.

Where are the smiley face Band-aids?

Start us off with the escargot...

Hell yeah I understand my rights, but I'm telling you, it's NOT MY FUCKING WEED!

Welcome to Italy.

I'm bored with differential equations.  I'm working on base numbers now.

Of course I voted for Obama!

*sorry Howie, apparently Blogger doesn't have all the fonts for this line. 

Previous Submissions

Now that the bordertown blog is up and running, we will be using it to showcase some of the works from the 2009 edition of the magazine, and the works from this year's edition as well.

We'll be posting these works as we have time, so if you were in the 2009 magazine and your work isn't up here yet, don't worry, it will be soon.

Also, we will post the biography of any of the authors with works on the blog.