The Independent Scribe

A Publication of
Student Arts and Writing

Spring 2011 Edition

University of Rhode Island

Cover Art:
Le Nymphaes (after Monet) by Nick McKnight

Executive Board
President
David Twomey

Treasurer
Nick Rutter

Secretary
Becca Arenas

Editorial Board
Phil Marasco
Daniel J. Mateus
John Holmes
Juliana Belizario

Graduate Advisor
Morgan A. Turano

Special Thanks To
Kim Bolton
URI Student Senate
Sheri Davis
Lori Olsen
Gillian Ramos
Marc Curtin
The Good 5 Cent Cigar
Libby Miles
URI Writing & Rhetoric Department
Stephen Barber
URI English Department
Kate Stone
URI Fine Arts Department
Bob Oscarson
Signature Printers
Holly Tran
Renaissance Yearbook
193 Coffee House
And last but not least, the wonderfully
creative minds of the University who submit to and
read our publication

Presidents Message

I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.

E.B White
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Writing

Visual Art

Poetry as a Natural Outgrowth of Speech

Ben Rekburg

11

Nuclear Family 6
Eric Slade

Letter to Elenora Fagan 18

Nick McKnight

[Title] 10
Gollone Moore

The Supermarket 23
John Holmes

New York Wonder 21

Dario Rodriguez

The Brown Bear Song 38

Jessica Watson

Gravity 22
Bethany Reise

A Touch of Ice 45
Alec Silvestro

Doubletake
Bethany Reise

Were Here Because Were Here

Geoffrey Blanchette

47

Kev 28
Albert Sackey

Waking the Dead 50

Morgan Turano

Winnie 29
Albert Sackey

The Affair at Sea 55

Nick McKnight

Letter to Twombly 30
Nick McKnight

Do Not Stare
Julia Garrick

(Legs Contest Runner-up)

59

Welcome to Narnia 31
Bethany Reise

Legs: Part Two

Morgan Turano

(Legs Contest Winner)

60

Excessive Eating 32
Albert Sackey

27

Excess 33
Albert Sackey

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Visual Art (continued)

Visual Art (continued)

Lady Beardwood 34
Daniel Mateus

Aquatic Beauty 54
Nick McKnight

The Release of Daphne 35

Catrin Richards

Wonders of a City 56
Dario Rodriguez

The Bright Side of a Darken City

Dario Rodriguez

Closed 57
Bethany Reise

36

Ultimate Sunset 37
Dario Rodriguez
On Ice
Bethany Reise

44

Relic 46
Bethany Reise
Ironwork 48
Maria Donnelly
Rush 49
Bethany Reise
Consumerism 51
Albert Sackey
Ghost 52
Nick McKnight
Delroy Fowlin 53
Catrin Richards

10 Moore

[Title]
Gollone Moore

The Independent Scribe

11

Poetry as a Natural Outgrowth of Speech

Ben Rekberg

A proposed mechanism, by which normal speech is constructed, strongly suggests a definition of poetry as an outgrowth of this
process. Such a definition of poetry may even lead to a delineation
of an aesthetic by which the quality of poetry could be assessed, as
well. (Although contemporary poetry may be argued to have outgrown, deviated from or played against, such definition and aesthetic, it is highly applicable to traditional poetry.) While the aesthetic
standard derived from this connection is not an innovation in itself,
the rationale of the standard as having a natural origin is.
Linguists note that conversation is not simply an exchange
of information. Two people engaged in conversation have a shared
understanding of the conventions used during the process of
conversing. The cooperation principle requires that the speaker try
to be as informative, truthful, relevant, concise, clear, and orderly
as possible, and the listener interprets what the speaker says under
the assumption that the speaker is trying to be informative, truthful,
relevant, concise, clear, and orderly.1
It does not do excessive violence to H. P. Grices maxims
of cooperative principle2 to regroup them, with some overlap, into
principles of adequacy, economy and order:
Adequacy

avoid ambiguity (a maxim of manner)

be as informative as required (a maxim of quantity)
1 Debborah J. Bennett, Logic Made Easy (New York, W.W. Norton &Co., 2004), p. 197.
2 Willem J. M. Levelt, Speaking (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1989) pp. 39 - 41.

