Quasi
an outlet for young writers


June 15, 2002
Volume 1, Issue 9


   Finally!

  We are most definitely on time this issue, punctually, and the reason is, quite simply, that readers are finally beginning to send in
their own stuff.  Thank God!
   The second part of Hannah Baker's vivid short story is in this issue, as is an anonymous poem which may be different in style than some of you are used to, but obviously heartfelt.  
   Then, of all things, someone actually wrote a Mouthin' Off piece, to relieve me of my duties for this issue.
   To reference Mouthin' Off from last issue, which advocated the reading of David Halberstam's new book Firehouse, I had
the chance to speak with David Halberstam yesterday on the phone, because I wanted to ask him what had made him such a good writer and successful author (I went straight from Firehouse to his groundbreaking book The Best and the Brightest, which was the first book to really show us what went wrong about the Vietnam war).
   Mr. Halberstam, who will be featured on C-Span's American Author's series on Sunday, July 7 at 3 p.m., mentioned two main things. He was surrounded by talented people in his first job at The Tennessean, after editing the student paper at Harvard, and obviously there were talented people at the New York Times, where he went after The Tennessean.
   What he did, he said, was first identify those who were truly excellent.  Then, he identified his own weaknesses as a writer and reporter.  His main weakness, he said, was his ability to dig on a story, to get past the initial facts, and to get to the details and
the true story.
   Once he had identified his weaknesses, he said he was intentional in working on improving those weaknesses, which was in
contrast to many others, who simply concentrated on what they did well and tried to reinforce those things.
   To help himself improve, he went to those whom he felt he could trust, and whose ability he respected, and asked them what they did to be successful, and he applied what he learned from them.
   Now, Mr. Halberstam is one of the most influential and talented writers of our time, known for his thorough investigation of a story and wonderful storytelling abilities.
   I encourage each of you to seek out the people who are doing what you'd like to do, the way you'd like to do it, go to them and
ask them how to do what they do, and try to follow in their footsteps.
   Aim high.
 
                       -- Jon Ward

...
  
The Souls of Juvenile Delinquents - A Short Story (Part II)
By Hannah Baker

   ...continued...
   
