Search The Bellwether Review, 2025

< Back Yew Shannon Sullivan Spring is here. Sun heats my uppermost foliage, and flowers erupt from the pimpled skin of my smaller branches. Columbine and strawberries flower in the field nearby, along with the fir trees across the river. I can taste their exuberance, carried through the webs of mycelia and roots we share. In four seasons, the seeds they are forming now will be sprouting around them. My seeds will not sprout. My own flowers will not be pollinated. I witness pollen travel between the other trees and plants, on wind and bees and butterflies, and know there will be none for my new flowers. There must be no male yew tree growing near enough for his pollen to reach me. I am the only yew here, a female unable to pollinate myself in the way of the firs. Each spring, I wait to see if my seeds will develop, but they never do. When I was younger, I wondered how the seed that started me found its way here. Was it carried by the river, or did it travel in the belly of an elk? How did I come to be so far away from the rest of my species? I am no longer young and do not expect an answer to my questions. Several seasons ago, the insects arrived. They laid their eggs on my branches and deep in the crevices of my bark. When the eggs hatched, the emerging larvae latched into my twigs, eating their fill of the resources I had gathered to nourish myself and my potential seeds. Season after season, my body incubates eggs that aren’t my own and dwindles as new generations of nymphs feed. For how many more springs will I be able to produce flowers? Soon, if there is another yew, it won’t matter if his pollen does reach me. My attention drifts back to the present, to the field steaming in the sun’s heat, water evaporating from the damp soil. Tall grasses swish in the breeze, each with its own characteristic movement. There among the grasses is a new gesture; someone grows pliant and sturdy and low to the ground. Someone who was not there last season, whose kind I have never observed, but whom I already know better than any other. I reach out, signaling through underground networks to the new yew tree. Welcome, seedling. Author Bio Shannon Sullivan is a lifelong Oregonian, perpetually interested in Oregon’s natural world, history and possible futures. Writing speculative fiction has provided a new means for her to explore themes of ecology, disaster, fear and hope.

< Back Over the Under Waves Moriendi Lenore Is this what quicksand feels like? Ocean waves dampen the sand around my feet with each return, sinking me towards the center of the Earth. Are those screams? No, just laughter… Gaze torn from my disappearing limbs, to my cousins as they dive under the waves like sea creatures in a film. Water crashes into my legs again, hitting my knees with the force to throw me overboard, I do not waver from my perch. The sand has held me to it with grainy hands, molded me into a monument, chiseled, then smoothed by sandpaper wind, an unlikely sculptor my curiosity has become. Am I the only artifact the sea foam has tricked into existence? What an image that must be, do tourists gawk and flock to view how curiosity tempts the cat? Do they simply check it off, another item on their bucket-list. Tide leaves, the intrusive blight of what if demands I sit down, back to the waves, just to see… Beach has me firm as a pedestal to marble, like the fall from a rollercoaster peak, heart swaps with my stomach, while my feet are ripped free from the bind the sand alluded to hold dear. Somersaulting under the sea, no gravity can hold me, until the archaeologists find the remains of a sculpture held once more in the briny grip of the beach. Wringing out the memories of the last failed attempt to swim from my hair, my father sits under an umbrella, not content to smell of salt, hey! You tried going under, good job! ; I nod in acquiescence. Today was not a day for killing the hopes of others. Summoned to the waves, I watch sea and sand move over my feet, with a sweet caress, unbothered by the way they nearly claimed me as their lifelong companion. What would happen if I did it again? Author Bio Moriendi Lenore is a Southern California native who moved to Oregon in 2008. They are finishing up their second year at PCC and plan to pursue a degree in Creative Writing and Film Studies. Their writing tends to focus around all things that go bump in the night; along with variations of folklore and mythology. When not at home with their cat, Schrödinger, working on projects or playing TTRPGs with friends, they are with their dog, Chopper, and can be found hiking around Oregon.

< Back Rose City J. Artemis Mackay Impurity midwinter baptism rain motor oil swells concrete crevices disgorge towards spotless white sneakers rhapsodic fit with light blue denim, what a throwback, how eighties I arrive penitent at the bourbon altar a stranger makes turgid confession I can’t take {that} I wait out side for rideshare rain falls in the biblical sense – hey noah – what a nightscape, how cozy city worn to the nub – hallelujah through gritted teeth. – Absolution I’m not waterproof but body can hack it, half gills sprout in northwestern damp hurried steps down cue the groaning hardwood staircase quartet strike a rhythm to the front door weather forecast unconsulted fragrant asphalt pirouette around the street water turn back take caution [heed the roses forever forward] Author Bio Artemis Mackay (they/them) is a queer, trans writer living near a bridge in Portland. They hold a Master’s Degree in Comparative Social Change from University College Dublin and several DSM-V diagnoses.

< Back War Through Chan's Eyes Chan Truong Jones “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness,” Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. once said. These words resonate deeply with me because although I was born after the wars were over in Vietnam, their impact remained constant in my life. The memories of war live on not in history books, but in the experiences of my parents, siblings, and neighbors, carrying unspoken pain and struggles of my community. The experiences of my childhood have never truly faded. Through them, I learned the power of empathy—the ability to listen, to share, and to understand what came before me. The past cannot be changed, but we can learn from it and carry its lessons forward with compassion rather than bitterness. Many stories have been deeply imprinted in my mind from childhood to adult life, and I would love to share them with you. Lost in Their Own Home When I was six years old, my neighbors, Uncle Sau and Uncle Nam, came home from a faraway place called Cambodia. Everyone in the village knew them. Even though they weren’t my real uncles, my family loved them like they were. But when they returned, they weren’t the same, according to my parents and neighbors. I had never met them before because they left Vietnam before I was born. My parents and older siblings used to talk about them like they were heroes. They left when they were just eighteen, young and full of energy. Uncle Sau would talk in a strange language at night— words that didn’t belong there. My mother whispered that it was Cambodian. I didn’t understand why he spoke it in his sleep, or why his voice trembled between fear and anger. His words drifted through the quiet village like ghosts searching for a way home. Uncle Nam, on the other hand, was always quiet, like a shadow moving without a sound. If Uncle Sau was fire, burning with something he could never put out, then Uncle Nam was stone, heavy and still. I was a curious child, always asking questions. One evening, I sat beside Uncle Sau as he stared at the sky. "What happened in Cambodia?” I asked, expecting an adventure story, like the ones my oldest brother told me about heroes and ghosts. He looked at me for a long time before sighing. “We were lucky, little one. We came home with all our arms and legs. Some never came home at all.” His voice was heavy, like a rock sinking in the water. As the days passed, I noticed more things that didn’t make sense. My uncles never slept at night. While the rest of the village rested, they sat outside my grandmother’s house, awake in the dark. Uncle Sau started drinking from a glass bottle that smelled sour. “It helps him sleep,” my mother told me. But the more he drank, the louder he became—yelling at the neighbors, at the sky, at the war. He was angry at everything and nothing at the same time. Uncle Nam didn’t drink. He just sat there, quiet, always staring into the distance, as if his body had returned, but his soul was still somewhere far away. I didn’t understand why they had no home of their own, or why they couldn’t go back to who they were before. The war was over, but it still clung to them like a shadow that never faded. One night, as I lay in bed, I listened to Uncle Sau whispering in his strange language, his voice rising and falling like the wind before a storm. Uncle Nam sat beside him, silent