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Raven Yoder majored in English with a focus in Writing Studies at TAMUCC. She produced a Haas-award winning research paper, presented “Coinage for Caring,” at the 2019 TAMUCC graduate conference, and has published multiple original poems. She worked as a writing consultant and has also served as Assistant Editor of Fiction for TAMUCC’s literary journal, The Windward Review. In her spare time, she enjoys exploring nature, reading, and spending time with family in Waco, Texas. Learn more about Raven by viewing her portfolio

The Feeling of Yellow

Nineteen years ago, a time when my knees barely rose above the willowy grass of our lawn, found me cowering in the doorway of our house, my tiny body consuming the fiery heat of the late afternoon sun. From a vantage point I was much accustomed to, I watched my mother. My frightened eyes peeped timidly upwards where they were soon shocked into attention. A loud bang rattled the room, and I screamed as the walls shook and wood splintered to the floor around my feet. My mom was a recognizable savage. Her rage filled the air, and the chair she’d thrown laid in mangled pieces not even inches from where I’d stood. 

And even at two years old, I was used to these eruptions. These volcanic explosions of fury and fervor were the only impressions I had of my mother—the only side of her I saw and the only one I knew. And even then, I was haunted by them, assuming, in my innocence, that the release of her demons was my fault. It wasn’t until many years later that I understood: it wasn’t only the demons to blame, it was the spirits. 

From the time of that first memory, an air of mystery and anarchy permeated my thoughts and surrounded my mother. Her sporadic appearances became only added to the charade and secrecy she portrayed. She was a being only present some birthdays and Christmases, but one omnipresent in the confused consciousness of my cluttered young mind. ‘Mother’ became synonymous with ‘dread.’

That day the chair splintered, my mom taught me how yellow felt. The sun sucked up the color, introducing me to a liquid and hazy hue. Where the sun should caress, it burned. Much like my mother, where it should enlighten and inspire, it ruined and scalded. Yellow whispered provision and renewal but its touch was scorching isolation.

I wish I would have known fences then. I didn’t yet know how to shield myself from suffering. I didn’t know there were things in the world that warranted boundaries at all. And I didn’t learn until later how to form fences. But what I did know even at my young age: yellow was a lie.

Chain-link

If I stood within the little diamonds that formed the chain-link and stretched my neck to the point of strain, I could almost see over the top of the fence and into my neighbor’s yard. The yard was sparsely decorated and always empty. But it held one thing that captivated my attention: an old yellow wooden swing. I didn’t know then that the swing would introduce me to a home that held me better than my own.

I was five when they moved in. I watched as the once barren yard became a miniature amusement park. They added a tire swing, a zip line leading to shallow waters, and a tree house. 

Again, I stood in the chain-link, hands raw and red, and wished there were no boundaries. 

Through the fence, I called to the blonde boy. “Can I use your swing?” He was currently rocking back and forth on the yellow board I so envied. 

The boy shrugged. “I guess, but it’s my turn right now.” 

That reluctant statement was all the confirmation I needed. 

I finished my trek over the fence and looked behind me. A jungle met my eyes. The bushes barricaded any real view. But the glowing summer jasmine drifted towards me in the breeze, and the bamboo towered behind the wooden shed in the middle of our yard. I had never seen my yard from a visitor’s viewpoint before. But I had an entire amusement park now. Why would I want a jungle?

I turned back to my newfound adventure and found the brash blonde looking at me with crossed arms. “I guess you can have your turn now,” he said, his hand stopping the swing’s sway. 

The painted yellow board creaked as it swung me higher. Higher than anywhere I’d ever been before, towards Heaven’s light. The breeze caught my hair, causing the long golden waves to tremor and fall. Up here, the glimmering sun rays caught me with eyes wide open before releasing me into my new reality. 

Summers stayed and strayed, leaving in their wake little memories with my new friends: tomboy madness and bunkbed secrets, home-grown garden suppers set inside the lawn-mower-created homemade baseball field on the lawn. There were zip-lined brigades to the shallows at the edge of the yard and tree-house carvings and codes that all disappeared, secreted behind our lips, once we crossed the kitchen’s watery linoleum tiles. 

I learned a sense of adventure fences never could confine, and the sunshine was the right shade again: a pale and inviting saffron that saturated my very bones.

Chicken Wire: From A Viewpoint Across the Fence

The finish rubs off in your hands, cheap chicken-wire plastic yielding to iron. Fingertips rusty and red, you guide the wire around its new partner: damp wood embraces the weakened, feigned fibers.

Sunshine has birthed this day, and you think it forged her, too. Today, she smells of lavender and sweat swirled with a spice and sweetness you can’t quite put your finger on. Her hair glints violet in this afternoon’s summer. She was blonde long ago, but you think she looks better this way, more real. Occasionally, she pushes her hair over her shoulders in your direction as if it wasn’t already magnetic enough. As if you weren’t already hopelessly welded to its shimmer. 

The heat kisses her cheeks crimson, and you know that, later, once she’s washed the day off and her cold palms find her face, she’ll tell you she should have worn sunscreen. And you told her so. Had told her that the lemon summer wouldn’t hesitate to cook everything in its path, including her. Her stubbornness should bother you—especially when it hurts her—but, instead, it pours through you like honey: warm and lilac. 

Your eyes braze her body, fluid hips yield to sharp ribs that soothe. She stiffens and turns at the waist, purposely accentuating the curves your hands cradle like a Catholic holds a rosary.

She smiles. And her cheekbones display it well. Her happy coaxes her spine straighter and lightens her russet eyes. The same smile that encapsulates and enchants strangers is yours. All yours. Damp earth stains the crimson stain across her cheeks. Yet, somehow, she seems even more warm this way. Like she is honey, too. 

