Twelve Winters by Suri Nahunte

[Author's Note: A short fiction inspired by "Early Autumn" by Langston Hughes.]

We met at a public library one gorgeous mid-April morning in New York twelve years ago. He was poring over the pages of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, oblivious to the world beyond its covers. That same book was, in fact, the very reason why I had been haunting that library like a restless ghost every weekend. Only there could I read poetry in absolute
silence, far from my constantly raving and ranting neurotic flat mate…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

15th April 1996

Dear Diary,

Everything that happened today is like a series of fast-paced snatches from a romantic film: we exchanged hellos, found out we’re both mad about Whitman, had an animated discourse on the poetic theses of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, exchanged addresses and phone numbers, had a brainstorming over lunch about a plan to publish our poems, and made out in his car by sundown. All on the same day… This must be the start of something great!…



21st April

Dear Diary,

I just know he is a kindred spirit. A soul mate. The one I was born for. He makes me laugh. On the day we first met, he said he has never in his entire life met someone from the Philippines, that he doesn’t even know where in the world the Philippines is, and that he used to believe (up until we met!) that my home country is just a fictitious place, sort of like Camelot or Atlantis. Our Camelot, yes. Funny guy…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


We were happy just writing poems, reading them to each other, building dreams, making out behind bookshelves at the public library (We mutually agree it’s a most thrilling adventure), or in the back seat of his midnight blue Mustang at some obscure parking lot…


That had been the middle of spring twelve years ago.


Now, sitting here, lazing around Central Park on a grey, late-fall afternoon, holding a paperback copy of Muffled Cries and Other Poems, the tenth best-selling book written by a poet named Earl Charles Warner, I wonder if I would ever again gaze into the bespectacled blue eyes of the man I lost twelve years ago to a wealthy publisher eight years his senior. (His profile reads: “…recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature…currently resides in Charleston, West Virginia with his wife and publisher, Lauren, and daughters Erin, Ashley, and Lindy.”)


He had to make a wise career move, of course. After that beautiful spring, we said goodbye to our dreams and to each other, reluctantly believing that it was the best decision and the only
option left to us.


He now owns one of the largest publishing companies in the continent and his eleventh book is underway. I, too, have done my part – and am still doing it well – in this tragic drama
called life according to my pre-destined role. I married a Fil-Hispanic art dealer I met in Brooklyn a year after Earl and I drifted apart, and raised our kids there, all five of them.


Since the parting twelve years ago, I have resolved to put down the pen, take up the paintbrush, and pursue my other love: painting. For more than a decade now, I’ve been living a
semi-reclusive life at my Soho loft, where I have put up an art studio, occasionally visiting Greenwich for my painting exhibits.


Anytime now, the first snow may fall. It’s going to be our twelfth winter apart. Why don’t I dial his number or email him? Perhaps,


(It’s late autumn…)


he’ll recognize my voice at once


(…winter’s coming)


and may even arrange for a reunion at some fancy restaurant down in Manhattan



(…twelfth winter apart)


which I’m desperately looking forward to because, God,


(…twelve cold, lonely winters)


I so badly want him still and love him and need him now more than ever!


But after all these lonely years in this foreign country, I still couldn’t bring my self to getting it
done because if I did that, the world would never make sense the way it does now.


Twelve years ago, Earl and I vowed to let each other go. To grow roots on the right soil. I have been faithful to that vow since the day I stood as best man at his and Lauren’s wedding.


I guess in this lifetime at least, we’ll just have to be husbands to our wives and fathers to our children.#

Confessions of a Stalker by H.P. Atilano

[Author's Note: Originally titled "The Specialist," this short fiction was first published on FB about two years ago.]



It happens every Wednesday afternoon at four inside a public library.

