 Thanks Karen. Our next reader is Lucy Coran. She's a fiction writer. She's been the Margaret Bridgeman Fellow at Bredlow and recently the American Academy of Arts and Letters John Guar, Writers Fund Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, which meant she got to go live in Rome for a year because that is what happens when you're Lucy Coran. She is the Associate Professor of English at UC Davis. Please welcome Lucy Coran. This cycle of life. She really needed some time off work so she took maternity leave but the baby was so much work it was like she wasn't getting any time off at all so she killed the baby. Hold on, hold on. And that gave her some time off for grieving a whole other hell of work plus the guilt and by the time she started to recover she had to go back to work but pretty soon the future seemed so stupid that she started wanting a baby again. When she looked into her options one that apparently a zillion people had chosen and she'd never even known about was a move to the trash heaps of Navarro. That put things in perspective. No, she thought. My options are way more limited than that. Thank the good Lord above. She felt her back against the warm wall of her office. She felt her cells battling it out below deck. She ate a stale pastry. She had one more idea. It was like an egg in her brain waiting to go off. Our next performer is Dia Deer who says, I use my body and performance as a form of writing or painting, both writing and painting. I use my body and performance to get a bunch of unwanted needs met. I'm interested in beauty and acceptance and perception and honesty and humanity and changing my mind. You can find more at diadeer.com and right now, Dia Deer. I am Mr. Eggman. Mr. Eggman is full of wishes. If you shake him, yellow mucus wishes come vomiting out. Mr. Eggman knits blankets out of his vomited wishes and wraps himself up, wet and slimy in them and smiles, shuts his egg eyes tight. Mr. Eggman lives in a smiling bright room. All the walls are white and they are decorated all over with elegant mirrors, large and small. And Mr. Eggman sits in front of them to gaze, wrapped in his mucus wish blanket. Mr. Eggman is sitting in front of one now. Mr. Eggman looks at himself and hopes to see a moonbeam. Right now, he sees a moonbeam. As a prince, I was a goodly and godly god. See my shiny shoes? Yes, you may address me as your Cleopatra Lisa, but I didn't come for much, you see. In this room, all the walls are white, the ceiling is white and the floor is white, flat white. All the same and even and matte, barely an eggshell. The edges are corners and they're all 90 degree angles. Each one fits only right angles and each is the same. A perfect clean white cube full of space, space and completely even bright light. Can you imagine? A perfect clean white cube full of space, full of space and completely even bright light. Here we are inside. Mr. Eggman received his boom mean wish and is off to the races. I mean, Mr. Eggman received his moonbeam wish from mirror gazing and is off to right. Mr. Eggman is writing chapter one. One. When you cross the ocean to the west from here, Japan is only one place and it will continue to be there linearly until it is no longer. The same can be said of pick a place name and think it here. They will be where they are right now and they will be the same place in the morning. When you open your eyes in the morning, it will be the same. When you open your eyes in the morning, same reality. By that I mean Japan will be there just there and it will be Japan and then to himself. Look at me, look at me, Mr. Professor, I will learn you things. Look at all the things I have told you. See how it is the most right, the very most rightly thing ever have you. When you cross the ocean to the west from here, Japan is only one place and it will continue to be there linearly until it is no longer. The same can be said of pick a place name and think it there. They will be there right there and and now and they'll be the same place in the morning. When you open your eyes in the morning, it will be the same. When you open your eyes in the morning, same reality. By that I mean Japan will be there just there and will be Japan. We thank Mr. Eggman for sharing. Thank you, Mr. Eggman. Thank you for sharing. Please, Mr. Eggman retires to his mirrors but sees moon beams no more. Mr. Eggman thinks while staring trying to find a fix. He drinks from a glass filled with sugared cream. As a prince I was a goodly godly godly see my shiny shoes ascribe his writing. How dare you? I'll absolutely dare you. I'd shoot my handkerchief looking down upon you. Mr. Eggman returns to chapter one with a cream mouth. Mr. Eggman feels a freeze. Chapter one. Japan is still to the west this morning and will continue to be until a disaster makes it otherwise. Or Japan is still to the east or north or south depending on my location. I'm serious. I have one location at one time linearly. A perfect clean white cube. Here we are inside. Mr. Eggman keeps one friend a speechless kitty, kitty no mouth. When he feels bad for not receiving his moon beam wish, he tells her everything and she listens. The box does not breathe there in small almost distinguishable shapes. Your eyes work the way they trick you when you're trying to wake yourself up from a nightmare and cannot quite open your eyes. You cannot focus on anything but you see