as always. I pulled my blanket up to my chin and whispered to myself, “If they are home now, why do they still seem so lost?” Shadows of the Past The Vietnam War was already over—or so the adults said. But in our village, whispers of it still clung to the air, like the thick smoke of burning rice fields. The war had taken so much from people’s houses, their land, and their families. But I didn’t understand any of that yet. I was just a child, playing barefoot with my friends in the dusk, when the older kids ran toward us, eyes wide with excitement and fear. “There’s a dead body at Ba Muoi’s house… it was a murder,” one of them whispered, his voice trembling. “Do you want to see it?” Ba Muoi worked for the new government at the time, holding the power to decide who could stay in the village and who would be forced to leave for the distant, undeveloped Kinh Te Moi economic zones. Her house was located just fifteen minutes away from ours, up in the neighborhood everyone calls the “upper village.” All the people in our area knew Ba Muoi because of her authority. She was friendly enough to us children, often smiling or nodding as we passed by, but families who had worked for the old government rarely received any warmth from her. A dead body and murder. I had never seen one before. My heart pounded, not with fear but with curiosity. Death was just a word, a thing from stories my siblings told at night, full of ghosts and shadows. “Yes,” I said. And we ran. As we reached Ba Muoi’s house, the air felt wrong. The evening breeze had stopped. The cicadas, usually so loud, had gone silent. The kitchen door was open, swinging slightly as if someone had just passed through. Then I smelled it. A mix of something sweet and something sour. Incense smoke. Flowers. And something heavier, something metallic. Something my young mind could not yet name. The other kids pushed me forward. My feet stepped onto the hard dirt floor, and my eyes landed on the first thing—the blood. It was dark and thick, pooled near a long knife that gleamed in the dim kitchen yellow light. My stomach twisted and hurt, but I couldn’t look away. Then I saw the white chalk lines. And inside the white chalk lines, Ba Muoi was lying there. She wasn’t moving. Her body looked stiff, twisted in a way that didn’t seem real. Her hair was matted to the side of her face; one of her hands held the bloody area, and the other hand was over her head. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I saw what was next to her: green bananas and a bundle of tuberose flowers, their white petals glowing under the flickering candlelight. The smell of tuberose was too strong. It stuck to my nose and clung to my skin. My chest felt tight. I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. I heard whispers behind me. “Thang De giet ba ay!” De. I knew that name. Everyone in the upper village knew that name. He was young, just a little older than my oldest brother. They sent him away to Kinh Te Moi—the Economic Zone—before I was even born. I didn’t really know what “Kinh Te Moi” meant, but I’d heard grown-ups whisper about it when they thought no kids were listening. They said families who went there didn’t come back the same—if they ever came back at all. There was never enough food to eat, and mosquitoes as big as bees bit people all night. The forest was full of scary animals that made people sick. I imagined snakes hiding under their beds, rats running around their feet when they tried to sleep, and people shivering with fevers they couldn’t escape. De’s family has been sent there. His father died first, then his little brother, and another sister. Some said it was sickness. Others said it was hunger. Now, De had returned, but not as the boy who had left—he came back with anger in his chest and a knife in his hand. I didn’t know what anger that big could feel like. I didn’t understand how grief could turn into something sharp, something deadly. But standing there, staring at the blood on the floor, I knew that whatever had happened to De had followed him home. I couldn’t breathe. The walls felt too close. The incense smoke curled toward the ceiling, twisting into shapes I didn’t want to see. Then I ran. I ran past the darkening houses, past the voices of the village women whispering, past the fields that stretched toward longan trees and large tamarind trees with big branches. I could imagine Ba Muoi’s dead body lying there in my mind. I closed my eyes and ran as fast as I could. I didn’t stop until I was home, throwing myself into bed and yanking the blanket over my head. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still see the chalk outline, the blood, the sweet smell of tuberose. That night, I didn’t eat. I didn’t speak. I didn’t sleep. I kept the window by my bed closed. Days later, I heard my mother whispering to my father. “Thang De bi bat roi. Ba no chet. Em no chet. No han ba Muoi vi dua nha no di Kinh Te Moi. No ve giet ba.” The police had taken De away. I imagined him sitting in a dark cell, the smell of blood still clinging to his hands. He was only twenty-five, but what would happen to his life next? Was it over? Ba Muoi was gone. De was gone. The war ended years ago, but it was still taking people—it had taken Ba Muoi’s life and De’s future. I didn’t understand war yet, but I knew one thing: it wasn’t over, just hiding in the hearts of those who had survived it. And from that night on, I could never look at green bananas or smell the scent of tuberose the same way again. The Mother Who Chose Love A sharp crack, the radio buzzed, shattering the afternoon quiet, breaking the stillness like a sudden bolt of electricity. I was just 14 years old, sitting on the floor in a traditional Asian squat, carefully cleaning morning glory—long green stems with hollow interiors and tender, arrow-shaped leaves. My fingers moved methodically, stripping away wilted leaves and snapping each stem into bite-sized pieces, preparing the familiar vegetable for dinner. The radio hummed with static before the voice of an American soldier came through—his words foreign and strange, yet heavy with emotion. He was searching for a woman he called his Mother. Her name was “Me Co.” He had come to Vietnam, to my hometown, in search of her. But everything has changed since 1972. The road, the houses, even the people—he could no longer find the place he once knew. It was the first time since the war that Vietnam had opened its doors to American visitors, and I couldn’t understand why this man, with “his blonde hair and blue eyes,” as the radio host described him, was calling an old Vietnamese woman mother. We were taught in school that De Quoc My la sau—“Đế Quốc Mỹ là xấu”—Imperialist America is bad. But this man’s voice, shaking on the radio, made me wonder if there was more to the story than what we were told. For three weeks, I listened to it every day, waiting for news. Then one afternoon, the radio host announced that someone had found Me Co. The soldier rushed to her house, but when he arrived, all he saw was an altar. A single framed picture of an old woman stared back at him. She was gone. He fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. “Me oi, con ve tre roi”— “Mother, I came back too late!” I imagined the scene as the host described it. The soldier saw a small plate in front of the altar, and inside was a ring. He picked it up, turning it over in his fingers, his breath hitching. It was his. His name and his wife’s name were engraved on the inside. Turning to the woman who now lived in the house, he asked for a hug. Without hesitation, she embraced him, and they both cried. Me Co had been a single mother. Her husband had died in the First Indochina War in 1954, leaving her to raise five children—four sons and a daughter. One by one, her sons joined the war, fighting as Viet Cong soldiers. Three never came home. The last one was still somewhere in the jungle, and Me Co was left alive with her young daughter. By 1972, her daughter was studying in town and couldn’t safely travel back home due to the constant threat of the war, leaving Me Co to live alone. One evening, she found an American soldier crawling into her yard, bleeding heavily from a wound in his leg. He was barely conscious, his body shaking with pain. She froze. He was the enemy, the reason her sons had died. She could have turned him in and reported him to the Viet Cong soldiers who patrolled the village. But when she looked into his face, she didn’t see an enemy. She saw someone’s son. A young man, no older than her own children, afraid and in pain. Her heart clenched, but she hid him. She moved him into the rice warehouse, cleaned his wounds, and wiped away his blood where he had crawled. That night, the Viet Cong came through the village, asking about an American soldier. She stayed silent. The next day, she intentionally cut her own hand, making the wound deep enough to need medicine. This gave her an excuse to visit the doctor, where she secretly gathered