The Five-Chord

fiction by Ryan Rickrode

Early in the morning, before the Hospice nurse lets herself in, Gladys goes to the piano. She slides her feet into the pink slippers she’ll be wearing the rest of the day, and she slowly shuffles into the sitting room. The long walk from the dining room, which is now her bedroom, leaves her pink sweater swelling with short wheezing breaths. It’s been a long time since she’s been upstairs. Sometimes she wonders about the dust up there.

Best of the Best: Lauren Bailey

Susquehanna senior and Logogram contributor Lauren Bailey was recently anthologized in plain china, Bennington College's national online magazine of the best undergraduate of 2010.  On top of being anthologized, Lauren's essay, "Convalesence," which was originally published in Susquehanna's Essay magazine, was selected by author/editor Phillip Lopate for the 2010 Bennington Nonfiction Prize.  Congratulations, Lauren!

Ryan Rickrode, editor

Susquehanna Alumni in the News

Susquehanna's own Marcus Burke, now a grad student at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop, was recently featured in a PBS NewsHour piece marking the Workshop's 75th anniversary.  See it for yourself:

Drive

poetry by Alex Guarco

I told you I was lost in you,

like I was some one-hit-wonder radio lookalike,

only I

realize now that my misplacement was little more

than a feeling of place,

a feeling I’ve been waiting years to experience,

a knowing of where I was at the time,

a knowing that

there, with you,

was where

I belonged.

I wouldn’t go out and say it was love,

it was just whatever

two 19-year-olds are capable of

on a Wednesday night,

parked too far away from the drive-in screen

to see any the movie.

You know,

I’ve brought other girls to that drive-in,

in the same car,

laid down on the same couple of pillows,

even thrown the same blanket over us

when the second movie started.

The difference is,

no matter how many rows back we were,

with them, I always watched the movie,

and if we touched underneath the blanket,

or if they rolled their head over and smiled to me,

I’d smile back, squeeze their hand a little tighter

because I knew that’s what I was supposed to do.

But with you, when the intermission was over,

I let our bare legs get cold,

not really sure what to do,

like that blanket wasn’t even there.

So I rolled my head towards yours,

and we both

squeezed our hands tighter,

both

knowing that’s what we were supposed to do.

And after

catching each other in the act,

realizing we were too busy knowing and

too far from enjoying,

we got lost,

unsure what to do next, but

it was okay because for the first time

we found life.

---

Alex Guarco is a sophomore creative writing major at Susquehanna University. He's president of SU Slam Poetry and a member of the Ultimate Frisbee and Club Volleyball teams.  Alex has appeared in Outrageous Fortune, Variance, Tomfoolery Review, and Essay.

Also by Alex Gaurco: 8:30

Untitled

by poetry Amber L. Cook


When I emptied the contents of your skull

                           I was monogrammed into
synapses you would never use,
                              synapses that I snapped
like green beans, fresh
   from the garden bordered by mesh wire,


where I planted you as a seed
                            & covered you with soil &
gave you water like you’d bud
into a color other than
                                      red overlapping red
down your temple where I traced


my fingers in lines trying to map
                    my way to words you left sitting in
the saliva around your ceramic mug,
                                       eggs laying stagnant in
rain from weeks before,
                                           drying up in the sun.

I do not imagine the mesh wire to outline
                                  the perimeter of your body
or the preparatory paint recoating the outside of
your white house
                       where you would leave her alone
in photograph after photograph


for the photo album she kept
                                      on the nightstand and I
do not admit to your exiting before
entering, do not admit to your wound still emptying
                                                            out years after, 
or years before I could capsulate you in my palm.

---

Amber L. Cook is a senior creative writing and English secondary-education major from Long Valley, New Jersey. She has a dual passion for modifying the poetic form and teaching her students. She has formerly been published in The Susquehanna Review, Prick of the Spindle, Outrageous Fortune, and Rivercraft. Her plans include getting an MFA in Poetry sometime in the near future.

Coming next week: poetry by Alex Guarco