School Days

Do Longer School Days Have Enduring Educational, Occupational, or Income Effects? A Natural Experiment in Buenos Aires, Argentina Juan Llach (bio), Cecilia Adrogué (bio), and María Gigaglia (bio) In 1971 longer school days were decreed for around half of the primary schools in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The policy covered all the city neighborhoods, and the schools were chosen probably at random. An unusual opportunity for a natural experiment was thus created. In 2006 and 2007 we interviewed a sample of 380 alumni of the 1971 cohort, thirty years after their 1977 graduation from schools with and without longer days. We tried to identify how the length of their school days affected their education, occupation, and income. The next section provides a fuller description of the aforementioned policy. The subsequent section, devoted to a review of the literature, is longer than usual. We thought it was important to review and to compare both the older literature on the relationship between the length of school schedules and academic results and the newer literature devoted to renewing the educational production function approach using random or natural experiments. Cross-references between different literatures are rare, but from our point of view, they can promote a better understanding of the issues dealt with here. [End Page 1] The third section presents the methodology and the characteristics of the database, and the fourth section shows the main results of the experiment. We then conclude with a discussion of the results and some of their policy implications. The Policy and Its Context In this section we describe the policy that gave origin to the natural experiment and the context in which it took place. Educational System in Argentina and Buenos Aires in the 1970s Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Argentine educational system has been governed by the principles of free and universal access, included laity in the public schools, and, up to the late 1970s, provided for seven years of compulsory primary education.1 Although primary education was constitutionally in the hands of the provinces, the federal government continued running some primary schools in most provinces until the late 1970s and early 1980s. The private sector—both religious and secular—was also authorized to run primary and secondary schools. The case of the city of Buenos Aires was peculiar. As the capital of Argentina, until 1996 its administration was in the hands of the federal government, and the same happened with its schools. Enrollment rates in Argentina have been traditionally high when compared to other Latin American countries. In 1970 school expectancy from primary to tertiary education was 10.3 years at the federal level, and even higher and close to the average of developed countries (11.5 years) in the city of Buenos Aires (Llach 2005). Policy of Lengthening School Days in the City of Buenos Aires: Creation of a Natural Experiment The policy introduced a double shift (DS), or full-time attendance, into the primary schools of the city of Buenos Aires.2 This approach began as a pilot [End Page 2] experiment in 1957 proposed by the professor Carlos Florit, general inspector of schools of the National Council of Education (Consejo Nacional de Educación).3 During the 1960s, the number of DS schools increased very gradually, but in 1971 it was drastically expanded to encompass almost 50 percent of the primary schools of the city of Buenos Aires.4 The policy was originally conceived to achieve both educational and social purposes (Consejo Nacional de Educación 1968, 1971) and was evenly applied in all the school districts in such a way that, in the early 1970s, the proportion of DS primary schools in every school district was around 50 percent of the total. Admission Criteria and the Selection Bias Issue. Even in areas where the middle class predominates in the city, there were, and still are, important socioeconomic differences among the neighborhoods and school districts. From a social perspective, the idea of the new policy was to provide a solution to the uneven consequences of the increasing participation of women in the labor force. While richer households could pay for nurses or other domestic help to...

My Father’s Nipples, and: A Series of Feasts, and: Reading Sartre by the Creek Charlotte Pence (bio) My Father’s Nipples I Fat, pastry-dough sacks, tipped with cone-shaped nipples, not hard, considering it. No—more like bloated pieces of candy corn. The raging colors of that autumn, that elm we sat under as he told me his plans for me, for other girls, but mostly for me. II A father and daughter under an elm— so tall it scratched all day at the sun. Branches gnarled but striving up and away, something Frost might say a boy could climb, a man might climb to leave earth awhile, only a little while. III From a distance, perhaps the kitchen window over the sink, his hand cupping mine might have appeared loving. Index finger circling, circling inside the palm— This is how you masturbate.This is how you kiss a man’s nipple. IV One side of his pectorals: a beached jellyfish, a strong hope, a deflating ball sitting all winter in a puddle outside the door. [End Page 82] Rain didn’t skin the hole each day, but what always remained: the sinking in the driveway. Twenty feet down an elm root must have broken off part of the earth, pulling down part of the drive, flattening one side of the ball, so don’t tell me earth itself doesn’t leave for a while. V You cannot leave this earth, but you can cross a splayed log that crosses the creek once spring begins its thaw; And you can stare at the shifting light through the shivering branches; And you can decide to love what isn’t attached to what you hate. Separate the log, the crossing, the leaves, the mother watching by the kitchen window from the elm, the body, the weight of the body. Even relinquish your hate of this earth forbidding your climbing away, giving only an afternoon by the creek under cover of damp-green rhododendrons while humidity and ghost-thin mosquitoes hover alongside something else best not to name. [End Page 83] A Series of Feasts Life began when I stood on a stool listening to the stiff-shirt rustle of a brown grocery bag, worms hatching, crackling from pecans I’d gathered, warm top of the humming fridge birthing them all. From the stiff-shirt rustle of brown grocery bags, to the light, the dark as Dad paced by windows, the warm hum of the fridge accompanying all, how can this life not be “a feast of brief hopes?” The light, the dark. From Dad pacing by windows, my brother swallowing ten bottles of pills, “Life is,” Milosz once wrote, “a feast of brief hopes.” How Ann smiled, one corner down, at my husband as we swallowed shots of Scotch after dinner. At that moment I realized I’d never smiled how she smiled. Folding one page corner down, he focused on his date book’s next task; he avoids grief most moments—like realizing I’ve never smiled or reading scrawled love notes found on sunken ships— by doing his date book’s next task. To avoid grief, each ship trudges to the next shore, the next hope. I wonder: how dying notes scrawled on ships like the Kursk differ from immigrants’ prayers who travel on orange dots of rafts floating to the next shore. Helen, too, crossed the Aegean convinced of better. How different is it? Immigrants traveling on, Helen crossing the Aegean sure of better love, to worms crackling from pecans I’d gathered, never ate, life beginning as I stood listening. [End Page 84] Reading Sartre by the Creek Not an S, more like a furious scribble, that cottonmouth charging me. Wet-black, thick whip cleaving creek-side grass and horseweed in harsh whispers. Wild thrash of body. Wide ghost of mouth. I’ve dreamt this, a snake attacking, woke worried what it could mean. But now, the snake real, I grin at each strike and miss, at speed, quick as pain travels through flesh, grin at how the day’s suddenly filled with a sureness: no debate what I should do; no mystery of its intent...

