Return to Contents

Return to Top of Page

Rochelle Hope Mehr Lark Beltran Ward Kelley Doug Tanoury Tom Sheehan Joanna M. Weston Donald Ryburn Stephen Oliver Kelley White Duane Locke Ashok Gupta Ron Scott Joseph Lewis Wilma Weant Dague    Patter by Rochelle Hope Mehr Silly little words. Do you dissect like a scalpel? Disinfect like lysol? Whose life have you saved? When the lame reach for a prop Are you a walker? Are you a cane? Are you a sop? Can you wipe up the sick man's mess? Can you zap him To quell his cancer distress? Of what use are you? Silly little words.   Bzzz by Rochelle Hope Mehr I am content with a moment— no news no CNN no Bulletins of Immortality interposing themselves— traipsing across my hyped-up brain— Poetry and Current Events have no interface— I am a zombie I want no sonic revelations no electronic instant access buzz Let the bad news rest I am far from the real world Far from the virtual world Far even from the mystic portals of the Imagination Let me sleep Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Perspectives Inspired by views seen from the Hubble Space Telescope by Lark Beltran Star-pointillation, backdrop of creation, the seeds and the souls of us all, Neon-bright nebulae—gems set in filigree:  art on an infinite wall Poses for telescopes, casting a spell of hopes ever beyond to explore. Labyrinths whispery, laden with mystery, cradle immensity's core. Blue-or-gray? What's-to-have-for-dinner? Go-or-stay? Wish-I-could-be-thinner. Why-oh-why? Daryn-do-you-love-me? I'll-just-die If-they-make-fun-of-me ... Clashing of galaxies, changing realities:  Chaos from order unfurls. Awesome the alchemy, beauteous the majesty marking the onset of worlds! Farther and farthest lie pillars of stardust - those gaseous columns so tall. What wonderment there looms?  Our cares and our heirlooms, our aims and our emblems, our games, our dissemblance, are chaff in the blaze of it all. ******** this-bill! Can't-afford-to-pay-it. Goodbye-Jill But-how'm-I-gonna-say-it? Want-this-work; Will-I-be-the-leader? He's-a-jerk And-I-don't-like-him-either...     Listening in on a Mass by Lark Beltran Words fill their mouths sweetly but leave my heart hollow; Swift the mind flits to the joys of tomorrow. Endless the echoing, blurred exhortations, The icons indifferent to all supplications. Messages dusty, archaic and thankless Are wafted to ceiling, white noise in the blankness. Lulled by faith-lozenges sucked of emotion, The soul soporific mulls over its potion. Encumbered by conflict and multiple ism, All creeds bear scintillas of light from truth's prism. What works for the wrestler may not for the teacher; One takes from the spectrum according to nature. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Weathering of Souls by Ward Kelley The unjust walk the earth. —W. H. Auden The cruel roam the land always, as unavoidable as they are inevitable, since you too require other lives to exist. You tried to live kindly, once, but impossible to proceed with such a task. You tried to love once, though the better you loved, the more cruelty prevailed in your life, and this equation appeared unnatural, even though it's the very fulcrum of the world. In the end, you stay quiet, and suspect, sometimes hope, cruelty is what is needed to refine this soul of yours. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Rolling in the Aisles by Doug Tanoury In my little corner of the cosmos confusion reigns And randomness has taken a rather malicious turn. Causality has conspired so comically against me It would make even Shakespeare slap his thighs And writhe with the most mad and unmanageable mirth. It would send the audience rolling in the aisles. But me, I'm feeling rather somber and not the least amused, For I fail to see the humor of a fortune so befuddled, Where providence wears the most profoundly puzzled look Of an old woman standing dazed in the aisle at the local grocery, Staring silent and stupefied over a stainless steel meat counter, Unable to speak, all her plans and purposes momentarily forgotten. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         On My Father's Blindness by Tom Sheehan Time whispered when he had eyes, a deliberation of things,             songs, stories, a string of beads             some islander made in his equatorial days; leaves, loaves, salad-making, great roasts’ sizzling songs, an unhurrying, yieldless time of games, ghosts, gobs of things. How when sentences finally came to be             he read Cappy Ricks and the Green Pea Pirates.             His eye on the page, my ear on his tongue,             caesura was a bite of beer, a drink of cheese,             turning words like the roasts he made,             savory succulent tongue,             but page wordless now.             Now! Now! Now Time strikes!             Hurricanes, lightning, days are crunching,             night is no more a pail of stars             flung as sand on dark skies.             The eyes are closed, the mouth;             when do songs cease to sound? Sprung from his loins wanting to be,             self-torn from his arms             at some piece of boyhood,             I now remember earless, wordless,             the touch when I was lovely young, and I know I roam forever in the darkness of his eyes. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Stories by Joanna M. Weston stories lie on my tongue— tales told by my grandmother and her mother and her mother stories that melt in my blood having been licked so often by mothers and daughters that they roll smooth as pebbles in a river and fit as well in my hand     Missing by Joanna M. Weston I walked down for the mail and saw a man painting a house which he picked up and carried away on his back maybe sunlight glazed my vision but there is definitely a house missing from our block Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Dragi Kamen by Donald Ryburn “….I asked what these dark strips of land were all about….”  Ranier Maria Rilke, Letter to Clara Rilke I am writing you this love letter in Serbian, So that you, my beautiful, Teutonic blonde hair dresser, Will think me charming and intelligent, Perhaps find me beneath slender fingers at 2:00 pm, Fingers that should be far away immersed in Prokofiev’s Piano Opus #12 Legende, Instead of bluing an old Praguian woman’s hair, Hair that will be immediately hidden beneath a hand-dyed silk scarf, “……perhaps you are correct, I have been without thinking, leading myself into patches of clump  birch trees and great, yellow twisted leaves.  She had commandeered my esoteric self within her white dress and now I only come as a beggar of beauty with sad pillows.  Everything now suddenly very English and tepid.  Here it is spring……” I exist, my lovely Princeza,  As if Thursday evenings were the same for us, As if against the sky we became De Chirocoan shadows elongated across a field of red poppies, This evening sun burns our cheeks, Twin glasses of Campari, Standing near-empty, A rose with indefinite color, Falling to the terrace floor in slow-motion. