Many writers, editors, publishers have those few “photog” friends.  Those people to help you out in a bind or inspire you when you need it.  I’m lucky to know a few awesome ones that have learned their craft from simply practicing it and without formal training.

Colin Shafer is a friend of mine from highschool.  He was one of the most easy going, caring, open people in highschool there probably has ever been.  He never limited himself, his friends circle or the love he has for life.  Football quarterback, cheerleader, artist, peer leader….the list goes on and on. But most of what I remember about Colin back then is his ability to make me laugh and making light of pretty much any situation.

After graduating University, Colin moved to Malaysia where he has continued to teach and mentor hundreds of youth.  He’s shown very strong interests in Malaysian politics, religion, social values and constructs, and you can tell he feels strongly about making a difference in a place that has very narrow views and tight controls over human life.  He blogs frequently about Malaysian life from a foreigners perspective and he continues to travel and take photos wherever he goes.

A few weeks ago, Colin sent me a video he had been working on for the Everyone Has Hope project. This project started in 2010 and aims to allow Refugee children living in Kuala Lumpur to express themselves and grow through photography. Malaysia is home to more than 100,000 refugees and they cannot legally go to school or work as Malaysia has not signed the 1951 Convention on the Rights of Refugees.

Colin’s been working on another massive photography project for awhile. Through his travels, he is encapsulating culture by taking just portraits of people from whatever areas he stops in.  These portraits are unbelievable. He  recently traveled to Melbourne where he took, what I think, is some of his best work yet.  These are some of the faces that represent the people of Fitzroy.

To view more of Colin’s photography, and show my schoolmate some support, please visit his facebook page entitled Colinizing Photography and his website. Also, to learn more about the Everyone Has Hope campaign, please visit their website.

Well, the lights have come down and the gifts have all been unwrapped.  It’s usually that time of year where many of us get the “holiday blues”, longing for more late nights with eggnog and our friends, and more time with our families shootin’ the shit and telling old stories.  January can seem like an extension of what has past and it takes awhile to get into but we all get there.

2011 was a great year for Thunderclap Press.  We worked with some great authors and published a lot of work.  The Thunderclap website was viewed over 21,000 times! Holy cow! I really thought that was an awesome piece of data.  Whether it was 21,000 people or one person who visited the site 21,000 times, knowing that people have taken a minute out of their day to read what goes on here is sick. (Good, sick. I realize people have stopped using that expression since like 2003)

In March, we published Thunderclap! 5 and Kenneth Pobo’s Closer Walks.

In April, we went all out for National Poetry Writing Month and published a poem for every single day in the month.  It was quite a challenge but it was incredibly fun and we ended up publishing a special book dedicated to those poems because people loved it so much.  We also published John Swain’s very fabulous Fragments of Calendars.

In July we published Thunderclap! 6, Kat Dixon’s Birding, and Michelle Reale’s Like Lungfish Getting Through the Dry Season.

In October, we published Thunderclap! 7 which was our biggest success to date.

Looking forward this year we have Thunderclap! 8 coming up in March, and chapbooks from Lynn Hoffman, Parker Tettleton, Craig Sernotti and Kristine Ong Muslim.

Thank you for making 2011 such a great year and we hope that we’ve got your continued support as we enter our 4th year as a small press.

Amanda

Hey All!

We’ve been on a bit of a hiatus since the last issue.  We all get a little crazy around the holidays and since Thanksgiving, I’ve been running rampant making sure I’ve crossed all my t’s and dotted the never ending i’s.  There has been a lot of fun in there too!  Lots of Christmas get-togethers and lots of thinking about future projects.

I’d like to take a moment to thank you all for your support over the last three years.  (I can’t believe Thunderclap! is that old)  I’ve had so much fun with this magazine, and a few late nights, but met some of the most amazing, creative people.  It’s also allowed me to get back on track with some of my own writing and opened me up to a lot of the other online projects that are surfacing and re-surfacing again and again.  We also have over 700 followers on twitter which is just awesome. Hopefully we can make that over one thousand come 2012.

• Caleb Ross recently put out a new book entitled “As a Machine and Parts”. You can buy it from Aqueous for $20.00 by going here http://www.aqueousbooks.com/author_pages/13_ross.htm
• Ryan Bradley has got a new book coming out soon called Code for Failure. You can pre-order it very soon. The cover for the book has been released and it’s pretty awesome because if you know Ryan, you just get it. http://ryanwbradley.blogspot.com/p/code-for-failure.html He also has a new story out at Metazen that is absolutely ridiculously good. http://www.metazen.ca/?p=8885
• Roxane Gay has had a lot of praise for her book AYITI which was put out by ADP.  This is definitely worth the purchase.http://www.artisticallydeclined.net/offerings/16295-ayiti-pre-order

As a reminder, all of our issues are available for purchase through Lulu by going here : http://thunderclappress.com/published-work/  Just click on the link.  Issue 7 has been our best selling issue to date and is now 25% off and just $7.50. Stocking stuffers any one?