everything in the waking world blurry between small eyelids. You cannot open your eyes. They're even shapes. Even shapes small in the distance and amalgamation of small squares and circles and primary colors. They move too slowly. They move too slowly. They move too slowly. They move too slowly. Mr. Eggman dripping in wish blank at smiles to himself. Smiling Mr. Eggman sees a mirror. Mr. Eggman sees the absence of a moon beam again. He didn't mean to look. But I am a moon beam. I'm a moon beam, a boom beam. Don't cry, Mr. Eggman. We will find your moon beams. We will find your boom beam. As a prince that was a good godly godly god see my shiny shoes. The scribe is writing, how dare you absolutely dare you to my handkerchief down upon you. Please do not disturb me. Time to die. Please do not disturb me. Let me sleep alongside my warm smiles. Time to die. Please do not disturb me. Allow me to sleep alongside my warm smiles. God came down and Mr. Eggman couldn't see them while he screamed. God's dance and laughed and painted elephants all over the air and walls and then the elephants came to life dancing and doing elephant things. So gods drew the elephants trees and calves and luxurious flowers and paisleys free spinning in the air. God's dancing and smiling and laughing and everything in the white room becoming a gluttonous rainbow. The gods are fearsome looking and Mr. Eggman would crack completely open to see them. There is no chance of cracking anyway. Mr. Eggman cannot see the gods dancing around him painting paisleys and elephant calves. The gods have faces painted in primary colors each one full of extra heads and flowing black hair and open mouths with green tongues lulling out in amber eyes rolling around in their sockets completely free glorious glass marbles. The gods are bodyless heads surrounded in light blue and white flames. Kitty no mouth sees everything but cannot make a sound. The room fills with tall grasses and trees the longer the gods play in an extravagant forest of glittering greens purples and blues punctuated with yellow and orange flowers springs up as the plants grow to capacity in the room. All of the light is suffocated out. Water begins to flow up from the now earth and floor. The forest room quickly fills with aquamarine water. The gods almost drown themselves the elephants and their calves. As soon as the room fills with water it drains flood drains into a quiet stream running through the middle of the glittering forest in the white box. Mr. Eggman does not notice. Mr. Eggman kills himself with his mirror game. The box is full with gods dancing and smiling tongues, lulling hair, flowing eyes rolling around in their sockets. They dance on top of dead Mr. Eggman. As the gods dance on top of Mr. Eggman shell all his yellow inside squish out. The box is gone. The forest remains and extends forever in all directions. The canopy grows high and is dense. A little moonlight filters to the floor. The air is royal purples big cats pad along the soft elvety ground and bumblebees buzz along. Jeweled elephants stand in a clearing drinking from the river stream. The remaining space hums and tinkles. Ghosts with pale white rotted flesh and missing limbs grow from evaporated mist off the stream and wave in the air like flags. The air breezes are full of the odor of shit and the scent of jasmine and oranges. Thank you. She took her laptop into bed to look at baby animals so that the pattern was hard world, soft bed, hard computer, soft baby animals. What's inside after that was hard to tell because the telescoping stopped. She looked at baby polar bears first because that's what got it started was feeling herself floating away from the melting iceberg mainland on her lonely shard. She moved on to puppies, a particular breed she'd had as a child that her parents had gotten rid of when they moved the dog floating deeper into her past with every moment she remained alive. Her carpet was endless, but the animals were also good and wronged that she started feeling better. But just as she started feeling better, a sick feeling seeped in to cover the inside of her stomach like fur. Just keep looking at them, she told herself. It's good for you no matter why. What would her male counterpart be doing? Looking at trucks? What would her destitute counterpart be doing? Counting stars? What would her animal counterpart be doing? Breathing, breathing, breathing? Thanks. Silas is short films, music videos and web stories series have aired on MTV logo show Time and the Sundance Channel. And his second feature Sunset Story is premiered at the 2012 South by Southwest Film Festival. And he's just doing so many things. He's like directing episodes of Hudson Valley Ballers, which is totally hilarious. And he had a short film in Valencia that was absolutely a fan favorite. And he's got some new stuff that he's going to sneak peek us tonight. Please welcome Silas Howard. Three of the four walls at the Nolan Chevrolet of Rutland are made of glass. The lot holds 70 new cars spaced two feet apart in perfect rows around the dealership. Steven stares at the blue sky and the dew covered lawn at the smudge on the once clean glass and goes to fetch the dead bird thinking of a sensitive daughter at home. Back in his office, Steven moves the stack of vanilla folders with lists and plans for a business of his own. Man needs to be his own boss, a man with