12 Rekberg

The Independent Scribe

13

Economy

be brief, avoid unnecessary prolixity (a maxim of
manner)

avoid obscurity of expression (a maxim of manner)

be relevant (maxim of relation)

be no more informative than required (a maxim of
quantity)
Order

be orderly (a maxim of manner)

avoid obscurity of expression (a maxim of manner,
again)

be relevant (maxim of relation, again)

do not say what you believe to be false (a maxim of
quality)

do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

(a maxim of quality)
Levelt3 discusses several theories of how words are selected
and theories of how their sounds are fashioned into grammatically
correct sentences. He points out one theory of word selection
uses the same mechanism as the sentence fashioning: activation
spreading. It is always esthetically pleasing to have a unified
principle (Occam). It is here suggested that the cooperative
principles, particularly order, are also a manifestation of these
same selection mechanisms.
The theory of activation spreading with regard to word
selection involves a mechanism in which there are nodes

representing conceptual components. The more ways in which a

node in question is relevant to the concepts to be expressed, the
more order that node represents, the more it is activated. When
a threshold level of activation is achieved, the word that node
represents is selected. Thus, excepting slips of the tongue, the word
selected is the most apt within the speakers lexicon.
Slips of the tongue have been used to provide insight into
this process4 and could be interpreted as arising from the influence
of superfluous order. Freudian slips could be seen to arise when
activation from a concept we have in mind overwhelms the activation
from the concept we mean to express. Levelt5 illustrates the results
of studies of word choice with the following example. Subjects
asked to complete the sentence They do not ski, but they.... found
the most common response to be skate, while responses like
breathe or think were not given.
This is interpreted to indicate that the response of skate
was chosen most often because it most closely preserves the core
concept of locomotion on frozen water using implements attached
to the feet. That might not be the entire story. Water ski, sled,
snowboard, toboggan, snowshoe and luge all preserve
aspects of the core concept. I would suggest that the fact that both
ski and skate begin with an sk-sound and are monosyllabic may also
influence the word choice. Although the sound does not preserve
the core concept with respect to the meaning of the word, it does
maximize the order of the sentence.
There is a childs trick in which one asks another a series of

3 Willem J. M. Levelt, Speaking (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1989)

4 V. A. Fromkin, Slips of the Tongue Scientific American, 1973 (December) 229, 110 -117.
5 Willem J. M. Levelt, ibid. p. 212.

14 Rekberg

The Independent Scribe

15

questions like the following exchange:

What kind of tree grows from an acorn?
Oak.
What is the dark stuff that rises from a fire?
Smoke.
What soft drink is more popular than Pepsi?
Coke.
What do you call the white part of an egg?
Yolk.
No, thats the yellow part; the white part is the egg white.
Clearly, here the sound of the word has overwhelmed the
choice of the obviously correct word. This induced slip is also
based on the words sound and being monosyllabic; the latter
relating to the rhythm of the response. It is not surprising that
rhyme can influence word selection. The popularity of Dr. Seuss
even among the very young suggests that rhyme is easily perceived
at an early age as well as its being enjoyed. Similarly, children
can rhyme at an early age. (In the case of the authors son, he
rhymed spontaneously, but intentionally, at the age of 4 years, two
weeks and one day.) While rhyme can be considered an artificial
similarity, it is no more so than spelling. Consider the relative
ease of finding a word that rhymes with say as opposed to thinking
verbs referring to acts of expression that contains a double letter,6
illustrating to which connection the brain is more naturally attuned.
The above can be thought to be evidence that pure conceptual

connection is not the sole basis for word selection, but order, in the
sense of all connections, is the principle upon which word selection
is made. Clearly, under normal circumstances, the conceptual
connections represent strong degrees of order.
Ordered material is easier to learn (possibly as a function of
retention, possibly retrievability)7 than is disorganized information.
Order facilitates learning. Hence, it may be argued that the order
of rhyme and rhythm may account for a brain-damaged individuals
ability to learn and retain verse and songs whereas he could
remember prose sentences for only a few minutes.8 It might even
be argued that rhyme and rhythm (as well as some other elements
of poetry) represent a universally accessible form of order that
communicate with the brain through deeper or broader avenues of
assimilation.
If order is what drives word selection in normal conversational
speech, then (what was traditionally regarded as) poetry can be
seen as normal speech upon which extra levels of order have been
superimposed. Such forms of order can easily be seen in melody,
rhythm, rhyme and rhyme scheme. Rhyme, for instance, means
knowing the end of one line is connected in an orderly fashion to
the end of another line. That this is order is demonstrated by the
fact that if you know the end of the first line of a couplet, you can
figure out the end of the next line. The unvarying meter in Frosts
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening may be said to suggest a
person habituated to the clip-clop of a trotting horse, reinforcing the