Introduction School buses not only provide safe transportation for children on their daily commute to and from school, but also facilitate access to education regardless of their location or income, making them eligible. Consolidating student transportation, not only reduces traffic and pollution, but it has historically also played a key role in desegregating schools after Brown v. Board. The humble yellow school buses remains a cornerstone of communities and kid-friendly transportation systems nationwide because it promotes shared learning experiences and can help build a sense of community among a diverse student body. According to the author, busing technology has exerted a significant impact on the lives of children in America throughout history. By examining the study of the historical and contemporary forces behind this innovative device, we can get a new picture of how technology functions in our society today and ask ourselves who developed this device. Content summary This book is divided into four chapters after the introduction. In Chapter 1, the early busing programs encountered significant resistance from integrate-averse white communities as they attempted to dismantle the entrenched system of racially segregated public education. Despite the long-term benefits of busing for black students’ academic and professional outcomes, busing also caused significant short-term hardships due to hostility in predominantly white schools. Moreover, busing decimated the number of black teachers, severely damaging an important source of cultural understanding and role models. As a result of weakened enforcement of desegregation mandates, residential segregation and private schools undermined the effectiveness of busing and revealed, its limitations in addressing systemic inequalities over time. Although the busing system fulfilled its functional role, it failed to change the discriminatory learning environment it sought to eliminate. As a result of this formidable challenge, it showed that truly equitable education requires holistic reforms, not isolated technical solutions, to address the deepest inequities in society. Busing’s legacy underscores that to fulfill the full equality, there is still a long way to go, even more than 65 years after Brown’s landmark integration decision. The second chapter focuses on the experience on a school buses, and questions the idealized view of the yellow school buses as a fun experience for children. It examines the reality of long commute times experienced by 60 Bellwood elementary and middle school students who, as the participants of a desegregation program, spent over two hours each way taking the bus to attend schools in nearby districts. In spite of the fact that exhausting commutes deprived children of control over their journey and made meeting basic needs difficult due to bus rules, the author concluded that students used sounds, games, music, and creative expression to build community despite the noisy conditions. Although enrichment activities were attempted and adult power/supervision remained a constant pressure, it was ultimately questioned whether such lengthy commuting techniques truly conferred dignity and needs on students as their primary users experienced exhausting journeys with little agency each school day. School buses design and futures are the focus of chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 examines the physical characteristics and design of school buses to determine how they are interpreted by students and what expectations they reflect. In the report, it is stated that the vinyl seats, lack of amenities, difficult-to-operate windows, and bare metal interior take precedence over comfort as a utilitarian means of transportation. It examines how the bus functions as a platform for educating students and shaping interactions on and inside the bus as well as outside of it. By using this "old" technology, this chapter emphasizes the importance of human relationships and analog interactions in learning, and argues that it allows us to reconsider what educational technology encompasses. The last chapter critically examines the role of school buses in American public education, and questions whether their operation and designs have actually improved students’ lives and experiences given the many hours they spend on buses each day. Though school buses emerged as a method of desegregation after Brown v. Board, it is unclear if this approach has provided equity for marginalized students. In addition, buses represent a "colonial technology" that transports students to schools built on stolen indigenous lands without considering indigenous voices or sovereignty. As a result, school buses do not meet the criteria for effective public transportation since they do not travel frequently or comfortably to desired locations and are not always affordable, when considering the costs of students’ time and dignity. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted busing and highlighted its dysfunction, but there remains an opportunity to redesign transportation and school structure rather than simply returning to the status quo of unchanged busing which has done little to substantially address inequities in educational opportunity. Analysis and evaluation This book provides an in-depth examination of the history and legacy of school desegregation through busing programs, as well as a critical analysis of the role of school busing in American public education. It investigates the short- and long-term effects of busing on marginalized students, explores students' lengthy commuting experiences, and analyzes the design of buses and how they exert interactional influence. Due to transportation shortcomings, the work questions whether school busing truly improves students' experiences or dignity. It also asserts buses represent outdated “colonial technology” and do not address systemic inequities over time. Therefore, the book emphasizes that achieving educational equality by isolated techniques is not sufficient. By reconsidering buses as an educational platform and reimagining transportation structures, the book presents an opportunity to further holistically reform the public education as a means of eliminating deep-rooted inequity and inadequacies that have been persisting since Brown v. Board for decades. By historically reviewing the shortcomings of busing and asking whether busing really improves students’ lives, the book suggests that broader reforms in education, transportation, and community engagement are needed. By presenting thought-provoking issues regarding persistent inequities in public education despite policies such as busing, this important analysis will be of interest to readers seeking insights into education policy and reform. Therefore, the most impressive aspect of the book is the depth and breadth of its historical and critical analysis in evaluating efforts to desegregate schools through busing programmes. It impressively traces in extensive detail the short and long-term effects of busing on marginalised student populations over time. In addition, the book offers an insightful critique of how bus transportation models have influenced student experiences rather than simply fulfilling their functional role, and questions whether commuters truly uphold student dignity. By challenging assumptions about technical solutions and calling for far-reaching educational reforms, the book raises thoughtful implications that are still crucial to the pursuit of full equity that add considerable value. This book appears to offer a more comprehensive analysis of school desegregation efforts through busing programmes compared to other similar works, as evidenced by several distinguishing factors. Its examination provides unprecedented depth in tracing both the short and long-term historical impact over 65 years since Brown v. Board. By taking a systematic view of the issues and calling for holistic reforms in education, transportation, and communities, the book presents a broader perspective compared to more narrowly focused policy analyses. The empirical examination of student experiences, such as lengthy commutes, adds context that has not been fully explored elsewhere. It also distinguishes itself by maintaining contemporary relevance through its implications for educational equity. Conclusions and limitations This book challenges the assertion that desegregation through transportation alone is sufficient to achieve full equity by examining both the historical role and limitations of busing, and suggesting that systemic changes are still needed. The analysis suggests buses should enhance their comfort through redesign, and maximize their platform capabilities. Moreover, critiques of buses as "colonial technology" that do not include indigenous voices have implications for inclusive participation in reforming these structures. Hence, it emphasizes that equal opportunity continues to be a challenge decade after Brown v. Board by highlighting the ongoing challenges of equality. To address deep-rooted inequities in educational opportunities through a systemic approach that focuses on the well-being of students and to redress the historical wrongs, requires holistic, multi-pronged reforms in education, transportation, design, and community engagement, not just isolated technical solutions. While the study offers a comprehensive critique of school desegregation efforts, some potential criticisms are that it could be strengthened by more direct empirical evidence and data to support its claims. Additionally, though arguing existing approaches are insufficient, it does not provide specific alternative policy solutions or frameworks. There is also a risk that the systemic view overlooks the complex policy trade-offs faced by different stakeholders. Applying current sensibilities to historical contexts may not fully account for the political realities that policymakers are confronted with.

