PURE FRANCIS

Like a Chance

by Irene Westcott

Once I wanted to understand football. Turnovers. Tight ends. Two-minute drills. So I asked a boy I knew to explain it to me. Blue light spilled from the television and clung to our skin; thousands of people called out to us. Defense! they shouted.

Pay attention, he said. This is the first down.
What’s a down? I asked and scooted closer.
A down is a like a chance. You get four chances to go 10 yards.

Chances––now those were things I understood. After all, I’d taken my share of them. Driving too fast without a seat belt. Leaving my door unlocked all night. Taking this boy’s earlobe between my lips. I sucked it a little, kneaded it gently with my teeth.

The boy I really wanted was in Texas, 1,174 miles away. That’s 2,066,240 yards––a long way to go for a slim chance.

See this? he said. It’s called a “substitution.”

I found a salty-sweet place behind his ear and let my tongue slip from it down to his collarbone.

Pay attention, he said. This is important.

Sometimes loneliness can roar like a crowd, spurring you forward. Forward, forward.

I freed the buttons on my shirt, then did the same for him.

Pay attention, I said. This is important.


Irene Westcott wishes she were back in Virginia with the cows.

Why We're Here

by Amy Stern

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Amy Stern wishes she was, but is not, in fact, a professional basketball player.

Pedagogy Forum

by Chip Corwin & Mike Theune

                Writing shit about new snow
    For the rich
               Is not art.
                           —Issa

Composing crap about the distant evergreens
For the dining hall Libertarians
Is not art,
Either.

And nor is scribbling dung about the falling leaf
For your third-grade teacher.

Spreading manure with a red wheelbarrow
For your favorite candidate?
Not art.

Dropping turdburgers in the burning sacks
Of your daily diary entries—
Nope.

Animating lawn sausages about defense contracts
For the troglodytes
Is gonna be, at best, artsy.

And while we’re at it, picking the dingleberries
Of self-abnegating ideologies
For your fellow faculty members
Is a shallow grave.

But tricking a bull with a red cape
Onto the point of your sword
Is way more dangerous than art.

And ringing Salvation Army bells
For the poor, no matter how cold,
Is not musicianship.

Delivering a corn massacre via the West Wind
To your poetry workshop
Is to be expected.
(Always expect excrement from poetry workshops.)

Transferring funds from your retirement account
To your checking account
Is not charity.

Installing extra watchtowers
Around the ghetto
Is not community service.

COMPOSING POEMS IN ALL CAPS
FOR THE BLIND
IS NOT COOL.

If you don’t videotape it,
Squirting the baby across the room
For the pirates
Who stole your lover
Cannot be ransom.

Living in a pre-modern community for a year
Does not confer upon you all the mystic powers
Of said community,
Peace Corps Volunteers.

Making a dreamcatcher at summer camp
For your mom
Is not art.
Same goes for a lanyard.

Making a sand-tit on the crowded beach
For your grandmother
Is not art.

Googling synonyms for shit and new snow
For your frat brothers…
Oh, shit.


Chip Corwin is a proud American deeply concerned about this float winning first place.

Mike Theune loved the '80s.

Tank Dreams

by Pam Cunningham

        I once read a blurb about a guy who plowed a makeshift armored bulldozer into his neighbor’s garage after a dispute over their property line.  This guy would mow his yard to point A, and the neighbor would mow to point B, resulting in a foot-tall no-man’s-inch between the two houses.  The neighbor’s Caddy died when bulldozer-man got proactive, and I couldn’t help but think:  how cool would it be to have your own tank?
        I could 'doze into the lot at Target and take any parking space I wanted, or convince a pushy salesman to get off my porch with a mere nod toward the driveway—Still think I need three years of Ladies’ Home Journal, Sparky?—as word quickly spread through the neighborhood that you don’t mess with the girl in the bulletproof tractor.
        The desire to be driving something manufactured by Caterpillar rather than Mitsubishi reared its ugly head this afternoon when I was driving down Wright Street and saw Jane Hamlin, English Department secretary and Champaign’s very own Elmira Gulch, step off the curb in front of Lincoln Hall.  (I’m pretty sure I only imagined the flying monkeys.)  She looked startled, then gave me her best eat-shit-and-die glare before continuing across the street, nose in the air and irremovable broomstick up her ass.  Forget the bulldozer, I wanted a steamroller.     
        Then again, I thought as I watched Jane’s expression descend from contempt to surprise to horror:  you can’t floor a steamroller.

Pam Cunningham quenches her thirst for adventure via the Web so she never has to actually come in contact with the great outdoors.

Just Now

by Michelle Chen

The solo helps itself up and
sails overhead.
Traces a perfect arc,
dribbles down,
drawing on contours of
curved brass.
Cymbals quiver.

Rhythm reduction,
distilled into
beats hung upon
just the right moment.
(There.

Just now. You catch that?)

Lilting, rocking,
tipping the scales,
pregnant modulation.

It creeps.
A smile onto
wrinkled
sueded air
half sour, half
sweet.

We. Notes collected, gathered,
folded diagonally in distraction.
Senses turned up, like collars undone,
exhaling a praise song.

There. Just now.

The audience steeped in translucent dark,
rolled up, smoldering.

Michelle Chen is a freelance journalist and a native New Yorker.