The
Bend
Poetry Editors: Prose Editors: Kim Koga EddieJoe I. Cherbony CJ Waterman Levi Bronson Sanchez
2010
Number Seven
University of Notre Dame
The Bend
Number Seven
Poetry Editors
Kim Koga
CJ Waterman
Prose Editors
EddieJoe I. Cherbony
Levi Bronson Sanchez
Bendies
Donald Cowan
Elijah Park
Front & Back Cover Photo
Tasha Matsumoto
Front Cover Design
Jen Penkethman
Content Formatting & Design
EddieJoe I. Cherbony
Levi Bronson Sanchez
Copyright ? 2010 The Bend
Rights revert to author upon publication
This is the 2010 installment of the showcase for the work of
students, alumni, and friends of the Creative Writing Program
at the University of Notre Dame -- the journal known, in
previous incarnations as Dánta, La Rue Barbarian, and The
. Rhubarbarian
The Bend does not read unsolicited manuscripts. Printed in the United States
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Forward......................................................................................................................... 4 Cyndi Vander Ven ..................................................................................................... 6 Desmond Kon ............................................................................................................. 7 Emily DiFilippo.......................................................................................................... 9 Jessica M. English ..................................................................................................... 13 Stephanie Magdalena White .................................................................................. 14 Jeanne deVita ............................................................................................................ 16 Cyndy Searfoss .......................................................................................................... 22 Jessica Maich ............................................................................................................. 26 Jennifer Stockdale..................................................................................................... 27 Dónal Kevin Gordon ............................................................................................... 29 Melanie Page ............................................................................................................. 30 Sami Schalk ................................................................................................................ 36 Francisco Aragón ...................................................................................................... 37 Shannon Doyne ........................................................................................................ 42 Danna Ephland ......................................................................................................... 47 Corey Madsen ........................................................................................................... 48 R. Jess Lavolette ....................................................................................................... 53 William McGee Jr.................................................................................................... 55 Jared Randall ............................................................................................................. 62 Jen Penkethman ........................................................................................................ 65 Renée E. D’Aoust ..................................................................................................... 72 Grant Osborn ............................................................................................................ 74 Lisa De Niscia ........................................................................................................... 76 Sheheryar Sheikh ...................................................................................................... 87 Sarah Bowman ........................................................................................................... 88 A. Faith De Betta ...................................................................................................... 92 Elizabeth Smith-Meyer ........................................................................................... 97 Alicia Guarracino...................................................................................................... 98 Iris Law .................................................................................................................... 101 Donald Cowan ....................................................................................................... 103
Bend
over.
the editors
Cyndi Vander Ven
DÉPRESSION: UNE PENSÉE
de scent
deep hollowed throat
great grey wings and milky breasts you shroud-wrap your dark children, suckle them as you lay light to rest in old tombs
Desmond Kon
DESIGNER DRINKS AT SUB ZERO
to let go, our cupola love of first flares, sudden flax massive music, beat mixer on three decks
any correspondence reads like a lover‘s promise
it‘s possible to say the aubades never mattered
it‘s possible to be as detached, labels, cold water
because epithets are cheap, effete;
like a good evening out, feigned angst, faux fur flashcard sommelier when he says it is he who loves
more than everyone else; it is he who doesn‘t spin
language games; his visions never left tepid
daymark pickle, snivels, yellowing in a jar; but is this sea chant and table salt?
quizzical himself; the egg has lost its ostrich shell in vinegar, moon illusion;
show them body armour, what happens anyway the servile possibility of it, bouguereau in a bounce
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3 HAIKUS AND 3 IAMBS:
A NON-PLANAR TRIANGLE
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kea1chmerntlaokoi3ngorffien perawlshne4he5fuondonfeograt velauehewnte4awyaadnsodlevetrhy inhgahedandbhtouigt6maewtht 8
Emily DiFilippo
THE PIONEER
here is only one photograph of you, and it was taken after your life was
finished. Your eyebrows are heavy and dark, your face surrounded by T
the white of a wimple. The black veil covering your head is a vow of death, even in life. But it is joyful death, it is freedom from all things of the world. Your body was of no consequence; it was only what carried you.
As children, we were shown this picture. It hangs in the school, low enough for a first grader to see. But we were not afraid. We were sent to kneel before the sarcophagus with ―Mother Duchesne‖ engraved along its shining flank. Your bones did not frighten us, either.
The shrine where they laid you is simple, the walls are tall and white. They built it as they thought you wanted. They cut the altar from cold Missouri granite. Every morning, a Sister practices the organ. The metronome ticks and the sun shines on her white hair. They brought you the crucifix, the one from the Visitation Convent in Grenoble, in France. From when you, too, were a child. They tell me it is lighter than one might expect. Below the corpus is inscribed, in old French: ―O bon Jesvs crvcifié povr novs sauez
novs.‖
They say you had a talent for sewing. Here is a chair you were mending with cowhide. Here are pieces of dolls‘ furniture that you made for the children in the infirmary. Two hundred years later, their upholstery is still scarlet and rich.
Outside, there are still children, girls in plaid jumpers, boys in knee pants. Red sweaters. No doubt they learn their prayers in French as I did, in the words that you left us. The children will always be here.
* * *
On the day of our First Communion, we made a circle in your parlor, reciting our prayers to the Blessed Mother, to the Sacred Heart. The Sisters gave us each a rosary, white beads, with a case marked ―My First Communion‖ in gold. On the walls around us hung tall portraits of the girls
who preceded us in the last century. We wore matching white dresses: long, ruffled, unflattering. We did not wear veils—we were discouraged from the
sin of vanity. I wore thick glasses with tortoiseshell rims. It is said that you were expected to grow up beautiful, until smallpox scarred your face.
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Your childhood was in the province of Dauphiny, where you loved animals and the outdoors. Even before the Revolution, you listened to the tales of missionary priests who had walked the valley of the Mississippi. When you heard names in the native languages, you wanted to be with the people they described.
It was the turn of the nineteenth century when the Sacred Heart found you. Perhaps he was in a garden, under oak trees, his robes greened with moss, heart pulsing against a ring of thorns, releasing flames. Maybe he pointed to this spectacle, or maybe his arms were outstretched. It was after the Revolution when he called to St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, when she formed the order of the Religieuses du Sacré Coeur. Madeleine Sophie is the patron saint of school girls, they told us. They said we should pray to her when we struggled, that through her, God would enlighten our minds. Her statue stands in the Vatican—I saw it when I was fifteen. She was up high,
her marble veil lifted by celestial wind. I was proud to see a saint I knew there, in the drafty shadows of St. Peter‘s Basilica, so far from the classrooms where we learned her name.
To you, she was Mother Superior, and she would not send you to the New World. You had a vow of obedience. But DuBourg, Bishop of the Louisianas, knocked at the Motherhouse door seeking teachers and missionaries for his diocese. Then it was decided that you would cross the ocean. You were named Superior of the American Mission. You were forty-nine years old.
The year was 1818, the voyage to St. Louis in the Illinois country was six months. There was a comet in the sky.
When you landed at the Port of New Orleans, you found the moss strange, hanging as it does from the cyprus trees. The people told you it was good for making mattresses.
* * *
The Sisters who taught us wore the Sacred Heart blooming at the center of their profession crosses. The girls‘ school was a chateau with white stones
and towers.
We wore skirts for field hockey and lacrosse. On your Feast Day, we ate sugar cookies shaped like oak leaves, with orange and yellow icing. This is because your name, Duchesne, means ―of oak.‖ And we did not say they were cookies; we called them goûter, in the French.
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