the medical supplies she needed to treat him. She nursed him back to health in secret for two weeks, risking her life every day. When he could finally walk again, she disguised him in her son’s old clothes. Wrapping a scarf around his face, she led him through the village, pretending he was her nephew as she walked toward town. When they reached the edge of the safety area, she pointed him toward the American base. Before he left, he took off his ring and placed it in her hands. “To remember me.” Then, with tears in his eyes, he hugged her tightly one last time. He never forgot her, but decades later, when he finally returned, he found her too late; instead, he found her daughter. Holding her hands, he said, “Me Co saved my life. She was my mother. And you—you are her daughter. That makes you my sister.” The daughter told him that her last brother had died in 1975. Her mother had lived the rest of her life alone, missing her children and holding onto the memories of war. And the ring, she had never sold it. She had never lost it. “It was a piece of a life she saved. A reminder of love, even in war.” I sat there, listening to the radio, my heart full. I had learned about the war in school, but I had never learned about this love, about compassion, about forgiveness. Me Co had lost her own children to war, yet she had still saved the life of a soldier—one who had fought on the other side. She had looked past politics, past hatred, past grief. She had simply seen a person in need. That day, I realized that war does not make people enemies. It is fear, pain, and loss that divide us. But kindness—kindness has the power to bring us back together. Sometimes, when we talk about war, we focus on the bombs and the bullets, on everything that’s been destroyed or lost. But what resonates with me most in Me Co’s story isn’t the violence. It’s the warmth of her heart—the way she chose compassion over anger at a moment when most people would have chosen otherwise. I grew up understanding that Vietnamese mothers embody a special kind of love: it’s patient, unwavering, and, most of all, boundless. Even though Me Co had every reason to hate the soldier—he was, in a way, tied to the tragedy of her own sons—she saw past the uniform. She recognized a human being in pain. In that instant, she was not thinking of sides or politics; she was simply a mother who saw someone’s child in need of help. That choice to show mercy rather than vengeance taught me something profound: forgiveness isn’t about forgetting what happened; it’s about refusing to let bitterness define us. We can acknowledge the wounds inflicted by war while still reaching out with kindness. Me Co lost her sons, but she saved another mother’s son. In doing so, she proved that even in the midst of unimaginable hardship, our capacity for empathy can overcome our fears and our anger. This story reminds me of the quiet strength many Vietnamese mothers hold in their hearts: an instinct to protect and nurture life, regardless of who stands before them. It shows how a single act of compassion can bridge the gap between enemies, turning them into family, even if only briefly. That is what I carry with me: the knowledge that a mother’s love transcends borders, ideologies, and resentments. Rather than dwelling on the violence of war, Me Co chose love—a love that says, “Yes, we have suffered, but we will not pass on the suffering.” I will never forget her story, because it urges us to see beyond labels of “enemy” or “ally” and recognize the humanity underneath. In a world that so often chooses war, may we learn to choose love. Letting Go In 2000, my sister, Minh, decided to travel to Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, and Phnom Penh. She needed a companion, so I joined her on a tour group heading from Vietnam to Cambodia. Only later would we realize that half the people on this tour were veterans of the “forgotten war” in Cambodia. At nineteen, I was the youngest one on the bus, and my life was as uncomplicated as a blank sheet of paper. We began our journey by crossing the Tay Ninh border gate, and almost at once, everyone on the bus introduced themselves. Some explained they had come on a memorial trip—an opportunity to remember a time gone by and perhaps find closure. My sister and I hadn’t known we were joining what was essentially a commemorative pilgrimage. We simply wanted to see historic sites. One woman in particular caught my attention: Chi Ha, who looked to be in her early forties. She sat quietly near the front, her expression warm yet tinged with sadness. When she finally spoke, the entire bus fell silent to listen. “Chay di, chay di, giac Pol pot toi!” (Run, run! The Pol Pot soldiers are here!) Her voice trembled as she recalled that desperate warning, living near the border between An Giang Province (Vietnam) and Kandal and Takeo Province (Cambodia). One moonlit night, she said, terror swept through her village. People sprinted down the dirt road, bare feet slapping the ground, trying to escape the Khmer Rouge soldiers. The air was thick with panic-rushed whispers, muffled sobs, and the rustling of bodies pushing against each other. “No time to ask questions. No time to think. We just ran,” she said softly. She recounted how she and her sisters were separated in the chaos. Hiding in a bush, she cowered under branches that clawed her arms, fearing for her life. At dawn, she returned to unimaginable horror: the bodies of mutilated and dismembered men, women, children lay everywhere. She found her parents and sisters among the dead. I felt a knot tighten in my throat. My ears burned, and I noticed her polite smile give way to raw, heart-rending pain. My hand started sweating as I tried to absorb the shock of her words. After a long pause, I managed to ask in Vietnamese: “Chi Ha oi, chi bao nhieu tuoi luc do?” (How old were you back then?) “Muoi tam,” she replied. (Eighteen.) She was younger than I was at that time. Around us, people on the bus bowed their heads, silently honoring her lost family. Chi Ha continued the story. After losing her family, she joined the army to protect those living near the border. She had no time to grieve, no time to process what had happened. As she put it: “I was young, and so much had already occurred. I just kept moving forward.” Six months into her service, her platoon was ambushed by Pol Pot forces. One of her female comrades was captured. When they found this friend, she was lying on the ground—naked and brutally violated. But that wasn’t the worst of it. “They planted a bomb in her private parts,” Chi Ha said, her voice trembling. She and her team quickly backed away, horrified. Moments later, the bomb exploded, destroying her friend’s body even further. No one else was hurt physically, but the emotional impact was unforgettable. They stared at each other in numb shock, a coldness filling the air that words could never describe. I could barely breathe after hearing this. I looked around the bus, and every passenger wore a haunted expression. For a while, no one spoke. Finally, a man named Hung stood up and introduced himself, offering his own wartime experience. Others soon followed, sharing stories that delved deeper and deeper into darkness. Fear and overwhelming sadness welled up inside me until I could no longer listen. I pressed my hands over my ears, seeking some refuge from the horror. Yet, Minh, my older sister, continued listening intently—she was much braver than I was. We eventually arrived in Phnom Penh, each of us weighed down by what we had just heard. In the early afternoon, while the group checked into a hotel, I wanted to find Chi Ha. I still had questions about her decision to return to a place filled with such horrific memories. Minh noticed me slipping away and tried to stop me: “Un, em dung hoi nua, se lam chi ay buon.” (Un, don’t ask more questions; it’ll only make her sad.) But when Minh got distracted, I approached Chi Ha anyway. She was sitting by the lobby window, gazing out at the busy streets of Phnom Penh. I sat next to her and asked quietly: “Chi Ha oi, tai sao chi lai quay lai Campuchia? Chi khong so nhung ky uc kia se tro ve hay sao?” (Why come back here? Aren’t you afraid those terrible memories will haunt you again?) She gave me a gentle smile. Despite the pain in her past, her face still held an almost radiant kindness—like a white daisy in full bloom. “Chien tranh do da ket thuc tu lau, nhung voi chi, duong nhu moi hom qua,” she said. “Dem nao chi cung mo thay canh ay. Cang lon tuoi, chi lai cang nho ro moi chuyen. Chi va nhung nguoi dong doi da tham gia vao cuoc chien do- due phai dau tranh voi ky uc. Nhieu dem tui chi khong ngu duoc, nho dong doi, nho gia dinh.” She paused, then added: “Chi tro de hy vong co the buong bo phan nao. Bang cach nhin dat nuoc cua ho, nhin nguoi dan cua ho, va cam thong cho ho. Ho con kho hon minh nhieu.” It means: “The war ended a long time ago, but to me, it still feels like yesterday,” she said. “Every night, I dream of those scenes. The older I get, the clearer everything becomes. I—and those who fought alongside me— have to struggle with these memories. Many nights, I can’t sleep, thinking about my comrades, thinking about my family.” She paused, then added: “I returned here hoping I could let go, even just a little. By seeing their country, seeing their people, and feeling compassion for them, I realize they suffered even more than we did.” I swallowed hard. “Chi co chac la lam vay se hieu qua khong?” “Chi khong biet,” she admitted, “nhung chi se thu bat cu cach nao de giam bot nhung ky uc kinh khung ay.” Just then, she mentioned that some in the group planned a visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum that evening: “Em co muon di khong?” (Do you want to come along?) Before I could answer, Minh stepped up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder: “Em ay se khong di dau,” she said firmly. “Nhung em thi se di.” After dinner, I lay on my hotel bed, unable to sleep. Images of the day’s conversations spun in my head: Chi Ha’s story, the bomb trap, the families lost to violence, and the old veterans who bowed in silence. I remembered the words of those who returned home with their bodies intact and how many of them carried pain that words couldn’t express. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, where survivors confronted their past. As I thought about Chi Ha’s resolve to “face her nightmares,” I wondered if that was the only way to truly move on. Could revisiting the place of trauma help one heal? Minh returned late from the museum. She sank onto the bed with a long, heavy sigh and didn’t say a word. She hardly slept for months afterward. Those stories have stayed with me ever since. They were dark and overwhelming, yet they opened my eyes to a reality I’d never known. War leaves scars not just on bodies but on hearts and minds—scars that can last a lifetime. Seeing how people like Chi Ha and my sister Minh chose to face those memories made me realize that “letting go” isn’t simple. Sometimes, you have to stand right in front of the past—in the very places where it happened—to begin releasing it. Whether it truly works or not, the act of trying is, in itself, a form of courage. And that, perhaps, is how people carry on. Chiếc đũa và cây tăm “The Chopstick and the Toothpick” In 2005, I got a call from Tinh Mahamony, a longtime family friend. He told me to pick him and his friends up at Tan Son Nhat Airport at 6 p.m. Vietnam time. I had no idea who his friends were, what they were doing here, or even that they were coming. Turns out, he had planned this trip with my sister Minh, but, being Tinh, he had given her the wrong arrival date. Panicked, I grabbed my sister, and we jumped on my motorbike, racing to the airport just ten minutes away from our house. When we got there, Minh darted off to find them, leaving me waiting by the bike, scanning the crowd. That’s when I first saw them. A tall, skinny high-school-looking boy stood awkwardly with a cowboy-hat-wearing man next to him. The second man looked like he had just stepped out of an American Western movie. Beside them was a beautiful girl with striking blonde hair, and of course, Tinh, short, dark-skinned, and stocky—100 percent unmistakably Vietnamese. They came back to our house in the Go Vap District to drop off their bags and meet my family. My sister took a taxi with them while I rode my motorbike back home, feeling puzzled and curious about these new guests. I had just graduated from university with an English degree, but within minutes of listening to them talk, I realized something horrifying—I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. Their accents were nothing like my Vietnamese teacher’s English. I forgot their names two minutes after they introduced themselves, so in my head, I labeled them High School Boy, Cowboy, and Blonde Girl—easier to remember. Tinh and my sister invited me to hang out with them, but I didn’t see the point. I didn’t know what they were doing, and I couldn’t speak English well enough to join their conversations. Not interested. A few days later, Minh came back laughing about something that had happened. “You should come with us; they’re really fun! Besides, you can practice your English.” She told me about the High School Boy crying after eating a banh mi because he couldn’t handle chili! I knew I had to see this myself. (Vietnamese chili—10 times spicier than American chili.) Then, she mentioned they needed help with paperwork for the government. Since I had just graduated, this could be a great opportunity for me to gain some practical work experience before finding a permanent job. I agreed immediately. But I had a plan. I decided I would teach High School Boy all the bad words and trick him into saying them. Cowboy looked too serious to mess with, and Blonde Girl was too sweet. But High School Boy was my target. It took me a week to remember their names—Lucas, Kate, and Jason. But by then, Lucas and I had already made a funny discovery: we both thought the other was still in high school. One afternoon, Lucas casually asked, “So, when do you graduate?” I laughed. “I already did!” His eyes widened. “Wait…you’re not in high school?!” I smirked. “Nope. But I thought you were!” We stared at each other in shock before bursting into laughter. From then on, Lucas became “High School Boy” and I was “Little Kid.” Before starting our work, we spent a few days traveling together. Everywhere we went, people stared and whispered. At a market, an old woman laughed and called out, “Chiếc đũa và cây tăm!” I turned to Lucas, “She called us the Chopstick and the Toothpick!” Lucas burst out laughing, “Because I’m tall and you’re tiny!” From that moment, the nickname stuck. What started as a misunderstanding quickly blossomed into friendship. Over the next four days, we traveled together along dusty roads, explored the Mekong River, wandered through the cool hills of Dalat, and eventually returning to Binh Thuan Province. As we journeyed, laughing and learning about each other, I sensed this trip would change me—I just didn’t yet know how deeply. Once the real work began, my job was to scout locations for schools and identify families in need of scholarships for their children. The organization aimed to build one or two schools each year, focusing on villages where young children, ages three to five, needed preschool facilities so their parents could work on local farms. Additionally, we provided 30 scholarships annually for promising students from impoverished families who couldn’t afford school fees. Without such assistance, many of these students would have been forced to stop studying and enter the workforce prematurely. Our first school was built in 2005 in Ma Lam, and we were searching for two more locations in Thien Nghiep, Binh Thuan Province. Lucas and I spent hours on the motorbike, riding through villages, meeting families, and making sure the government had chosen places that actually needed schools. In 1969, a young man named Ron Brown was drafted into the Vietnam War at the age of 20. His lottery number was called, and just like that, his fate was decided—he would go to war. They sent him to Da Nang, where he was stationed at Orange Air Base. The experience changed him in ways he never expected. The violence, the fear, the destruction—it was too much. When he finally returned home, he vowed never to set foot in Vietnam again. And yet, a part of him never left. The memories haunted him for decades. Years later, while attending a conference hosted by Lucas’s company in Chicago, Ron met Tinh-a, a Vietnamese American musician who gave a talk about the Village Foundation School, a project building schools and providing scholarships to rural Vietnamese children. Moved by the mission, Ron made a heartfelt donation to help fund a new school. He wanted to leave behind something good—something that brought healing instead of pain. But Ron didn’t just send money. He sent something far more personal: his dog tag from the war. It was a small piece of metal, weathered and worn, a reminder of who he had once been. He asked Lucas to bury it at the school site once construction was complete. The school was built in 2006, in a rural village in Binh Thuan Province. When the construction was done, our team returned to hand over the keys to the local teachers and the government officials. Our job was officially complete. But before we left, Lucas did something I’ll never forget. He bent down near the entrance of the school and dug a small hole beneath the first step. Slowly, he took the dog tag from around his neck and placed it gently on the ground. Then, without saying a word, he covered it with sand. I stared at him. “What are you doing?” He smiled, but his eyes looked far away. “Leaving something behind,” he said softly. At that moment, I realized he was burying more than just a small piece of metal. It was the legacy of a soldier, a piece of his mentor’s