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         O Say Can You Hear? by Stephen Oliver The dripping Gorgon's head over the sands of Iraq, spittle of snakes flame out from a thousand gun barrels— at last!  the two worlds unite in the death struggle, the two as one to make a third: fantasy is reality is fantasy. America has become its own horror cartoon, each thought locked within its renegade cell, Bugs Bunny holds forth in the senate on the bankrupt dream-stocks buried at Fort Knox. Donald Duck meantime jerks off in disgust over the American flag—quacks the country's been bushwhacked, 'ain't worth a hill of beans' in archaic colloquialisms of a nation near claim jumping the Middle East. The last capitalist gasp v the last medieval groan; eventually, to make way for the eco-terrorists whose motto:  destroy what you cannot save:  will sound the retreat to a history vaporised—a memory erased. So we come to inherit 'Our Common Loss'. The Space Shuttle Columbia makes its long wave 'good-bye' bright finger nails tearing at the sky (like) 'morning Lucifer, that star that beckons all mankind to daily rounds' scratching down God's blackboard as seven souls fly away toward the Pleiades. So we make our omens to live and die by. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Chastened by Kelley White Never chaste, for that was taken, ever chased, chastised, humbled, bled, she takes claret as a chaser to blended bourbon neat, a locket, charity, soft gold chased with her god- mother’s initials threaded on black velvet locked in a hidden chest, change, choice, not hers, forsaken, chance chosen by hard hands and harder eyes, chastity chopped chill childhood mornings, water course, waterchase, blood channel, clean to clear rose curled rule cut.   Eleventh Grade English by Kelley White Eleanor I thank you who saw beauty in even the boiled faces of adolescents their sweet soiled hands turning the pages of the beloveds, and loved;  thin woman, intense gaze,  voice never wasted, who listened all day to the suck suck suck of life spinning down stairwells to purgatory, to cars, beer, and fumbled flesh, and sat alone in a straight back chair in a backdoor basement caretaker of words exile from her river bed   Gift by Kelley White He keeps a clean house. He tells me how to clean mine. It is Christmas and he tells me I must dust all surfaces including the basement but he has little hope I can clear my air. Then he says good night and goes home to his clean air to sleep. My anger is a surprise. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Movie Script 22 by Duane Locke Director: “The title of this movie is Faustine,” And is produced as a homage to Swinburne, the English Baudelaire. The origin of the movie is a painting by Maxwell Armsfield. Armsfield has a man and woman in this painting, But due to our low budget, only a woman Will appear in our movie.  Her name, Faustine. Faustine: A white dove is flying slowly through the crepuscular atmosphere Of the large room.  The dove flaps its wings slowly as if not a bird, But an artificial construction propelled by words From a criminal code.  On the floor, a cribbage board With the pegs scattered in disarray over its surface Stained with spilled wine, an empty sea shell, the pink Lining of its interior facing Faustine, a piece of decaying driftwood With a twig broken and dropping its shattered rotten wood Onto the white rug. At her feet, next to her mauve-painted toenails are books on Paganism, Gnosticism, and Alchemy. She has just written a poem in a transgressive style, an antiabsorptive Style, opaque, artificial, discontinuous being filled with distractions, Digressions, interruptions and disconnected asides when she describes In the commonplace language of the people, the appearance of rye in rye bread. Faustine wrote the poem in gold ink on a beige-colored rice paper, And now the poem Has fallen to the floor, covering the sea shell. Faustine never looks down and asks her shadows, Her opinions, Her views of metaphysics and her view of the quotidian life. She never offered her shadow A drink of cognac. She never talks to her shadow. Her shadow is a stranger, Her shadow is even more unknown Than a stranger. Faustine is not even aware that she has a shadow. The shadow of Faustine is pouring poison Into Faustine’s cognac. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         'Lest Life Flies by Ashok Gupta The smallest micro-organism it's no surprise, lives but for a moment, reproduces and dies. It's only nature's way, to live, love and go away. All else is smoke, illusion and lies Birth is past, death far away; come here my dear let's do likewise.   Metamorphosis by Ashok Gupta The crowd jeers and screams, one jams the doors of the jeep, another sets it ablaze. Flames lap bodies huddled in embrace; Graham Stains, missionary, who served lepers, his two little children screaming. Religious men of the crowd return home, hug and kiss their own. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Madness by Ron Scott Madness is beautiful. With Madness, I will achieve greatness. I shall make Madness my bride and we will live in a mad house splattered randomly with peepholes for windows. We will have mad children with uncouth hair who flow in rhythm and fall in line and fall off the crisp edge of it all to be caught by the next line. Madness will spend her afternoons whipping up a batch of bitter chocolate no one will eat as I shoot the stars down from the sky one by one in broad daylight. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         The Manager by Joseph Lewis Her skin's pale from reading too many books, Though now she must follow corporate ways. She gives the Poetry a sidelong look Like she was remembering her school days. Better bestsellers instead of Beowulf Or having to parse a play by the Bard. She's given up living in her own castle For the comfort of a suburban yard.   Debris by Joseph Lewis Pieces of cantelope and green melon composed in a plastic container, which could be a fragile bowl for soup or an inverted hat for cover. One by one they disappear as fingers reach down like tentacles, leaving fragments and a clear residue sweet as the sap from flowers. The bowl is empty then thrown away ending up with the city trash, gone to a hill that grows near the highway covered by a layer of grass. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Chaff by Wilma Weant Dague In this place I'm a pariah a pawn a pushover a prophet. Yesterday, a young hipster bopped by as I was waiting for the bus. He called me Baby Doll. Today, even friends avert their eyes, except the other husks spun out like me. "It's a winnowing process." I knew this before the down-turned mouths of would-be mentors said so. But the sparkle of Baby Doll churns up by and by, and I can wait it out one more day. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page

