0 a 0 10B -- The Michigan Daily Literary Magazine - Thursday, March 12, 1998 Mississii p By Sarah Flint Ny Write Poems, Dro in Your Sleep By Rob Pham The Michigan Daily Literary Magazir Sweet whiskey scent bounces from mouth to mouth amid raw kisses at impossible angles clothes slide off sweat lies heavy atop vinyl seat covers passion fueled by alcohol the romance of a Southern night black field, dark car two slick bodies sliding down together. - Sarah Flint is an RCjuniorfrom Ann Arbor She is majoring in creative writ- ing, and plans to move to California after graduation and, hopefully, find a career r UNIVERSIY OFMARYLAND Onion Skin Five the first time I tried swimming, I slipped into the pool without a care whether anyone was there to see me. Underwater I began to breathe. No need to inhale I believed. I thought breathing was exhaling. A stranger pulled me up by the shorts for air. I took a deep breath, trying to inhale as much as I could. A more terrifying thing now than then, my nearly drowning comes to me occasionally in my dreams. Last night my father delivered while I was lying in my bed the message that he was dying. He told me best his language could carry that he carried cancer in his shorts, tugging at his boxers. I asked him what the prognosis was, then he told me four monts or four days or four somethings, I think. It was the night before last night that my father died because of reasons I cannot remember. I was sobbing in my sheets. My eyes closed three nights ago, my father died. It was too late already when I told him that I regretted not knowing him, really. Tonight I was about to drown when he said he could save me; for my soul the ability to swim. All the things I could stop doing: Only dreaming of snorkeling, opening the blinds on long nights in hopes that strangers were looking, my fingers tapping habitually, me thinking: How so rarely do things come out perfectly. So I was tempted to accept his offer, but I decided to just breathe, exhaling, not worrying about not being able to inhale sometimes. Only so much air my lungs could carry, I made sure to breathe it all out before I ran out. Drowning, I was not terrified. I watched the bubbles rise while I continued sinking, not wondering if any strangers were looking, not really caring if it meant accepting my father dying everyday in my sleep. - Rob Pham is an LSA senior from Houston, Texas. "Write Poems, Drown in Your Sleep" won a 1997 Summer Hopwood Award for poetry. COLLEGE PARK An Outstanding Research University Nationally-ranked academic departments... Phi Beta Kappa University... Research I Institution... National Archives II, the,world's leading library complex. Incredible Selection One of the largest Summer Sessions in the country, Maryland features more than 1,100 courses in 98 disciplines. Location, Location, Location Enjoy our suburban cam- pus-and still be close to DC, Baltimore, the bay and the beach. Get here by Metro, and take the free UM Shuttle around campus. Summer's Smart, Strategic and Unique Get ahead, stay on course, or catch up in our Summer Session...stand out from.the crowd with career-oriented courses...or experience a once-in-a-lifetime workshop or institute...all at Maryland in the summer! By Greg My father's eyes were slices of onions, filling the dining room with their stinging ether. My father's skin, like the ladybug wing skin of a golden onion, used to wrinkle, tense - when I pinched it lightly - my small fingertips straining to feel the dark massage of his bristled pores. Touching his skin was years before I noticed onion eyes, silent in the dining room.J It was evening beneath the earth, we two only bulbs, still green wraps of flesh that could nourish. Concentrating on his pores, I must have imagined pressing myself inside his strong presence, Epstein tightly as between the bone white layers of a ripened onion. A thin, sentient membrane, clinging to his tightly wound walls. My father loved to cook for us with onions. Even when the skin of his angular cheeks, the moisture of his statue vigilant eyes was yellowing like a day opened onion left sliced, under cellophane atop the refrigerator. When we were just two at dinner that last year, the meal flavored of onions, his eyes like carvings of them, I might have known better than to disregard their faint sweetness and not touch his skin. - Greg Epstein is an LSA junior from New York, N. Y He is a Chinese major and is the founder and director of the State Street Poetry Project. Fun From aerobics to weight- lifting, if it's fun, it's here! Outdoor and indoor pools, state-of-the-art fitness centers, lighted tennis courts, golf, basketball, racquetball... and much more. I i w i R2 P e a a r + Visit our webslte at www.infor..umd.du/su... for the Summer Sessions course schedule and other information, or call 1-800-711-UMCP to get your catalogue by mail.