history, quietly becoming part of the foundation for a new beginning. Later, Ron received photos of the finished school: the painted walls, the children laughing, the teachers smiling as they opened classrooms doors. He never stepped foot in Vietnam again, but in that moment, seeing what had been built, he found a small kind of peace. A few years later, Lucas received another message, this time from Ron’s family. Ron had passed away after a battle with cancer, which was caused by exposure to Agent Orange at the very base where he had once served. The war had taken him, not with bullets, but with the silent poison that lingered long after the last shot was fired. When Lucas told me Ron’s story, I sat in silence for a long time. I had always seen war from my own side—the suffering of my people, the loss, the pain. But for the first time, I understood that the pain of war had reached far beyond my country’s borders. Ron had suffered, too. And yet, he chose to turn his pain into purpose. He planted something in the soil of a country he once feared and helped bring education, laughter, and hope to the next generation. His final act was not one of destruction, but of healing. That is the legacy of a soldier. Over the next few years, we built five more schools and expanded our scholarship program, helping even more students from poor families continue their education. During that time, something else quietly blossomed between us. The Chopstick and the Toothpick—as everyone jokingly called us—slowly began to fall in love. Even though Lucas returned to the U.S. after each visit, he came back to Vietnam every three months, staying for one to two weeks each time. With every visit, our connection grew stronger. We explored dusty villages by motorbike, laughed over roadside meals, and shared quiet moments watching the sun set over rice fields and the ocean. What started as a funny nickname became something much deeper: partnership, trust, and love. In December 2007, on Christmas Eve, we were married in a small but deeply meaningful ceremony in Vietnam. Lucas’s family and longtime friends flew in from the U.S. to be part of it, and they joined hands with my own family in a celebration where West met East, American warmth blending with the beauty of a traditional Vietnamese wedding. We wore ao dai and suits and shared laughter over tea and rice wine. It wasn’t just a wedding; it was a promise, rooted in two cultures, to build something bigger than ourselves. A few months later, I moved to the United States—not just to start a new life with Lucas, but to carry forward the mission we had come to share: to keep building hope, one school at a time. In 2008, I moved from Vietnam to Bend, Oregon. After settling in for a couple of months, I decided to host a dinner and invite my neighbors over to introduce myself to the community. That night, I met Noah and Lisa, a couple around Ron Brown’s age. Throughout the meal, Noah asked me many questions about Vietnam. Near the end, he stood up and bowed to me, a polite gesture that took me by surprise, considering I was much younger. “I am very sorry for what we did to your country,” he said, voice sincere. “I was studying at a naval school when the war in Vietnam started. They wanted me to go, but I refused. I thought the war was wrong—it didn’t benefit my country or its people. So I ran away and hid in the forests between Canada and the U.S. for two years. Of course, my reputation suffered. Eventually, I changed my career and became a lawyer. But still, I’m sorry for what we did.” I was stunned. First, he was a successful lawyer; second, he hadn’t actually gone to war; and third, he was apologizing even though he never personally fought in Vietnam. It happened so fast that I didn’t know how to respond at first. Yet in that moment, I saw another side to this complicated history—people who refused to fight because they believed the war was unjust, people who bore social consequences for that choice, and people who still feel regret about what happened. Between Ron Brown’s story of healing and Noah’s admission of guilt for a war he never fought, my perspective on Vietnam’s past continued to broaden. War scars everyone in different ways—those who fight, those who choose not to, and those born into its aftermath. Each person’s story weaves into a larger tapestry of suffering, regret, compassion, and ultimately, hope. For me, building schools in Vietnam and hearing heartfelt apologies in Oregon are two sides of the same goal: to move forward—not by forgetting the past, but by transforming it into lessons for a more peaceful future. Yet, woven through the sorrows and horrors were acts of extraordinary compassion: a Vietnamese mother risking her life to save a wounded American soldier, a simple ring that became a bridge between enemies-turned-family, and the heartfelt apology from someone who once refused to fight in an unjust war. Each story reminded me that we are not bound to repeat the tragedies of the past. We can choose empathy over anger, forgiveness over resentment. I hold onto these stories because they show that, even when fear and suffering feel overwhelming, love can still triumph. For every bomb that was dropped, there was also someone who offered a meal to a stranger. For every lost son, there was a mother like Me Co who saw beyond politics and chose to rescue a life instead of turning it away. We need more peace in this world. We can’t erase the tragedies that shaped our families or the scars left behind, but we can break the cycle. We can look at those once called “enemies” and recognize our shared humanity. We can remember that a single act of kindness, like hiding a wounded stranger or building a school, can begin to mend what war has torn apart. So I invite you to carry these lessons forward with me. Let us plant the seeds of understanding wherever we can, choosing empathy instead of hatred. That is how we honor the past—not by letting bitterness define us, but by turning pain into the courage to love more boldly. Peace is not just an ideal—it’s a decision made one act of compassion at a time. And if enough of us choose it, perhaps we can give future generations something truly priceless: a world where the echoes of war are replaced by the sound of hearts that refuse to harden. Author Bio When Chan isn’t cooking or writing, she’s sharing stories from her colorful childhood in Phan Thiet, a coastal town in Vietnam. Born in 1980, she grew up observing neighbors returning from the Cambodian war, quietly witnessing the echoes of conflict. At age seven, she found her favorite hiding spot—a mango tree—where she escaped chores and watched the world unfold below. While working on rural school-building projects for an American NGO in her early thirties, she met a lanky American philanthropist. They married, raising two daughters between Portland, Oregon, and Vietnam. Though stories always lived inside her, dyslexia made writing intimidating—even in Vietnamese. With determination, she now writes to express what’s often left unspoken. Off the page, you might spot her at Portland’s Asian markets or smuggling fish sauce into an Italian restaurant. Chan brings heart, humor, and deep insight to everything she touches—especially the lives around her.

< Back Why I Write Megan McGrory I always say that I’ve been writing before I could write. As a young girl, I dictated stories to my mother so she could write them for me. When an older but still young girl, I hand-wrote in journals with my own stick figures as illustrations. Now I type my stories, even though canyons could be formed in the time it takes me to finish. Throughout it all, my most frequent listener was myself. From little girl to young woman, I have entertained myself with stories in my head. They were my escape from a world that I didn’t understand. My very own form of expression to myself. I live to tell my stories. I am fire, and it my kindling. I see a story in every fallen leaf, behind every closed door. I look up at the sky and see words written in the stars. My head is filled with stories, with a world of possibilities. Even when the page is blank, my mind is full of life. Most of all, writing is my exploration. Of emotions too big to contain, New worlds that beg an explorer, Wonders that need to be shared, A past that must be processed. I have always written, always told stories. It seems that I always will. Because I can’t imagine a universe where my soul would ever be so silent. Author Bio Megan McGrory is an avid consumer of media who’s lived in Washington, Alaska, and finally Oregon. She has been writing since before she could technically write, getting her mother to write down her stories for her. Her greatest passion is prose, particularly fantasy and science fiction, though she’s started to dabble in poetry. Aside from writing, Megan loves to read, watch movies and TV, perform on stage, and analyze media through a feminist lens. One of her greatest passions is napping with her cat, Spooky.