I hope all of you have a safe, healthy and happy Christmas/New Year.  I look forward to reading more of your work in 2012.

The following are the six chosen writers & their respective pieces for our Pushcart Price nominations of 2011:

Sara Lippman-Thank God For The Radio (Thunderclap 7- music issue)

Len Kuntz- Mouthwash (Thunderclap 5)

Meg Tuite- Fissure (Thunderclap 7- music issue)

Parker Tettleton – You Don’t Cry in My Bed (Thunderclap 5)

Gregory Sherl- Please Live in the Dive Bar that Houses My Amp (Thunderclap 7- music issue)

Sheldon Lee Compton- From the Ground up in Four Movements (Thunderclap 5)

In April 2001, I finally got my driver’s license. I was 17 and on top of the world.  I was driving home from a party and felt like I had lost the love of my life for almost a year.  Yes, I was a little ridiculous.  I was going down the highway with all the windows down when Procol Harum’s song Whiter Shade of Pale came onto the radio.  This was my mum’s favourite song.  After my gran died, every time my mum listened to this song she would instantly burst into tears in front of me.   She had done it so many times in my childhood that it wasn’t awkward or surreal at all;  it was something I knew she had to do.

So I burst into tears too that night. I got it.  That’s just music.

This one is for all the music lovers. Our Seventh Edition is now available by going here for $10.  It features writers such as Parker Tettleton, Howie Good, David Tomaloff, Meg Tuite, Susan Tepper and many others. Lots of thanks to Robert Vaughan for helping with submissions and Ryan W. Bradley for his great designs.

Love it and it will sing to you.

…when we are at our deadline for Issue 7 submissions!

We won’t be accepting submissions past 4:00pm EST today so please get your last few poems or flash fiction pieces in for our music issue.

A big thank you to all those have submitted thus far.

-Thunderclap Press Team

The gunshot sends me running.  I pump my arms and make up the spread by the end of the first turn.  The inside lane is my favorite.  I’m faster when I reel them in.  This is the local meet at our rival’s track: Midtown Prep.  We’re all white here.  My school, Springhill, is coed.  Midtown is all demerits and paddles and takes only boys.  Other than that, we’re the same.  Rich, private, and white.  My great grandfather built Midtown’s auditorium, Kale Hall, in memory of my grandfather.  He was killed by Japanese kamikazes.  I’ve seen pictures of him before the war, running on this very track.  His sister says that when she watches me run, she can’t tell the difference.  She says running genes must skip a generation.  I pass under the shadow of Kale Hall at the top of the second turn.  We hate Midtown.  They hate us.  My quads burn by the time I hit the straightaway and lengthen my stride.  Four hundred and forty yards.

This is my race.  So I win it.

Coach Volks jogs over holding a stopwatch an inch from his nose.

“Great race, son.”  He clicks a button with his thumb.  He holds a hand over the face to cut the glare and shows me. “Fifty point seven.”

I’m bent over, hands on knees and huffing my breaths.

“Next time,” I say.

The four-forty is excruciating.  I’m not trying to sound melodramatic; the race is hard.  With sprints, you never run out of air.  With distance, you work yourself into a rhythm and look for the fastest pace your heart can sustain.  The four-forty is different.  It’s everything you’ve got for a quarter mile.  One lap around the track.  Your muscles run out of oxygen at the final turn and it’s a mental battle from then on.  You can see the finish line. You know it’s almost over.  But the knives start in on your quads, the pins drive into your knees.  Fires burn under your feet.  The last stretch hurts worse than a fist fight.  You have to believe you can’t feel a thing.

I’m trying to run it in under fifty seconds.  This isn’t a record.  The 6A kids break fifty every time.  But we’re a small school in a small division inMobile,Alabama.  I’m the best we’ve got.

The next meet is County.  Then it’s State.  The rumor is that our division, 4A, will be combined with 5A at State.  It’s still not 6A; that would be murder.  But we’re scared just the same.  The public schools find bigger and stronger runners.  They’re all black.  Some of them even have beards.

Dad calls and says he wants to go hunting in Barlo.  He slurs his words.  Not all of them, but enough to let me know what I’m in for.

“Let’s go this weekend,” he says. “Opening weekend.”

“Really?  Opening weekend?” I ask.  “Yes!”

“Sir.”

“What?”

“Yes sir.”

“Yes Sir.  Wait.  I have County meet.”

“What’s that?”

