Chelsea Jennings
Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Poetry, 2006

FRUIT

Her swimsuit cured me; she had called my name
as she stepped outside and I could not—though I felt
the thrum of alarm in my body—keep from turning,
from back-slamming into the wave of my own want.
Sun-sheen, red on red, on red, on her; love revealing

its hidden angles and opinions; I saw the strong
geometry of her shoulder, legs kicking the sun aside
as she walked. History was cut to the seed, before
and after clattered apart on the chopping block.
Women appeared as they had not-red is primary,

on it we build the world. By intention or accident,
a wet-red outline of her was offered up; the serpent
mere decoration, figure of danger, fruit itself calling
us unto it-shame forever sewing us with buttons,
which we must teach each other to unfasten.

Leslie Larson
Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Fiction, 2006
Excerpt from Chapter 3 of Slipstream

Jewell was sorting the silverware into canisters when her phone rang. She fished it out of the front pocket of her overalls and watched the last few trays wobble in on the belt while she listened to Celeste explain that childcare for Rachel had fallen through that afternoon and that she and Dana had a meeting at Rachel's school that they just couldn't miss. Was there any chance that Jewell could pick Rachel up and watch her, just for a few hours?

"I was going to work on my project this afternoon," Jewell said. "It's due in less than two weeks and I'm really behind."

"I know, baby. I thought maybe you could put her down for a nap and work while she's there. It's a real favor, I know. I wouldn't even ask you except-"

Jewell tried to ignore the words and just listen to the sound of Celeste's voice. She pictured Celeste at her desk, calling while the fifth-graders she taught were at recess. They had met at a party where Jewell hadn't known anyone. She had just wedged herself into an out-of-the way comer when Celeste had come in the door talking and laughing with a group of friends. She had walked straight to where Jewell was sitting, bent down, and said, "You're in my seat." She had reminded Jewell of the famous picture of Anne Frank: the same large, dark eyes, the same quizzical expression. They had whispered to each other all evening. Two days later, they ran into each other in the toothpaste aisle at Rite Aid. "You again," Celeste had said. Jewell began to believe in Fate.

"Can't Dana find anybody else to watch her?" Jewell asked. She hated to even say Dana's name.

''No, she wasn't able to," Celeste answered with conspicuous restraint.

Jewell sighed. "I'm at work, you know. I have class in a half hour."

"I know. I'm sorry. If it's too much trouble, it's okay. I'll just-"

''No, it's okay," Jewell said before Celeste could finish. "I'll pick her up on my way home."

Out in the serving bay a cook was cleaning the grill and breaking down the steam table. In the kitchen, another cook pulled metal pans of lasagna from huge ovens. Jewell had worked in the cafeteria since she started college four years ago; the lonesome smell of food cooked in too-large quantities was like home. She loaded a plate with sausage, eggs, and French toast and headed for the dining room.

Jewell's buddy Eli was eating and reading the paper at table near the windows. He waved her over to the chair opposite him.

"How're you doing?" he asked. Jewell shrugged and sat down.

Eli was probably the only student who put in more hours at the cafeteria than Jewell. He was Samoan, with rippled black hair that he wore in a pony tail. A second sparser pony tail dangled from his chin. His big head and huge torso made him seem tall until he stood up, then you noticed how short his legs were. He always worked the pot room, the assignment all the other students in the cafeteria avoided because it meant leaning over a Jacuzzi-size vat of hot greasy suds. Eli didn't mind. He scrubbed away on the industrial-sized cookie sheets, baking pans, and mixing bowls while he listened to his walkman and let sweat pour off his arms and face.

He and Jewell both worked full-time every summer, so they'd spent a lot of time together.