Touch and Go, and: Always the Entertainer, and: Desert Odyssey, and: Rinsing That Tomato, and: Radio Control Peggy Shumaker (bio) Touch and Go Gone to pick up two dozen hot from the deep fat chocolate frosted, custard, coconut, cake and his favorite, raised and glazed, he pays cash, swoops up the box each sweet straight and level gliding under the lid’s window. Take offs and landings . . . he makes room on the seat, moving aside the body he’s built, Styrofoam, engine embedded, taped, wings detached. At the four-way stop, his head spirals, stress cracks, splits. Nose down breaks the stalland you’ll fly again … He guns it while he can see, flies low by trailers, saguaro, his last turn home, eases down so smooth he and the plane are one— fuel off, flying as long as … he scans for his spot, swallows [End Page 32] two tablets he’s heard can help when blood’s not getting where it needs to go and blood rushes free, floods all emergency landing strips, old dirt roads, dry fields, any flat patch where he might put down. Always the Entertainer Flat on his back in emergency, he tries to get me to laugh. He’s breathing sporadically, he’s clammy. “He’s very sick,” the er doc tells me. As if I couldn’t see that for myself. I stroke Dad’s arm, cold to the touch. He says, “Have you heard the one . . .” and here it comes racist, crass, unfunny again this joke sick with toe-maine he’s told in some version, knee-monia [End Page 33] all my life dick-theria I’ve cringed. The most I can muster is a grimace, steady look right in his eyes where I see he knows how close this call really is. He’s tap dancing for all he’s worth not sure at all what it is he’s worth. To the overworked attending he brags on me, grabs onto that swinging vine, aaaah-UH-ah-UH-aaah ~ our tangled jungle. Desert Odyssey Like us, Telemachus didn’t know where to start when father didn’t come home. Face down in a field, his mouth split by stones, he might need us. We spread out, [End Page 34] hit Tucson Bowl, the Beachcomber, the Maverick, listening for his whiskery line trolling for barflies, pickled laughter amber waves grain siphoned from bottomless kegs. Rinsing That Tomato Sunwarm in my palm, the heft— summer’s first juice-heavy ripeness snapped from its hairy vine. On his deathbed my father needed to hear how proud I was of him and I couldn’t wouldn’t shouldn’t didn’t lie. My touch, gentle, the kind that wouldn’t bruise. [End Page 35] Two hands, open-palmed, cool water rinsing away flecks of our ancestors, us, and soon enough our proud children. Radio Control After your friends testified how when they stroked on the pinstripes, chose the call numbers, balanced engine, body, and landing gear when all that work was ready for the virgin flight, they brought it to you, the new craft, to see what it could do. They knew you’d ease it up into the air, anticipating rough ground, rough air, compensating for whatever they hadn’t thought of, whatever wouldn’t show up until wind rushed over the wings [End Page 36] and the perfect angle of attack lifted it off into the blue for a turn or two over the trailer park above cacti and creosote slipping on the crosswind easing back to hard-baked earth, and the huge sigh when it touched down, safe on earth, after that while your daughter choked on words she’d scrawled to honor you, above us all came the whining hum your craft out of sight wing and roar sailing over. Peggy Shumaker Peggy Shumaker’s nonfiction book, Just Breathe Normally, is now available from the University of Nebraska Press. Her most recent book of poetry is Blaze, a collaboration with Alaskan painter Kesler Woodward. Copyright © 2008 University of Nebraska Press