   James whispers, inches from Chris's face, cupping his hand around his face: He killed her."
   James smiles, grimacing, half-laughing innocence, the luxury of innocence spills out in the form of lies like, "How could I know? I didn't mean it!" and they work for substitute teachers who do not understand what is going on beneath the surface of things.
   Let me take you there. First, a lesson on the futility of the time-out chair to correct this sort of malice in a child's heart. The problem with
the time-out chair is that seconds can not buy a heart transformation. If any of us had all the time in the world to think about why we screw up, we would realize only that we love meanness, that we have to win, get the attention, be the favorite child, scream for the love of wreaking chaos or because we have been mistreated.
   The real issue is that James bops up and down, laughing hysterically, like one of those monster rock heads that pop up and down as a game at Chuck E. Cheese's. That monster rock head looks like sea coral or my Aunt's cellulite, except that it's frozen into one unit--coherent, thinking, sensible, reasoning lump of meanness that has a way to walk oh so cool and a way to jive, so calculated. Always somehow managing to duck or glide out at just the right moments. Less even then seconds as to frustrate the kid trying to prove his athletic ability with his skill ast decking the monsters with a kind of gavel. Justice, eh? Kill the ugly face. Is this civilized anger? Anger repressed in the mouse mask, the face of Chuck E. Cheese, a slice of cheese pizza, and birthday cake, "where a kid can be a kid?" or
"ax-murderer?" We have such polite ways of doing these things, you see, celebrating your five-year old birthday while smashing in eight or more skulls.
    The only complication is that the ugly face is the beautiful James, who never gets in trouble and the kid having the birthday party, the dashing prince who slays the dragon to get the girl, is the bully, Chris. It's funny that I always thought the monster head was cute and I had to resist the urge to grab my brother's arms and restrain him from clobbering their large, delicate eyes and interesting crevices. Mini Sugarloaf mountains popping up like a crafty old Jack-in-the-box, trying to be funny, that's all.
Peek-a-boo, cute, nothing to get scared over. No reason to kill somebody.
That was James's effect on everybody, so charming and seemingly innocent and unthinking, unintentional, playful, whimsical, smiles, dancing, lacing up his smooth, black face with the intention to do right and never hurt a bug. I wanted always to protect him from Chris's irrational outbursts.
   Stephanie cries, "Look at what Chris is doing to James! Look, Sharlita, look, Sharlita, would you look?"
   Chris's hula-hoop anger held an array of sticks, plastic airplanes, stones. Danger flicks around him, whirling like a hot pink, hula hoop, and the slightest things could set him off balance and every planet in his universe could collide with James's world. James efficacious language and laughter functioned perfectly, keeping his own anger at bay and his jealousy quiet so that  everything lay behind
the wall in your basement where the fuse box hides its incredible power to shut off your electricity.
   "I'll kill you, so why don't you just shut up!" Chris barely got the words out between thrusting James to the undergrowth,kicking him in the groin, chest, ears, temple, jaw.
   Sharlita squeals, "Oooh! James gettin' pounded! Go, Chris! Go, Chris! Oh my god! No!"
   Had I been there, I would not direct Chris to kick "his wall," the wall my boss permits him to kick or punch in order to get the anger out. If it worked, if it rid him of his anger, if the anger is something wrong with his food that he mistakenly consumed, then, yes, he could vomit it up. Yet, the anger was him. He was out of control. Himself. Anger. Inseparable. It was always with him, in him, mingling with his fears, guilt, hopes, dreams, personal life. It wasn't a wrong, unhappy choice he made occasionally. What if he became that wall and he was actually kicking himself? Punches were turning back on himself, kicks were rebounding, headed for his gut. It wan't a fight between good and evil, it wasn't a fight raging between opposing forces. It was masochistic. He wanted to be mean and nasty, and when he
did mean and nasty things, that was the real self.
   I absolutely refuse to talk to Chris about choices the way Robert Frost does in "The Road Not Taken." I don't belive choices are made in a whimsical way. They define us. We are the motives and feelings behind the actions and words we choose, so that our choices always relfect on our souls. Yet, there are things one can say and do that are labelled good, decent, Christian behavior. No one pays attention to the people behind such actions and words, the individual thoughts and feelings, the authentic self, the soul, and the
various attiudues, connontations, specific situations, or personal history behind such people! Sharing is good. Sharing is a good thing to do. It's a thing. It occupies space in everyone's mind as a proof, a mathmatical equation, a check mark for what is goodness.
   Frankly, I do not know what I would have done, I have no answers for changing someone else by my own power. That's why I quit three weeks ago, and I do not care if you think I am a cop-out. I can't handle the fact that I cannot help children within this framework that cuts out hope. My hope is that Jesus died for me. I don't see any other way out of sin. Yet you can't force people to be redeemed, that's something God does. It's a miracle, something I pray will occur in their hearts. I won't work with them anymore, there's nothing I can do but go home crying every Thursday and having nightmares, and I won't internalize their guilt and suffering any longer.
That's why I quit, pretty hard one to explain to my boss, as she's crying over the phone. Can't do what you don't have faith for, I say to myself, and keep praying for my babies. Just can't do the time-out thing no more.
   Keshon swaggers over to the scene of the crime.
   "That's my cousin! Whatch gonna do to my cousin, you do to me, Chris!"
   Keshon jutts out his his hips, his little blue jeans, size 4 boys, falling off him. Grabbing his jeans and scratching his penis, he grunts and puts up his fists. He comes up to James's knee, but that doesn't matter now that James is on the grass, unconscious.
   "Thas ma cousin! I's his main man. Don't die on me, man, I need you...to protect me from ma uncle, ma uncle Pukey. Pukey's mean. He ate ma Cocoa Puffs, so I bit his arm and scratch his leg when he flung me off the counter top. Don't have no chairs, we eat and sleep on de sofa or we eat on de counter in case we spill since we gotta hurry mornings, we stay up late watching a movie and can't wake up to dat fire alarm, I mean, alarm clock...James, git!"
   "Keshon? Ya wanna get blasted?" Chris barks.
   Stephanie and Sharlita flee, Keshon's jaw opens, hands drop to his sides with the rigidity of the metal stop sign arm.
   James's black face looks like purple velvet with oozing red designs, curtains with intricate, expensive embroidery form one of those trendy furniture stores that specializes in absracrt, wierd art. Is James artwork? Chris smiles over him as though he has finally made a
statement about how angry he feels. Here lies the product of much blood, sweat, and tears. The satisfaction he feels in having hewn the form of so much abstract emotion--all the times he has painted James's smiling face on the wall he punches several times in a single afternoon or the many times he has hung James in his imagination on the cherry tree and kicked his limp body--is terrifying.
   Trembling, eyes reddening, Chris walks past Keshon. Keshon runs up behind him, kicks him in the ankle, but trips. Crawling toward his idol who is now painting the grass red and evil with his ears as they seep the color of raspberries, the kind of tartness juxtaposed to pinkish watermelon and grass stains, the supposed perfect life for boys in some mythic world, in the books I
now read to Keshon at daycare about lazy farmers and frolicking pigs wearing pj's.
   The daycare library is nothing like the realm of everyday experience for Keshon. Nothing like having your dad pick you up instead of your grandmother. Your dad looks like a thug, does not speak, whom you see several times a year, and never upon your request.
Keshon screams and cries at the sight of him, wishing, longing for his mother. Why didn't his mother love him? Tuck him in bed, instead of me folding him up in a plastic cot with his name written in permanent marker on a piece of masking tape? Was she pretty? Prettier than his fat grandmother holding him in her lap while she eats Utz potato chips on the sofa over his head, making all the chip crumbs stick to his wooly hair? Was that why she liked his head shaved--so no one would see that his grandmother made a tablecloth out of his head--out of necessity? No napkins or paper plates in their house. Just bags of chips and Lunchables, or drive-thru McDonald's.
   Keshon wants to go home now, wherever that is, touching James's face and tasting his finger to see if that is real blood or just ketchup.
   Chris takes off running down Muncaster Mill Road, but feels that he is inside James's veins. He has not really left. He is not free. The hands that marred James's black face are ripping through the sky, flying down the road, fighting to forge more distance between himself, the self he wants to become, and the dead self, the one that killed James and crushed Keshon's heart. The self that now hits and bites at daycare, that self is going down, has to be crucified. Chris wonders if suicide might help, sees himself dash across the street, but then he'd be dead and what good would that be? He needs someone to do it for him, to take the physical anger in his body into their own body, but he does not know how to ask for a new body, one that doesn't find pleasure in meanness. Later, the answer would come find him, but now he is unchanged at the intersection of Muncaster Mill and Route 124, his body aching of
cruelty.