The chicken wire hugs the post, its new home, and you hammer in the nail that you hold. Minutes ago, she wouldn’t stop asking you to let her help. 

“It’s our garden after all,” she whines, emphasizing the second word. 

You wouldn’t hear of it. She could accidentally hammer her finger instead. Her fragile, lily white fingers grip your arm in case the hammer slips. And, even though she hurts herself, you’d never let anything touch her. Lilies, iron, and sunshine were never meant to coexist. 

Fences for Miles

I hold tighter, mesh my solvent elbows with the lines of his chest. Maybe, if I hold tighter, it’ll stop his ribs from shaking. Blue so deep it claws its way out in sputters and sobs. An overflowing well: the brim is clouded with murky tears and phlegm-coated words. If he is midnight right now, I am amber. His light in the dark—but I am trying to illuminate my own onyx: splashes of dandelion against a dripping, draining dusk. 

Light sparks, flickers, fades. And I am leaving here today. Putting miles of fences between him and I, later and now. He talks, and I cannot hear—words are writing themselves over and over and over again in my head. I’m listening to their slow sprint, their scrawl on the slick velvet canvas of mind over matter: “Maybe if I hold him tighter, it’ll stop his ribs from shaking. Hold him tighter. Tighter. Hold him tighter.” 

Silence. 

I don’t pray except during the last eighteen seconds when I’ve been begging God to give him some peace. Plead, wait, hold. Feel amber melt midnight. Pause, wait. Hold. Tighter. Their sprawl is artifice—slipping sharp against silk. I cannot hear him—these words have pulled me too far away into another abyss altogether. But all of the darkest darks look the same. 

I listen to rhythm, wager with Myth, and tense in the too-loud dandelion-drenched air. Wisps of shadows sneak in, drench an embrace already flooded with collapsed faces. I want to stay his yellow, but I can’t even be my own. 

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Roberta Shellum Dohse practiced law in Corpus Christi for many years.  She has always loved to write. More about Roberta at the end of this section.

I once read a book about a woman who ran away from her life,

changing her name to that of towns through which she passed,

names so unique and different 

that no one would think them the name of a woman.

She cut free her tethers and floated into a new world.

There are still times when I wish to pull up stakes, leaving behind all that is

known. 

I still thirst for new challenges, new mountains,

different faces of the sun.

What am I searching for?

At those times the moments appear like facets in a gem,

turned one way and the familiar stares back,

turned another and the unknown glints in the light so enticingly,

luring me with possibility.

Those moments last only so long as the light refracts just so,

but an urgency still remains and presses on me

 to change the air I breathe, the job that I do,

the routine of my life.

I want to see a different mountain, listen to a different sea.

So I dream. But they are waking dreams. 

My restlessness is strong.

And though my wandering is a poor substitute, it helps slake my thirst

when I watch the sun rise, or set, on a different sea,

taste the salt in the air and smell the pines. 

There is a respite as I breathe in heather and lilacs, 

new rain on freshly turned earth

leather being worked into scabbards 

and iron being forged, 

melted wax being formed into candles,

alfalfa in the fields and dust on the wind.

I grow herbs and imagine I am of a different age in the gardens of a castle.

And, sometimes, I linger at the faint strums of a guitar and think of you

and wish I did not have to wander just to catch a hint of your

passing.

read more great writing like this in Corpus Christi Writers 2019

The old tree where you first pulled down a branch 

to pluck me a sweet blossom, 

where you first gazed so deeply into my eyes, 

it is leaning so wearily into the wind.

The old gas pump is still standing at the edge of town, 

though the station is now long abandoned.

It was there you first put your hands on my shoulders 

and drew me close, just to smell my hair. 

And just up the hill is the old barn 

 where we had our first dance, 

swaying so slowly to the rhythm of the band.

I still remember the deep musky smell of you.

There is music! And despite my best intentions, 

I am drawn in to gaze at the big dance floor, 

at the band at the far end, up on the stage, 

just getting started.

People filter in to sit at the rough wooden tables, 

laughing, talking, 

and I lose myself in the lively tunes.

I can almost taste the beer. 

A smile steals across my lips. 

Then a loud commotion erupts at the door, 

and you burst in, 

your bigger-than-life laugh filling this space. 

You move through, 

greeting old friends, eyes sparkling, 

legs twitching with the pulsing rhythm. 

The very air has come alive. 

But you are not with me, 

and the tears spill unbidden from my eyes. 

I stifle my sobs, fade back into the shadows, 

then out into the twilight. 

Still, I cannot keep from looking back as I drift 

slowly down the hill, and, 

like Lot’s wife, I am rooted to the spot.

The last rays of the setting sun 

arc through the gaps in the walls, 

through the places where the roof has crumbled, 

where moss and leaves have tumbled in.

And, with a great a flutter of wings, 

a covey of dove bursts out into the cooling air. 

Shadow and color mingle, and glitter in my tears.

When am I and where are you, my love?

copyright Roberta Dohse

read more poetry by Roberta Dohse in Corpus Christi Writers 2018

Roberta Shellum Dohse hails primarily from California. She is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley. After a stint on a farm in northern Minnesota and time in Oregon, she moved to Texas in 1980. She attended law school at the University of Houston and practiced law in Corpus Christi. She was formerly a flight instructor and a college professor. She has always loved to write, and conveys her love of the land in her poetry. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies.