“I have to be there,” I say.  I sit on Mom’s bed.  I curl the cord between my fingers.  “The team.  We’ve been training.”

“This is a matter of priorities.  What’s more important to you, running or family?”

“They need me to run the four-forty.”

“Is that a gun?  I’ve got the 30-30 ready for you.”

“That’s my race.”

Dad sighs.  “Okay, next weekend.  We’ll miss the first shot, but the second weekend isn’t all bad.”

“That’s the State championship.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”  Dad emphasizes the ‘H.’ He slurs the ‘t’ out of Christ.

“That’s the most important one.”

“Oh. I see.  Then we’ll go hunting this weekend and you’ll do the run thing next weekend.  It’s opening weekend.”

“But this weekend is County.”

“Fucking A.  Now if you can’t go next weekend, and that’s the most important one, then you’re going hunting this weekend with me.”

“Coach Volks isn’t going to un-”

“I don’t give a shit what Coach Polks thinks.  He sounds like a vodka pisser.”

Volks, I think.  I pull my fingers free and curl them back into the cord.  “What about the next week. After State?”

“Three weeks into the season?”

“But we could still-”

“It’s settled. Four o’clockon Friday.”

I want to say no, but work the phone cord instead.  Dad hangs up.  I listen to the dead line.

In his office, Coach Volks taps pen against clipboard.  On the wall behind him, a plaque is engraved with his State Championship titles.  He holds the national record for most consecutive 4A high school wins.  Sports Illustrated ran an article on his career.  Volks is bald, tan, tall, and strong.  Some afternoons, he runs with us.  I’ve never seen him drink.

“Where are your priorities?  Is hunting more important than running?”

“I hardly ever see my Dad.”

“Right.  I get that.  But when you make a commitment to the team, we expect you to be here every time.  Are you a part of this team?”

“Yes sir.  I am.  I’m just, well, it’s Dad.  He’s got this thing about opening weekend.”

“I don’t give a damn about opening weekend.  But if you desert us at County, I’m not sure we should plan on you for State.  We’ve got to mix it up with 5A boys, and they mean business.  I don’t want to slot you in for the big race and then get a no-show.  Are you a part of this team?”

I sit still.  I grip the edges of my chair seat and try to breathe evenly.  I stare down at my legs.

“Look son, just see if you can get a run in while you’re out there.”  Volks rubs his hands, palm down, on the surface of his desk.  “You’re a point scorer.”  He pulls a sheet of graph paper from a pile and points to my name in the left column.  “We’re counting on your points.  Without you, we could end up eight or ten points down when it really counts.  That could mean first or second in the state.  Just look at the numbers.”

I look at the paper, at the tiny boxes and pencil marks, and I understand more than I want to.

It’s five thirty.  Mom called Dad, but he’s not home.  Must be on his way, she says.  I nod.  We’ve made this exchange a hundred times.  I’m wearing a new camouflage t-shirt from the Army-Navy Surplus outlet.  Mom bought it.  You look like a little soldier, she says.  I made her buy face paint too, but I’m saving that for the woods.

For now, I grab my pellet gun and coat and wander into the neighbor’s yard.  We live in the old part of the neighborhood.  The houses sit on plots four and five times bigger than the new ones.  There’s still a chunk of woods behind my neighbor’s house, and I wonder how long it will last.  I spot a squirrel at the base of a pine sixty yards away.  I take a pot shot and miss.  The squirrel scrambles up into the branches and clings to the bark.  As I circle the pine, he claws his way around the trunk so the tree is always between us.  I pick up a pine cone and toss it into an azalea beyond the tree.  The squirrel moves away from the cone and into view.  I pop him between the shoulder blades.  He falls limp into the grass.

I run to the squirrel and grab him by the tail.  I take him into my back yard and skin him out with my Swiss Army knife.  The meat is so little, so delicate, I ruin most of it with the knife.  I look back to our house, then to the neighbors.  I bury everything behind the shed.  I stomp the loose dirt until it’s flush with the ground.  Then I cover it with pine straw and go back inside.  I put the gun in the corner of my closet behind a box of trophies and shut the door.

Dad turns into the drive atsix fifteen.  He pulls himself out of the Mercedes.  He stands, keeping a hand on the car for balance, and finishes his cigarette.  The sun is beginning to set behind him and the edges of his silhouette glow.  I spot him from the window and go to open the door.  Dad steps into the house slowly.  He smells of smoke and cough drops and bourbon.  We don’t hug, but the smell is strong.  Mom stands behind me.

“How’s my house?” he asks. “Taking care of it?”

“The house is fine,” Mom says.

“The yard looks shabby,” he says. “Can’t get those monkeys to do it right?”