 

 

   

• Remote Control   Susannah Eisner

• Circle Dance   Fred Johnston

• The Black Beach Party on the Black Sea   Troy Morash

• A Mandelbaum by Any Other Name   Jack Goodstein

• Bath Time   Michael Graves

• Way to Hustle   Wes Prussing

---

 

 

Remote Control                                                         

by Susannah Eisner                                                                          

haron sits at her desk in the small office where she works alone and watches a backhoe maneuvering about the neighboring Super Fund site, carting PCB coated boards and debris to a central pile where they are doused with water from a nearby fire hydrant.  The abandoned building looms grey and bleak, a windowless mass of concrete, dwarfing the white-clad humans who climb around in and on it.  Sharon assumes they will have to detonate the thing in order to bring it down.  She hopes she will be able to hang onto her job long enough to see that happen.

It has been two days since she has had a client, and then it was only a typing job.  She thought the resume business would be more lucrative, especially now, with the country sunk in a recession that shows no promise of an end.  She has watched the hills beyond the highway turn from green to the tawny gold of lion skin; she has watched house sparrows chasing ravens and red tailed hawks across the sky; she has read and reread the motivational posters plastered on the walls around her desk; she has chewed her fingernails to nubs and the skin around them to shreds.  She rests her head on her desk, ponders her cuticles, and sighs.

When the telephone rings she sits up and stares at it.  She lets it ring a few moments before answering, running through the script she is expected to follow word for word.  She has been advised that Corporate Headquarters will be calling to make sure she does so.

"Good, ah," she glances at her watch, "afternoon.  Thank you for calling Perfection Resumes.  This is Sharon Winston, Career Counselor.  What may I do for you?" 