They'd delivered coffee and donuts to seminar rooms in the morning, cheese and crackers in the afternoons. They'd flipped burgers at beach parties for incoming freshmen, made thousands of sandwiches for the cheerleading camps that were housed in the dorms when classes weren't in session, drove the catering van all over town on university-related business. The two of them had a lot in common. Both were paying their own way through college. Both their fathers had spent time in prison. Neither of them could sit still. They shared the same dark humor, a love of kung fu movies, and enormous appetites. Which was why Eli didn't blink while Jewell quickly demolished her heaping plate of food, then reached across the table for the tower of toast he'd stacked next to his own overflowing plate.

"How's your uptight girlfriend?" he asked.

Jewell held her napkin to her mouth. To her surprise, her eyes filled with tears.

"Uh-oh. Wrong question," Eli said.

Jewell grinned miserably and forced herself to talk. "I don't know. Things are messed up, I guess. It's mostly her ex-girlfriend. They're always talking on the phone, you know. Discussing Rachel, their kid. Making arrangements, dropping her off. Who's going to do this and who's going to do that. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I feel like something's going on. I mean, I know they have this kid and all, but really." She searched Eli's face, embarrassed but also relieved to be talking. "I feel like there's still something between the two of them. Like it never really ended."

Eli nodded. Jewell could tell he was freaked out that she was on the verge of tears; she was usually so tough. He'd seen her go through no small number of lovers over the past several years. With the others, men and women both, Jewell was usually more than ready to move on when the time came, but it was different with Celeste.

"You going to drink that?" Eli said, pointing to one of the four glasses of milk she had lined up on her tray.

She pushed one toward him. He drained it solemnly, as if he were downing a shot of whisky to calm his nerves. "How long have you and Celeste been together?" he asked, not bothering to wipe the milk from his upper lip.

"About a year and a half."

Eli raised his eyebrows. "And how long was she with her girl- The other woman?"

Jewell drank one of the glasses of milk herself. She felt relieved yet nervous, like she'd finally made a doctor's appointment about an ailment she'd been ignoring.

"Four years," she said.

She leaned forward, eager for Eli's reply. He fingered the straggly hairs on his chin.

"I'm in over my head," Jewell prompted, since Eli didn't seem to know what to say. "I don't know what it is about Celeste. I've just never felt like this before. I keep making an ass out of myself. Even I hate myself. I know I should just get out of there, but I can't. I just can't see leaving."

Eli tugged so hard on his stringy beard that his chin stretched like putty.

"Celeste's a little self-centered," he said. "I don't think she appreciates you."

"Really, you think so?"

Eli nodded solemnly. "Yeah, I do."

Jewell chewed her lips. How could she explain how wonderful it felt just to be in Celeste's presence, to watch her move and speak? What a miracle that they actually lived together, that Celeste came home every night and woke next to Jewell every morning?

"You're right, it's fucked up," Jewell said. She pushed one of the two remaining milk glasses toward him and took the other herself. "Cheers," she said grimly.

They clanged glasses and shot back the milk. "What's new in the news?" Jewell said, nodding toward the newspaper that was folded beside Eli's tray. "Read me something distracting."

"A big storm's supposed to move in tonight," Eli said, visibly grateful that the heavy part of their conversation was over. "The storm door is open and a series of systems is lined up across the Pacific."

He turned a few pages, reading to himself, while Jewell watched a student from the next shift wheel out a big bowl of fresh fruit for lunch.

''There was trouble out at the airport again yesterday," Eli said. "They had to close down a whole terminal."

"What happened?"

"Metal detector was unplugged and nobody even knew it. Bunch of people went through before they figured it out, then they had to ground some planes because there were people on them who'd walked through without getting screened." Eli shook his head and smiled like the whole thing delighted him. "Big mess," he added. "People going crazy."

"My uncle works out at the airport," Jewell said absently.

"He a pilot?"

She laughed. "This is my family, remember? He's a bartender. Works one of the bars out there." She reached across and stabbed one of the extra sausages Eli had piled on a saucer. "What are you looking at?"

''Nothing. Just watching you eat."

"Why?"

''No reason. I just like to watch you pack it in."

She put the whole sausage in her mouth and grinned at him while she chewed.