“Honestly, the yard is fine,” Mom says.  “When will you have him back?”

“Should be Sunday afternoon.  We might hunt the morning.”

Dad’s eyes are blood red.  He pulls a cigarette from the pack in his chest pocket.  He pops it in his mouth, wiggling it up and down with his lips.

“Please be.  Please be careful,” Mom says.  She grips my shoulders hard.

“You bet.” Dad lights his cigarette. “All right Ben, let’s hit it.”

We walk out onto the drive and Mom stands on the porch.  I can see her breath. She puts a hand in front of her eyes to block the glare of a low sun.

In the car, Dad smokes and sips a pint of bourbon in a brown paper bag.  The radio is on, but the volume is so low I can’t tell what’s playing.

“So Ben,” Dad exhales. “How’s school?”

“Fine.”  I hold my breath as we shave past a clump of mailboxes.

“All A’s,” I say.

“My eyes are killing me.” Dad leans his head back and squeezes eye drops onto his cheeks and brow.  A drop or two find his eyes as the Mercedes floats into the middle of the road.  We straddle the dotted line.

“I’ll just keep her centered,” he says.

“Should I drive?”

“I’ve got it.” Dad says this as if chewing on rocks. Then, “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Got a license?”

“Learner’s permit.”

“Now why the hell didn’t you speak up sooner?”

We pull over at Papagayo’s Stop and Snack.  Dad goes in for beer and cigarettes while I adjust the driver’s seat.  I can see okay, but the controls are different from Mom’s Buick.  I get the headlights on just as Dad gets back in.

“Let’s hit it,” he says.

I pull out onto Highway 43.  Everyone calls it Bloody 43 for the accidents. City drivers in hatchbacks forget that loaded logging trucks can’t brake on a dime.  Once I saw a Honda pinned to a telephone pole.  The rear tail light had been pushed through to the driver’s seat.

Dad cracks a beer.  “Good timing, too.  It’s nothing but dry counties from here on out.  Juan is selling beer hand over fist in there.  It’s a goddamn goldmine for a wetback.”

I drive ahead.  Pine and oak trees blip in and out of the headlights.  Pick-ups fly past in the left lane.  I’m not sure about the speed limit, so I hold tight at 50.   Dad finishes his beer and throws the can out the window.  He opens another.  I grip the steering wheel, leaning forward and looking for our turn.  I’m hoping I’ll find the cabin without having to ask.  I’m hoping Dad will be conscious when we get there.  I’m mad as hell at Mom for letting me go.  I’m wishing to God I was home in my room, gone to bed early, and dreaming of my race.

Turning off 43, I find theTombigbeeRiverBridge.  On the other side, I take a right onto the red clay roads.  These roads, so red in daylight it surprises me, turn the color of blood in moonlight.  They wind through thick woods and pine stands, nameless, and I make turns based on a dip in the road, a license plate nailed to a tree, and the weedy cemetery.  The gravestones here have faces on them called death masks. Mount Erebuschurch still does it.  The reverend makes a plaster mold of the face before the burial, then fills it with concrete and tears away the shell.  He mounts the likeness into the gravestone.  The older ones turn dark and slick.  It makes them look real.

Dad’s been out twenty minutes.  I drive slowly through the black night.   A dogwood branch scrapes the side of the car and I snap my head to the window, eyes wide.  All this darkness creeps into the car, shadowing Dad’s face.  He looks dead.  I can’t see his chest rise, but I can still smell his breath.  I keep control of the car, making subtle turns to dodge ruts and holes.  Then I change my mind and aim for them.  Dad doesn’t budge.  When I find the cabin, I hit the brakes hard.  Dad jerks forward, slumps back, and finally wakes.  He looks over at me, dreamy eyed and confused.  He sits up and purses his lips as if to ask a question.  Then he stops.  He turns and looks through the window at the cabin, nods, and gets out of the car.

The morning hunt comes and goes without us.  Dad sleeps on the couch.  I’m on the dock.  The sun burns off an early mist and ducks gather, flecking the edges of a little island mid-lake.  Baby alligators sun themselves on the sandy mound in front of their underground den.  They make a throaty burping sound like no other animal.  The mother is fourteen feet long and her head is as wide as my shoulders.  I can’t see her now, but with all these babies, I know she’s close.

My great grandfather, the first Benjamin Kale, dammed the swamp and created this lake fifty years ago.  He built the cabin and cut deer fields from the wilderness.  He brought friends and businessmen up to this land on weekends, hunting the swamp in morning and the fields in late afternoon.  He stocked the lake with bass and bluegill and fished the off season.  The land sprawls out five thousand acres, winding alongside the Tombigbeeand spreading out to higher ground in the east.  We own all of just about all of Barlo.  Except for the church and a cluster of black families near the road.  They have squatter’s rights.  Dad calls them cousins.  The cousins got here before Granddad; we can’t get ‘em off.  Dad says this with a heavy southern accent.  I’ve heard it a hundred times.  His mother raised him inNew England with her family after the war.  Dad went to Harvard.  He didn’t return to the South until he was thirty.  No one knows why he talks this way.

