Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2015 - (Page 44)

creative minds imagine Fiction Contest Thank you to all who entered our Creative minds fiction Contest! we are thrilled to announce the winners here. Please visit our website at http://cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/contest/contestresults.html to read all winning essays as well as the judge's comments on them. our Creative minds Poetry Contest is now open through July, 2015. Read submission guidelines and enter online at www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/creativeminds.html. FIRST PLACE Six Eyes by Shayley Martin My mother died the very day I was born, you know, but her mother was sure still living. That was Maw Maw, the bitterest and shortest old woman you ever saw, and it was her bitterness over the whole thing that kept her alive, I think, like the taste of quinine that stays in your mouth. When I was four years old, a frothing-at-the-mouth stripedy cat slashed Maw Maw's eye plumb out of working order. Well, the next day, Maw Maw put one of that thing's peepers out with a red-hot poker. That's how she was. An eye for an eye, and it stopped at that if you were lucky. She didn't raise me like a respectable mommy and a daddy would raise a little girl in South Carolina in the year of our Lord nineteen and twenty two. We lived a ways from the post office and the courthouse and you bet nowhere near the schoolhouse, and my shoe never scraped the floor of any of those places. She didn't make me go, didn't even bring up any kind of schooling. I didn't even wear shoes, or socks for that matter, except when Maw Maw said she smelled string worms about the house. Then I slipped old shoes on for fear that they would crawl up through the bottoms of my feet and set up shop in my intestines. Maw Maw scared the daylights out of me sometimes, when she was angry. She would scrunch up her good eye and her gone eye would scrunch up too, and she would take off her big floppy hat. But if I could get her working in her precious garden, I was all right. I never saw her more at peace then when she was setting pea vines in a trellis, or some such. That garden was her pet, because of course, cats weren't much count to her anymore. I took after the melon vines: no school, no hot baths, no friends but the wind and the rain, no shoes. In that sun-soaked garden I lived my whole childhood: I danced around tiger-colored nasturtiums in highest bloom, I let myself be soaked by the rain, 44 imagine I hid under an oversized squash leaf from Maw Maw and her cherry wood whipping cane. I remember, there was sunlight-flavored cucumber juice running races down my chin when I saw a girl's eyes, whole, hearty hazel-colored eyes in my garden, eyes I had never seen before. I had mostly seen Maw Maw, the colored fellow named Apple she dragged in for lifting loads of dirt, and the big fat truant officer with the jolly face who drank too much. And Apple just had one eye anyway. I believe that's why Maw Maw took a gruff liking to him. Eyes. There were two of them, the surest sign of a newcomer in these one-eyed parts. Two big hazel eyes peering, peering ever so curiously out from among a thick colony of sunflower stems. Attached to a girl about my age, eleven or so, but not dressed like a girl. She wore short, dirty tan-colored pants that revealed stick-skinny legs covered with reddish brown hair, and her shirt was a man's: a pale sunbleached blue, long and dotted with fraying holes on the arms, one perfunctory button at the top. Her hair was short and wild, and her face was dirty. I convinced myself it was a scarecrow there staring at me, but Maw Maw didn't use scarecrows in her precious garden. "Will you help me?" Just standing there like they were her sunflowers. "What you mean?" "My name is Maple, will you help me?" "Help you with what?" "You be the judge and the jury, I be the 'cused." "'Cused?" My two eyes rambled for Maw Maw in her wrinkly sundress. It was high time for her to come out and smell for string worms. I turned my head for a split second, just to let my two eyes rove for May/June 2015 http://cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/contest/contestresults.html http://www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/creativeminds.html

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2015

Big Picture
In My Own Words Daniel Kammen, Professor of Energy, UC Berkeley
A Solar-Powered Solution to the Water Crisis Using the sun to purify water
The PolluCell Generating electricity using waste and pollution
More than a Race The Solar Car Challenge
Energy Agenda The power of teen research
Energized! A crash course in fuels of the future
Grease Is Good Helping the environment and the community with biofuel
Fueled by Algae Sara Volz and the powerful potential of pond scum
The Future of Energy Five careers in green power
My Sanskrit Yaatra Connecting with my culture through language
Devoted Awareness My internship with Until There’s a Cure
Selected Opportunities and Resources
Off the Shelf Review of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options Interview with green architect Andrew Thompson
One Step Ahead Six things incoming college students should know
Planning Ahead for College Developing your passions
Students Review: University of Pennsylvania
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2015