Time stops. Earth loses its gravity and everything moves in slow motion as he walks in – no, floats in—with the distinctive methodical gait of a well-bred gentleman. He glides over to the exact same carrel in the exact same corner, where a repro of Salvador Dali’s painting “The Enigma of Desire” hangs handsomely on the wall. He then takes out his box of wet tissue and wipes everything meticulously until he is certain he wouldn’t get contaminated by whoever occupied his spot before him. Then, he counts his pens, which he keeps in his pen organizer, arranged according to color and kind: black gel ink, red gel ink; black refillable, blue refillable; black oil gel, red oil gel...He counts them three times. And when he is finally satisfied with the state of things in his neat little corner, he takes out his own book and starts reading, caressing the pages with his handsome fingers. He brings his own books. I’ve never seen him touch any of the public library’s books.

I know his routine by heart. I know, for instance, that at exactly 5:15, he would take out a pouch, where he keeps his hand sanitizer. In the next five minutes or so, he would slather his hands with a copious amount of sanitizer and rub his palms fiercely, briskly, gradually picking up speed until he loses himself in the frantic motion of his own hands. And then the rubbing would slow down gradually, gradually until his hands, like my heart, finally come to rest.

I watch everything he does with his hands with a kind of guilty pleasure. Every Wednesday at 4 P.M., not a minute late, I go to the public library to watch him go through with the routine. I sit there—neither too far from nor too near him – contemplating his perfectly calculated scheme. This clockwork routine of his has become a source of an odd sort of thrill for me. This thrill intensifies when, on certain occasions, he looks at my direction to rest his eyes and almost catches me staring at him. My only source of relief in tense moments like this is the fact that we’re total strangers. Just random library users.

This state of affairs never bothered me until I started fantasizing about his hands. That particular Wednesday afternoon, he did something different. Something random. He must have been studying me these past few weeks, for, on more than one occasion, our eyes met and I saw an unmistakable curve in the corners of his lips. I remember smiling back, my mind in total chaos. It was, indeed, so unlike him to notice me, let alone, smile at me. But he did smile at me. For one insane moment, I saw him lift his hand and he made a gesture that resembled a wave. And, for the very first time, I became aware of this obscure, indefinable obsession: his hands... his huge, manly hands.

The thought of being touched by those hands keeps me up many nights and haunts me in my dreams. I decided this has got to stop, so I try to break the habit of going to the public library. But I find it more and more difficult to sleep at night. Focusing on a task becomes a real struggle, as my mind keeps playing back the motions of his hands—how those fingers turn the pages of his book, how he holds his pen, how he rubs his palms together. Tormented by this odd obsession, I considered seeing a therapist.


The psychotherapist was recommended by a college friend who underwent therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although I haven’t met him, I have heard of his renown as a U.S.-trained specialist handling difficult cases from credible sources. I just know I need this kind of professional help.

I am half an hour too early for my appointment, so the receptionist shows me to the clinic’s waiting lounge-- a cozy, immaculate little nook adjacent to the therapist’s office. It is the cleanest, most flawless place I’ve ever been to. The occupant of this doctor’s office must be taking the words “order” and “hygiene” very seriously. Every object is classified, from the reading materials (entertainment magazines, professional journals, etc.) to the trash bins (biodegradable, non-biodegradable). The room reeks of Lysol. If I wasn’t told this therapist is a “he,” I would’ve been convinced I would be seeing a thirty-something control-freak, anal retentive female shrink.

“Miss, he’s ready to see you. You may come in when you’re ready,” rings the receptionist’s voice, jolting me out of my idle musings.

The therapist sits snugly in his wing chair next to the doctor’s long seat. As I enter his office, he arranges his pens in his pen organizer. He looks up and smiles—a knowing smile-- at me. Then, he takes out a bottle of hand sanitizer from a pouch, slathers his hands with a copious amount of it, and rubs them together fiercely, never taking his eyes off me.

“How come you never drop by the public library anymore?” he asks.#

Of Pornography and Word Choice: Fifty Shades Paraphrased! by H.P. Atilano

[Author's Note: This post was published on Facebook August 25, 2012, in response to the Fifty Shades craze.]