6 For instance: address, allege, announce, babble, bellow, blabber, chatter, comment,
communicate, confess, discuss, express, gabble, gossip, jabber, mutter, natter, powwow, prattle,
profess, speechify, stammer, stutter, suggest, tattle, tell, tittle-tattle, twitter, utter, yell.

7 Bette LaSere Erickson and Diane Weltner Strommer, Teaching College Freshmen (San
Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1991) pp. 94 - 98.
8 Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars, The Last Hippie (New York, Knopf, 1995) p. 66.

16 Rekberg

The Independent Scribe

17

anomalousness of this hiatus from occupational travel. Similarly,

other elements of poetry, allusion, alliteration, onomatopoeia,
foreshadowing, the evocation of the etymology of the words all
superimpose extra layers of order (meaning, interconnectedness) on
the words of the poem.
If additional meaning is considered order, then order in
poetry can include what would otherwise be considered disorder (in
seeming or actual violation of some maxims of manner). Intentional
ambiguity, where divergent thoughts are intentionally expressed
simultaneously, represents order in that both thoughts contain
meaning. This is seen in the word unleaving, in Hopkins Spring
and Fall, referring simultaneously to trees that are shedding their
leaves but not actually dyingnot going away. An unexpected rhyme
represents order in that the author takes advantage both of the
anticipated word and the chosen one.
Poems also progress and, thus, can exhibit order by
foreshadowing, and the recurrences or contrasts of images, sounds,
words or lines. Michael Anania compared a poem to a three ring
circus, where the act the audience watched distracted them from
the setting up for acts that were to follow.9 This may be seen as
laying the foundation for some form of order for the poem to exhibit.
One may say that the quality of poetry increases as its conformity
to the standards of cooperative principle (economy, adequacy and
order) while, at the same time, extra layers of order are added.
Few would argue that there is no beauty found in order. The more
additional order, the richer is the poem.

The quality of the poetry is lowered when the extra order/

meaning interferes with or disrupts what would otherwise be normal
conversational speech, for instance the mangling of sentence
structure merely to get the rhyming word at the end of the line.
Thus, the final couplet of Shakespeares Sonnet 73, This thou
perceivst, which makes thy love more strong,/To love that well
which thou must leave ere long. is superior toIt makes thy love
more strong to this perceive:/To love that well which thou must ere
long leave. On the other hand, the echo of the leaves image in the

9 Classroom discussion.

10 Were this a poem, the Hopkins discussion preceding this would have been foreshadowing.

second line would be enhanced by the emphasis lent to leave by

being at the end of the line and poem.10 This is not to suggest that
a better end couplet would be Seeing this is what makes your love
stronger:/Knowing I must die before much longer. Standing alone,
this couplet might seem to better satisfy the stated criteria of quality.
Nonetheless, in the context of the rest of the poem with gentle,
melancholy metaphors of autumn, twilight and flickering embers, the
jarring contrast of this couplet would disrupt the order of mood.
To summarize, according to the activation spreading model,
natural speech can be seen as arising from seeking to maximize
orderaptness and meaning. Poetry is natural speech to which extra
layers of order have been added. The more layers of order added
without disrupting the primary order of natural language, the better
the poem.

18 McKnight

The Independent Scribe

Letter to Elenora Fagan

Nick McKnight
The leaves turned to the color of your womb
the first time you lied on your back and saw
the sky unwillingly.
The voice box of a wingless bird was conceived
that day.
Raped at 11 years old, turned tricks at 14.
Since then, they said all the silhouettes
of the people that hurt you, made you feel
like an empty vessel, collected in your throat
like dust, made you fragile,
made you hollow like the inside of Gods stomach,
made you stretch like the elastics on your arms
and snap, made you break like sweat on the stage,
and off of it.
And every soul that heard you say stop stop were silent acres
of forest the first time they heard your name on the radio:
Billie Holiday!