"Impressive," Eli said.

"Thanks."

"I'll tell you what, all this tightened security is a bunch of shit," he said, turning back to the paper. "It's not going to do a damn bit of good. You watch. Something's going to happen. They're laying people off right and left, things like that. Well, it isn't so simple. You pull something loose over here, something else is going to give over there. It's all connected. Little things you don't see." He speared a sausage himself and chewed ferociously.

Jewell gazed vaguely over Eli's shoulder, out the window where students were passing on their way to class. "I think my dad's supposed to get out pretty soon," she commented, switching gears without warning.

"Huh?"

"My dad. He's supposed to get out about now. He might be out already for all I know."

Eli nodded. Jewell didn't need to explain to him, since he, too, had complicated family connections as a result of several generations of wild and wayward hearts. Jewell had half-siblings she barely knew, more stepmothers and pseudo uncles than she could remember, and a huge cast of indeterminate relatives who had played nothing but brief walk-on parts in her life. It was one of the things that Celeste, who came from a big but tightly-knit clan of Argentinean Jews, couldn't understand. Eli didn't blink an eye, though. He was living with his mother, his three young half-sisters, and the girls' aunt. His own father had spent the last eleven years in a Texas prison for assaulting a police officer.

"You going to see him?" Eli asked.

"Ah, jeez. I don't know." Jewell was her father's oldest, born when he was twenty-one, the same age she was now. "Probably not. It's been years since I've seen him. I have some good memories of him from a long time ago, but he's basically a fuck- up. Probably by the time I got around to connecting with him he'd be back in jail anyway."

Eli used the last piece of toast to swab his plate clean. "You know how to get in touch with him if you decide you want to see him?" he asked before shoving the toast in his mouth.

"I guess I could call my uncle. He usually stays in touch with him."

"The same uncle who works at the airport?"

"Yeah, the same one. He's my half-uncle really. He and my dad have the same father, but my dad's a lot younger. They weren't brought up together. I think my uncle just bails my dad out of trouble every now and then."

"Doors are opening!" the cashier shouted from the front of the dining room. She unlocked the doors that had been closed after the breakfast shift and a mob of students stampeded in.

"Animals," Eli said, shaking his head. "You going to class?"

"I don't think so. I need to work on my final project. Plus I have to pick up Celeste's kid this afternoon."

"What? Are you kidding?"

She smiled broadly. "Nope, we're one big happy family. Anything to help."

Mary Beth Caschetta
Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Finalist in Fiction, 2006
Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Terrible Love

Alice-James leaned out the window. "Hey, you two, come up here." Andy and I looked up and saw her fleshy face peering down. "The empty bedroom," she said. Before I'd married Bo and moved out a few years earlier, the empty room had been where I slept. We ran up the stairs, where Alice-James stood muttering. I was still surprised when I saw all the walls of my old room relieved of my high-school banners and photographs, so it would be nice for all the guests Ma and Daddy never got around to having.

"Daddy took his daily naps in this room," Alice-James said. "Help me move the bed."

As we slid the heavy frame across the carpet, there was a clanking of glass by Alice-James's feet. She peered at us, eyebrows raised, as several dusty bottles skidded out from under the spread. Empties piled high as the hem on her long skirt knocked against her swollen ankles.

Andy eyed the labels. "Mouthwash?"

"Last few months, he was drinking these," Alice-James said, holding up a bottle.

"Drinking?"

"Listerine and Scope," said Alice-James. "Alcohol."

"He wasn't drinking," Andy said. "The doctor said he couldn't."

Alice-James shrugged.

"Bo drove him to those meetings every week," I said. "Alcoholics Anonymous."

"Evidence is evidence," Alice-James said, though she seemed relieved when we ran out of protests. She gave us a minute to absorb the information, sighing to herself.

Daddy always said Alice-James had all the brains in the family.

She took a deep breath. "Okay, let's vote."