"Hi."  It's a man's voice, smooth and low.

"How may I help you, sir?"

"You're a resume service, hunh?"

"Yes," she says, brightly.  "Are you in need of one?"

"Yeah," he says.  "Yeah, I am.  I'm uh, trying to change jobs right now.  But hey, did you say your name was Sharon?"

"Sharon Winston, yes."

"My name's Eric.  I do need a resume, it's funny I wound up calling you."

"Would you like to make an appointment?" Sharon asks, trying hard to stay on-script.  "How would tomorrow at two be for you?"

"Um, see, I'm at work right now, too."

"Okay…"

"I'm doing a poll of California women,"  he says.  "That's my job."

"Okay."

"If you'll answer a few simple questions, I'll make an appointment.  I'll even promise to buy a resume."

"Okay, Eric.  Shoot."

"Okay, how old are you?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Married?"

"Um.  No."

"Race?"

"Caucasian."

"Hair color?"

"Blonde"

"Eyes?"

"Brown."

"Sexual preference?"

"What?"

"Sexual preference?  I need that information so I can tell which set of questions to ask next."

"Is this a prank?  Because if it is, you might want to get to the punch line before I have this call traced."

"It's no prank, Sharon," his voice is soft, sincere, almost tender.  "Don't worry.  I am very real."

"I'm straight," she says.  "Straight as anybody anyhow."

"Good," Eric says.  "You sound cute."

"Next question?"

Sharon hears paper being shuffled.  He clears his throat.  "Here it is," he says.  "Um, how often do you have sex?"

"Look, that's pretty personal."

"I'm sorry, I need to know.  I have this chart here and I go to the next question based on your answer.  So?"

"Not a lot.  Not ever, lately."

"You don't have a boyfriend?"

"He left three months ago." 

"I see.  Do you like being tied up?"

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean, like if I slowly undressed you and walked you to a chair, that chair you're sitting on, right there in your office, and I bent you over it and tied you to it, and..."

Sharon slams the receiver back into its cradle.  She sits very still, her hands pressed flat on the desk in front of her, before calling the police and finding out there is nothing they can do.  "Look," she tells the woman on the other end of the line, "I'm in this office alone all day.  That call really frightened me."

"Prank calls like that are usually one-time only," the officer says.

"He knows the company I work for.  He knows my name.  It's not like he'll have a hard time finding me."

"Honestly," Sharon can hear the woman's growing exasperation.  "He'll probably never call you again, and it is extremely unlikely that he is going to come after you.  If it happens again, let us know and we'll put a tracer on your line, alright?"  Sharon thanks the woman and hangs up, fighting a sense of disappointment that she can't quite put her finger on.

Sharon's bus is late, and twice as crowded as usual.  She can't find a place to stand where she can hold onto the back of a seat or a support pole.  The bar that runs along the ceiling is too high for her.  She can just cling to it with the ends of her fingers.  Every jolt and shiver of the bus runs through her hyper-extended shoulder like flame.  A tall, slim man in a leather jacket half-smiles an apology as he pushes into place behind her.  She does not allow herself to make eye contact.

The ride home is forty-five minutes long.  When her car was still running, it took her fifteen minutes to go the same distance.  Riding the bus to and from the office always serves to reaffirm her sense that she has failed miserably at everything she once believed she could and would do.  Her car is broken, her engagement is broken, her bank account and her heart are broken.  The cold metal and hot, often sour human odor of the bus tend to throw her into the darkest mood she is capable of.  But this time is different.  The man behind her smells like Alan.  A vivid image of Alan's forearms appears in her mind.  Thick, strong boned, the blonde hairs standing out against his carpenter's tan like honey on a wooden spoon.  She fights the urge to lean back against the chest of the man behind her, to let him encircle her with his arms, his coat leather creaking, his rich smell rising up around them both like steam.  The bus lurches to a stop and for a brief moment he is pressed against her.  She feels her knees go weak.  He grabs her around her waist to keep her from falling, holding her against him until she has steadied herself.  "Thanks," she says, turning to look up into his face.  He smiles broadly at her.  He has no front teeth and there is something brown and sticky gluing the scruffy bristles of his mustache to one side of his face.

"Yur welcome," he says, his grin almost a leer.  The doors hiss open and he pushes his way to the exit.  An obese woman in a pink pantsuit bearing three large shopping bags takes his place.  The woman's belly rubs against Sharon's back, her labored breath whistling against her ear until she gets to her stop.