Dad gets up for lunch.  I make tuna fish on Wonder Bread.

“Where should we hunt the afternoon?” I ask.

“I thought we’d try out the new shooting house by the barn.”

“Have you seen deer in there?”

“Bucks move around. You never know.”  Dad sips instant coffee and smokes.  Two bites of tuna and he’s done.

I go to the bathroom and put my camouflage t-shirt on over long johns.   It’s too cold, but I want to wear it.  I pull out the face paint and rub my fingers across the glazed surface.  It’s like shoe polish.  It goes on smooth and I’m covered in no time. I had wanted to paint a real camouflage mask with greens and browns, but mom would only buy one tin.  I picked dark olive.

When I come out, Dad gags on his beer.  He laughs hard.

“Black face?  Dressin’ up like a nigger for the deer?”

“I’m camouflage,” I say.  My face goes hot under the paint.

“Jesus H. Christ.” Dad emphasizes the ‘H.’ “How the hell am I supposed to look at you?”

We walk from the cabin to the barn in silence.  From the barn, there’s a thin trail through the trees to the shooting house.  We climb the ladder one at a time, pulling rifles off our shoulders at the top and scooting sideways through the plywood door.  I thought we should unload before climbing, but there is no discussion of safety.  Inside, we sit in shadows at either end of a six foot bench.  We face forward through a cut-out window draped in green cheese cloth, overlooking the field.  Dad sips from his flask.  He glances over and grins.

The gun in my hands is a 1932 Winchester30-30 in mint condition.  This is my first time to carry it.  My grandfather’s gun.  The story is that he used it to kill a ten point buck in the swamp.  They say he heaved the deer over his shoulders and hiked it right up to the skinning shed.  Two miles through the mud with 210 pounds on his back.  There are dozens of stories about Granddad.  Dad says the stories keep his father perfect.  By the time you’re my age, he says, they’ll be making movies and comic books.  Son of a bitch will be wearing a cape.  Dad was one year old when Granddad was killed.  He carries a Remington 7mm with a fiberglass stock.

After an hour, does trickle into the edges of the field.  They feed on grass, listening for strange sounds by flicking their ears side to side while they chew.  I study their movements.  One doe raises her head to look around, then another.  They alternate the watch.  As a new deer enters the field, the others freeze.  They stare in the direction of the newcomer, waiting to be sure.  They stamp a foot or give a low snort.  Sometimes they flick tails up, flagging to the others with bright white fur.  I think it’s a buck every single time.  My heart rate rises and my hands sweat.  Dad leans his head back against plywood and closes his eyes.  He cradles the flask between his legs.

“Why did you send me to Springhill, not Midtown?”  I ask.

“Midtown is boys only.  I worried you’d turn out a fairy.”

“But the theater has our name on it.”

“That’s not my fault.”

When the sun dips below the tree line, it becomes easier to imagine antlers.  Every deer seems to carry a burden of horns.  I lift the rifle and ease the barrel through a slit in the cheese cloth.  I sight the deer in.  Then, of course, she turns her head and the branches behind her stay put.  I do this every five minutes.  Dad’s out.  Thirty doe feed in the field.  When another enters, I lift the gun.

This time, the antlers are real.  I sight him in and count the tines.  Ten points.  My hands go clammy and my fingers tingle.  I kick Dad’s leg.  He nods forward and squints.

“Hot damn,” he whispers. “Shoot.”

I’m shaking enough that I can’t place the cross hairs on his shoulder.  The buck keeps moving, sniffing the air and nosing the ground.  When he looks to the doe, he grunts.  He’s walking across the middle of the field.  It’s only fifty yards.

“Shoot already for Christ’s sake.” Dad turns the last two words into one. “Come on, let’s hit it.”

He puts down the flask and lifts his gun into his lap. The buck lowers his head to feed.  I hold my breath, but even then, I can’t steady the gun.

“It’s time,” Dad says. “Shoooot.”

I’m deaf with heart beats by the time I squeeze the trigger.  The earsplitting report echoes off the plywood walls, but I don’t hear it.  The recoil bruises my shoulder, but I don’t feel it.   I’m shaking and sweating and trying to spot the buck.  He’s running fast, bounding yards at a time with all four hooves off the ground. I know I’m supposed to shoot again, but I freeze.  The rifle has some kind of lever action, and I don’t know how it works.