An asthma ridden angel,

you cradled the microphone as if it were
your father, closed your eyes
when the late-night ghosts
poured out from your lips,
and when the shadows were just too dirty,
just too heavy, you packed werewolves
in the underbelly of your lungs,
all gripped with nails and gnarled hair,
full of fever, full of love and hate,
full of muscle memory and broken glass,
so all that came out from your howling throat
were phantoms in the moonlight.
I now know why some creatures only
come out at night.
I know why the rib-caged bird sings.
Why some people use a needle shaped
like the tallest buildings, because its
bigger than themselves,
cause some people just want to feel at home.

19

20 McKnight
They want nothing more than to breathe slow
like a back-alley thunder punch.
Breathe slow like daybreak,
like the love making youve never known, Billie,
Slow like the tempo you created.
You collapsed in the collarbones of men,
ragged and apocalyptic, as broken as you are,
with saxophone spines and piano key teeth,
youd say
Dont love me down there, caress my mouth,
thats where the talent is.
As you lay dying of not enough in the dull light
of threaded hospital sheets,
they handcuffed you with halos.
Just two days later, you left this world with
nothing but empty jazz halls and a prayer
that said god bless the child thats endured so much.
Since then, soul has been something
only monsters can create.

The Independent Scribe

New York Wonder

Dario Rodriguez

21

22 Reise

Gravity
Bethany Reise

The Independent Scribe

The Supermarket
John Holmes

23

Second Place Winner:

Nancy Potter Short Story Contest

Its funny, but it feels like every time I go grocery shopping,

I end up with a carriage with a busted wheel. Ill be moving forward
and suddenly the thing will seize up, or itll lock completely to
prevent me from taking some hastily considered left turn. Im
beginning to think all of the carts are similarly broken, but of course
I couldnt prove it. For all I know, Im just getting the same carriage
every time. I know that Im the only one making a scene when Im
unable to maneuver my way around an obese man in the bread
aisle, or when the cart veers out of control on its own accord and
knocks over an old woman.
Its times like these that make me wonder why I come here
at all. I mean, thats obviously a silly question. I come because Im
hungry.

I rarely go grocery shopping knowing what I plan to buy.
Sometimes my sweet tooth takes over. I want something that I can
just pop in my mouth and forget soon after disposing of its brightlycolored packaging. Candy, cookies, soda pop. I know its not good
for me, but sometimes the cravings are just too strong. A quick treat,
and then go about the rest of my day. Maybe even go a little crazy,
get some chocolate, caramel, butter pecan. Its fine to go wild now
and then, as long as its not an everyday occurrence, although I do
sometimes go shopping several times a week when my sweet tooth
is particularly out of control.
Even when looking for empty calories, I keep one eye out for

24 Holmes
something more nutritious. Something starchy, grainy, something
that will fill me up. Something that I wont even be able to finish
in one sitting and need to keep in Tupperware containers in my
fridge for weeks, leftovers! Something warm and tender and hearty,
something that Ill never get sick of.
That kind of food is in much shorter supply around here. I
get frustrated. All the best cuts of meat seem to get snatched up
as soon as they hit the shelf. Ive seen fights break out among the
customers over some particularly delicious-looking chicken breasts.
I swear some customers have arrangements made with the staff to
get the first crack at the best food, because it seems like the same
people get everything first. I never know where to stand, who to talk
to, what to say to make sure I get dibs on the best. Im not cut out to
compete.
Granted, Im not sure that the people who got those great
cuts really enjoyed them. Food always looks better on the label than
it really is, even at the high-end places. Some of the items Ive seen
at this supermarket though just astound me.
I once bought a box of cereal that looked delicious. It was
a new brand, something Id never tried, but Id seen ads for it. It
was supposed to have the full-day doctor recommendation of fiber,
protein, and God knows what else, all in delicious, crunchy clusters
which tasted great despite having no added sugar. Quite frankly, it
was supposed to be perfect. I remember the next morning, pouring
myself my coffee, eagerly anticipating the life-changing experience
of digging into that cereal. I opened the box. It was empty. No cereal,
not even a bag. Not even a special prize.

The Independent Scribe

25

I once required stitches in my mouth after biting down on a
razor blade concealed in a Kit-Kat bar.