< Back An Ode to the Unsung Heroes of My Home Shamik Banerjee Music is anodyne, but what compares to our rice steamer’s ‘hissing’? Oh! that sound flies to each corner, even down the stairs, and makes our home a curry-cooker’s ground (evoking lunchtime dishes in one’s mind). Glory be to our geyser. Though a thing, it is no less than Gaia, great and kind, who shares with everyone her thermal spring, defrosting them in Winter’s glacial chill. Tell me how I should hail our ceiling fan, whose hypnic air transports me to some hill where zephyrs blow through Junipers that span upon its vertex. And these whitish walls imitate laminar white waterfalls. Now laud for windows: they amp up the dawn’s, the dusk’s, and the eve’s beauty ten times more, those voile-made curtains, like two lovely swans, float in the wafting light breeze from the door. Our living room’s a newsstand, or at best, a kiosk full of magazines and snacks. And oh, the English Roll-Arm is where rest comes pouring on us when we lean our backs upon its cushions with our eyes all glued to the TV, and if God has a kingdom, some glimpses of that place I’ve surely viewed in this home where I’ve learned a lifetime’s wisdom and felt comforted by these ‘things’ I prize— true paragons of firmness to my eyes. Author Bio Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India. Some of his recent publications include Spelt , Ink Sweat and Tears , St. Austin Review , Modern Reformation , San Antonio Review , The Society of Classical Poets , Third Wednesday , and Amethyst Review , among others. He secured second position in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024.

< Back grandfather clock Eleanor Song on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; you sat there with me, almost, the ghost of a downturned hand tapping slow and steady on your knee. i watched my sister poke at airplane food as you recounted the famines etched in your gut, the ghost of your river mush mixture sloshing around in her emesis bag. on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; grasping at the passing years, the white of your knuckles bleeding into your hair. you wear clothes washed by a machine decades old, break bread out of an aluminum bowl, watch time run dry on a year-old desk calendar. you’d drawn on the right month in red marker the next time i saw it; i wonder if putting numbers on time matters more or less when you know you’re running out. on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; to watch skyscrapers burst from the land you love and old customs turn to impersonal plastic. half the grave you used to frequent sits empty and unlabeled, waiting for you year by year. did it hurt to face your own impermanence as you lit incense at the proof of hers? i let a life engulf me as your daughter watched from the shore, but you stood on another side of the ocean. it’d take so long to know you the way i’d like; years of dinner table conversations and turtle-paced walks that we just don’t have the time for. sometimes i wonder if i watch you so closely because i know more sharply that i won’t be able to for long. you take your lunches slow and sugarless, place your life in a box, assemble your bedsheets like a puzzle. i piece you together as you rearrange the blankets, craft stories and fading photos into a mind and a heart; you build yourself a place to lie down as i build a boat out of your histories. when it is strong enough, i’ll sail across our ocean again Author Bio Native Portlander Eleanor Song is a second-year PCC student majoring in political science. She is a former National Student Poets Program semifinalist and has been published by Stepping Stone Publishing (but most of her work exists in a single notes app file, not backed up). Outside of writing, Eleanor is a photographer, legislative staffer, and proud cat mom. You can find her talking to strangers on the blue line, getting lost on hiking trails, and lighting candles that smell like sugar.

MEET THE EDITORS Destiny Abbott is a Las Vegas native turned Portland transplant as of 2023. Traditionally, she is an illustrator, but she has been interested in creative writing since high school. She is working on an Associate’s Degree in Art and intends to pursue a Master’s in Art Practice. Destiny aspires to be a graphic novelist, so she is pursuing editing to further develop her writing practice. The Bellwether Review is her first experience with professional editing. While she isn’t active on social media, you can follow her on Instagram @deliri_arts. Elijah Acosta is an aspiring poet and writer currently pursuing an Associate of Science degree. Growing up in East Los Angeles in Southern California, he has always strived to be a positive role model. He has also been actively involved in his community, being elected as the president of his high school’s GSA, as well as studying environmental sciences and anthropology in India and Nepal with the student travel organization Carpe Mundi. Finding the goodness in things while daydreaming, stargazing, and living is something he always enjoys. He lives in Portland on a little street called Joy Avenue, where he continues his educational goals. You can see more about him or contact him through Instagram @ell.eaell. Paul Buchholz is a poet born and raised in Beaverton, with a lifelong passion for music, comedy, and writing. This edition of The Bellwether Review is his first foray into editing, and he’s grateful to be a part of letting the artistic voices of the PCC Rock Creek community be heard, especially at a time when art and connection are more important than ever. Katie Friend is a student at PCC with a growing interest in the literary world, especially in poetry and scriptwriting. New to editing teams, Katie joined to explore the behind-the-scenes process of content creation and editing. Katie was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. In her free time, she enjoys nothing more than lying down with her cat and reading a book to unwind after a long day. “Listen, three-eyes. Don’t you try to out-weird me. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.” —Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Restaurant at the end of the Universe Look at him go, back for round two! Once again typesetter and special pages editor, but this time he took his shot and submitted his own stuff. He didn’t know photography was right up his alley, but when Adam Idris picked up that camera, he knew it was right for him. With a passion for photography and love of Gunpla, he combined the two, inspired by the likes of Mitchel Wu and Kim DM Simmons. Karah Kemmerly has been working on journals since she started a creative writing club at her high school in 2009, but this is her first year as the faculty adviser for The Bellwether Review . In addition to teaching writing at PCC, she also makes zines with Conjunction Press, works on fiber arts projects, and watches a lot of Robert Pattinson movies. She lives in Northwest Portland with her partner and two orange cats. Everest Looney is an artist and poet living in a tight-knit neighborhood in northwest Oregon. Growing up in southern, sunny California, Everest found his love for the outdoors. As a trans student at PCC, he works his life into his art and writing. The Bellwether Review is his first experience in the world of published editing, with all past experiences being in the writing classes he’s taken at Rock Creek. Megan McGrory is an avid consumer of media who’s lived in Washington, Alaska, and finally Oregon. She has been writing since before she could technically write, getting her mother to write down her stories for her. Her greatest passion is prose, particularly fantasy and science fiction, though she’s started to dabble in poetry. Aside from writing, Megan loves to read, watch movies and TV, perform on stage, and analyze media through a feminist lens. One of her greatest passions is napping with her cat, Spooky. Marie Rubio is an editor for The Bellwether Review. For a full bio, see Moriendi Lenore's author bio . A lifelong love of reading in magic and self-discovery, Kaitlyn Thursam is now finding a new passion hidden deep within her: writing poetry. Her writing is inspired by climate action and political topics and is written through a feminist lens. She hopes that her work inspires others but also allows people to reflect on the interconnectedness of complex issues. Although this is her last year at PCC, she will be transferring to PSU to major in English and pursue her career in helping others publish and edit their work. Izzi Veeiriia (real name Gloria Isabella Pagui Vaire) is a layout and prose editor. Friends describe her as “eccentric,” which is a fun way to say “completely out of pocket.” Pictured is not her, but rather her (and her best friend’s) husband working and residing at the Tillamook Cheese Factory: Jason. Izzi has many hobbies, such as intentionally misspelling her last name, writing, having existential crises, retail therapy, and wasting hours dressing up only to stay inside all day. Her favorite question is “what is the color of day?” Other fun facts? Her favorite color has been lavender since she was 13. She has another fiancé aside from her husband: Diego from JoJo Part 7 . She is going to be bitten by a vampire in her ’30s and will go on to fulfill every career option possible over multiple millennia.