a plan. He has a second wife, a child from a first marriage and an old golden retriever. He's 26. Every night, he vows to quit his job. The other salesman entered the dealership as Steven sits behind his desk learning learning the specs for new car models. Steven's brother Chuck, in spite of years on welfare, always bought a big use Cadillac every couple of years. As long as you got a car, you get a place to live. Chuck would tell his little brother. In order to sell, you must believe in the need for the thing that you're selling. Steven was one of their top salesmen. A new car smell reeks of promise, escape, power, mobility, upward or at the very least horizontal and status. Steven knows this as he convinces the prospective buyer to sit behind the wheel and close the door. But Steven also knows cars fuel if not invented dissatisfaction, enabling one to drive with no destination to feel the electrifying potential perpetual choice unanchored from train and bus schedules. Ron, the owner of the shop like Steven, a man you could trust. That's how people experienced him and made him the top salesman in charge. Ron always gave him a second chance. Matt or Maddie, as Steven called him on the other hand, was fired for far less bad behavior just the day before. Maddie's sales were down and Steven could see his confidence wane. He could hear it in his voice. Maddie started to think every new buyer was out to get him. There were complaints. Maddie's the phone rang again and Steven crossed the glossy showroom floor to answer it. I have to swing by the bank then the dentist so I won't be in today. Have Jerry do the night statements. Ron said, Sure, we have it. Steven replied. The dealership doors opened, second pot of coffee brewed. The secretary came in and smiled at Steve. Their eye contact broken by a car as it skidded into the lot. The driver going too fast, too close to the main showroom window parked sideways. When Maddie got out, he looked rearranged. Like the thoughts he'd been thinking all night physically changed his face. Steven almost didn't recognize him. Maddie walked in and demanded to see Ron the owner of the car dealership. He's out for the day, Maddie. Well, that's too bad because I drove all the way here to shoot him. Everyone stopped and then noticed the gun in Maddie's hand. It tapped against his leg, jumpy and loose like a hook trout trying to get away. He just let me go. You can't do that. You can't just let somebody go, Maddie said. I'm sure he'll talk to you, but he's not going to be in today. Steven looks him in the eye as he says this. Eight people stand in the showroom spread out around the new beige car on display. Maddie stands on one side with the gun out in front of him. A couple enters a door, click, click as they swing through and open it and then a whoosh, whoosh sound as Maddie swings around. Could it be true, Steven, how could he hear the sound of Maddie's turn? But he remembers that sound most distinctly. The couple at the door smile then register the gun and the possibility of danger out of nowhere. Whoosh, whoosh, Steven hears again. Go, Maddie yells at them, swinging the gun back to the eight coworkers standing in a half circle around the beige car. I'll let you go one by one until Ron shows up. But he's not coming in, Maddie, they tell him once again. Then I'll shoot the last person here. The Rutland police show up six cars parked around the showroom. The wide brim sheriff's hat visible behind Maddie's head and shoulders. Okay, Sue, you can go. The secretary looks at her coworkers. It's down to two people, Steven and Jerry. They gesture for her to go. Maddie paces, looks at the police cars and back at his coworkers. Steven at that moment has an overwhelming desire to protect Maddie. Maddie looks at my father. Go, he says, and tilts his head towards the door. Steven looks at Jerry. You wonder what you'll do. You know what you're supposed to do. But in reality, you have no idea each second what you're capable of. It comes down to this. You save yourself or you risk it all to save the other person. Steven walks around the car and everything slows down just like they say times elastic, it's always this way. As he passes Maddie, he pretends to stumble or was it pretend? It wasn't real either way he falls. Maddie reacts on instinct and he reaches down to help my father. Jerry moves forward and grabs his arms while Steven pins the gun against the bumper of the new car. Jerry and Steven wrestle him up against the car hood like actors on a cop show. They yell things like, drop it now. They're bad acting their own lives. The crowd out front, including the police, they watch. Stephen and Jerry wrestle Maddie who holds the gun tight. My father can't get Maddie's finger off the trigger. He said the only thing that finally made Maddie drop the gun was when he gently massaged Maddie's shoulder. Steven just rubbed Maddie's shoulders and repeated softly, it's over. It's all over. Let go. They held each other and it was the closest Steven ever felt to a man. That day, Steven was a big hero in a small town, but Ron, the owner of the car dealership, was worried to let the story out. He didn't want anyone to get any similar idea. So he made the newspaper bury it. The only difference between a hero and a fool is the outcome, my father says, finishing the story. Stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray, the