I was 17 years old in the summer of 1969, when I announced to my parents that I was going to upstate New York to a three-day music festival. They looked at me like I was crazy. They said "oh really, and how do you plan to get there?" I told them I would hitchhike if I had to, but I was definitely going. I whined about it. I got my twin brother Michael and my younger sister Lynn to whine about it. My mother reminds me that I was the ringleader and instigator. I had roused my siblings to the cause, and we all wanted to go to Woodstock. Our teenage mantra was that we would get there any way we could. We had seen the poster. We heard about it from everyone we talked to. The festival's energy was simply omnipresent in our world. My parents relented but only on one condition, if our 20 year old brother Marc, who was home from college would drive us in his fine 1967 Ford Galaxy 500 convertible. My mother tells me now that she gave him her credit card and cash to encourage him to take us. She even paid for the gas. So, he agreed to chaperone and chauffeur us, and our high school buddy Susan, to the celebration of peace and music: Woodstock.

We borrowed sleeping bags from our neighbors. We didn't even have backpacks so we didn't pack a thing with us. No food, no change of clothes. We were kids from suburban Fords, New Jersey, who had never camped out in our lives. Despite being seasoned anti-war protesters, open-air music concerts was out of our ken. We brought an extra blanket, like we were going to a picnic, loaded ourselves into the car and drove the 125 miles upstate to a show we didn't have tickets for. I think we must have assumed that we would buy tickets at the gate. It all seemed very reasonable to a 17 year old.

The ride was uneventful until we arrived fairly close to the site on Friday afternoon. Suddenly there were cars and people everywhere. Everyone looked just like us. My older brother told me that that's what he remembers most about Woodstock, how it was a great equalizer. No one stood out. There was a moving sea of blue jeans and flowing hair, beads, embroidery and flowers. We just parked our car in a field of other cars and joined the throngs. We didn't even have to know where the event was being held exactly, the movement simply took us there. We had heard in the crowd that the fences were down and people were being allowed in for free. That worked for us. We were going to Woodstock and we didn't even need tickets anymore!

A sea of people spread before us in the largest crowd of humanity we had ever seen amassed in one place. There was a stage in the distance, and smoke was rising from pipes and joints. Everyone smiled at each other like we were all members of the same lost tribe, now rejoined. There was camaraderie, a likeness of spirit. It reminded me of Walt Whitman's: And what I assume, you shall assume; For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you."

I remember listening to the music of Ravi Shankar, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez. Darkness fell to their sounds on Friday night. People came and went. Joints were passed around. Someone gave us amyl nitrate. The world inverted and then righted itself. The rain started. We moved our wet sleeping bags closer to the stage. The rain continued. We were part of the sea of people.

I don't remember sleeping, but soon it was Saturday morning.

I have to admit I don't remember much else. My older brother left us for several hours in search of food. That was some time on Saturday. I do recall that he showed up with a dozen hamburgers and a good-sized box of big soft pretzels that someone had given him on the side of the road. We shared the bounty with our neighbors. Lynn, Susan, and I walked to the port-a-potties. There were tables set up where event organizers were handing out information; there was food somewhere; there was a makeshift medical tent. I don't know how we found our way back to our family and our little square patch of place, everything looked the same in every direction, but we did. I remember feeling safe everywhere we went.

It occurred to us, though, we were completely unprepared to stay. We were in the same clothes from the day before. We had spent the night outside unprotected from the elements. We were cold, and we had no way to change our situation. So, we decided to leave. One of our neighbors was handing out acid. My siblings and I didn't indulge, but Susan did. She opened her mouth, and he tossed in a tab. Just like that. We headed back to the car, found it and headed south on the New York Thruway. By then It was late Saturday afternoon.

Exhaustion does not begin to describe the state we were in. Giddy and hungry, we talked and dozed. We pulled off on to the thruway shoulder and slept, with the top down. Susan was still tripping away. She sat on the top of the back seat and watched the sky change colors. She told us that while we slept she had walked into the field of cows we had parked next to and had communed and communicated with them. It's very likely that's exactly what happened. We had just come from Woodstock. We knew anything was possible.

If I had to summarize those 24 hours we spent at Woodstock, I would say that we did not hear much of the music, but we celebrated with a half million other people the first festival of peace.

I love being reminded of Allen Ginsberg's poems. I had the wonderful good fortune to cross paths with him in 1982 in Boulder, Colorado. I volunteered at Naropa Institute where he was teaching a poetry course. I did a summer poetry apprenticeship with him and would go to his house to help him with all kinds of stuff. He had an old file cabinet with a giant folder in it called "Faded Yellow Newspaper Clippings" that I would add to on a regular basis. It was the summer of the Kerouac Conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of On The Road. All the old Beat poets and writers were there. I was the volunteer coordinator for that week-long event. One of most favorite summers of my lifetime. 

 Here's another anecdote from the 1982 era. For some reason I had William Burroughs in the back of my car driving him somewhere. He had a companion with him, but I can't remember who. Burroughs said in his very strange voice, "I want to stop and get some strawberries." The way he said strawberries sounded so bizarre, I never forgot it. Many many years later on the the campus at UC Santa Cruz, the library had just gotten many works by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He was on campus to celebrate. I was coming out of the library for a completely unrelated reason and saw him walking up the steps. I had to stop and ask, "Are you Lawrence Ferlinghetti?" He said, "Yes, I am." I said I was the volunteer coordinator at the Kerouace Conference at Naropa in 1982." He looked at me and his eyes twinkled with happiness. He said "Oh that was a time...that was quite a time." 

Ron George retired in 2015 from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi as a research development officer. He is a former journalist and retired presbyter of The Episcopal Church. His newspaper stints include The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, The Dallas Morning News and The Houston Chronicle. He was an instructor in the Journalism Department at Texas A&M University in College Station and news adviser for The Battalion student newspaper from 1999 to 2006. A 1965 graduate of Texas Christian University (BA, Journalism), George holds a Master of Divinity degree (cum laude) from Nashotah House Theological seminary (1976) and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (2009). In retirement, he writes for pleasure at https://pelicandiaries.wordpress.com/.  