I jerk my head up when Dad fires on the buck.  Tears and face paint fill my mouth.  I look out on the darkening field.  The buck lies dead in the corner.

We climb out of the shooting house and walk across the grass.  A humid, fecund odor fills my lungs.  I can already see the bloated white stomach rising from the ground.  It looks so unnatural, so out of place, that I almost convince myself that when I get there it won’t be real.

The buck’s tongue lolls out, caked in dirt and already drawing flies.  His eyes remain open, even as Dad nudges a leg with his boot.  The antlers are perfect.  Ten evenly spaced tines, bowing out, then curling back in.

We walk back to the cabin by flashlight.  At the porch, Dad holds out a length of rope.

“Get back out there and tie this to the antlers,” he says.  “Drag his ass to the skinning shed.”

I take the rope.  Dad doesn’t offer the flashlight, so I find my way by the moon.  I’m cold.  I find the buck, tie the rope, and start dragging.  First I face the deer and pull backwards off my heels. Then I throw the rope over my shoulder and dig in with my toes.  I switch back and forth.  It takes two hours to drag the buck to the shed.  When I get there, Dad stands with two black men.  I recognize the bearded one from our last trip. They all drink beers.  They’re laughing hard.

“Hey, hey. Look who made it for dinner,” Dad says.  “Clifford and T thought we should check up on you.  But I knew you could do it.  First-deer adrenaline, I said.  Ain’t that right T?”

“That’s right Mister Kale,” T says. He scratches his thick black beard. “First deer and all.”

I don’t know the joke yet, so I stay quiet.  I’m cold, thirsty, and soaked in sweat.

“Hey, Ben.  A beer for you.  It’s your first buck.”  Dad hands me a can of beer, and not knowing what else to do, I take it.  My hands ache with cramps and cold.  My legs burn.  The beer is bitter, but I gulp it fast.

“Look at him,” T says. “Drinks like his paw.”

“All right,” Dad says. “Get this deer up on hooks and skin him out.”

“Yes sir, Mister Kale.”  T grabs a curl of steel, like a giant fishhook, and pops it between tendon and bone, six inches above the back left hoof.  He wraps both hands around the shaft and lifts the entire deer.  Even with two thick shirts on, T’s biceps swell visibly.  He fits the steel circle at the end of the hook over a bolt in the frame of the porch.  The buck hangs upside down.  Blood gathers on the cement.

Dad hands me another beer.  He pats my back.

“You know what comes next.”

“Yes sir.”

“Don’t call me sir,” he says.

“Yeah.”

Dad takes a knife from his belt and slices the deer’s hide.  He cuts from crotch to neck, exposing guts and stomach.  T pushes a tin garbage can under the belly and scoops everything out.  When the stomach falls, it catches the lip of the can and tears open.  A caustic stench hits us.  I step back, but Dad grabs my arm.

“Oh no you don’t.”

Dad pulls me in close.  He slides a bare hand inside the buck and brings it back bloody.  He rubs his hand across my face.  The smell is unbearable.  He reaches in for fresh blood and slaps my forehead.  The blood mixes with face paint and tightens my skin as it dries.  Some of it gets in my eye and my lids stick when I blink.  Clifford and T go about cleaning the buck.

“Now, I might be wrong, but I’d swear I heard two shots over here.”  Clifford points at a bullet hole in the front shoulder and smiles wide.  “But I just see this one hole.”

I step from the concrete into a patch of grass and vomit.

“Look who can’t hold his liquor,” Dad says. He turns from me to Clifford. “The kid missed the first shot, but he nailed the second one.  Quick hands.”

I’m on my knees, freezing.  My legs twitch as I stand up.

“I’m cold,” I say. “I’m going in.”

“You’re a man now,” T says. The men raise their beers while Dad lights a cigarette.

When I get to the cabin, I sit on the steps and unlace my boots.  I look back to the shed as I pull them off.  Dad unfolds bills from his wallet and hands them to Clifford and T.  Dad points to his cooler and says to pack the tenderloins in block ice.  He tells them to keep the rest.  They open another round of beers and laugh about something I can’t hear. Soon, Clifford and T will finish the deer and take the remains to the swamp.  They will dump the guts, bones, and hide onto the pile.  In less than an hour, the hogs and vultures will scavenge what’s left.

I go inside, undress, and look in the mirror.  My face is unrecognizable.  I stand under a hot shower.  Blood and face paint color the water pooling at my feet.  When the water turns cold, I get out.

