The Mute (by Elizabeth MacDougal)

She lost herself to sacred things
Adored the polished brass
Became the sainted bones

From our hardened lips
We turn marble words
That cannot rise
That cannot take us with them

The wood could not be trained to speak
So she burned the forest down
Walked away with a nail in her mouth, stone in her hand

Found a telephone pole, called the place Sedbo'u
Knocked a For Sale sign
In above her head, her back to the post

From our hardened lips
We turn marble words
That will not rise
That would not take us with them

I passed with vinegar three times
She wanted water, but
That was never done before

Now Sedbo'u is Spatium
The wires were placed underground
Everyone knew this was coming
But nobody saw her go

From our hardened lips
We turn marble words
That will not rise
We polish them

Professor Patrick Lewis Grangerford, Pre-Law, & Graduate Physical Sciences, & Co-Chair of Dept.

(By Madeleine MacDougal)

“Professor Patrick Grangerford,” read the gold letters on the door of room 228, which is where Professor Patrick Grangerford teaches. He has 137 pupils to whom he lectures at nine o’ clock in the morning, and again at four in the afternoon.
His pupils enjoy him and his classes are full. In fact, Prof. Grangerford has just been given a salary raise, but he has yet to learn this; instead, as he packs his things–a favorite pen, or a coffee mug given him by a student–into his bag, he’s thinking about his little daughter at home, who’s just started liking Barbie and who watches Dragon Tales on the TV. Just like on every other Thursday afternoon–it is Thursday, and Prof. Grangerford is flying to New Orleans this weekend–he locks the supply cabinet, shuts off the overhead, and then pulls the shades to.
But something happens, and he does not pull the shades (and maybe the janitor would question this, but he wouldn’t ever have an answer for why). Prof. P. Grangerford either forgets to pull them, or else is stopped--prevented physically from doing so–and something has caused this (because it can't have been any fault of his own).
Actually, Professor G. is probably in the act of doing so when, crawling onto the window frame to reach a shade, he looks through a window pane and sees something through it. He cannot understand, at first, what he's seeing, so squints, but something has undeniably clumb onto a high-up windowsill within the stairwell of another wing, and is (probably) clutching its knees (or maybe it's lying prostrate); but, anyhow, that figure in the window is a person–a startling person–whom Prof. G. knows (after he recovers from the sight) is in distress.
After a few minutes’ elapse, he has come through a couple hallways and has found the stairwell and the phantom. She is sitting, and she is dangling a leg where it rubs the glass. She’s oblivious, even though Professor Grangerford knows that his phantom (no longer a phantom, but a person with a thought and a will) has heard his tapping shoes on the polished floor.
“G’deevning”–his words are not so loud, nor so sudden, and are almost expected.
A nod replaces reply. He becomes frustrated.
“Are you all right?”–this time, his words seem to break the atmosphere, and they sound frustrated. The creature, the girl, must know that the words are for his gain, and not for hers–but they are truly spoken out of concern.
“Yes.”
She speaks in what is almost a cough. Professor G. hears the dry lips tear apart before the utterance of speech, and it seems the very muscles in that unattuned throat have nearly forgotten their use.
“Mmm hmm.”
His action has proved ineffectual. The Professor's reaction evoked by this student is useless. Suavity has failed him: he climbs the stairs and his tapping shoes tap down along another hallway around the corner.

Retrograde Creation

Let there be no light to flaw the dark.
Let sky
and land
and sea form into one.
Let Adam’s feet
return to clay,
and breath,
Let it d i f f u s e
before it pass the tongue

Into the crumbling man turning earth
Into the black gas, choking,
Into mechanical turning of earth
Into rivers, streams yet-smoking

While some billion counted crowns are fed
Necessity commercialized, electric shocks;
Some billion-dollar industry thanking,
(moments some billion years undoing).

Earth bled, Say, and shrank to nothing.
Say I shrank and nothing bled,
That my lips one dark breath choked
On indecision|Barring Eden

This
no sword.
This
(in my head).

The Elicitor Volume XXIV is here!

Please join us at the Pleasant Street Tea Company on Monday, March 21 at 3:30 pm to celebrate the arrival of the 2009-2010 (Volume XXIV) Elicitor with a special preview of the 2010-2011 (Volume XXV) issue, which will come out in June.

Volume XXIV includes work by Sarah Zuidema, Madeline MacDougal, Tyler Devlin, Micaela O'Connor, Joanna McKinnon, Wes Dunn, Maryka Gillis, Alexandra Hanley, Hannah Sumner, Pauline Cruz, Elizabeth MacDougal, Kristina Bandoni, Alex Bigger-Allen, Philip Curcuru, Ryan Fulford, Kara Papa, and last year's editors Eric Brown, Amy Carpenter, Hayden Wilson, and Terri Moody.