I teach Literary Criticism, so I can distinguish between the diction (word choice) of Jane Austen and Stephanie Meyer, the way a wine connoisseur can taste the subtle difference between Pinot Blanc and Pinot Grigio. So when some of my Lit Crit students and the grad school students in my Structure of English class, who’ve read E L James, asked me if this work of erotic fiction is pornographic or just gut-level erotic narrative, I did the most logical thing an English teacher would do, as suggested by my trusty common sense: look pornography up in the dictionary.


What is pornography? What constitutes pornographic materials?


Pornography, n. [Mid-19th century. Via French < Greek pornographos "writing about prostitutes" pornē "prostitute"] 1. Sexually explicit material: films, magazines, writings, photographs, or other materials that are sexually explicit and intended to cause sexual arousal; 2. Sexual images industry: the production or sale of sexually explicit films, magazines, or other materials. (Microsoft® Encarta® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation.) So, the bottom-line question is: Were you sexually aroused by the 101 ways E L James vividly described orgasm in her Fifty Shades trilogy? Simply put, did you feel a tingling sensation running down your spine all the way to the soles of your feet and a slight rise in temperature in your facial area, extremities, and groin, as you visualized the sexual positions and “clenching” of the characters’ anatomies, as the author describes them in a way that leaves nothing to the imagination? Because if you’re not affected, there could only be two implications: (1) You DID NOT READ 98.8% of the books, OR (2) You NEED to see a SEX THERAPIST…soon! The next argument has to do with the second aspect of the definition: Authorial intent. Does the author “intend to cause sexual arousal”? Let me paraphrase: Is the author responsible for the male readers’ hard-on and the female readers’ frequent trips to the powder room? Of course, the author can always deny her true intent and invoke the Reader Response Theory to literary interpretation (i.e. “the meaning is in the reader”), but you simply cannot deny the unmistakable response of that very sensitive thing between your thighs! And she is definitely responsible for that, because she is the source of the stimulus! Enough said. So we’ve established the reading materials in question are pornographic. But we don’t stop here. As a literature teacher, I tend to question, “What makes this pornographic: the reader’s response (arousal) or the writer’s stimulus (text)?” As in the crime of murder, no murder weapon (and the desire to kill), no murderer. No murderer, no victim. So, what is a “pornographer’s” weapon? The same ammunition every writer uses to hit his targets: WORDS. We are dealing here with print materials only, but do bear in mind that words translate to images inside our heads as we read. In Developmental Reading, we call this “visualization.” And to the fertile mind and active imagination, things can go very graphic! To illustrate how word choice-- or, in literary jargon, diction-- spells the difference between art and smut, I will use a teeny bit of my insane imagination and ask the question I always ask when I’m bored to a comatose: “What if…?” Recently, I came across several You Tube videos of Hollywood celebrities reading Fifty Shades of Grey on open mic—Ellen DeGeneres, Kristen Stewart, Will Ferrell (hilarious to the max!), etc. I’ve also been listening to audio book versions, from throaty bedroom voice rendition to semi-constipated ones (what’s wrong with these people?) This seems to be the latest craze, so I’ll jump into the clichéd bandwagon but I’ll give it a twist--- I’ll have certain personalities paraphrase Fifty Shades excerpts to suit their “conscience” and their audience. Imagine this: What if Jane Austen-- 18th century English spinster-author of Victorian classics like Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, etc.-- did an audio book reading of Fifty Shades? How would she paraphrase it for Queen Victoria, the most morally astute, most conservative queen of England? What if English poet John Donne, who wrote the “divine sonnets,” did a reading for his morally-sensitive audience? What if Hans Christian Andersen, the fairy tale icon, would read excerpts for very young audience? What if a medical doctor paraphrased it because he couldn’t risk blushing before his audience? For reference purposes, here is the excerpt to be paraphrased, lifted verbatim with a few omissions, from the book: “His kiss is demanding, his tongue and lips coaxing mine. I moan and my tongue tentatively meets his. He puts his arms around me and hauls me against his body, squeezing me tightly…his hand flexes over my backside and squeezes gently. He holds me against his hips, and I feel his erection, which he languidly pushes into me. I moan once more into his mouth…he gently cups my breast…my breasts swell, and my nipples harden under his steady gaze. ‘I am going to f^*k you now, Ms. Steele,’ he murmurs as he positions the head of his erection at the entrance of my sex…” (E L James, Fifty Shades of Grey, Chapter 7)


So, here goes…(Bear in mind these are paraphrased…and entirely my error!)