I dress, button up my letter jacket, and silently vow to never wear camouflage again.  I steal a beer from the fridge and ease past Dad, passed out on the couch.  An obscure station on the radio plays Robert Johnson’s Cross Road Blues.  I step outside and walk out on the dock.  The purple sky is heavy with stars.  Crickets and tree frogs sing at the water’s edge, but I can’t hear the alligators.  I listen for their throaty call, but it’s not there.  When I finish the beer, I stand up and piss into the lake for what seems like forever.  I go back inside, hoping to sleep.  I’ll dream of herds of sprinting deer.  In my dream, they’ll do nothing but run.

But now, stepping back into the cabin, Dad is awake and drinking bourbon.  I can tell by the look in his eye, he has something to say.

“Hey hey,” he says. “Look here you little shit. When are you gonna start acting white?”

Dad stands and bumps his drink with a knee.  I take a step back.

“Gonna run off like a little nigger,” he says. “Better head for the cousins. Maybe they’ll bow down to our new, great white hunter.”

Coach Volks drives the team to Bankhead Coliseum for the Indoor State Championship.  Curved buttresses extend from the oval dome to the black parking lot like legs.  Everyone calls the coliseum the roach.  In its belly, a crew of men constructs a wooden track with banked sides.  They fit the pieces together as if it were an elaborate jigsaw puzzle.  The outside lane rises eight feet above ground on turns.  The best thing about the track is the sound.  When a flight of runners rounds the turn, six pair of spiked shoes pound the elevated boards.  The thunderous rhythm echoes like drum songs, rolling out from the track a half step behind their feet.

In the stands, Coach Volks hands out numbers and safety pins.  He announces the order of events, time to allow for warm-ups, and foods he thinks we should or should not eat.  Keep hydrated, he says, keep loose but keep alert.  We stretch and jog in the outer hall.  We peer into Midtown’s section and wave to the kids we know.  The Coliseum fills with strange faces and our hatred for Midtown wanes.  We convince them to move down and sit next to us.

Mom sits with the other parents.  She cheers for all of us by name.  She underlines my race times in the program and shouts out when I need to be ready.  Coach enters me in high jump, long jump, triple jump, and the four-forty.  I do well enough in the other events, but all I care about is the four-forty.  It’s my race.

I win my heat of the prelims, but the time is off: fifty-one two.  I’m slated to the inside lane for the finals.  Coach Volks tells me not to worry: You’re faster when you reel them in.  But the roster makes me nervous.  The top time is forty-nine seven.  His name is Tyson.  I don’t know him, but I know he’s 5A.  I know he’s black.  I don’t have any black friends and I’ll admit that they scare me.  They stand taller and stronger with arms and legs like steel cables.  I’m rail thin with a mouth full of braces.  My chin is as pink and smooth as the skin on baby mice.

Mom hands me Gatorade from the ice chest.  It’s cold and sweet.  I gulp it fast.

“It’s time,” Coach Volks says.

“I’m ready,” I say.

“It’s time,” Mom says.

“I know. I’m ready.”  I lace and double knot my spikes.

“Do you need a banana?” Mom asks.

“I’m ready,” I say.

The finalists collect mid-track and I discover they’re not all black. We have two white runners, two black runners, and me.  The bigger black boy trots to each of us, nodding and shaking hands.  Good luck, he says. Have a good race.  He’s got a thick, black beard and the brightest smile I’ve ever seen.  This must be Tyson.  His handshake feels like leather gloves.

I move to my starting line, yards behind the rest on the inside lane.   I shake the nerves from my hands and bounce on my toes, stretching my calves and quads.   When the starter calls us to take our marks, I put my left foot out front, leaning forward and balancing my weight with a hand on my knee.  I throw my right arm back and suspend it mid-air.

The gunshot sends me running.  I close the gap on the boy in the second lane by the start of the first turn.  Tyson is in the third lane.  His calves pop up and down like pistons.  I catch the runner in the fourth lane as we curl out of the turn.  The red line across the track signals us to break from our lanes and shift to the inside.  I stay put, edging ahead of the boy from lane six.  I move into second place.  A group of girls with braided hair lean out from the first row of seats screaming, Tyson, Tyson, white boy’s coming!

By the start of the second turn, I’m on his heels.  I stay in his shadow until the straight.  I move out into the second lane and drive my legs.  Mom claps her hands and screams my name and I love her for it.  Coach Volks smacks a hand against his clipboard and stands up in his seat.  He calls out, You’ve got it son!  The girls with braided hair chant, white boy’s gonna win, white boy’s gonna win.  I lean forward and pump my arms.  I drive my legs.  As I pass Tyson, I move into something beyond pain, something out-of-body and dreamlike.