< Back Kids Shane Allison In my dream we are two best friends lying on our bellies reading comic books strewn across your bedroom floor. The sugar rush from the wad of Big League gum we’re chewing is assurance that we’ll be up all night reading The Fantastic Four , Captain America , and Superman back when they were seventy-five cents. We hang loose at your parent’s house because my mother is afraid we’ll break something, that we’ll track in dirt from playing outside. She offers us Cheetos and Capri Suns to stay away. Our friendship is impenetrable like a GI Joe tank. Nothing can break us after the pinky swears and blood oaths we take using the pocket knife stolen from my dad’s glove box. We go around collecting worms in jelly jars, burning ants under a magnifying glass. When the black neighborhood kids ask, Why are you always hanging out with that white boy? I tell them to shut up and hold them in headlocks until they say sorry. I am the biggest kid in school like The Thing from The Fantastic Four . Mother would never let him in the house. I had this dream where we were kids with superpowers, who could fly over buildings, shoot red beams out of our eyes and bend crowbars like licorice ropes. I wish I had grown up with you in Tallahassee or Kettering, Ohio. I could have used a friend like you. Author Bio Shane Allison was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish many chapbooks of poetry—Black Fag , Ceiling of Mirrors , Cock and Balls , I Want to Fuck a Redneck , Remembered Men and Live Nude Guys —as well as four full-length poetry collections: I Remember (Future Tense Books), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori Press), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical Books), and, most recently, I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire Press). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon and Schuster Publishing). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine , The Southeast Review , South Broadway Review , Postscript Magazine , and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

< Back The Lost Voice Fran Kohler I am on my way to meet my wannabe lover north of Seattle. I am a businessman and it has been a hard, successful day. The night rain is cold and ugly on the interstate and my need to piss pulls the car into the northbound roadside rest. There is a small dark form sitting upright against the wet restroom wall that somehow makes me feel safe, sitting here in my heated car. A tiny, tiny ragged form in a ragged old sleeping bag. I cannot see a face, there are shadows everywhere and, honestly, I don’t really care anyway. A ghost hand lifts a beggar’s cup in my direction. I drop some change in it and turn away. I don’t normally do that, drop change. Looking in the metal mirror bolted to the restroom wall I pause considering the man looking back. “Damn” I think. Outside the wind has picked up and the rain is frighteningly horizontal. Almost loud enough to drown out a hauntingly beautiful song coming from the beggar. The shaking coins in the tin cup are a big band rhythm section. An amazing, wondrous, Billy Holiday voice, overwhelming my senses. It is everywhere in my head. The hard rain is smashing into the beggar, making the sleeping bag heavy with cold. This voice does not belong here in this wasteland. I become afraid and run back to the safety of my heated, car. Driving north again the rhythm of the wipers sound like my coins in the beggar’s tin cup, louder with every swipe. The injustice of the beggar makes me lash out at the radio, what I know to be the truth. I want to blame Trump’s social fruit but that is just a cop-out. I am headed crazy to my wannabe lover and that is a cop-out too. I feel weak. I do not want to cry but I cannot help myself. I cannot get that voice out of my head. I know what I have to do as the car turns south, almost frantically, the wind blowing me sideways, now desperate for an off-ramp to McDonalds. My god, the salvation of McDonalds! There. Over there. Minutes later I am back; the beggar has become smaller—like the storm has been blowing beggar parts away. I grab my umbrella, open it and walk. I see the little vertical pools of water forming where the sleeping bag touches the wall, then down onto the sidewalk. Propping the umbrella as best I can against the rain I carefully set the box of hot food and hot coffee in front of the beggar. Like offerings in front of an altar. But why? Then—BAM!! A single bolt of lightning hits the pavement, causing the asphalt to burst into flames, right in front of me, in front of my car, cleaning the air. But why? I go deaf for a moment. I panic, thinking that I will not hear that voice again. I cannot live without it. Then… There it is again. Singing in the cold rain. I cannot look at this beggar. I dare not but I can… not help myself. The bright overhead light casts a face back at me—a beautiful scarecrow smile of broken teeth and whip-etched skin. She is singing to me, singing for her dinner and I am taken away somewhere far south of here. South of the Mason-Dixon line. It is long ago and I am peaceful. The falling rain is now warm, turning into springtime orange blossoms, dripping from my sleeves. The big, graceful old plantation has a giant old porch filled with happy people eating watermelon and homemade ice cream. A grand piano is there, rolled out of the house for the occasion. Teddy Roosevelt is presenting a Belle to the Ball. Living Blackamores open Duisenberg and Marmon coach doors, offering gloved hands to the Masters of a passing age. Then, that voice! Beautiful like God enraptured with creation fills the early evening magnolia trees. **************** A truck light illuminated the old woman. I saw she was reading a book by Faulkner. As she turned the cold wet page it tore in half. I ran. **************** Standing at the Edge. Soon I would arrive at the palace of my wannabe lover. A smaller palace to be sure, but quite expensive and built in a hurry—located at the very end of an insanely beautiful, manicured spit of land jutting out into Fidalgo Bay with its own drawbridge and moat. It was 2 a.m. dark outside as I pulled up. I waited in the cold rain, at the foot of the condo stairs. I wanted to be critical of the wealth surrounding me, of the yachts, the fine motorcars, the perfection. But I could not. I was weak with age and gravity. I felt trapped by the beauty and complexity of the bizarre feeling coming from my wannabe lover as she eased dramatically past the door, standing radiant and lonely in the driving rain. “Image is everything” I thought to myself as I stepped out of the car and into her arms. I could feel the money demon’s eyes upon me, inviting me to plug into any outlet. I did. It is hard now to recall those first impressions—the private elevator, the perfectly groomed and psychotic dog. Grandma County Kitchen décor in every room with Captain Nemo floor-to-ceiling bay views— screaming at me—run away! Run away quick before I did something crazy. “It’s ok” I said inside my head, “I mean, the whole idea of this meeting is to fall in love, or at least to seal the deal. ” I was too tired to surrender to my morals so I fell into the bed of a very inappropriate stranger. There was a delicious glass of never-ending fine red wine in my hand as I fell victim to my senses. “Fuck it.” I said under my breath. “Just fucking own it .” Days passed. Extreme, possibly undeserved days of leisure fueled with half-truths and gritted teeth. I could see Naked Sirens just off the shore looking back at me through my wannabe lover’s bedroom windows. Magnificent, nubile creatures who came into the house—seducing me with their trident of perpetual world news, expensive takeout food and engaging sex toys of all types. A massive TV in every room, all on the same news channel, 24/7. I found that it was hard to sleep with the lights always on, but my wannabe lover could not sleep with them off. It was not fair of me. My wannabe lover’s face was youthful for the most part and looked like almost the best that money can buy. There was a fear that if the lights went off then things would be different when they came back on. Like turning off the lights was like turning on the night gravity monster. “Touch Ups, love.” I started looking at my face with the power of money transforming it. Not dishonesty, in fact, honesty was a shield for cosmetic indulgence and I