Sharon lives in the nothing side of town, her house is one of many hidden from the road by a façade of automobile dealerships, with their brightly colored flags snapping.  She has lived in this house for the past four years.  Up until three months ago she had shared it with Alan, but shortly after their engagement, Alan had suddenly packed and moved to Alaska, to work in a salmon fishery.  He needed to find himself, he said.  He told her she could keep the ring, if it would help her heal, but he could use the money he'd get for it if she didn't mind.  She'd taken it off as if to hand it to him, then turned and thrown it out the front door.  It still lay somewhere out there, buried in the ivy they'd permitted to take over all but the brick walkway.

Sometimes she thinks she stayed for the ring.  Every weekend she plans to rip out the ivy, but she somehow never seems to get around to it.  Perhaps she stays out of simple inertia.  The detritus of four years of two people's lives seemingly too much to sift through.  Her dead car in the driveway, Alan's dead car and row boat behind it.  A garage full of things she can neither bear to look at nor let go.  It certainly can't be love that she stays for.  She longs to burn the whole place down with everything in it, to leave all of her things and Alan's things behind and embark upon some adventure of her own.

Sharon's housemate, Andrea, is home.  Her battered VW Bug is parked at a strange angle, one tire up on the curb.  Sharon hopes she is sleeping in her nest on the floor of what once was her guest bedroom, but gives up all fantasies of a quiet evening as she approaches and hears the dissonant strains of Black Sabbath blaring out of her living room windows.  She sees Andrea dancing wildly inside.  Andrea's dog, Gremlin, is chained to the bumper of Sharon's car, growling at her and straining at its collar.  Half pit bull and half whippet, the bug-eyed, sickle toothed, semi-hairless creature is probably the ugliest living thing Sharon has ever seen.  She growls at it as she drags the big metal garbage can she'd hauled out that morning back up the driveway.  She makes a great show of clattering and banging the can up the back steps, slamming the lid into place.  She is hoping Andrea might learn by example.  She knows from experience that telling her what to do only leads to its opposite.  The music is deafening as she comes in the back door.  Flies rise up off the food crusted onto dishes piled in the sink.  The entire house smells of Gremlin.  Her housemate gyrates past the kitchen doorway in a black tank top and lacy yellow panties, wailing along with the music and waving a bottle of whiskey.  Sharon slams the door shut behind her and the music stops.  A viscous silence wells into the shambles Sharon once called home.  Andrea's head pops around the door frame.  "Hey Share!  How's tricks?"  

"All right, I guess," Sharon says, picking through the mounded dishes for a washable glass.  "I brought the garbage can back up."

"I was just about to do that!"  Andrea says, dumping old newspapers off a chair and sitting down.  She lights a cigarette and leans forward with her elbows on her knees, apparently oblivious that her posture has pushed one nipple clear of its sheer covering.  "It was my turn, I know.  I planned to wake up early enough to take it down this morning, but by the time I got up, the truck was already gone."

"Forget it," Sharon says.  "Are all these dishes mine?"  She knows none of them are.  She has made a careful point of cleaning up after herself constantly, in hopes that Andrea might realize what a profound pig she really is.

Andrea takes a swig off the bottle and sets it on the table.  "Sorry," she says.  "I think most of them are mine.  I've been so busy.  I just haven't had a chance to do all the cleaning I've been wanting to."

"So you've found a job?"

"No, I've just been busy, Sharon.  You know, I went to Unemployment today, and then my mom called when I got home, so I had to go over there for a while, and then I was planning on bathing Gremlin."

"Wow, rough day."  Sharon dumps the clotted remains of a glass of milk into the garbage because the sink is too full to reach the drain.  She starts cleaning the glass and finds herself doing all the dishes while Andrea talks.  "I stopped by that guy, Richard's, house today, too.  Remember Richard?  He, uh, he spent the night here one night?  Remember him?"

"Sure I do, you guys were up until three or four in the morning."

"Yeah, that guy.  Well, he's got this cable for his radio.  You know, like four hundred channels.  He says it's only fifty bucks a month.  I thought, that's only twenty-five each for us.  What do you think?  I could call the cable company tomorrow."

"I can't afford it," Sharon says.  "And you're on Unemployment.  Maybe after I start getting some clients, or once you've got work, okay?"

"Yeah, you're right.  You know, you really shouldn't dump all that old food in the trash.  Gremlin'll just eat it and puke it back up like last time."

"The garbage can's empty, there's room to dump this now."

"Yeah," Andrea says.  "I guess you could do that."

Sharon goes to the refrigerator to get some orange juice but the gust of fetid air that wafts into her face when she opens it changes her mind.