School buses are important components of the educational structure of societies worldwide. Children's safety on school bus trips is first and foremost. Decisions made by bus drivers, traffic authorities, school divisions and parents can have a substantial influence. Each year, school buses are used for an estimated 10 billion student trips in the USA. Every school day, 475,000 school buses transport 25 million children to and from schools and school-related activities. Numerous studies have been carried out on school bus and pupil safety during the last 40 years. One important result that has emerged from these studies is that the school bus is the safest mode of transportation for school children. The numbers of accidents, injuries and fatalities show that more school-aged children die in private cars than in school buses. School bus accidents can be either single or multiple vehicle accidents, and the injuries and fatalities are not confined to the occupants of these vehicles but can also include the occupants of other vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists. This article analyzes school bus accidents in terms of their types, causes and impacts, comparing Canada and the USA. One result that emerges here is that there are more similarities than differences in school bus accidents and the resulting affects. Language: en

Return Fire Glenn Blake (bio) He's sitting on the verandah, underneath the magnolias. The sun's going down. His backyard's in shadow. The sun's shining on the bayou and on the levee bluff beyond the bayou. He's sitting out there, sipping his mescal. None of this hokey Hollywood horseshit. None of this knocking back shots, chugging the bottle, worrying the worm. This isn't pulque. This isn't tequila. He likes to keep the bottle in the freezer so that when he pours the maguey, it's viscous—not quite liquid, not quite solid. He likes the smoky taste. He likes to watch the mescal move. It doesn't just sit there like bourbon. It doesn't bubble like champagne. It doesn't foam like beer. It slowly, practically imperceptibly, roils in the glass. It's like watching a tannic pond, its bottom lined with leaves—days, weeks, months—turn itself over. Angela loved the magnolias. She loved to sit out there. She loved to open the windows in the springtime and let the breeze from the bayou fill the house with that sweet Southern smell. She loved to pick a blossom and float it in a bowl and place the bowl between them during dinner. But they died so quickly, those magnolia blossoms, overnight, so in the mornings, before he shaved, before he fixed breakfast, he scooped them out and tossed them over the verandah. He's thinking these things when he notices a hummingbird hovering over his drink. He's thinking, Ruby throat. He's thinking, Female. No blood-red bandana. The hummingbird alights on the lip of his glass. She's considering the contents of his container. She starts to tongue the nectar. [End Page 403] I wouldn't, he says, and she disappears. He pours himself some more mescal. No ice. One quarter lime. He watches the worm writhe in the bottle. He notices the hummingbird feeder hanging in the magnolia. He positioned it so that she could see it from the kitchen window. The feeder's empty. The feeder's been empty these many months. He's thinking, Four shots water, one shot sugar. He's thinking, Four shots sugar, one shot water. Something gets boiled. He could probably fill it. He's thinking these things when he notices the ruby throat visiting the magnolia. She visits each of the feeder's ports, and then she darts back over and stops right in front of him. She's just hovering inches from his nose. The whirring's so loud so close. This isn't mescaline, this isn't peyote, but he can see perfectly—in slow motion—the figure eight patterns of her wings. She's just suspended there. She's just watching him. He can see her blink. Sorry, he says, and the hummingbird feeder, hanging in the magnolia, explodes. He hears the laughter from across the bayou. He doesn't need to look. It's the Bagwells. On the other side of the water. In the next county. What are they now? Juniors? Seniors? Varsity football. Twins. He knows that. Over at James Bowie. Old man Buddy's boys. He drove over once to talk to the old man. There used to be a ferry on Ferry Road. You'd drive your truck onto the floating barge, unhook the chain, and then pull yourself across. But Carla had taken care of the landing, and the ferry had never been found. So now you had to follow the bayou down through the slough to the interstate. Sometimes an hour depending on the tides. You had to cross over the Old and the Lost, drive past rice field after rice field, down farm-to-market roads, until you reached the cattle guard. The gate was always locked, so you had to climb over and try to make the mile back to the big house, back in the live oaks, before the big dogs found you and took you down. But his old man and old man Buddy had never gotten along, so he said, Fuck it, before he made it through the slough, pulled [End Page 404] off the road, and...

A smart solution for preventive information, diagnostics, and prognostics for durable engine management on school buses will improve vehicle safety and performance, reduce maintenance costs and time, and extend vehicle life while minimizing environmental impacts. Additionally, the solution provides knowledge to the school district on effective vehicle maintenance; it enhances students’ welfare and educational outcomes. School transportation is the only major public transit system for children, which operates two trips a day each school day. 480,000 yellow school buses transport 25 million children 3.3 million miles to and from school. Researchers have shown exacerbated environmental and health impacts from considerable emissions and idle time. Schools are increasingly choosing diesel engine vehicles over hybrid or electric power vehicles. The higher acquisition and maintenance costs, the reliance on battery power based on outside temperature, and the requirements of off-route and after-school activities have limited the investment in these alternative power school buses. The interest in this paper is primarily based on diesel-powered school buses that constitute 90% of school buses and trips. High emission durations caused by aging and/or poor maintenance of school buses are a result of the non-usage of technologies and management practices to achieve low emissions. Its growth is hindered by the inability of some school districts to detect engine damage early, poor excuses regarding the price for effective maintenance, and uncertainty about maintenance cost savings and equipment longevity. The proposed diagnostic and prognostic maintenance solution employs an open-source machine learning algorithm to train bus engine and emission rate models and minimize idle time and wear parts using vehicles’ sub-minute real-time GPS locations, vehicle-activated event logs, and real-time diagnostics. The training database manages a variety of engine models by replacing training data with diagnostic and prognostic information in a model training feedback loop with engine manufacturers. The environmental algorithm for real-time emissions rate measures the most discriminant temperature, pressure, and emissions for idle time and proposed torque sub-ranges. The algorithms are portable to passenger buses, fire trucks, police vehicles, snow plows, street sweepers, traffic management vehicles, and construction vehicles that often perform daily short, low-speed, and stop-and-go cycles and are driven by student drivers. Pilot implementations performed for school buses in Los Angeles have shown promising results. The full proposed solution can be implemented using existing resources in the transportation community.