I was once bitten on the finger by a small lizard as I reached
my hand into a bag of chips.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep coming back here, pushing
along the same rickety carriage. I guess that one reason is that its
so convenient. The place is only about three miles away from my
house, so as soon as I feel my stomach rumble, I can be there in a
matter of minutes. And the food is so cheap. Theres another place
uptown, but its forty minutes away, and the traffics always crazy,
and parkings a bitch, and its so damn expensive that I just dont
think its worth all the hassle. No, Im really much better off doing
what Ive been doing.

Its not that Ive never come close, either. One day I chanced
upon some of the most gorgeous cuts of steak Ive ever seen. A
whole rack of them, practically glowing under the fluorescent lighting
of the display. They were perfect: juicy, tender, high-quality beef,
packaged today. I wondered if I was dreaming. There were no other
customers around to push me out of the way and grab it. I couldnt
believe my luck. I almost felt blessed. I quickly but inconspicuously
stacked every last package in my cart, and practically ran to the cash
register to check out.

My mouth watered as I sped home, doing at least twenty over
the speed limit as my mind wandered, thinking about taking this
steak home, tearing off the packaging, cooking it up, and sinking my
teeth into it. I mentally portioned out my freezer, intending to fill it for
months to come with this beautiful steak.

26 Holmes

But it wasnt to be. When I got the steak to my kitchen, it was
rotten. Completely rotten. Green mold was growing on it, as were
wriggling maggots. The meat was nowhere near its expiration date,
but somehow had gone bad during the ten minute ride home. I didnt
even get a taste.

So I keep shopping. I mean, eventually somethings gotta be
as good as it seems, right? Until then, I can deal with the occasional
disappointment, the constant hunger, the fear of getting a disease
from spoiled meat.

I walk to the checkout. My carriage is empty save for a box of
Twinkies, and I labor to force its stubborn wheels to cooperate. As
I approach, again thoroughly dejected, I notice the clerk peeling a
banana. The banana is perfect. It is perfectly ripe, without a single
brown spot, unlike the mushy, moldy, disgusting bananas in aisle
three. I have never seen a banana like this one, at this supermarket
or anywhere. Dumbfounded, I ask the clerk where he found it.

Oh, this? he replies. I brought this from home.

The Independent Scribe

Doubletake
Bethany Reise

27

28 Sackey

Kev
Albert Sackey

The Independent Scribe

Winnie
Albert Sackey

29

30 McKnight

Letter to Twombly
Nick McKnight

The Independent Scribe

Welcome to Narnia
Bethany Reise

31

32 Sackey

Excessive Eating
Albert Sackey

The Independent Scribe

Excess
Albert Sackey

33

34 Mateus

The Independent Scribe

Lady Beardwood
Daniel Mateus

The Release of Daphne

Catrin Richards

Model: Victoria Beardwood

35

36 Rodriguez

The Bright Side of a Darken City

Dario Rodriguez

The Independent Scribe

Ultimate Sunset
Dario Rodriguez

37

38 Watson

The Brown Bear Song

Jessica Watson

The Independent Scribe

Third Place Winner:

Creative Non-Fiction Contest

Sitting in room 406 on Roosevelt Halls fourth floor, all I could

think about was pizza. Next to me, Laura chewed silently on her
pepperoni, Sarah wiped grease on her napkin, and even Tim had
a plateful of crusts before him. Somehow, I had missed out on the
free pizza and soda that everyone else was eating in the Writing
Center meeting. In the hopes of spotting leftovers, I peered around
the room, but no pizza boxes were visible.

Resigned, my mind wandered away from the directors
speech about the logistics of tutoring at the WC, asking myself
instead why I was there. I certainly had not enrolled in the tutoring
class so I could miss lunch or listen to dry discussions of politics at
a tutoring center. But why? Thinking back, I remembered teaching
trombone, Spanish, multiplication, all sorts of subjects to students
over the yearsbut the first time I realized I wanted to help students
learn with one-on-one help was a long time before any of those
experiences.

The summer that inspired me to keep passing on learning
was like any other. Driving to the school that morning, my mom and
I passed groups of children heading to the pool, towels and goggles
slung over their shoulders. Air conditioners buzzed harshly while the
trees drooped in the humid heat of July. The elementary school, red
brick and cement, stood empty, waiting for the students to arrive.