blue haze of smoke that surrounded him my whole life hangs between us. In the sunlight, it's almost beautiful. This smoke that's slowly shutting his system down. He looks into his green plastic cigarette holder. He obsessively checks his oxygen level with a clip that attaches to the end of his finger. Yeah, like they say, the only difference between a hero and a fool is the outcome. And he laughs. He reaches for another another oxycodon places dangerly places the small white tablet on his tongue coughs and lights a cigarette. I tilt the mirror that I've just hung one more time until it's level. How about this, I ask. He can no longer lie on his right side to face the bedroom window with the view he fought so hard for. That's perfect. I can see camels hump and the clouds. I cross to his side of the bed and look at the mirror from there. I can see the mountains perfectly reflected. His head tilts up. Look at that. He says, you made me a new window. Thank you. These people in the photo of the war and their babies look like dirt and rags and dirt. All fell but especially the babies who fell into the earth the way they had always fallen into shoulders into sleep with small complete weight. You understand that the bodies are dead because of angles elucidated by the photograph. You are not convinced that the stillness is not the stillness of a photograph. As the photo suggests, you conflate what is rag, what is dirt, what is body. You put yourself in there, even in babies. And you know the angles your body can't do even with yoga. The other reason you know they're dead is it says as much on a little card next to the photograph. You have come to an exhibit of photographs that has been praised for breathing. The reviewer stopped short of announcing that the pictures make the war come to life. He composed the review after visiting an ex-lover in the hospital, a sculptor who, quote, remained in a vegetative state. In the hospital, he tried to concentrate on the sheet veiling her and not the memory of her body. She had been a sculptor on her way to revitalizing classicism. They lived in an apartment with her resin figures. He had been a photographer losing faith in his own artistic promise. Her stillness was hard to take. He remembered the camera he loved and Nikon he'd saved up for in 1965 and still brought out some times, usually alone in his apartment, usually after several drinks. Once he'd found a mysterious role of film among the pieces of fruit in the bowl on his countertop and had it developed. On it, objects in his life had been rendered monumental. He had not had children. He had not gone to war. He had not made good art. But when he looked at the photograph of his kettle, he found it difficult to breathe. Somamesheng Frazier. This is her latest book, Collateral Damage. She's an East Coast native. She lives here in the Bay Area. She works at KQED. Please welcome Soma. What incentive exists for honesty? These are the facts of the case. We value diversity. There is no evidence of foul play. The potato peeler looked like a gun officer. You shot an unarmed woman. But those who suffer by the lie, hunger for the truth. He stared at his lead. Too heavy handed. Fuck it. This was high school. Nobody read the school paper except its student staff. Student journalists will shape weekly issues of just the facts in concert with a faculty advisor, the course syllabus read. But Mr. Murphy, who'd taken a single journalism course at Monroe Community College 30 years ago and still heavily referenced Iran Contra and the rise of Connie Chung, barely read the headlines that his staff wrote. Your next, Anfrid, he said at least once a week, the greatest Asian journalist since Constance Yuhua Chung Povich. Then he dozed off behind his laptop while Freddie and his co-editor took turns managing the computer lab and smoking weed in the bathroom. Before his parents dragged him to rural Massachusetts, the coups had lived on Flatbush Ave. There he'd had impromptu drum circles, close friends, the two and the five. Here he had pretty autumn leaves, no car, and a clear window into a close-knit pastoral community. There he'd had his older brother Thorsten, home from college on the weekends. Here his parents claimed he had safety, as though concrete might kill him and foliage could keep him safe. Some days Freddie felt like a worldly urbanite, others like a little yellow bug swimming around in homogenized milk. I've had a bit of experience with New York myself, Mr. Murphy had announced on the first day of school. In fact, I met Ollie North once on Park Avenue back when he was fresh out of Akawamik. If only I'd known what was to come. Smiling wistfully, he'd scratched his armpit through a forest green wool sweater. Interesting connection, Massachusetts is an Algonquin word. Freddie had nodded his head slowly, as though this were an actual connection. Just the type of white dude I like, he thought, one who lacks the sophistication to hide his flaws. But sophistication had its merits, he acknowledged later when a classmate nicknamed him chunk, a brazen amalgam of the word shink and the observation that he was 20 pounds overweight. At night, the silence kept him awake. He'd lost his headphones in the move and for now lack the money to replace them. So he lay there and listened to the quiet. Sometimes the house gave a creaky exhale or a raccoon bumped against the garage door. But