School buses generally serve as the first and last school function for millions of school children every school day. School bus is also a kind of a classroom where children learn positive and negative behavior. However, now a day‟s security for school children even in the school has become a major issue, hence, there is a need of security system for school children in school bus. So, many school managements want to provide security to children in school bus with the help of a system using which they could have the continuous visibility and monitoring of school buses. In this paper, we present the design and development of a security system for schools by deploying an IP based camera inside the school buses, and making it viewable / controllable by the authorized people of the school management through an android device. Also the system enable the IP based camera to upload the videos and pictures captured on to a private cloud platform of the school automatically as it enters the Wi-Fi zone of the school.

Luxuria, and: Faith, and: Camp Despy Boutris (bio) Luxuria The secret to sin is to do itin secret. You & I learned secrecy young— two girls taught to swallowour hunger—so we meet up at nightfall, once we hearsnores & the last lights have gone out, our houses darkas the devil. We walk down the dirt roads, cursing this townfull of coal miners & farmers & churches, cursing the way we'll likely never leave.Grass sprouts up along the asphalt, the airstained with petrichor, & I'm guided only by the hummingstreetlights & starlit sky. We find each other at our meeting place, the lakesouth of me, north of you, each of us [End Page 61] scrambling over the wet rockstoward the grassy hill & willow grove where you've laid down the knit blanket.Walking toward you, I feel the grass & mud against the soles of my feet, find yousitting in the crotch of a tree, & as soon as we catcheach other's eyes, we're each saying Here is my shirt, here is my hair, my hands,my mouth, take it, take me, right here, right now. Your eyes glow like a glowstick,your jaw sharp as my pocket knife. & you strip me, nearly strippingme of my similes as our breaths turn to fog, the cool drizzle falling onto your curls,your half-shut eyelids, our skin bright as the waning moon, the lake sparklingsilver. Your sharp thighs shear mine, with the seawater tasteof skin, the scrape of teeth against lip, fingertips meandering down spines, tracingmandibles, losing ourselves in our lungsounds. Warm kisses pressto collarbones & shoulders & wrists, [End Page 62] our breathing a windstorm, bodies beggingfor collision—some desire to rub ourselves together till we makesome sort of fire. As your mouth latches onto skin that hardly anyonehas ever seen, rosy even in this low light, we gasp like people drowning,& I try to think of a word for the way I want you—wildly, maybe.Like a monsoon. Though I know that so much rainfall can cause more harmthan good, that what's at first erotic then erodes—love collapsing like thehills that gave way after so much rain & mud last winter. How too muchof something can turn deadly—like those found dead in their crumbled homes. & so muchwant is sinful, I know, so we beware of the fires & floods. We lie togetheronly in darkness, warm & wet as steam as droplets of water spatter our faces,swallowing what we can of each other. [End Page 63] Faith I knew the dying was coming—knew her heart strucktwelve because I couldn't sleep, could only gaze out at the hallway,past my door as it creakedon its hinges, the wind outside the open window runningits hands over everything in sight.If I closed my eyes, I could pretend it was my grandmother, runningher fingers through my hair,& I knew my father would call soon, stranded at the hospitalwith his dead mama, not wanting meor my brother to see death so young. I knew the lawyerwould stop by, present us with herwill. I didn't know she'd leave my brother her rocking chair,& me: my favorite breakfast—her recipe for buttered biscuits. Didn't know my father's facecould crumpleor how hard I'd sob, or the way [End Page 64] my mother's smooth palmwould do its work of soothingme as we watched the coffin descend into the ground, my grandmothermaking her way into eternal life,as the priest promised. I wish I believed in eternal life.It's too much work to tryto imagine a realm without darkness, no croakingtoads, nothing with claws.It's too hard to believe in her cheering for me up above.But how temptingit is to have faith in her floating like pollen above us,the clouds blurring her angles,her body all tangled up with God's. Camp Do you want to try it? she asked,to see what it's like? At camp for the...