With Andy still five months shy of 18, his vote didn't count, not according to Alice-James, who made the rules. Anyway, he voted with the majority to not tell Ma about the mouthwash. A few months later, Andy's first and only legal vote would be for college, New York University instead of Penn. After that, he didn't come home much, not even summers.

We continued on, whittling our opinions down to bottom lines, scrawling "yay" or "nay" on scraps of paper. We fold them in half and drop them in shoeboxes, hoping for the best.

Andy moved on, but we remain here, polling our way through life.

Barbara Johnson Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Finalist in Fiction, 2006
Excerpt from short story "Delia Failed"

Delia adjusts the straps on her new sandals, which she now realizes are a regrettable choice for this rendezvous. They are a recent gift from Maggie, who brought them back from a business trip to Vancouver, home of Sippit Coffee, an international chain of high-end coffee shops for whom Maggie is a regional executive. The hateful core of her beloved's thoughtful gesture came to light earlier in the afternoon when Delia pulled the new shoes from their box. "M.," Delia read on a card tucked beneath the tissue paper in which the sandals had been wrapped, a card Maggie clearly had not seen before she presented the shoes to Delia. "M.," the card said, "it was lovely as always, and you're lovely. Think of me when you wear these in that hot town of yours." Several X's and O's. No signature. Maggie had handed Delia the box with a flourish, with flowers, with a Slingbacks pour vous! followed by a story about how, between meetings, she'd spent some time shopping. "When I saw those delicious lovelies, I thought of you," Maggie said, sealing the pack of lies with a kiss on Delia's mouth. Delia has felt this moment, punctuated with exactly this sort of tale, coming for a while.

"No new palindromes," Maggie chirps now, crossing the courtyard after a trip to the primitive bathroom, an awful room that requires a snaky trek through the establishment's kitchen. Delia admires Maggie's grace, her posture, her loose-hipped, duck-footed gait with its remnant of ballet lessons in it. Maggie's flip-flop catches on the foot of her chair, foiling an otherwise regal approach. Delia watches her sit, then tuck a long, muscled leg beneath herself. From behind one ear Maggie pulls a brown eyebrow pencil and sets it on the table next to a bowl of olives.

Delia's thirsty, and she's anxious to give her senses a soaking. She tries to catch the eye of their waiter who, with his fellows, stands leaning against the far wall next to a cigarette machine.

"Aren't you going in?" Maggie asks, tipping her head in the direction of the bathroom. "Don't you want to write something?"

They have always written on the bathroom wall here with an eyebrow pencil. Song lyrics with double meanings—If I told you you had a beautiful body/would you hold it against me?—and palindromes. It's the palindrome's balance that Delia's drawn to, how palindromes can right a wobbly, wavy feeling like the one that's come over her. Everything but palindromes has a tipping point. Everything else is ruled by its inherent inequities, evidence piling up on one side or another. Never even. That's what she's said to her friends about Maggie, about their relationship, about any relationship. It's never even. It's give and take. It's compromise. She'd read that in a book or heard it on a talk show. Who hasn't? But now she wonders. If things are never even, how can you tell where the tipping point is, when enough is enough? Shouldn't you know how much weight the welded joint of love can take before it sheers and fails?

Lilah Hegnauer
Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Finalist in Poetry, 2006

The Last Recording

E flat, lets make that our home. And when we turn after three minutes or so and darken, I'll tell you there's a way out and you won't believe me. Few of us

make clear our losses these days. There weren't enough trees or ferns or complicated yellows in autumn. The days of their arrival went by unnoticed;

when we reached full color, it was passing. Staccato hour, life in darkness. I've told you the foxglove
is late. I'll probably never have children. Many good reasons,

not the least of which is an unwilling partner - custody, adoption, insemination, words of challenge
and heartache. Sometimes the chords come on much softer

than I predict, like sparrows on a wire: those opening triplet ricochets, repeated stretches in C sharp
with no room for breath, a scattering of rice, a sharp broth of peppers and celery.