could not blame my wannabe lover for seeking the perpetual comfort of physical, mentally therapeutic pampering. After all, she could afford it. But, there was a ghost hole in the kitchen that set alarms off in my head. I was becoming comfortably numb after only 3 days (Or was it a month?) in this illusion. I did not want it to make sense to me. I did not know if I gave a shit or not. I went outside in the cold rain and saw old men and women with their wet dogs and I was beginning to look just like them. Warm bed to warm car, go for a drive, warm restaurant, see the town. In the big Lexus I could not feel the gears change, I could not feel the outside world moving by, I could only feel like I was losing the feel of things, everything. The wide, crack-free street sterility of the town came blasting through the dark and insanely cold, ripping rain all around us…Still…It was a warm fantasy town filled with warm fantasy citizens living in the strange reality of expensive designer drugs. Twinkling eyes and absent faces. The warm smile of my wannabe lover assured me that everything was alright with permanent porcelain masks floating gracelessly upon hidden necklines. And from this perspective, she was right. Even so, something was wrong and it was the wrong of no one under 30 years old living in this town. Not one young person to be seen. Not really because it is too fucking expensive—it is, and that is part of its comforting, disturbingly orderly appeal—but really because the youth of today have no interest in watching stiff walking ghosts become more translucent. I wanted to run like a freezing animal. “Will I be rich?” I ask myself. “Damn right I will.” “Ask me what I would do with it…. Isn’t that really what I am doing up here?” I comforted myself with comforting platitudes—“I’m guilty and I hate myself for it, I loathe myself for it.” I feared becoming a comfortable little ceramic actor on my wannabe lover’s fireplace mantle. I was afraid that I would enjoy fucking myself. When I arrived, my thoughts were about a mysterious broken-toothed beggar singing in the rain. I started freaking myself out when, on drunken day number four of this “indulgence,” I began to forget what the beautiful beggar looked like and how lovely her voice was. What it meant to me. It was becoming a lost voice and I did not want to lose it. In the middle of the night, I fled. It was expected. It was not right and we both knew it was not right. It had to happen and we both knew it but it still hurt and it still does. **************** The bitter salvation of reprise. It is raining really hard on the freeway as I leave Seattle for Portland. It is late at night and I feel safe in my businessman’s car. Hell, it is a Pontiac and they don’t make them like that anymore . I want to hide as I drive by the beggar’s roadside rest. “It’ll be safe to stop here” I think, “after all, this stop is on the southbound side of the road .” I carefully look, there are no beggars in sight. Uneasy I drop the seat and drift off to sleep. Then; then, I hear it again—that voice of warm, easy, honey-filled days. I desire that. Rolling down my window to hear it better the fierce rain and wind bring me back to coldness as the warmth of my car leaves. I want to stay here and wait until she comes back to rest next to me in her rags, in my dry warm car. I will wait here for her until I look like her—ancient and fragile. What is she reading? My very life depends upon knowing. I sit here watching pale figures get out of, and then after a few minutes, back into their warm cars. Some sleep, some drive away. When I woke up, wake up it was and is still raining and I saw her—see her clearly, my beautiful, sensual beggar, there, standing in front of my car. Brilliant. She stood tall, standing elegant in a long, perfectly tailored white raincoat and gloves. A kind of druid hoodie that covered covers her golden brown plantation hair. She stood back, now standing in the street light as it caught her face, sorta catching it like clear water in your hands. The light was bright, shining now on her missing teeth and whip-scarred face—far more lovely than ever before. She smiled a smile at me and I died dying. I wanted to want her love, to give her my car, shelter her from the storm, anything, if only she would sing something for me. The windshield fogged over and she was gone. Author Bio “You’re only given a little spark of madness, and if you lose that—you’re nothing.” - –Robin Williams Francis E. L. Kohler : I returned to PCC when I was in my middle ’60s because I was inspired by my children to start over in life. Honestly, I was clueless but I soon found a direction in the liberal arts thanks to some amazing instructors and brilliant fellow students who saw something in me that I had nearly forgotten I had—a creative imagination. Zackel/rust/stiffler/truax/sairanen/knight/fujita/buswell/hilt/johnson/tangredi/andsomany more with a special shout out to dr.s mitra and postma of pacific u—but mostly to my wonderful, really wonderful children! I intend to audit classes and write as long as I can think. Now, about my little story, “The Lost Voice,” it is a true story filled with real phantoms and demons.

< Back Home Economics Shane Allison I’d like to think that Mrs. President, My ninth-grade home Economics teacher, Is in heaven showing teenage angels how to make spaghetti and bake a chocolate cake. I imagine her selling blow pops out of a pencil box that lies hidden in one of her desk drawers. I think of her scolding some kid With his jeans hanging past his butt And saying, “Boy, pull up yo’ britches.” Author Bio Shane Allison was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish many chapbooks of poetry—Black Fag , Ceiling of Mirrors , Cock and Balls , I Want to Fuck a Redneck , Remembered Men and Live Nude Guys —as well as four full-length poetry collections: I Remember (Future Tense Books), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori Press), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical Books), and, most recently, I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire Press). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon and Schuster Publishing). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine , The Southeast Review , South Broadway Review , Postscript Magazine , and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

< Back Devil-Damned Shane Allison When my mother speaks of how my father has hurt her over the years, She acts as if each time is the first. As if him being a bastard Is something she never saw in him before. I’m so unhappy. I try so hard to get along with him , she says, As she looks past a set of dusty vertical blinds into a front yard of azaleas. When I dare to utter the word divorce again, she says, No, I’m going to wait, so I can get his money. Like the rest of us, She now waits like a buzzard on a power line To swoop down to fill her belly on my father’s remains. He gets more than one hundred percent now from the VA, Tucking money in Family Dollar bags to stash under the seat Of his truck. I prefer my father when he’s quiet in the house, Hiding from his family as if we don’t know he’s devil-damned. When my mother cries, I wipe her tears with my I Never Liked You Anyway t-shirt. She thinks that if I talk to him, he will listen to me, That maybe by sheer will, He will turn over a new leaf. But talking to my father means a baseball bat to the head. A strike for every tear that has streaked my mother’s face. I can hear her now, don’t say stuff like that about your daddy . And there it is. Flipping on and off like the proverbial light switch. Author Bio Shane Allison was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish many chapbooks of poetry—Black Fag , Ceiling of Mirrors , Cock and Balls , I Want to Fuck a Redneck , Remembered Men and Live Nude Guys —as well as four full-length poetry collections: I Remember (Future Tense Books), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori Press), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical Books), and, most recently, I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire Press). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon and Schuster Publishing). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine , The Southeast Review , South Broadway Review , Postscript Magazine , and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.