Friends: A Garland Emily Grosholz (bio) Annik The citadel of Namur, posed on the higher cliffs The Meuse carves at its confluence, an hour beyond Brussels, Now houses a school of haute cuisine in two good senses, So, when I arrived by train, we drove up into the clouds For lunch. Each dish appeared seriatim on a square white plate Dazzled with arabesques of green or sun-gold sauces, Served by very young people, nervous but secretly proud. We kept stepping through window-doors to look for the river. It was all designed by your mother, who lives in a nearby village, Spy, and, although she can’t travel, cultivates local intelligence. Her father built the neat brick, well-trimmed house, and squared The acre behind it, fruit trees, vegetable gardens, lawn, Where we landed (tipsy, replete) pulling my suitcase. Your mother Gave me a welcoming pat, kiss, advice, and cup of tea, I oddly enough requited with sudden undisguised tears. I forgot how long ago I enjoyed being someone’s daughter. Cinda Your kitchen’s in the basement, dark on winter mornings But never cold, stocked with the impromptu riches you cull Daily from markets along the canals, flower-strewn Even in winter, when streetlamps have to kindle early And gleam in gathering mist, shine on folding water. [End Page 357] How often, Cinda, I’ve sought refuge in your long line Of beautiful composed houses, and watched you ahead of me Join the endlessly complicated fray of raising children. Outside your kitchen window, beyond the sunken garden, We see the tree Anne Frank recorded from her attic room. The neighborhood contributes to its preservation, Watching anxiously from kitchen windows, as its bole Hollows, balds, leans more heavily on the big crutches. Once it showed Anne Frank the seasons she could not touch, And she recorded them. Our children read the leaves. Christine Shopping’s our trope, because if memory serves we once made friends In Carolina’s minimalls and outlets, that bright winter Of January dandelions on the fairways and no snow, Twenty years ago. As if we were discussing strappy shoes, We’d talk of Jefferson’s stone and Descartes’ line geometry, And Baudelaire’s lost Paris, leveled and underscored by Haussmann. So, when you finally visited me in Paris (it was snowing), I took you north of the Louvre through the Passages, covered, ornate, But seedy shopping arcades. In eighteen-fifty there were One-hundred-twenty-five in Paris, where gentlemen and ladies Could purchase without setting foot on the considerable mud Of Parisian thoroughfares. You were more puzzled than enchanted, But followed me through Galéries Valois, Colbert, Feydeau, Over to Passages Jouffroy-Verdeau, crossing the Boulevard Haussmann, Into the heart of the Nouvelle Athènes, where Van Gogh, Renoir, and Cézanne Bought their paints from Père Tanguy, and Géricault met his doom [End Page 358] At the height of the narrow, all-too-aptly named rue des Martyrs. You humored me through shops with dollhouse furniture and beads, And bought us coffee in a derelict café hidden behind A museum of magical devices with Tussaud-style wax people. Today I learn these passages were the stuff of Walter Benjamin’s Last, greatest, mostly unpublished work, a tribute to Baudelaire And the power of representation: not too far removed, my dear, From your books on the history of God, and mine on Hilbert’s figures. Jackie Here we are again, by Cape Cod’s involuted shoreline, Looking out past pines and sea grass where, on the shimmering cove, Catboats and schooners sail past at intervals, and a red-tailed hawk Lands on the high island of a pine-crown, and preens for the camera. Fifty years ago, it was only another beach, an occasion For getting tan, meeting cute boys, parrying waves, dozing, Reading romantic novels. Now we herd our children before us With some anxiety, and bring our binoculars and field guides. We know that in four thousand years Cape Cod will vanish; Global warming might even accelerate the lapse. It’s only A remnant, a spit of sand already gently eroding its beachfronts Though real-estate agents buy and sell...

The Signs of Choking The Victim Can't Speak or Breathe and the world is silent, a slow blur, each red car in front of you: specific, the strangers around you: pure movement, everything enlarged, then microscopic, trying to get back inside your body, and then you remember your first pillow (smelled of Tide), your first pair of underoos (Superman), [End Page 38] your first swim (afraid to go underwater), your first day leaving home (the Disney-school-bus-lunch-pail in your hand) and how your mother cried in the kitchen window, remember the way everything always never mattered before this? The Victim Collapses again and again and differently with each remembering, and just maybe it was meant to be this way or already happened, always already happening, just maybe the one last thing that matters is how you die, or the one good suit you wore everywhere to everything that made you feel important and happy, or the way you let yourself be touched and tasted and liked it, the way you didn't know then your father driving off in his red pickup would be every man you'd ever love returning love. The Victim Turns Blue and it's not so bad really, is it? to be the robe of a virgin who made a savior who saved a world from wanting, not so bad to be a bruise spit out from the mouth of last night's undressed stranger, a magic marker uncapped on the living room floor of a snooty next door neighbor, a dead friend's favorite cup filled up and sipped from each morning, a broken-in pair of jeans, a perfectly stained T-shirt, to crave what you were afraid to crave and get it. [End Page 39] Secrets of an Identity Thief Never give your name. Call yourself, Gone Again or Probably. Listen to conversations around you in restaurants. They have everything to do with you, but aren't anything you can't laugh about at parties. Sell yourself short, at a discount, fifty percent off the lowest price. Bargain bin. Two for one. But never give yourself, not even once, for free. Say, No. Say, I wasn't able to. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Every train leaving: be on it. Every love ending: cause it. Everything that's asked of you is too much. Say, Too much. Say, I used to. Say, I never wanted this. Notes Composed in a Heat Wave I realize a strange affection for my doctor because he knows too much and is happy. I'm dizzy in Manhattan and think how terrible our lives behind these walls. I saw inside once, [End Page 40] imagined brick and steel dissolved, and I could hardly stand how we carried on, stacked on top of each other, separate floors, divided into rooms, so close and yet so lonely. Nothing's real in August, heat dissolving us to body. Yesterday, I had an intimate relationship with the throat of a man on a crowded train. He smelled like soap and second chances. My doctor prescribes another pill. So much work to feel happy. I tell him I cried this morning because we die, because we are given back. He says, but not tomorrow. He says, you really should try to be kind to yourself.