His family had been stonecutters for generations. His father and grandfather worked all their lives on the great Temple in Jerusalem. He was born in the city of David, almost in the shadow of Herod’s great work as it rose above the Kidron Valley. Previous generations of his family had been itinerant craftsmen, ranging as far north as the Galilee and across the Jordan River valley. They were a proud, talented clan, and the gleaming cities they left behind were their legacy.

They were Jews and spoke the common tongue of Palestine but also Greek, for it was the language of trade. There hadn’t been much need for it in his time, but grandfather always insisted that the family keep its Greek, even after more than 40 years of living in mountainous Judah. You can speak Greek to the ends of the earth, he used to say; and someday, you may have to go there to make a living.

He had no yen to travel, though. Jerusalem was home, the center of his world, his life. Now his children were learning his craft and trade; and soon, he would be the grandfather of his family. Thirty years of life, most of them in quarries and climbing construction scaffolding, had left their mark, but he was glad to have lived so long. Many of his generation had not. He no longer scaled quarry ladders, but neither had he quit working. He was a tomb cutter, one of the best. The pay was good for an old man, but best of all, his feet never left the ground. He had seen too many of his old friends end their days falling from where they had climbed to put finishing touches on high stone. Some regarded tomb cutting as unclean. There was nothing unclean about a new tomb, though, which he was weary of explaining to neighbors.

His clients were wealthy and had taken to the burial practice of cutting family tombs into limestone with enough space to lay out a corpse and then store the bones in niches in the walls or floor after the flesh had totally decayed. Thousands of such tombs in Jerusalem were filled with bone-boxes inscribed with the names of the dead. Every handbreadth of space was used for storing the bones before a new tomb was cut. Hiring a tomb cutter, especially the best, was expensive.

He had cut large and small tombs, always with a ledge for laying out the corpse. He took great care in making the tomb seem more like the room of house than a hole in the side of a hill. Most tomb cutters did no more than this, and of course, their prices were lower. He had spent too many years, however, carefully measuring and measuring again before making just the right cut.

It was a hallmark of his work that his tombs were secure, ingeniously engineered to make it impossible for grave robbers to steal whatever was precious in the bone boxes. Once the custom-cut stone, shaped like a globe, was rolled into place, it took special tools to move it. He was not only the cutter of tombs but the opener as well for those he made, which was another reason his prices were high.

He had for some weeks worked on a modest tomb for a member of the Council from Arimathea. It wasn’t far outside the northern wall of the city, between roads leading from the Fish and Sheep gates on the way to Samaria. Nearby, a putrescent waste dump fouled the air, the Place of the Skull, so called for all the rotting animal carcasses and even human remains. Beggars’ corpses were dumped there—and criminals’, especially of those crucified on that foul heap. He detested the tomb site. He’d almost turned down the work, but the Arimathean was persuasive—and paid a little more. He’d finished the tomb just a week before Passover.

The holiday was relatively uneventful, which is not to say the city was calm. While tens of thousands of pilgrims thronged upper city streets and the Temple precincts, his family crowded into his house in the lower city to commemorate Passover with the traditional meal. Permanent residents of Jerusalem had learned to stay home when pilgrims jammed the streets. They had stored extra food and provisions for weeks before the holiday. His sons had secured the lamb and had it duly sacrificed, but everyone else stayed far from the Temple. They would pay their respects some other time.

As usual, the family remained together through Passover night, all sleeping in the tomb cutter’s modest house. They would stay together through the Sabbath, which began at sundown the next day. An unspoken prayer churned in everyone’s breast: Let there be no riots this year.

There weren’t, although a Galilean rabbi had been arrested for making trouble at the Temple, or so his sons told him. He spat upon hearing the news. Nothing good comes out of Galilee, he said. Some criminals were to be crucified, and it was rumored that the rabbi might be crucified, too, although no one was sure. Residents in the lower city heard only bits and pieces of what was going on at the Antonia, the Roman fortress built immediately next to the Temple. He was relieved that he’d finished his work for the Arimathean. The dump was especially foul after a crucifixion. It took days for victims to die and then putrefy as carrion birds picked their bones clean.

Not long before Sabbath sundown, a messenger came from the Arimathean. The new tomb had to be opened. Reluctantly, the tomb cutter set out through the city, which was quiet though still crowded with pilgrims. Fortunately, his sons had been close at hand, so they joined him, which would make the work go faster. They made for the Fish Gate and then for the new tomb.

The large closing-stone fit snugly and had been rolled into place over a lip of stone he had cut intentionally so it would fall into the round, low entrance of the tomb. He had left a slot at the top of the stone and had fashioned a special tool that, when slipped into the slot and down the back of the stone would engage a notch that enabled one man to pull the stone away from the entrance; without the tool, however, it was impossible to get hand or lever behind the stone to pull it out. He and his sons made short work of removing the stone. A few moments later, the Arimathean came with a small group of men carrying a corpse, followed by a few women.

This is one of the criminals, he thought, stepping back. The Arimathean said nothing but stood aside as the men carried the corpse into the tomb, which was no easy matter. The entrance was no more than three cubits across. The Arimathean passed a taper inside; a few moments later, the men came out. The women, carrying blocks of spices and a long piece of linen, went in for a few minutes then emerged. Everyone looked more frightened than grief-stricken. The sun was just above the horizon. Shadows were long. The tomb cutter aligned the closing stone then let it roll into the entrance of the tomb.