Reader No. 1: Miss Jane Austen, English novelist


[Curtsying before the Queen…] “His lips remind me of the birds and the bees and the butterflies. Oh, how so divine! I sing the song of the nightingale and, oh Blessed Mary Ever Virgin, he sings with me! He offered me his hand and I take it in my gloved hand and he pressed it ever so gently. And so help me Lord, he comes near me, about three feet near, and I can see he is a gentleman because he stands erect, oh dear! I sing once more…he gently touches my heart…my heart swells…’I shall show you the birds and the bees and the butterflies now, Ms. Steele,’ he whispers as he positions his key at the keyhole of my heart…”


Reader No. 2: Sir John Donne, English poet

“His kiss is a religious experience, a portal to some unknown depths of my soul. Our souls intertwine and we sing the glorious hymn of a thousand angels. He rests his arms around my being and he and I were one. As the vine clings to the tree, he holds me against his being, and I feel his manhood, as hard as the rocks of Gibraltar. I hear the birds sing as he gently caresses my bosom. My cup runneth over! ‘I will take you now on a spiritual journey of the Seven Seas, Ms. Steele,’ he utters as he raises the sail of his sailing ship waiting by the shore of my sea…”

Reader No. 3: Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tale compiler

“A long, long time ago, in a kingdom far, far away, Mr. Tongue and Mr. Lips went on a journey into a cave, where moans can be heard as one enters it. And so it happens that Mr. Tongue and Mr. Lips were met by the Moaning Lady and they played for a little while, before they decided to go South where there is a river where they could quench their thirst. The Moaning Lady knows she could not stop these two, because she knows how hard their heads are. Their friend, Dick, suddenly arrives, looking rigid and too excited, and he said to the Moaning Lady, ‘I am going to enter your cave now, my Lady,’ as he positions himself at the entrance of her cave…”


And finally, Reader No. 4: The Doctor


“His tongue is invading my oral cavity like gingivitis. My vocal chords vibrate to make noises that resemble the sound of the rubber pump of a sphygmomanometer. His upper extremities flex over my posterior and squeezed my muscle there. He holds me against his pelvic area and I feel his phallus, rigid due to muscular constriction as adrenaline makes his heart pump more blood into the genital area. He gently cups my mammary glands which swell due to overstimulation, and my areolas contract as my nerve endings there are stimulated, too. ‘I am going to perforate your hymen now, Ms. Steele,’ he whispers as he positions the cusp of his phallus at 6 o’ clock of my urethra…”


Now, you be Reader No. 5. (Paraphrase, paraphrase, paraphrase!)#

"God is a Verb" and Other Truths from "The Shack" -- A Book Review by H.P. Atilano

[Author's Note: This article was first published on Facebook last July 21, 2011.]


I'm writing about a book I finished reading tonight, not as a critic or a literature buff, but as a lost child of God who has found her way back home. So, this will be more of a testimony than a critical essay on a work of fiction. I ought to caution you that if full disclosures of profound spiritual experiences is not your cup of tea, this will be a tedious, boring read. So, you may, as you see fit, leave this page, fully exonerated.