Soon, I’ll stop running.  Mom will scream my name so loud that it brings tears to my eyes.  Coach Volks will show me his watch and I’ll have crossed the line at forty-nine five. He’ll tell me that first place brings ten points.  That we’ve won the championship. He’ll put his arm around my shoulder and squeeze.  Even the guys at Midtown will applaud.  When they gather in Kale Hall at school next week, they’ll make the connection.  They’ll know where I come from.

Soon, we’ll load up the van and start the drive home.  When we reach Springhill, Coach Volks will be smiling when he says: son, you know what comes next.  I’ll nod and say yes sir as they grab me by the arm and throw me into the pool.  My legs will go limp and I’ll turn nauseous.  But when the team shouts my name, it will be worth all that cold.

Soon, a crew of men will begin tearing down the wooden track.  An expert will inspect the beams and battens, the tongue and groove, and judge the construction unsafe.   They will remove the sections one by one.  They will throw them all away.

But right now, I’ve still got fifty yards.  Ten points are in my hands, and I intend to keep them.  Tyson draws up on my left, but I find it in me and give more.  I’m running harder and faster than I ever have.  I lean so far forward I have to catch myself, but I don’t lose my stride.  Tyson recedes from the corner of my eye.  His black beard is the last thing I see before turning numb.  My head slips into a cottony haze.  I can hear my spikes hitting the track like a fist pounding.  The recoil of each footfall twists in my stomach.  They hit so hard I’m shocked by the sound.  But I can’t feel it.  Not the burn in my spikes, not the knives in my quads, not the pins in my knees.  I can’t feel any pain.  I’m floating to the finish.

This is my race, of course.

So I win it.

It’s tall & slender. It stands alone. It’s the ever loved, ever hated, ever tested pronoun.

I love I; it’s personal.  I’ve heard some writers and readers make the personal pronoun  out to be some sort of gimmick.  The use of it being a gimmick implies that using I is a cheap trick.  I’ve never once read someone’s poetry who used I and thought it to be cheap or easy.

All editors, and many readers, are searching for originality in the work that they read.  Thus, I’ve heard of a few editors  and fellow writers out there who denounce pronoun heavy pieces.  One of the main concerns I’ve collected over the years from these folks is concerning the perception of the ego that is put into an I-centered poem.  I see it as a way to present one’s self in a self aware state, a method of letting readers know that the writer is fully involved in whatever the piece is about.

I’m extremely confident in the first-person poem as a writer; it’s something I truly believe in.  If you read some of T.S. Eliot’s finest work, the first-person narration is divine as he describes the chaos happening around him.  This is probably  why I love modernist work so much.

Charles Olsen was a writer who used first person narration as well.  His vision of the I in poetry was, more or less, to listen to our inner selves. Proprioceptive writing is something that Olsen practiced and felt weakened the whole “I in poetry is egocentric” argument; he felt it washed the ego away.

Maybe it’s because I sort of adore the idea of confessionalism underneath it all and maybe it’s because pronoun heavy poetry often smells of isolationism. However, the intimacy felt and observed by the I in poetry is surely exciting to many readers and a quick connection can often be made to the writer which is always a thumbs up.

Do you I or do you dare not to I?

Other Important Items:

• So Ryan Bradley has this story up at HOUSEFIRE  which is, honestly, the most raw thing I’ve read..possibly ever.
• Marcus has a very interesting blog post in regards to an earlier blog I did about “Would you still Write if no one read your work?”  You can find it here: http://networkedblogs.com/lOalH.  In the blog he asks who your ideal reader is.  What an interesting question.  My ideal reader is probably a nerdy 20-something that watches Sex and the City re-runs and over-thinks every decision she or he has made since they were 12.
• This is the point where I tell all of you that listen to radio and like new music to listen to CBC Radio 3.  I can’t get enough of it.
• Submit your prose and poetry for our October Issue! Thunderclap.mag@gmail.com.

We are ready to accept submissions again for our next issue that will come out in late October.  Our next issue will find you writing about the theme of music.  Some of you may know that I would have never gotten into writing if it weren’t for music.  I began writing songs, really really bad songs, at the age of 14 or 15.  My bad songs eventually turned into very bad poetry, but I was a true child of music.

My mum and dad forced us to listen to Motown growing up, and we spent a lot of time in the car going to sports tournaments so I heard the same songs over and over again.  We also only had an AM radio in the van, so The Temptations, The Chantels, The Four Seasons, The Four Tops, etc. were all we listened to. Some of those guys had some juicy, resilient songs that I still listen to today.  And the lyrics? Don’t get me started!  They knew how to woo a woman, or a man, for that matter.  Like REALLY fall on your knees, head in your hands, begging kind of lyrics.

So whether you write about a musician, a type of music, a song, I don’t care! But let’s have fun with what is, in my opinion, the only universal language in the world.  Read the submissions guidelines in case you have forgotten!