The Arimathean asked that the stone be removed early on the first day of the week. The tomb cutter agreed, then he and his sons hurried home. He wondered why the wealthy Arimathean let a criminal be put in his new family tomb; otherwise, he didn’t think much about it. It was the Sabbath, a day of rest. There had been no Passover riots. His family was safe and secure. Perhaps the day after tomorrow would shed more light on this strange burial.

__________

Chill air and darkness greeted the tomb cutter as he rose the morning of Yom Ree-Shom, the day after Sabbath. Snoring and deep breathing rose from his wife, sons and daughters, their spouses and children. He walked carefully through the house then picked up his tomb-opening tools—a large iron hook threaded with long leather straps and a stout wooden staff he’d put near the door. He splashed cold water on his face from a cistern then donned and cinched his stonecutter’s leather tunic, a protective outer shell worn over his garments.

Jerusalem’s streets lay empty. He decided not to carry a lamp but made his way in the dark through the city’s narrow but familiar streets. He passed through the Fish Gate no more than a half hour after leaving his house in the lower city. He picked his way carefully along a rocky path through an orchard then down a steep bank to the tomb he had made for the Arimathean. Golgotha’s stench rode the morning breeze. He marveled at the silence—no moans from the crosses, no screams. They must have died sooner than usual, he thought, which made the burial of the crucified man two days ago all the more strange.

He worked quickly to remove the globe-shaped stone from the mouth of the tomb. He dropped the carefully-fashioned iron hook behind the stone through a notch he’d made at the top of the stone, then skillfully let the hook slide down the back of the stone until it caught on a deep notch he’d made to fit the hook. He tied the strap ends together to form a loop, then used the staff put through the loop to pull the heavy stone from where it lay secure against the tomb entrance. It came to rest with some precision a few feet away from tomb’s mouth. The tomb cutter would align the stone carefully before replacing it after the body inside had been treated. He walked some distance away to wait for the women who would come to clean the body and drape it with linen. He would keep his distance and replace the stone when they left. He had no desire to see that corpse again. He found an olive tree, sat to lean against it and promptly dozed.

He was awakened by women’s voices as dawn light began to make its way over the Mount of Olives. The tomb cutter smiled as they marveled that the stone had been removed from the mouth of the tomb. He hoped they would be quick about their grisly business so he could replace the stone and return home. The first woman crouched to enter the tomb but quickly emerged, shouting at the others and tearing at her hair. She screamed, They’ve stolen his body! The other women looked into the tomb. All began keening their grief and fear. Surely this was the work of the Temple guard. The final degradation—a second death!

The tomb cutter slowly approached the grieving women, but before he could reach them, they rose and hurried back the way they’d come, almost running along a path to the Sheep Gate road that would take them across the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives and then Bethany two miles away. He turned back to the tomb and stooped to enter. Sunlight scarcely shone into the cave, but there was enough light to see that the corpse put on the ledge last Sabbath sundown was not there. The spice blocks and linen remained. Pungent spices only amplified the sickening odor of dried blood and human waste on the ledge. The tomb cutter left the tomb quickly but not quick enough to avoid vomiting.

No one could have stolen that man’s body, he thought; no one could have rolled away that stone. The Arimathean would be furious that someone had stolen the body. He had paid a premium for the tomb cutter’s reputed guarantee that tombs he made could not be robbed. He’d have to return his pay for this tomb. That setback, though, was nothing compared with damage to his reputation. Then came an even more frightening thought: He would be accused of stealing the body, because he was the only one who could open the tomb. He began to sweat as fear churned his innards. Morning had broken, and it would not be long before nearby roads would be swarming with traveling Passover pilgrims leaving the city. Rumors would spread quickly once the women told others what they had found. All eyes would be looking for the tomb cutter.

He staggered then collapsed in despair.

Don’t be afraid, said someone nearby. The tomb cutter leaped to his feet but saw no one. I’m here, said the man, behind the olive tree. Please don’t look upon my nakedness. The tomb cutter ignored the man’s plea and began walking toward the tree where he had sat waiting for the women. He took off his leather tunic, and without saying a word held it out for the man to take. The naked man slipped into the tunic then stepped from behind the tree.

Dried blood caked and matted his hair. Bruises covered his swollen face and blackened eyes. Torn flesh hung from his knees, which still oozed as he stood. Worst of all, the man’s hands and feet had been pierced and still bled. The stunned tomb cutter could but gawk at the man who wore his tunic. 

I was one of them, the man said through labored breath as he sat down on a large stone. I was crucified two days ago, but then I awoke in the tomb. I was frightened, he said. I didn’t know where I was. It was so dark, I thought I was in Sheol. I couldn’t get out of the tomb. I prayed I would die. Then I heard the sound of metal against the stone, and the tomb was opened. I saw no one at first when I finally crawled out. I looked for a hiding place because I was naked. 

The tomb cutter found his voice: Who are you?

Yeshua, the man said. I am a teacher from Galilee. 

The tomb cutter backed away. He had seen a dead man laid in the tomb, a man flogged and crucified; and now, that man was speaking to him. His body hadn’t been stolen—or had it? What was he seeing now? A ghost? A demon? Something from Sheol come to haunt him? Moments before, the tomb cutter had feared for his reputation; now, he feared for his life. Perhaps this shade had come to kill him and take him to Sheol. The strangeness made his head swim as he backed away, reached for his tools and then turned to flee the way he’d come.

As he stumbled along a path through the olive trees, he heard voices behind him. Turning, he saw men and women coming to the tomb, but he didn’t see the Galilean. His family, thought the stone-cutter. They will accuse me. He plunged on through the trees to the Fish Gate road. 

__________

The Arimathean never came to accuse him. It was well known who had made the tomb, and rumors of a crucified man risen from the dead percolated through the city. The tomb cutter kept silent. He knew nothing of the man, he would say when asked. He had opened the Arimathean’s tomb and then went home. Ask a Galilean, he would say as he spat with disgust. 