The preview of volume XXV includes a photograph by Lucas Olson, microfiction by Nicole Dahlmer, and a poem by Elizabeth MacDougal.

Join us!

......... ...-elizabeth macdougal.

Low Expectations (By Elizabeth Macdougal)

When this mottled sycamore no longer breathes
Nor wants of limbs they hewed to clear the view
Of that, the breath of this transpired to dew,
Young waterway gone brackish, salt marsh greaves
I could recall from grasses now frost sheaves,
Divert my mind from roads salt-crusted, cracked
That brackish turn the sweeter water (cast
By car tires, trudging, gritty splashes; leaked
To huddled roots corroding froze-bark sleeves
Tucked up, tight, pericyclic; toxin-wracked),
Could overlook, not focus my fault shared,
Or silent tongue, preserving (hushed) the soul,
To know of somewhere's influence yet spared,
That time dispensing which: facile--until.

Low Expectations, or One If By Sea (By Tom Martin)

It was dark, and it was cold, and it was quiet.

And then the rain came.

That's all I remember.

But it might have gone like this:

It was a Thursday evening when I made the decision, as good a day as any to be drastically dramatic. “It's now or never,” I say. And “never” was really not an option at all. The moment was now.

I get in, close the door. No sound, no warmth. It's cold. It's always cold here. Even in the blistering heat of the summer's reign, this town is still cold, cold and unforgiving.

I drive down the hills. The roads aren't smooth, not safe at all, but I go faster and faster until-bump-I almost crashed, I swear I almost crashed.

It was as if my life flashed before my eyes.

And how very dreary it was.

The roads are flat now, better for the brakes they say.

I stop, even though I don't have to, look, even though I don't have to.

What exactly is the right-of-way anyways?

Which way am I going, how do I have it, and is it really right?

I don't really question, I just think.

I pull out into the street and I just wait, just for a little bit, for no real reason at all.

What if this is my last moment?

What if right now, a car speeding by in the oppressive darkness strikes me dead, cold.

What if a meteor falls from the sky and crushes me into a million little pieces, gone.

What if?

A few more moments pass me by and I'm closer now. I'm closer to the shore. I can sense it as I roll down my windows and inhale the scent, the salty, bitter cold of the sea air. It thrusts past me, what else, cold. And just when I begin to think that maybe this isn't right, maybe there is no perfect place, I am here, this is it. I pull over to the side of the road, get out of my car and walk slowly, but surely to the bridge. I walk the planks, they creak, I don't care, it's none of their business. The sand brushed upon the wooden floor beneath me causes traction between it and my shoes. “Don't” it says, “go back”.

But I keep walking. I keep walking.

As I take my first steps into the sand, I nearly couldn't get back up, it pulls me in, trying to engulf me in one fell swoop. Over and over again, I escape. I hate the sand and have no time for it now. No time. I continue the routine until the sand is hard enough and more stable that it lets me go. I am practically thrown upon the beach. I walk little by little to the shore's line. It ebbs and flows in a rhythmic pattern, pushing closer and yet farther away from me. The stars are all I see above, small specks in the massive insignificance. The tide comes in higher now, it reaches my shoes. I paid good money for them. Such a shame. Splash, splash, splash. I'm an obstruction. An obstacle.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that…

Why think anymore, why bother? This is it, this is the moment. The sea is calling me. I look out for one last moment; the expansiveness of the ocean astounds me and terrifies me all at the same time. I would be just as essential there as I am here. Might as well be. I run. I can't jump, it's up to my ankles. So I run. I run into the sea and I don't stop. I'm soaking wet. I hate wet socks, I hate them. I run until I can't run any longer, until my feet can't touch the ground and until I can't feel anything at all. I float flat on my back and look up. But it was then, that I remember, looking up, that a drop of water hit my forehead. It was dark, and it was cold, and it was quiet. And then the rain came. It poured down unto me and then I realized that this isn't how it's supposed to end, and that I'm not the best swimmer, and the stars were there for a reason, and then I remembered that he said he would never let us perish by flood ever again.

So I got out, I got out of there. I pushed my way back to the beach, and fell down again once I hit the land. I looked up again, still in the pouring rain, and thought this was good enough. So I laid there and waited, and breathed.

When I was ready, I got up, and started to walk back to my car, and back home.

Pretending none of this had ever happened, and that it was all better now.

Which, I'd like to think, it was.