A Certain Swirl

by Mary Ruefle

      The classroom was dark, all the desks were empty,
and the sentence on the board was frightened to
find itself alone. The sentence wanted someone to
read it, the sentence thought it was a fine sentence, a
noble, thorough sentence, perhaps a sentence of
some importance, made of chalk dust, yes, but a sen-
tence that contained within itself a certain swirl not
unlike the nebulous heart of the unknown universe,
but if no one read it, how could it be sure? Perhaps it
was a dull sentence and that was why everyone had
left the room and turned out the lights. Night came,
and the moon with it. The sentence sat on the board
and shone. It was beautiful to look at, but no one
read it.

 

 Shame

by C. K. Williams

A girl who, in 1971, when I was living by myself, painfully lonely, bereft, depressed,
offhandedly mentioned to me in a conversation with some friends that although at
   first she'd found me—
I can't remember the term, some dated colloquialism signifying odd, unacceptable,
   out-of-things—
she'd decided that I was after all all right…twelve years later she comes back to me
   from nowhere
and I realize that it wasn't my then irrepressible, unselective, incessant sexual want
   she meant,
which, when we'd been introduced, I'd naturally aimed at her and which she'd
   easily deflected,
but that she'd thought I really was, in myself, the way I looked and spoke and acted,
what she was saying, creepy, weird, whatever, and I am taken with a terrible
   humiliation.

  

Amphibious

by Erin Murphy

My daughter wants to take
a framed oil painting to school,

a nude with loose breasts and a belly
ripe as the full moon. Why? Because

we're studying frogs, she says,
and it's a frog. I cock my head

to consider the angle of the draped arm
but can't get past the female form.

My daughter, though, is swimming
in amphibians, bringing home

scribbled pictures of tadpoles sprouting
splayed feet. At night, she sleeps

in the bedroom I painted pink,
her shelves lined with confectionary

teapots and cups. By day, she wants
to be her brother when she grows up.

Lately, she's morphed into
a creature who'd rather squirm free

than be held. O, how we see what we
want to see. My daughter, looking at

a nude, sees a frog for show-n-tell.
I look at her and see myself. 

 

  I was the victim of a street crime once. I was a victim because, having lived most of my life overseas as a service brat among professional naval aviation types, I was naive about many things.
It was not till I was back in the States as a civilian that I noticed that it was not wise to be incautious around certain races. My first serious experience was when I was in a civilian high school and was checking out various universities. In one instance, I was walking toward the USC campus south of downtown LA after getting off a bus a few stops past where I should have. A car pulled up and stopped ahead of me and a black man got out of the passenger side and walked directly up to me.
I smiled tentatively, assuming he was going to ask directions or something and I would have to say that I was not familiar with the area. But he punched me in the face and then landed a terrific blow to the side of my head, knocking me  unconscious.
When I came to, I was lying on the sidewalk, my purse gone. I got to my feet and, without a cell phone to call for help, and with no money or ID -- all in my purse -- I walked to a convenience store and asked the clerk to call the police. I must have looked a mess, bleeding, clothing dirty and my sleeve torn somehow. The Korean clerk just shouted at me, "You go now! You go now!" 
I stood bewildered for a moment then went out and, feeling dizzy, sat down in the parking lot. Customers came and went, ignoring me, until finally an older white man asked if I was all right. I told him what had happened and asked him to call my home and have someone come and pick me up. He also called the police and requested an ambulance, but they didn't show up before my brother did.
The upshot of that was that I crossed USC off my list of colleges to consider and my dad bought me a Lady Smith .38 cal. revolver and I resolved to have it ready for use anytime a black person I did not personally know came anywhere near me.
Suffice it to say that I learned why there is such a thing a white flight. A man might choose to risk getting into a street fight with violent criminals, but I chose simply to avoid situations where that might be necessary.