Temple guards once came to ask about the Arimathean’s tomb. Yes, he said, I opened it. There was no body in it. No, I didn’t steal the body. It was unclean, and I am a religious man. How then, they asked, did the dead Galilean get out of the tomb? I don’t know, said the tomb cutter; maybe his disciples stole his body, though I don’t know how. That tomb could not be opened without my tools. Then you must have stolen the body, they said. No, he said, it was unclean. And so it went, round and round. The guards threatened to torture him but didn’t. The tomb cutter was known to be an honest man from a good family, generations of stonecutters who had helped build the Temple. The tomb cutter told no one, ever, that he had seen the man and fled. In any case, it wasn’t long before the story of the crucified teacher from Galilee who vanished from the Arimathean’s tomb was all but forgotten. 

Almost, but not quite. 

Ron George reads from "The Tomb Cutter" from Corpus Christi Writers 2020

I.

I hear the voice of Jesus on the Cross:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

I like to say I can’t help what I don’t know,

it’s not my fault,

don’t blame me,

if only I’d known.

Lets me off the hook.

Lets me off, Scot free.

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I’ve never been so moved by an art exhibit as I was by "Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work, 1940-1950" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. -- frame after frame of images created from life, composed with deep care and concern, and not just for the black people but also for glam-fashion women, celebrities and, yes, film stars – Ingrid Bergman, most notably.

Parks didn’t take pictures; he made photographs – light writing images in silver halide media – and it was work to get it right. He must have made tens of thousands of images, but we see only the outcomes. It’s how artists work, by producing so much more than anyone ever will know in order to reveal whatever truth they’ve discovered and distilled from the mass.

That leaves most of us out, because it seems as though being an artist, doing art, is magnificently obsessive. When I say the reason I don’t or can’t write fiction is because I lack creative imagination, it’s also because I am not possessed by the urge to make creative words or photographs or anything else, for that matter. I’m a rank amateur who can take it or leave it. Given the opportunity, I’ll take it, but I’m not going to build my entire life around the making of art. Frankly, I wish that were so, but I know it’s not; and, you know, it’s not just the Deadly Sin of Sloth but personal disposition.

True artists are few and far between. There are many more aspirants and pretenders than there are those who work obsessively, who practice and are disciplined by their talent and who aspire to develop and grow into a kind of perfection called fulfillment – although, I’ve heard it said, that last bit seldom enters the true artist’s consciousness, because they themselves never sense that kind of completeness. There’s always more, and it seems beyond their reach, but they sally forth just the same, intrepid, even though they may not know where the path is leading – or when it will end.

 Sara Kaplan received her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Idaho, and she also holds degrees from Miami University and Sweet Briar College. Her chapbooks include Moon Talk and Touring West of the Mississippi. Published interviews with notable poets are on Poetry Daily and in Conversations with Natasha Trethewey. Her poems appear in the following journals, and several poems were nominated for The Pushcart Prize: The Antioch Review, Harpur Palate, LIT 9, The Cincinnati Review, Talking River Review, The Meadow, InLand, Ruminate, The New Vilna Review, decomP magazine, Failbetter, Splash of Red, MO: Writings from the River, & Gulf Islands Review. As an Associate Professor of English at Del Mar College, she specializes in teaching Poetry and British Literature 

The Shoal Creek vitex against the brick spikes 

12-inch fragrant flowers of deep lavender blue

by May and a second flush in August. You keep 

the tree shapely and tame. Until the dark, you stand

in the yard with your clippers, undecided. Butterflies

and hummingbirds never stop except when the dark 

root of electricity grows through the rain. 

When the early morning wakens, you put handfuls

of Rose Glo over the knockout roses in the bed 

by the back fence and feel the ground for water.

You try to make things grow. You try to keep order,

prune. And here it comes, the dry light, cobwebs form 

in the shrubs. You inspect the eaves with a broom 

and recaulk and repaint the siding along the patio. 

I can imagine the torment at the lift and rot

and spill and tear and crack of paint and wood and brick—

glowing imperfections—and you go around the house 

looking for something broken you cannot fix.

Skylar is a local actor and college student. She’s a novice writer and would like to advance her craft. TUB MIRE is her first published work.

There is a cozy town named Mentisdolum. With its greenery and thick fog, it is one of many towns and cities clustered on the outer rim of the bathtub. The tub is filled with swampy water that stretches beyond the horizon. It stands like an ancient monument to a time that no one remembers.

Tom looks over the edge, gripping the damp fence and pressing his feet firmly to the tub. Down below, eight miles away, he catches a glimpse of what looks like a green field through the thick clouds. What is it like down there?

He scrapes his finger back and forth through moss on the fence, letting it build under his nail. Dozens have been lost to the unmerciful trip down, and now he’s about to go. It’s commonly said that joining the Vanguard is something that’s only done by three types of people: the brave, the broke, and the bored. Tom wants to believe he’s the first type, but he’s probably more akin to the last. The thought of spending his whole life as just another moss farmer or beekeeper scares him way more than the long drop down into mysterious land with no hope of ever returning. Besides, the population cannot sustain itself on the rim, and everyone will die if they can’t establish new colonies. So, it seemed better to volunteer and be thought of as a hero.

“Thomas,” A man calls out. “Suit up!”

He steps away from the fence and flicks the moss from his finger.

This will be both his first and last time abseiling all the way down. He puts on his harness and gloves and takes one last look around. He’s leaving his mother behind, but she will be taken care of, he tells himself to relieve the guilt. And she has her candle making hobby.