Andrea rises from her perch.  "Well," she says. "I got things to do."  She goes into the living room and turns on the TV.   "Oh yeah," she shouts.  "Some guy called for you.  He sounded cute."

Sharon goes to the doorway.  "Who?"  Her housemate looks up at her across the pile of magazines on the coffee table.  She appears to be building a nest right there in the living room. 

Andrea nods her head.  "Some guy, okay?  He asked for Sharon Winston.  Said he was a business acquaintance."

"Did he leave a number?"

"Sorry.  No."  Andrea raises the remote control and points it at the television.  "He said his name was Eric, or something like that.  Said he'd call back."

"Oh Jesus," Sharon says.  She feels herself growing numb and cold.  "Oh my God, he's got this number."  She lets her legs buckle and sits down on the floor.

"So?" Andrea says, turning up the volume. 

"He's a prank caller.  He called me at work today.  God, how did he get this number?"

"Oh come on.  Maybe it was another Eric."

"I don't know any other Erics.  D'you think I should call the police?"

"I think it was Eric, and Hell no.  Police are always more trouble than they're worth.  They can't do anything about it anyway.  Not unless he threatens you."

Gremlin starts barking outside, his voice rising in pitch to match his excitement.  His chain rattles frantically against the bumper of Sharon's car.  "Something's out there," Sharon says.  The dog's barking gets wilder, tinged with yips and howls.

"It's a cat, 'coon, or something.  Jesus, Sharon."  Andrea turns the sound up further and stares intently at the screen, dismissing Sharon entirely.  Viper, her favorite American Gladiator, has just knocked a Contender from his plastic perch with a padded ramrod.  "That's Viper," Andrea says, gnawing the edge of her index finger.

"I know," Sharon says.

"I think he's so cute."

"I know," Sharon says.  "I'm going upstairs."

"'Kay," Andrea replies, not moving her eyes from the television screen.  "Have fun."

Sharon locks her bedroom door and checks to make sure the knife she keeps under her bed is there, within easy reach.  She sits down at her desk and stares out the small dormer window at the top of the elm tree that overshadows her front yard.  For years she has watched the ivy winding its way upward around the tree's trunk, and now she sees it reaching through the leafy crown, spires of it rising up as if to pull the old tree to the ground.  Gremlin has stopped his barking.  Through a gap in the leaves Sharon can just make out his grey, snakelike body, pulled taught against the chain as he strains toward something on the other side of the street.  "A cat," she says aloud.  "I'm being paranoid."  She runs through her conversation with the caller in her mind.  For the most part it was innocent enough.  She can still hear his voice.  It was soothing.  The kind of voice you'd like to curl up in front of a fire with.  "Do you enjoy being tied up?"  She'd never thought about it before.  She wonders if she would.

Sharon stands very still outside her office door.  It is ajar.  She can feel her heartbeat in her throat and the tips of her fingers, and she can see its rhythm in white flashes at the corners of her vision.  Someone is moving around in there, opening and closing file cabinets.  "Hello," she says softly, her tongue thick and dry against the roof of her mouth.  "Hello?"  The door opens suddenly outward.  It is Bonnie, her Regional Manager.

Bonnie smiles down at her.  "Sharon!"  she says, as if greeting an invited guest.  "So glad you could make it!"

"I'm sorry, Bonnie," Sharon says.  "The bus was early so I missed it, and then I stood out here for a while.  I didn't know it was you in the office.  I've had some prank calls lately.  I was frightened."  Her words pour out of her in a nervous stream.   She knows she is babbling.  She puts her hands in her jacket pockets to hide their shaking.  "Usually, well, you know me.  Usually I'm too early for everything."  She tries to laugh but it comes out something like a cough.

"Listen, Hun," Bonnie says, gripping her shoulders and guiding her into her office.  "I'm on my way to Fresno.  I only have a sec.  I just wanted to stop in and talk to you about a little issue that was brought to my attention by Accounting."  Bonnie goes to sit behind Sharon's desk.  "Sit down, Sharon."  Sharon sits on the chair intended for her clients.  "Now don't get upset.  This is just a heads-up.  But apparently you haven't met quota once in the six months you've been here."

"Nobody comes in," Sharon says,  "Nobody calls.  Maybe if this office was closer to downtown.  I mean out here in the boonies, it's not like I get a lot of walk-ins."

"Nonsense, Sharon," Bonnie says, one hand fussing with her silver skull cap of hair.  "Location has nothing to do with it.  Do you get more calls than clients?"

"Yes, of course, I…"

"Are you really following the script?  The script is designed to bring people in.  You make the appointment for them, and you tell them when they are coming in, and you never give them a chance to say 'no.'"