The Last Voyage of the Alice B Toklas Jason Brown (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution (1981) Photo by simonsimages [End Page 34] When, at fifteen, I began my first summer as the Rural Carrier Associate of Howland Island, Maine, a post officer from the regional office showed up unannounced and reminded me that I must adhere to the agency's mission statement by [End Page 35] ensuring the "prompt, reliable, and efficient" delivery of the mail. In August I thought of his words as I held the official-looking letter that had arrived for the writer staying in my grandparents' guest cottage. Most people only received bills and handwritten notes from friends and relatives. Sometimes a postcard. My grandfather, who frequently asked me if I'd heard the writer say anything interesting, would love to see the contents of a typed envelope from the Jonathon Riley Agency, 333a Lafayette St., NY, NY. As I put the letter aside instead of in the writer's mailbox, I thought of the postal motto, which I had memorized the previous summer: Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Halfway through sorting the rest of the mail, I picked up the writer's envelope again and ran my finger over the indentations left by the typewriter on the letters of the writer's name, Alexander Smith, and the name of the island. The bell on the door clanged, and hard-soled shoes tapped down the hall to my office/candy store. "Hey," the writer said. "Anything for me?" Through the dark glass of his Ray-Ban Aviators, he looked at me sitting on my swivel chair behind my desk complete with various cubbyholes for international, certified, and return service forms, as well as a number of rubber stamps I longed to use in an official capacity. I still held his envelope clamped between my thumb and forefinger. "Is that mine?" he asked, his eyebrow rising above the gold rim of his glasses. I nodded, relieved, and handed the envelope to him. He turned and walked away without saying goodbye. The writer's vanilla-colored envelope would have leaned at an angle in his brass box. The weaker envelopes, especially the blue par avion ones, began to sag from moisture after a few hours. Made of thicker paper, the writer's letter hadn't even bent in the mailbag on the boat ride from the mainland. At 1 pm I rushed home to eat the lunch Grandma had left for me. She'd taken the skiff to shop on the mainland, so I had a one-day reprieve from afternoon chores. The writer had only left fifteen minutes ahead of me, but when I arrived at our house and looked out the kitchen window across the field that stretched to the beach and the guest cottage, I saw no sign of him. [End Page 36] Most summers our house filled with cousins, uncles and aunts, and my sister, but for the last two weeks of August this year, I was alone with my grandparents. My sister was staying with my father and his new girlfriend over on China Lake, and my cousins were busy with their parents. I called out for my grandfather. When he didn't answer, I knew he was probably down at the island landing. I had just finished the first half of my sandwich when the door to the guest cottage flew open and smacked against the shingles. The writer lurched into the field, kicked a rotting log with the toe of his leather shoe, and yelped as he hopped on one foot. In his balled fist, he raised a crumpled letter the same color as the envelope that had come for him and threw it toward the mouth of the bay. The August winds on our part of the coast followed predictable patterns. The letter rose briefly, pushed a few inches, no more, toward the water, then slowly reversed course and blew back over his head. As he whipped the door to the cottage closed behind him, I watched the letter roll over...

On Alleys, and: On Error, and: On Theoretical Reconstructions of Imaginary Objects Using Genuine Parts Kathryn Nuernberger (bio) On Alleys Weeding cuticle deep in the loose soil mounded around the zinnia roots at the community farm and my hands tingle with the breathing of all these transplanted bacteria, protists, fungi, and archaea grafted to the packed clay of land that carried a convent on its back and an open-pit gravel mine in its belly for six decades. ________ I might not feel it so much, this ecstasy of a microbiome, if I weren't trying not to miss the place I came from, where I loved the elder and wild carrot, [End Page 41] yarrow and goosefoot and did not know how to live anymore either with the flags my neighbors loved to fly over their soybean acres. ________ How much of her microbiome does the bobtail squid feel when the bioluminescent garden of the bacteria Vibrio fischeri is so bright in that organ behind her eye? Is it suffering or elation to spume 95 percent of them into the open water, where they will mostly die but some drift into the bodies of younger and more empty squid who sense they need something but don't yet know what it will feel like to be answered with a city of light? ________ It was such a moonlit beam of blue flashing across my kitchen window that night, before we knew what had happened. It looked like we were all living together at the bottom of the ocean. ________ When morning came I picked up a bouquet of those zinnias. As I passed through our alley, over the debris of yellow police tape, my neighbor was taking out the trash with a gun holstered to his chest. Packing has never been his way before, he who opens his garage with its flat-screen and homemade bar to the whole neighborhood on game days and also fills the block with the smell of deep-fried tacos for three dollars every Friday. I gave him the bouquet and it was frail and pretty beside his revolver. ________ He must have been so afraid. He must have had no idea what to do. The back doors of our houses look at each other all day long, but I didn't hear a single one of the four shots, each aimed at his brother-in-law, but grazing without apology anyone in the way. He is pissed at his brother, calls him an idiot for what he is mixed up in, but thank God that fool is still alive and everyone else is too. ________ The squid use the light to blend in with the moon shining on the water, or they shut the lid and disappear completely into the depths. They can reflect and refract and direct their light in all directions. But, like any living being, they have to learn how to do this and they may not always know precisely the most perfect way to cast that glow. If they make a mistake, they die of it, or of bad luck, or they die just of having lived so long they didn't already. [End Page 42] On Error Beyond the stained-glass glow of the library's windowed wall was a garden of medicinal plants. Purple bells of foxglove and yellow buttons of calendula flourished among the leafy blankets of chamomile and sage. For a summer I worked at the mahogany table where the man who invented the pacemaker once took tea. My fellowship was for researching quack medicine, particularly as it related to matters of electricity and the heart, but on the first day I was scolded [End Page 43] for using the word quack. One curator said it was a judgmental pejorative that misunderstood how important unproved theories are to the development of knowledge. Other fellows objected on similar grounds to pseudoscience, dead ends, mistakes, and folk. It became hard for me to say, when asked, what exactly I came to that place to learn. ________ Fortunately, there were many distractions in the archives. I followed a little question about luminescent aether into the whole history of...