There weren't enough etudes written for E flat, that's for sure. I'd like to walk in this silk dawn on
silk roads, each pitch aslant, and go home. Stand at the kitchen sink and eat

the pear that's darkened on top of the microwave. The next time you see me my arms will be laden
with firewood. Time to dry more; loss of day round like a coin in a jar. Time will

wind its way around you, each chord a minor of another, jumping ship at times, stoking the fire at others. Let me make clear: this doorweed places around its roots a necklace of panes. Round the
roots of its roots.

Cutting Down Nana's Maple

She aimed and snipped all morning. Placed the saw, a half-chink to set it, and heaved
her chest against the handle. Only three branches and the trunk were left by lunch.

It was as she's always saying: those breasts get in the way. But hot damn; thank God.
I wouldn't downsize half a centimeter. Not when she's pressing the butt of the saw.

Cotton so thin, sweat so dark, telling Nana I'm the roommate after all these years.
From my eyes to her body in peace through a window while she works.

Let the poem say sweat runs to her navel and pools and say it runs down her back
and darkens the waistband of her cutoffs (though we'd have to imagine that;

it's not visible). Let the reader ask why she's not using a chainsaw. I don't know.
Ask what shape her mouth takes. There are no fruitless trees, per se, so this

is only a damaged ruse, for now. How round the space between minds. Half-chinked,
setting the couplets up for failure. There was a tree, a maple, rotting where the water

pooled last Autumn. Out farther, an icy brook where we stood naked, watching
the maple droop, lending us its weight, though it was too weak to haul away our sorrows.

Kate Lynn Hibbard
Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Finalist in Poetry, 2006

Naked

Not the name of the park
What drove us inside
Or how long after that night I left her

Not the moon on the lake
The patient cars ticking in the lot
Her rough thumbs pressing apart my thighs

But the dress I wore - vintage gingham
Zipped up the back, fit close at the bodice,
Flared at the waist to a full skirt —

When I stepped out of that dress it spilled
A circle of pale blue light at my feet
And never since then have I been quite so naked.

The Reading Woman: Three Portraits

I. A Reader (Albert Joseph Moore, 1877)
As if any woman would read standing up.
The fabric of her gown a performance
of shadow and light. It is barely even
a book she holds, slight enough to grasp in one slender hand.
Her feet are bare but he won't let her stand
on the striped rug which picks up color
from the flowered wall and again the gown.
It takes a long time to model for an oil.
(At least she isn't nude.) Poppies on the paper, poppy
on her dress beneath that layer of light. Her face
gives nothing away, not thinking about her reading, perhaps
the smell of linseed and turpentine instead.
At least she has her book, but always only
the one page. To Moore, the subject is
decorative, anachronistic, like a muted instrument,
or a woman reading who perhaps does not know how.

II. Interior (Model Reading) (Edward Hopper, 1925)
The light is cold, yellow yet somehow
blue. A straight backed chair in front of
a mirrored dresser, the cushion thin,
the chair hard, bottles and jars on the bureau,
a hairbrush. Deliberate, spare composition,
squares in all the corners. A woman wearing a slip
so slight she appears to be wearing nothing
is reading, suitcase at her feet, the mirror reflecting
only the top of her head. She has no face, being all women
in her husband's art, adept at enacting
the roles he required. She is parenthetical, an afterthought,
her hair long and loose over her shoulders,
the blank book open on her knees.

III. Macarina Reading (Ruby Aranguiz, 1979)
She wears an everyday sweater and skirt,
like a girl just home from school. The artist gives her
a name, a couch to lie on like a glove of color,
as the book itself must be to take her into its lucid dream.
But look again: there is no couch, though I want there
to be one, want the woman artist to provide comfort,
a framework to hold the model's body, my own resistance
to the way painter shapes subject. Macarina lies suspended
in a riot of red, in her melodious name, her head propped on one hand.
Her muscles ache from staying weightless
for the time it takes me to read her pastel face.