...


Slam This!  Poet's Forum

Rachael
Anonymous

There she was
Surrounded in light
In an unlikely place
On an unlikely night
Floating the world
Like a bird with no nest.
To have only seen her
Is to truly be blessed.
I looked through her eyes
deep into her soul
And saw a bright warmth
In a world that is cold.
There are some feelings
Which can't be expressed
--How my heart glowed
Like coals in my chest.
These feelings I'll not
Keep them reserved.
I'll speak that the world
Does not deserve
To have an angel
Drifting its face.
She should be in heaven
She's clearly misplaced.
A bird on the ground
That should be in flight,
She made me believe
In love at first sight.
Now I will leave
With oceans between
Never forgetting
True beauty I've seen.
Sadly it's true
She cannot be mine.
So I will imagine
Another lifetime.
In a land that is pure
And just and fair
Perhaps I can wish
She'd be with me there.
I'd hold her hand
And give her my life.
She'd give me her love
She'd be my wife.
I would caress,
Protect, and defend.
She would remain
With me 'till the end.
Now I am here
And all dreams aside
There's hurt and there's pain
And tears that we cry.
When she's mistreated
May she hold on to this.
May it comfort her
Like a soft gentle kiss.
Remember that always
After the rain,
The clouds will make way
For sunshine again.
Now I can dream,
Now I can pray,
To see her again
On some sunny day.