From “The Relief” James Brasfield (bio) Paul Celan (Paul Antschel, 1920–1970)was born in Romanian Cernauti, formerly Czernowitz Bukovina, now Chernivtsi Ukraine. From light's curvatures on the angles of your pale cast, your parted lips form a shadow for air, as for a voice from the timbre of silence, like a beggar content with a smoke after lunch—fortunate the length of that cigarette, as on the lips of the condemned. Clouds thicken in the cold gray of late afternoon, identified only by the numbers on my watch. It is, as said, those with little look up to you and possess; they know how much is necessary to hold, but those who abandon you see only with a brute sense. Your eyes cannot close. They share the night. * You watch over narrow N. Pryboya Boulevard, not the strasse of a hundred years ago. Who was N. Pryboya? I believe Antschel would remember the name of the strasse and you outside my kitchen window, your Hapsburg face faithful as daylight— a silence without lament—more human than of marble, more like a face carved [End Page 173] in an apple, dried, as if without withering. Still, after so much, you have not vanished along the way, your features the blush of ripeness, a visibility in relief—the lines of age unspoken. * For the time being all is fixed to a moment. If only tomorrow's having been were as simple as yesterday, having survived it. What remains holds its place in wider circumference— a form of departure like a crumbling concrete vacant lot, relinquished. Such wilderness is a stone age, longed for, nonetheless. Your severance compels: Let not my house be squandered. Yet, you have never worried how long a fabrication can last— what is loss, if not human? Callused palms and thick fingers fashioned you with a good time in mind. . . . To think, whitewash, a few repairs, the kindness of hands, will keep you. * Those who saw you and see you no more; those who have seen you for years, who know of your face; those who glance up as if staring at a tin can in the city dump; those who see you for the first time and each time after, who take your image, your shadowed hollows, to the grave— is it your mask those men and women, buried here, mirror in the clear midnight of the Resurrection, each plot its candle, the sky smelling of wax? Hidden and apparent, your expression is dry-eyed, set as a bride [End Page 174] who waits to marry her second husband in the Palace of Solemn Events. * Of solitude, of things human without someone, your portrayal: Bukovinan? Ukrainian? or Beatrice? Eurydice? Maybe Anschtel's mother would recall when you were cast, then placed in your continuum—the question posed above a Viennese photographer's prop in the Hall of Mirrors, where headless a man and woman in formal dress wave from the painted buggy. In the amusement park, cavalry of the first world war trained as children on the carousel. Perhaps a few people, living the day you become a mound of white dust on the pavement, may remember your resemblances. * Few think twice about your presence now. Your street of poplars remains—snow in each niche. A house is a division of flats. Behind you the brick-made space for an intimate life: your body, part wood, part glass, of the window. Your form recedes over lamplight in the folds of curtains. You've never wept nor will— what we see is snow melting or rain; it finds the Prut, eventually the Black Sea, the current of primitive awareness, the infinite distances as when I stand among winter trees, as one among ruins. Still here, the jangling clop of horse and wagon— Mercedes and Ladas, their engines gunned. * [End Page 175] March, late afternoon, beads of moisture appear on your mask like sweat from the plaster, or come to you like dew, like the cries of a finch from the poplar in its flurry of seeds drifting down, as snow through dust, blown across these consequences, things to come in a dark alive in its...

Rural Scenes Stephen C. Behrendt (bio) Domesticity At the table, its yellow enamel gleamingin the sun washing in from this tiny kitchen's window,the woman shells fresh peas into a deep bowl,blue as the sky framed in the upper pane.She must be young: her swift fingers are smooth,straight as her gaze out the window, her angular facelineless, gold with reflected sun. This is a chore she knows well;the bowl in her lap fills steadilyas her ivory radio pours rivulets of Debussyacross the countertop, yellow-ochre flecked with blue. On the stove, rattling on the black iron burner,a teapot in the shape of a cat's head does its busy workwhile the soup for the evening meal blends and meldsbeside the milk warming in the azure creamer.There is no cat; but this is where it would be,here in the warmth, wrapped in fragrance and sun,dust-motes drifting, visible in the angling rays,while its glossy black ribcage rises and fallswith its easy breathing, its soundless sleep. [End Page 524] False Dawn, Nebraska Before first light the chime of birdsongtolls the moonfall, big and full in the west,Venus red and fat in the east's false dawn:cupped in the copse the call of oriole,round and bell-like in the Maytime fringe of leaves,falls like dew before the green breeze rises. Field mice move among the newly sprung shafts,part them silently in the comforting dark,safe before the grizzled predatory cat appears,close-set crusty eyes keen for motion,paw set by paw, in half-pace, soundless. In cool beds beside open windowssleepers stir, restive, readying to rise,birdsong sifting through the screens,filling the odd spaces, dream-corners,skylight still only false, morning yet undawnedwhile the day stalks, patient, inexorable,scanning the parting stems of half-past dreamsfor signs of motion, sighs of weakness. Tracks The fresh snow discloses what dry nights conceal:the criss-crossing paths of paw prints—the rule-straight lines, the rabbits' threes-and-ones,the small indentations that straddle the steady furrowwhere the possum's tail parted the fluff,the fine lines of sparrows' feet, jays' larger ones,crows' larger still where they foraged at sunrise,poked and pried up small things, lifeless, stiff,from the snow that piled sometime past midnight. [End Page 525] Now in the morning I read the evidence,heading for the barn to feed, to tip oats by the canfulinto battered rubber pans turned inside-outby the black mare who dips her waiting muzzle,rimed with hoarfrost, nose dripping,breath blown loud and grassy with the hay's last remnantsto encourage me, prod me to slice the twine,let the full bales spring loose, their dust risingabove the hay that smells still of sweet and summereven in this finger-numbing sunrise cold. They work by night, these small creatures,beneath the blank moon or the shedding clouds,under the gaze of sharp-eyed owls that fly soundlesson square wings in the breathless darkto pluck and pierce them, tear, devour the unlucky,while the fortunate freeze in place, eyes wide,small respirations making tiny clouds, whiskers twitchingas the sharp yellow hooks of owls' beaks,the talons black as obsidian, do their bloody workwithout malice or rancor but in generous thanksgivingfor gifts received, sustenance found, enough for now,in winter's empty barn, its snow-filled hollowspocked and scored by countless tiny feet. [End Page 526] Stephen C. Behrendt Stephen C. Behrendt professes English at the University of Nebraska. His most recent collection of poems is History published by Mid-List Press. Copyright © 2013 Stephen C. Behrendt