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Mindprints – 2004

A Literary Journal

Volume IV

2004

Ann Stapleton

Mindprints, from the Learning Assistance Program of Allan Hancock College, is an annual literary journal “for writers and artists with disabilities or those with an interest in disabilities.” In this issue, Marcia Mascolini’s hilarious/wise “Hocus Pocus” considers real-world faith in one very wriggly kid’s encounter with an unmelting Communion wafer: “You have touched the Body of Christ, they yelled. I didn’t really think so. If I had touched the Body of Christ, I think it would have felt more like chicken.”

Mindprints, from the Learning Assistance Program of Allan Hancock College, is an annual literary journal “for writers and artists with disabilities or those with an interest in disabilities.” In this issue, Marcia Mascolini’s hilarious/wise “Hocus Pocus” considers real-world faith in one very wriggly kid’s encounter with an unmelting Communion wafer: “You have touched the Body of Christ, they yelled. I didn’t really think so. If I had touched the Body of Christ, I think it would have felt more like chicken.” Vincent J. Tomeo’s “Multiple Sclerosis Poem Four” bravely jettisons the imperfect in order to save what’s essential: “Excuse me for stumbling / Excuse me for not cleaning the house // Excuse me for forgetting / Excuse me for not keeping up with my friends // Pardon me / As I write a poem.” And in the moving “Walking Toward Tenerife,” Susan Rolston expresses perfectly in one searing image the survivor’s guilt and regret, the anguished why didn’t I?, of every daughter who has lost a beloved father:

On waking, I resume my morning
ritual, scouring the obituaries to calculate
how many of today’s dead fathers
lived longer than mine, wondering
if one of them will end with
“Survivors include a daughter
who should have seen,
should have known, should
have looked back sooner.”

Like a person with a disability who has suffered much and come to grips with what remains, Mindprints is tough-minded and generous of heart; it knows what’s important and how to find a reason to get out of bed every morning. This journal will keep you from giving up and, even more importantly, will help you go on from here. [Mindprints, A Literary Journal, Learning Assistance Program, 800 South College Drive, Santa Maria, CA 93454-6399. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $6. http://www.hancockcollege.edu]

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