Sharon nods her passionate assent.  "Always," she says.  "And I never quote prices over the phone." 

Bonnie glances at her watch.  "I'm running late.  Sharon, I have brought you a new copy of the script, and I want you to really study it.  Remember, this business isn't about writing resumes so much as it is about sales."  She stands and adjusts her dress around her substantial thighs.  "This little visit is just an FYI, Sharon.  If you get yourself up to quota by next month I won't have to come back here to ask you for your keys."

"I'll make quota, Bonnie."

"That's what I want to hear.  Don't be frightened.  I'm not threatening you.  Just consider this a pep talk."  Bonnie wedges her tiny purse under her arm and strides out of the room. 

Sharon goes to the window and watches the woman's silver Pontiac pull out of the driveway.  She doesn't take her eyes off it until it is out of sight.  Only then does she allow herself to cry.

At five-thirty Sharon takes off her pumps and places them in her desk drawer.  She puts on worn sneakers for the long walk to the bus stop.  Outside, the pavement wavers beneath a slick heat haze.  The leaves on the eucalyptus trees that line the dusty parking lot hang limply in the stale air.  The awful heat slams into her as she opens the door, stinging her eyes and nose with its dryness.  She heads out into it, walking as quickly as she can in order to be at the bus stop by five forty-five.  If she misses that bus, she will have to wait another hour.  She takes off her suit jacket while she walks and ties it around her waist like a sweatshirt.

Sharon is halfway to the bus stop when the low hum of a well-tuned engine catches her attention.  She keeps walking, expecting at any moment to be passed by the car behind her.  When that doesn't happen, she glances over her shoulder.  A black BMW with tinted windows rides low to the ground about ten yards behind her.  It seems to be pacing her.  She speeds up her walk, but she can tell by the sound that the car is still there, keeping just to the rear of her peripheral vision.

"Oh God," she says under her breath.  "This is it."  To her surprise she grows suddenly calm.  Even the heat seems to dissipate around her.  She hears the silky engine come to life.  The car accelerates past her, its black paint gleaming in the flat, hard light.  By the time it reaches the corner it's moving so quickly its tires squeal and its rear end shivers as it turns and roars down Grey Farm Road.  Sharon stops walking and stares after it until it disappears, waves of heat seeming to subsume it like a hot tide.  She sees her bus pull up to the stop a few blocks away and watches as it approaches and passes her.  Its tail wind lifts the hair from the back of her neck and breaths coolly against her damp skin.

Sharon finds a patch of shade within a block of the bus stop and sits down in the dirt, her grey tweed skirt hiked up around her thighs.  She has an odd sense of anticipation, as if something spectacular is about to topple into the world.  She looks around at the flat expanse of warehouses and parking lots that surround her.  There is not another human being in sight.  A red winged blackbird swoops lightly across the road and lands on a stalk of wild wheat.  It fluffs its feathers, cranes its neck and releases its strange watery song.  The folds of the old hills rise up around her like the cupped palm of some massive, golden hand.

At home the front door is open and the house is empty.  Sharon calls out for Andrea but gets no response.  The interior of the house is cool, dark, and utterly silent.  She takes a few tentative steps into the living room, straining for the slightest sound or sign of an intruder.  Her plan is to make it to the kitchen and get a knife before she goes upstairs to her bedroom, where she is certain he is waiting for her.  She turns on first one lamp, then the other.  In the unaccustomed light, the mounded couches and dog hair coated carpet seem all the more horrible.  There are stains on the walls where Gremlin has urinated, and stains on the carpet where his vomit was allowed to soak in.  Sharon is surprised that anyone would bother to break into such a dump.  She makes her way fearfully to the kitchen.  When the phone rings she jumps, smothers a scream, and dashes into the kitchen to answer it. 

"Sharon,"  the voice is male.  The connection crackles and wavers.

Sharon pulls the receiver as far as the cord will reach and stretches to get the butcher knife out of the mound of dishes in the sink.  "Eric?"  She whispers.  "You son-of-a-bitch.  Is that you?"

"Who the hell is Eric?"  She recognizes the voice now.  It is Alan.

"No one," she whispers.  "I'm doing something.  I can't talk now."

"Sharon.  I need to tell you."

"I'm doing something," she hisses  through clenched teeth.

"I'm coming home, Babe," Alan says.  "I'm coming home to you, Honey.  We'll find that ring, and this time we'll use it."

"What?"

"I said, I'm coming home.  I'm coming back to marry you, Baby.  I can't stand it here.  I'm wet and cold and lonely.  If Eric's some guy you're dating, I don't care.  I understand.  Only marry me, okay?  Marry me?"