He begins his descent. It’ll be at least four hours before he reaches the ground. He looks down at a view that no longer induces vertigo. Staring over the edge has been a favorite pastime since he was accepted into the training program and given access to the outer fence.

Two others are descending alongside him. “Hey, how are you guys doing?” he yells to them.

They are slightly above him and on either side. One of them gives a reassuring-sounding response. It’s Abi. She’s the first woman to make this descent, and she hasn’t been able to think about anything else. They initially weren’t accepting women into the program. Obviously, women would be needed to establish future colonies, but the current rate of survival during descent coupled with unpredictable living conditions below made them reluctant to consider sending a woman. Even so, Abi isn’t someone who takes no for an answer. The other person is Doug, not as memorable as Abi, but Tom had seen him before.

The wind is too loud, and they can’t understand him, so the descent continues uneventfully. Four hours later, they reach the bottom with no injuries aside from heat rash and a little chaffing.

Ground level isn’t as otherworldly as Tom had expected. He takes his glove off and presses his hand against its surface. It’s somewhat rough, almost like a white stone, and it’s warm from where the setting sun has been hitting it.

“So, what the hell were you saying up there?” Abi asks as she approaches, gleefully swinging her knee pads around like a child that’s been cooped up inside for too long. “Me and Doug were taking bets that you had already lost you mind.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Tom replies, smiling for the first time since he began this trip. “But my mental health is still as intact as ever. So, who won the bet?”

“I did of course,” Doug chimes, raising one eyebrow at Abi in a peculiar way.

She cringes.

“I see,” Tom answers, not quite sure what just took place.

Two men approach and lead them to a camp. A hand-carved sign reads Camp Praevalus. After a meal they’re escorted by another group to Camp Litore. By this time the sun is all but gone. The journey so far had been lackluster. They were warned of dangerous animals and plants, but they hadn’t seen anything more interesting than a bird so far.

There are torches lighting up the entrances to each of the tents and people sit near a communal fire. They are talking about what they did before they joined the Vanguard. It’s gotten too dark to travel, so Doug and Tom go their tent. Abi, being the only female, gets a tent to herself.

The next morning they make their way to Camp Evanescent. This is the last stop before they will be sent out to stake ground for a new campsite. It’s really happening, Tom thinks to himself. All the years of training are finally paying off. He is about to be a part of history. They all are. And he will tell his grandkids about it, assuming he lives.

It doesn’t take long however to notice that everyone in this camp is somber.

“What do you think is wrong with these guys?” Doug asks, squinting as he looked suspiciously at the camp’s many inhabitants from the corner of his eye.

“This camp is the farthest out,” Abi says, looking pretty somber herself all of a sudden. “It’s setting in that we’re really never going back.” She had been bubbly the whole time, and the change in mood upset Tom.

More escorts meet them with another man in tow.

“This is Leon,” one of the escorts says. “He’ll be in your group now.”

Leon has messy hair and a round face. He is somber like everyone else. The escort leads them to a tree line at the edge of the camp

“Why is everyone here so somber?” Tom asks.

Without hesitation the escort answers plainly. “Because none of the groups we send out come back.”

“What do you mean they never come back?” Doug demands. “No one? Are you telling me you’re sending us to our deaths? You expect us to just go knowing this? Doesn’t somebody have some idea as to why they don’t come back? Shouldn’t you be doing something to prevent it? I mean, hell! Stop the damn expeditions until you figure out what’s happening to people!”

The escort doesn’t flinch. He replies matter-of-factly. “We used to send large groups, but now we send only three or four. Too many casualties with larger groups. With small groups there are fewer casualties, and we figure someone will eventually make it back and tell us what happened.”

“What happens out there?” Tom asks.

“We have no idea. We thought it was wild animals so we sent in large groups with weapons. Then we thought it was toxic plants or gasses, so we tried masks. Ever since that first mission all of our troops have been instructed to come back at the first sign of danger, but even so. . .” 

Tom takes this all in. There’s no way to turn back now. The government won’t let them back up anyway because they don’t want people to know that the Vanguards are a suicide squad.

Then again, Tom thinks to himself, this could just be some kind of half-cocked way for the government to be trying to cull the population, but what would be the point in that when we’ve already made it this far? If anything, preventing that possible outcome is just one more reason these missions are a necessity.

There’s a long silence, but no one bothers asking what will happen if they refuse to go. Tom assumes he knows the answer, and the rest of them may have come to the same conclusion. 

We’ll probably all just be killed if we refuse. We’re obviously expendable anyway and the only way anyone would agree to this is if staying was also guaranteed death.

None of them say anything. It’s clear from their faces that they all know going back isn’t an option. Leon is the first to begin walking. Doug goes next. Tom gets the feeling that Leon had heard this all already and had time to come to terms. Tom and Abi just watch them until they begin to disappear from view, then almost simultaneously they begin to follow suit.

About an hour in, something drops to the ground in front of them with a thick thud. 

They pause, prepared for anything while also having no idea what to expect. The grass is too high to see exactly where it landed.

Another something goes flying, barely missing Tom’s head. It is green, but it’s moving too fast to get a good look.

Leon takes a long dagger from his bag.

There’s a screech and something else comes flying in their direction. It hits a nearby tree and plops to the ground. Leon lunges and stabs it with his dagger. It oozes a sticky liquid. At the same time they hear a loud guttural chirping and the tree limbs above them start to shake aggressively. Tom looks up to see a long-armed creature baring its teeth. 

“It’s a monkey,” Leon says in a relived sigh as he stands. He holds up some kind of green fruit on his dagger. The liquid drips down his arm. “Some of the guys at the camp told me about them while I was waiting for you to arrive. They said they caught one once.” He pulls the fruit off and chucks it hard back at the monkey. He misses, but the animal disappears into the treetops. “When there’s one there usually more and they’re territorial so that probably won’t be the last thing we get thrown at our heads, but they aren’t a real threat. Just don’t get close enough to one to get bit.”

