Excerpts from Perceptions 2004:

.:Fiction:.

From Focus, by Cheryl Smith

I thought that if I focused on the tissues tearing apart in my throat, it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Saliva kept pooling in my mouth, unable to force its way down. In my lap was a pile of Kleenex sopping with the excess fluid. The sticky whiteness of the mound moaned too. I watched bubbles spit and pop and ignored the priest throbbing at the graveside. Instead, I focused.


     
 

.:Non-fiction:.


From The Right to Drink Saves Russia, by Natasha Rubens

I am Russian. I was born in Siberia. There are certain things that everyone knows. The Russian people are tired and poor and unprotected. But what you may not know is this: Russians have always kept their most important right—the right to drink. It is this remarkable right that allows an oppressed people to endure. It is a right capable of enabling a free, careless, and forgetful existence. It can make the grey reality of life seem tolerable. It can wash the contaminated air. It can make the smell of exhaust the scent of a flower. The hopeless and indifferent faces you pass on the street become cheerful and relaxed. The muted colors of fading Russia are suddenly bright and vivid.



.:Poetry:.


From For Madeline, by Alyssa Perkins


Weare2 parts of a

jagged purple ticket –

            bought heart in July

smelling of socks&kids and pinball

it rests in my

            neck where the skin

dips down in a canyon

&the whole universe can

slit its wrists for all I care

            i’ve you

i have you & I have poetry.