the predominant sound was nothing. In the eyes of his classmates, it turned out chink chunk didn't indicate derision. It was in fact a term of affection that he came to appreciate. With his Canal Street knockoffs, Gembe and Flatbush accent, Freddie established himself as a trend setter. The ruder he was, the stronger his reputation for being real, and he could popularize whatever slang came to mind. That's Bootsy, he'd say, and the next day everything was Bootsy. Occasionally he threw in a made-up term. All the other kids, except the Decados and the Silvas, wore clothing from the town's strip mall. Jenna and Rob Decado's father owned a truck stop with a cafe and convenience store and they could afford to order everything online. Jenny and Jamie and Debbie De Silva wore thrift store stuff. They eat roadkill. Mindy Johnson had whispered as he assisted her with his layout. Apparently the Decados owned a grip of publicly traded stocks at most of Massachusetts. Acres and acres of forest that Freddie had mistaken for public land. And they also owned a shitty wooden shed at the end of a quarter mile trek from their egregiously overbuilt mansion, where half the high school's upperclassmen had convened tonight. Rubbing his hands together for warmth, he sidled up to the bonfire that they'd finally got going. Jell-O-Shat, like a Sylvan catering service, Jenna Decado and Tonya Tibadot were circulating with laden silver trays. He lifted a paper cup down to jiggling orange cube. Don't mind if I do. Very good set, Jake Sullivan said, examining the tray with an imaginary monocle. Obviously the finest. Freddie laughed feeling good. Sully was a kitten at heart and even the old New York crew would have been down for an alcohol-fueled bonfire in the woods. Who wouldn't? Even Irene Jong was in attendance, hanging back near the shed with Mindy Johnson. He stared at her, noting her full lips and short skirt, but she didn't look back. Following his eyes, Sully socked his shoulder hard. Forget that slant. He blurted in a yell that was pretty much a whisper for him. Small tits. Small sense of humor, Freddie added. No sense of humor, agreed. By dawn, only 15 kids or so were left. Silent, ecstatic, and clustered around the dead bonfire. And with a little jolt, Freddie realized that he didn't want the party to end. Rising, exhausted to his tiptoes, he raised his 10th natty light. All y'all, he intoned in his heaviest flatbush accent. My fam, bam, now. The white kids laughed loudly, then stared at him, committing this new phrase to memory. Like your family, Mindy Johnson asked, ever the fact-checking reporter, damn straight, he answered, and they shared a quiet minute of journalistic fellowship. Excuse me, said Marnie, making some good eye contact before she left the circle. Gotta use the ladies. At best accommodations await you, Jenna Decato sang out, throwing an arm toward the dark wall of pine, and everyone laughed again. Me too, Sully said. Me three, nodding at the group. Jim Hanscom followed Sully into the woods. Freddie had left his notepad in the shed, he realized, just as the group reached the mansion where the cars were parked. What are you doing? Irene Jong asked as he turned and trudged back toward the tree line. Forgot my notes for the op-ed piece, till Mindy to wait up, she rolled her eyes and walked on. The notepad was exactly where he'd left it, wedged between couch cushions in the splintery shed. He snatched it and went back outside. The forest was magical in a new way now, white sun sifting through its leaves and needles, lighting the undergrowth, and he paused to breathe deeply. At first when he heard it, he thought it was a cat. Sometimes cats made sounds like that, dying sounds that might be mating sounds or fighting sounds, but when he followed the whale, he saw Marnie and Sully and Jim. When Marnie came forward a week after the party, he and all his classmates had closely followed the proceedings which the school paper had even covered, stabbed by guilt. He'd reminded himself that it wasn't like he'd never dialed the cops, but there was no cell service in the Massachusetts wood and he'd had a lot of time to think about the repercussions of snitching as Mindy Johnson drove him and Irene slowly home. With Thorsten gone, he thought, turning his phone over and over in his hands, these kids are my only family. Okay. In the end, nothing happened. Marnie went off to Spellman, Sully to State, Jim to the Marines, and he kept in touch with both boys for a few years. The alleged and the accuser had all been 18 and the facts weren't conclusive. There was minor vaginal tearing, but not enough physical evidence to confirm who was lying and who was telling the truth. It was consensual. She was begging for it. At his desk, he leans his head onto his palm. It's time, he knows, to finish that lead. To give the story of the party history complexity and weight, because Sully and Jim said one thing and Marnie said another, because the precise measurement of complementary variables is impossible simultaneously, especially in a close-knit family and his sister deserved more than just the facts. He starts to move his pen, but rather than beginning with the lines he'd intended, lines derived from that elusive high school lead, he starts with the words of a stranger. I'm sorry, he writes, I should have stepped up sooner. I was a coward. I waited too long. Thank you.