Clambering out of the car, I was still barely any taller than
the students I worked with. Only several years before, when I was

39

nine years old, I had come to this summer school for classes myself.
Many of the students remembered me, and, more importantly, I
knew what it felt like to spend mornings there five times a week.
Even when the heat got so bad that your legs stuck to the chairs, the
teachers and aides tried to inspire learning with weird activities or
sing-a-longs.

Inside, we split up, my mom going to her classroom and I
to mine, down in the kindergarten wing. Silently, I walked behind
her as her colleagues called out greetings and questions when she
passed by. I was used to being in the background, the middle school
student whose mom worked at the school, who had nothing better
to do than to volunteer in the classrooms over the summer. Nobody
asked much of me besides copying worksheets for the kids and
helping them play together. I was the silent helper, bending over
to show which color crayon to use, picking up the building blocks,
straightening the chairs.

It was like being stuck in the middle of two worldsone foot
straining to reach adulthood, the other still straddling childhood.
To most of the teachers, I was just another student, another young
charge sent there daily to experience the joys of learning in the heat
of July. To the students, I was a big kid stuck in their room for some
inexplicable reason. I enjoyed feeling helpful, but I never could fully
reconcile all the different expectations.
However, I still wanted to help out, and this was my
third summer at the school. I was working in Mrs. Gamel's
room, a second grade teacher who was in charge of half of the
kindergarteners. For several weeks, we had been singing songs

40 Watson
daily to help teach colors, numbers, and animals. Led by her strong
voice, fifteen little mouths bugled out the tunes as she pointed to the
words. Seated behind the students, I followed along, mouthing the
words to myself and tapping out the rhythm with my foot.
Occasionally, even teachers have to take breaks and leave
the room, as I was soon to find out.On that morning, after spotting
me decorating the windowsill, Mrs. Gamel decided I had seen the
routine enough times to do it by myself while she left. Calling me
over, she asked, Can you start the brown bear song so I can go
next door? Ever obedient, I shrugged my assent and walked to the
board. Staying only long enough to make sure I had the right piece,
Mrs. Gamel ducked out of the room.

Heart pounding, hands sweating, I stood alone in front of a
crowd of expectant faces. Chad, Joey, Tiffanytheir names blended
together in my mind as I nervously tried to remember the tune. I
have always been fond of playing instruments in band, but I am not
good singer. Even singing Happy Birthday to someone makes me
anxious. And even though those kids would probably never see me
againand definitely would forget my name after that summerI
could not stop hesitating. The need to avoid humiliation was too
great for me to start.
Stalling, I called out, Who likes this song? Geri, Amanda,
Steven, and several other students raised their hands, but all of their
little eyes kept boring into me. Glancing across the hallway, I saw
Mrs. Gamel, surreptitiously listening to what was occurring in our
classroom, even while she talked to the other teacher. Suddenly, I
realized what she did for them every daywithout her concern for

The Independent Scribe

41

their knowledge, these kids would be home in front of the television,

wasting their summer. For students with learning difficulties, the
only way to teach was to show them what they could do. At five years
old, each of those children had so much undiscovered potential.
Emboldened with an understanding of what I could do for
their education, I counted off four beats, then sang out the first line
of the song. Instantly, fifteen duck voices joined in, shouting out
the colors and barely hesitating between verses. Still unsure of my
own voice, I lapsed back to silence, pointing to the words as they
sang and occasionally calling out words they forgot. Before I knew
it, the words ran out; caught up in the moment, I had forgotten to
look at the clock. Eager to hold their attention for one last minute
before Mrs. Gamel returned, I pointed to Chad and asked him
which animals were in the rhyme. By the time we had moved on to
discussing the colors, Mrs. Gamel had returned. Pulling on her role
as teacher like a coat, she slipped past me into her customary spot
in the front. Although she did not say anything, her eyes shot me a
message of thanksand congratulations.
Flushed with my success, I retreated back to my part of
awkward helper. Inside, however, I still remembered how it felt
to inspire other people. I had realized that even as a peer, I had
influence to spread ideas.