The instant I opened "The Shack," I knew it was written for people like me: lost souls in a spiritual desert. By the time I closed it, I was "home," my thirst for spiritual enlightenment fully quenched. And now that I've written it down, a new flash of insight, another epiphany: reading "The Shack" is symbolically entering this proverbial shack in the story, where the reader gets a vivid glimpse into the nature of the mysterious God compressed in 250 pages of fictional prose. I'm talking of The God that theologians and religious scholars spend 10 or 20 years studying about and yet do not fully grasp, let alone genuinely love. This is the same God you will grow to "truly" love, albeit not fully grasp, after reading "The Shack."


"The Shack" is a novel by William Paul Young, "a Canadian raised by missionary parents among a stone-age tribe in the highlands of New Guinea," so goes his brief biosketch. This much I knew about the author. But after reading his novel, I could tell he, too, was lost and found, broken and healed, blinded and enlightened. Reading him was a pilgrimage in print, a very enlightening crash course in theology, if we define "theology" as the study of God. Having said these about the author, I'm inclined to believe that he is an angel, if, by definition, "angel" means God's messenger. I believe, too, that it was no accident that the owner of this book, Miss Tessa Gonzales Yulo, is in my Literary Criticism class this semester and had the good heart to lend me the book. She, too, is an angel.


I will not go into a semi-detailed synopsis of the novel and spare you the agony of a verbose retelling. After all, it is your "obligation" to find out what this novel is about. You owe this to your self. My role here is just to lead you to "the shack," the way the protagonist, Mackenzie, was led to it by a cryptic note he found in his mailbox, signed by God Himself. I daresay, not many writers who could treat such a delicate subject matter as the nature of God the way he did would get away with it unscathed by both religious and literary critics. But Young pulled it off gracefully and brilliantly till page 250.


I mean, what author-- even of prose fiction-- would depict the Almighty Creator of the Universe as a corpulent African-American woman who speaks like Maya Angelou? The Heavenly Father appears in this novel as you would imagine Oprah in apron, covered in flour and reeking of oyster sauce. Jesus Christ is a Middle Eastern-looking guy in laborer's clothes who laughs a lot, eats a lot, and skips stones over the lake when he's not walking on it. The Holy Ghost is a lady gardener with strong oriental features dressed in plain jeans and brightly colored blouse.


But before you cry "blasphemy!" and judge this book as the myopic critics did, read it and see for yourself, as cleverly told in a compelling narrative by an enlightened author, the following Bible truths:

* God is a verb, not a noun, as Love is;
* God did not create evil and sufferings; we did, a long time ago in a Garden far away;
* God DOES NOT believe in religion; He believes in Relationship;
* Jesus is NOT a Christian (and he said this himself somewhere in the story);
* We were created by Love, because of Love, and for Love and the ONLY way to live is to LIVE LOVED...


This, and more earth-shattering, life-changing revelations about God's innermost thoughts and sentiments exposed as if God were flesh and blood.


I've dealt with Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy, but this medieval guy is sometimes too inaccessible for a Gen-Xer like me. William Paul Young is the Dante of this age, and I'm saying this with the conviction of a soul redeemed from her self-inflicted perdition.


There's one person in my life right now that I couldn't bring myself to forgive. Many times-- and secretly, of course-- I wished this person would die a most painful death. This person broke my soul. And it took a book to COMPLETELY heal me from this brokenness. "The Shack" is my catharsis. I was in there with the protagonist, confronting my own monster, my shadow beast, my id. As God was showing the protagonist how to forgive the man who brutally murdered her 6 1/2-year-old daughter, I was being shown how to kill my already-wounded ego. And, I'm telling you, the pain was so excruciating I had to close the book and weep. I have forgiven, in my heart and in my soul, the person who "killed" me.

Enter "The Shack." Let go. Let God.#

About This Blog

Dear Creative Writing Students, This blog has been created to provide you with a venue for creative self-expression. The name of the blog, originally La Plume, means "The Pen" in the French language. "De La Salle" was added to add a Lasallian identity to our class blog. Why French? The language was chosen in honor of our founder St. Jean-Baptiste De La Salle, who was French. May this semester be a fruitful, productive one for you. Carpe diem!