Leon puts his dagger away, and they look in the treetops as they continue. When they reach an empty field, they are cautious. Doug sticks his leg out from the cover of the foliage and slides his foot back and forth along the ground, edging his way further and further into the field. Leon’s eyes frantically dart around searching for anything out of the ordinary. Tom’s pulse races faster than it did when they were jumped by the monkey. They wait a few minutes, listening and observing.

The grass is a few inches high and billows peacefully in the wind. There are more familiar-looking trees across the way. A shadow passes over the field. It may rain soon. “It’s almost worth turning around just to report how far we’ve come,” Doug says somewhat hopefully.

Abi agrees. “We could mark this spot for a camp when someone comes back.”

“As if the big empty field isn’t marker enough,” Doug retorts teasingly “Maybe it really was some super poisonous pollen, but the plant is out of season. Who’s to say this whole field wasn’t filled with deadly dandelions that are all shriveled up now?”

Doug continues to shuffle his feet as he slowly moves further across the billowing field, just in case. Abi and Leon carefully make their way behind him inspecting the ground for any signs of unfamiliar plant life.

“If that’s the case we could probably come back with a bigger team to dig up this field before they’re back in season,” Tom says, also beginning to feel hopeful again.

But there are no remnants of dandelions or of anything else.

“I don’t mean to be macabre, but I had kind of expected to find bodies,” Abi says. “Not that I’m complaining.”

No one finds it macabre though. They find it comforting. They laugh.

Tom scans the field.

When he looks back, Abi, Doug and Leon are gone.

He spins around looking for them. They are gone but that is not possible. They could not have just disappeared.

But they are gone.

He stays there for hours. No one returns. Not knowing what to do, he heads back to camp. They cheer his return. “You are the first!” they yell. “The first!”

A team escorts him back to each base and then eventually back up to the rim of Tub Mire.

He is a hero and travels through every town. There are bigger celebrations at each stop as word spreads of his return. They ask what happened. He can’t tell them because he doesn’t know, nor does he know why he was spared. So, he never says a word about what had happened down there, and people are happy.

Time passes. People call him Father and gather to hear him speak once a week, so he makes up a story about a man he met down there.

“And the man said ‘though shalt not leave the tub for I have provided everything for you and to leave the tub is blasphemy.’ Think about what he said. To leave this tub you are saying God, holy creator, I have decided this is not enough. I want more. You cannot provide for me as well as I can provide for myself.”

He shakes his head. “If you leave the tub, you are leaving his mercy, and you are doomed. There’s a reason the rest of the world is down below us. This tub was created for us. To lift us up out of that wretched world. Away from the path to destruction! It’s hard to get down there for a reason. Don’t you think, our God, would have made it a little easier if he wanted us to go down there? He made it hard in order to save us. And now we betray him and throw our lives away. And for what? More land? Well at what cost is that land coming? How many lives have we already lost to that land? Do you want your children growing up in a place that’s capable of swallowing up men whole? The same land that stole your husbands and brothers and sons? Ladies and gentlemen pray with me. Let us bow our heads and say the prayer of the Lord, and as we do this let us keep in our minds those who have strayed. And let our loss be a reminder that the danger is very real and the danger is very near and if we do not heed the word now and teach our sons and daughters to respect and appreciate that which has been so lovingly created for us we will all suffer the consequences.”

Father Tom bows his head and begins to chant a prayer in a similar but older sounding language. The congregation follows suit. 

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Sydney Spangler is a senior English student at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi pursuing a minor in creative writing. She is the managing editor of the Windward Review, a literary journal showcasing the unique narratives of South Texas, the Coastal Bend, and the border, and a writing intern for Marketing and Communications at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.  

When I was a child I would take a straw and blow air into my chocolate milk until the bubbles overflowed, making a mess of the table. I was six years old and sitting in the kitchen alone. My parents liked the phrase, “Children are not meant to be seen not heard”. They slept in separate bedrooms; I was faced with two doors instead of one. There was no open-door policy. I spent my time in books and television and toys. Looking back now, I was lucky to have parents who would buy dolls and stuffed animals for a little boy. 

My favorite stuffed toy was a beanie baby named Trumpet. He was a Christmas gift from some aunt I never met. I received him in the second grade. At that time, I slept with my mother. She would scare me at night. Her eyes watching me in the dark, a protective gaze that felt predatory. I kept Trumpet by my side. At night, I would tuck him in; a silent “I love you” exchanged. 

Comradery was not something my parents excelled at. My father’s interactions with me were minimal. My mother’s interactions were threatening. 

My father worked nights. Sometimes, on a Saturday, he would take me to the park. I was always too scared to play with other children—afraid I would somehow disappoint at basic human interaction; afraid of their gaze as I struggled to connect. We would sit on a bench and watch the kiddos play tag. My dad, sitting next to me with a cap shielding his eyes from the sun, would tap me on the arm, “Tag. You’re it,” before getting up and faux running away. Eventually I would break away from my father and play with the other kids or find myself sitting in a wooden enclosure, like a hideout, where kids would graffiti on the wood. Phone numbers, stick figures, S luvs M. Bffs 4eva. Call me if you wanna have a good time. Hidden by wooden bars, I watched children live. 

“Let’s go to the swings!” my dad would call out.

I didn’t like heights, but my dad would push me forward propelling me towards the sky. It was scary. I was frightened as my body approached the top, my little grubby hands gripping the chains like it was a matter of life or death, but I appreciated the view. The blue sky seemed limitless; my body—my small little child body—soared.  

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