By the end of the day, shouts rang through the halls and
forgotten papers littered the desks. To everyone else at the school,
the day had progressed just like any othermath, spelling, recess,
snack time, reading, time to go home. One day down, two weeks
more to go until August came and summer days would finally be

42 Watson
empty of classes. Raucous children ran onto the buses while lines
of strain popped up on all the teachers' faces.
As I helped clean up, my mind kept slipping back to midmorning, when I got to teach the class for five minutes. I had always
assumed that I would be pretty good at teaching, since my mom had
been doing it for twenty years. Surely the skills needed for relating
to childrenpatience, caring, the ability to dry tearswould have
worn off on me somehow.
I had never really tested that theoryI was usually just in the
background, a big kid good for helping with drawings or zipping
coats. But when I stepped in front of the class, I realized that I did
have something more to contribute to schoola way for me to pass
on my own learning to other students.
After all of my fretting, nervous giggles, and disclaimers,
after the teacher came back and relieved me of my new position,
after retreating back into the corner, I could not stop smiling.
Remembering the moment when the kids accepted me as their
teacher momentarily and began to participate freely made me
feel accomplished, like I had touched their lives by sharing my
knowledge, and had been validated. I hoped every day that they
were learning from me, but it turns out I had lots to learn from them,
like how unimportant age or status are to students who truly want to
learnand how anyone can contribute to education if they find the
right outlet.
Since that moment, I have actively volunteered in tutoring
programs and peer reviews. It seems almost selfish to keep all
the facts and tricks I have learned in my own head, when there are

The Independent Scribe

plenty of students who would love help.

Remembering this moment, the crucial five minutes of my life
when I decided I liked helping other people learn, my mind slowly
floated back into my body, slouching in the meeting. I knew that no
matter my complaints, I did not want to be anywhere else. Through
boring and exciting moments, sessions that end in smiles and ones
that make my blood surge in anger, tutoring is my reprieve from the
rest of academia. I want to spend my time spreading knowledge,
even as I make friends and help peers.

44 Reise

On Ice
Bethany Reise

The Independent Scribe

A Touch of Ice
Alec Silvestro
On a cold spring morning I feel the chill
Of winters weather from the dark of night,
For a weary body its quite the thrill,
Even more so than the days first strange light.
Peculiar and odd is the brand new day,
In those early hours all lifes reborn
I have a brand new world on which to play,
And for days gone by I will fail to mourn.
In these not quite comforts I can forget
All my light troubles with their heavy thoughts
And into the day I have no regret,
No troubles upon me can heaven wrought.
On a cold, cold morning Im born anew,
Tell me new stranger, is it the same for you?

45

46 Reise

Relic
Bethany Reise

The Independent Scribe

47

Were Here Because Were Here

Geoffrey Blanchette
And then the new diplomatic envoy, lost as he was in the perverse
machinations of the
foreign court, did his best to remember the correct protocol to use
while addressing the drug-addled ex-wife of a blood-hungry tyrant.
When he began to stammer out the appropriate obsequies,his
tongue
grew dangerously brittle
and exploded in shards of black ice
that flew around the room and pierced the flesh of all those present.
Punctured skin
seized up, became illusory twisted wall hanging,
like the silent steel beams that denote a shipwreck.
Dumb and unseeing, for the shards had pierced his eyes
so that the vitreous ran down his face and over his brand new shoes,
the young man continued his automatic speech
while the former doyenne, her skull crackling with the shock
of a thousand needles jammed through the bone, wore on her face
the grimace of the dead. Whereupon the conqueror himself
burst through the door,
wearing his most sensuous smile.

48 Donnelly

Ironwork
Maria Donnelly

The Independent Scribe

Rush
Bethany Reise

49

50 Turano

Waking the Dead

Morgan Turano

Its the screaming that wakes her, screaming to wake the
dead, and at first she thinks its the baby, somethings wrong with
the baby, but then she remembers theres no baby; no baby, no
Tommy, no nobody but herself now, shes all by herself now, but
shes too scared to open her eyes the screaming is terrifying.
The fire. The fire had taken everything. The great cleansing
fire had erased all, left the world blank and empty and cold; it left
behind only smoke, smoke which clouded her vision still she
couldnt tell the doctors about the smoke, she knew they would
say it was psychological, but it wasnt, it was real thick, blinding,
sometimes choking her, stifling, her words became caught up in her
throat. And the screaming. The screaming had been burned into
her very flesh that night, burrowed inside her somehow, and now, at
night, it tried to get out.
But no: its the baby, the baby is screaming again theres
something wrong with the baby. The baby cant breathe; the baby is
choking on the smoke too. But no: that isnt right, she remembers
there is no baby; no baby, no Tommy who is screaming? She is
so scared she is shaking. Violently shaking someone is trying to
wake her from the nightmare. She reaches out blindly to them, eyes
squeezed tight against the smoke. She sits up, reaching out and
finally opens her eyes there is no one. The motel room is still and
empty and silent, save her screaming.