...

Mouthin' Off
Luke Smart

Piercing the Bubble

"Firehouse is a book about September 11th, which, amazingly, will be a year ago soon. I would recommend you read it before then, or even right around then, to remind yourself of that awful day that changed all of us
forever."

So says Jon Ward as he mouths off yet again.  A good suggestion I think.  It makes sense.  I like to read, why not try a good book about more heroic American men?  Yet there's something that bothers me in that suggestion.  

It's the hyperbole.  The suggestion that September 11th is the day that changed my life forever. How to explain?  I don't oppose the idea that this day was monumental formany.  On that day, the destruction of thousands took place.  But I am left unaffected-sort of.  And that's what bothers me.  Do these events really affect so many so drastically?
 
Or am I the only one who lives inside a bubble? We call it the UMBC bubble.  While on campus at UMBC, nothing seems real.
 I walk to class, I walk to the cafeteria, I walk back to my dorm.  I interact with individuals and create relationships, memories,
conflicts, resolutions, and many other details of campus life.  But it all occurs within the Bubble. Friday afternoon I pack my dirty clothes in a gym back, pack my books with great precision into a backpack and head home, trekking outside the bubble, back onto the highway, into the real world.

September 11th is only one of several events that has occurred to me in the bubble.  Sure, I remember exactly where I was when I
heard about the attack. I was sitting in the middle of genetics class. My professor was efficiently describing mitosis, drawing circular
cell shapes on the board for each step of the process.  He abruptly left the room just as the spindles began to retract the separated
chromosomes to opposite sides of the cell in preparation for cell division.
 
The microphone fuzzed for a brief moment and he reappeared announcing that the rest of class was cancelled because another plane had crashed, this one into the pentagon. My first class was at eight in the morning, so this was the first news I had of any plane crashes.

I walked out of class with a feeling of nervous anticipation.  What was our professor talking about?  A few friends headed over to the library and checked the news on the internet.  Yes, two planes had hit the world trade center in NY and a plane had hit the pentagon as
well.  What was this?  At least class was cancelled, that's a real bonus. My next class was cancelled as well and I sat down to gaze at the television for a bit to try to soak in some of the news.  It didn't register.

Hijackers?  Thousands of people dead?  It all seems a little ridiculous. Another experience inside the bubble.  Here I feel invincible.  If nuclear war were to break out, this isolated campus would be unaffected. But there's something more to it.  I'm not just unaffected at school.  At home as well I gaze at the front-page news about people dying and war inAfghanistan and homeland security.  What's all that got to do with me? My brain takes it in.  But it doesn't compute.  People dead.  Maybe I am just a hardened individual with no feelings for others.  But I think others experience this too.  The next day a girl in one of my classes shared how she was upset with herself for not crying more about September 11th.  I don't know; did that day change my life forever?
 
Surely it has changed the world I live in.  But I am so little affected by that world in my day to day doings.  I see fighter jets more often.  I hear about the delays at airports and the troops fighting overseas.  But I still go to class, go to the cafeteria, go back to my dorm and go home on the weekends. So the statement irks me: the day that changed all of us forever.  I hardly feel affected.
 
How can I have been changed forever? But the desire exists. I want to be affected.  I want to feel with others. Empathy. It's precious.  I savor those moments when I do feel.  I hold dear the times I am affected.  I remember those times that emotion rose up within me.  When I hear friends share of great trials in their life.  When I spend time with my ever-growing family.  When those I love experience pain or
loss.

But it's not always an event. Sometimes it's a good movie or a book. Saving Private Ryan.  Flags of Our Fathers.  All Quiet on the Western Front. Black Hawk Down.  We Were Soldiers.  Memoirs of patriotism and heroism, of men who suffered great loss on behalf of this country.  Men who bled.  Men who died.  Maybe I will read that book.  Maybe that September day didn't change me forever.  Maybe it's changing me, forever.
 
...