The Independent Scribe

Consumerism
Albert Sackey

51

52 McKnight

Ghost
Nick McKnight

The Independent Scribe

Delroy Fowlin
Catrin Richards

53

54 Rodriguez

Aquatic Beauty
Dario Rodriguez

The Independent Scribe

The Affair at Sea

Nick McKnight
The depth weeps rippled riddles,
Laughing neath midnight skies;
She entangles beating fiddles
And wraps them between her thighs.
She dreams of breathing shivers,
Exhaling lonely goodbyes;
She unravels vibrations of wooden slivers,
None could ever pry.
Gusts of wind to the depth she whispers,
Flowing through rolling tides;
She absorbs dreams of sails and whimpers,
And leaves them all to die.
The sea is silent as bellows whither,
And does not simmer at the worlds demise;
She inhales the sky as if tohinder,
But she tends to tell many lies.

55

56 Rodriguez

Wonders of a City
Dario Rodriguez

The Independent Scribe

Closed
Bethany Reise

57

Contest Title Page

The Independent Scribe

Do Not Stare
Julia Garrick

Runner-Up:
[iScribe Contest Name]

Sitting alone on this city bus

Atmosphere smells of stagnant perfume
Boy stands in front of me; he grips the oily pole
He looks down my dress
Calf brushes knee, cold denim on bare skin
Faint words are heard from the girl to my right
Music is bumpin' from headphones too big for her head
Foul lyrics, sick beats
My right foot taps along
Softly, it hits the vibrating floor
This is my stop
I rise slowly from my seat, the boy takes my place
Focused eyes follow me as I walk down the three steps
Eyes stare at my quick moving legs
Exhaust puffs noisily into the air
The leaving bus roars goodbye
Hands in wool gloves
Hair wild, dusted with snowflakes
Cars pass and push wind into my ear
Street signs blush under twilight's glow
I watch my breath slowly rise into the air

59

60 Turano

Legs: Part 2
Morgan Turano

The Independent Scribe

Winner:
[iScribe Contest Name]

Pulpy chunks he fed into the grinder, the juice running down
his forearms in cold rivulets. He wiped the sweat from his eyes
with the back of one wrist, leaving a streak of red grit across his
brow. There was so much more than hed realized; hed never really
thought of the bulk before, and it was so much heavier than hed
expected, as if it was purposefully resisting him, even now. As a
child he had watched one of his uncles field-dress a deer, but he
had never done it himself, and he found it was the little things that
bothered him the most the eyes, the eyes had to go so he had
taken care to remove the head first but the worst was over now, all
that was left was the meat from the legs and to dispose of the bags
of bones and skin.

He had already broken up the bones, crushing what he could
into teeth-sized pieces using the hammer he found in the garage,
the bigger bones he cut with the saw and the pruning shears; it
was tedious but necessary. The meat grinder caught on the sinewy
tendons, and he worried for a moment that he had damaged it, but
with a little force the tendons snapped and the handle continued to
turn.

Only one bone he left on the counter. The others were in
contractor trash bags on the floor beside him, but he couldnt bring
himself to lose this smooth triangular bone, it sat so perfectly in the
palm of his hand, so white and smooth and small. He could have
had two except he ruined the other during the kill; it cracked down

61

the middle when the leg was twisted. The good bone lay on the
blood streaked countertop, and he thought I will have to take care
to wash it in warm water, and dry it with the dishtowel. I will leave it
to dry overnight on her windowsill, and in the morning, after a good
nights sleep, I will take the bags of bone and skin and meat out to
the car, and make sure the kitchen is clean it is lucky all the floors
are tile and I was able to work in the bathtub on her and that we
were both naked so that it did not ruin our clothes Ill just need to
shower and remember to collect her kneecap from the windowsill.
But first he had to finish grinding the meat; it was 2 a.m., and he only
had three chunks to go.

62

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63

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