Sharon feels her face flush hot with anger, although she is not quite sure at what.  Her heart is pounding, and her breath comes hard and fast.  "You can come back to California if you want to, Alan," she says.  "But you can't come back to me."  Sharon hangs up the telephone, amazed at how naturally her response welled up out of her, like blood from a puncture wound.  She looks down and sees the knife is still in her hand.  "I'm gonna kill you, you bastard," she whispers, and a smile flicks across her face.

Sharon picks her way through the living room and slowly climbs the stairs.  Beads of sweat gather on her upper lip and forehead, rolling into her eyes and mouth.  She catches one on her tongue and tastes the sea. 

Sharon goes first to her own room.  In her minds eye she sees him there, sitting on her bed.  She gives him thick dark hair that runs in a pony tail down his back, and brown eyes ringed with long, curling lashes.  He is holding a rope in his hand.

She pushes her bedroom door open and walks in.  The room is empty, the cover pulled up neatly on the bed.  She goes to Andrea's room, and pokes around in the mounds of clothing, the molding coffee cups and ancient sandwiches.  "Okay," she says aloud.  "Okay, calm down.  Nobody's here."  But then she remembers that the front door was wide open.  She realizes he must be downstairs.  He probably ran down there while she was searching her bedroom.  Now she is cornered, she is filled with the paralyzing fear of a trapped animal.  She hears him now.  Moving around downstairs like he owns the place.  When Andrea speaks, Sharon jumps and screams.

"Good Gremlin," Andrea coos.  "Good Gremmy.  Did you have a good time in the park puppy baby hunh?"

"Jesus Christ," Sharon says.  "Jesus Fucking Christ."  She heads down the stairs, the knife still clutched in her hand.  Andrea is in the living room, crouched on the floor, hugging Gremlin's skeletal head against her breast.  "God DAMN IT, Andrea.  You scared the shit out of me.  Where did you go that you thought it was okay to leave the damned front door wide open, hunh?"  Sharon is shaking, breathing through her nose like an enraged bull.  "Why don't you just hang a big sign on the door, Andrea?  You could make it hot pink, or whatever your favorite color is.  'STEAL OUR STUFF,' or even better, 'THE DOOR'S UNLOCKED AND WE'RE ASLEEP, COME KILL US!'"  Sharon is pacing now, waving the butcher knife in the air.  Gremlin growls at her, low in his throat.  "Shut up, you disgusting excuse for a life form."  She moves as if to kick the dog.

"Don't you kick my dog, you bitch!"  Andrea stands to face her housemate eye-to-eye. 

"I'll do anything I damn well please, Andrea, and do you know why?  Because this is my house.  Because you are my tenant.  I can't live like this any more.  I can't.  I can't take the mess, I can't take the smell, I can't take the damned television all hours of the day.  I'm laying down some rules here, Andrea, and you can obey them or you can move.  First, we don't ever leave the door unlocked, let alone wide open when we are not home.  Do you understand?"

Andrea, eyes wide, nods her head.  "I'm sorry," she says, looking down at her dog.  "I didn't think it would upset you like this."

"It's not just the door."  Sharon goes into the kitchen and sets down the knife.  She takes a deep breath and lowers her voice to a normal level.   "It's everything," she says, returning to the living room.  "The mess," she says, calmly.  "The constant noise.  That dog destroying everything I own."

"So what do you want?" Andrea has returned to her perch on the only unlittered portion of the couch, her bony fingers scrabbling to pull a cigarette from its pack.

"I want us to set up a regular cleaning schedule.  I want you to bathe that dog and take it to obedience school.  I want you to let me watch my television every so often.  If I can't have these things then I want you to leave."

"I get it now," Andrea says, her big, grey-ringed eyes welling up with tears.  "I thought we were friends.  I thought we were sharing this place."  She stands, fists balled tightly at her sides.  "I thought this was my house, too!"  She shouts the last like a petulant twelve-year-old and turns and runs up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

"Okay," Sharon says.  "Come on, you shit."  She reaches for Gremlin's choke chain.  He growls again, his tattered ears pressed flat against his skull.  "Come on, ugly boy."  His gums flick up past his long, yellow teeth, and he glares at her out of the corner of his eye.  "I'm not afraid of you, you nightmare."  She yanks the chain tight and drags the dog, still sitting, still growling, outside.  She unties the chain from her bumper and wrestles the dog into the street behind her housemate's car.  She ties Gremlin to Andrea's bumper and goes inside, closing the door behind her to block out his howls.  She can hear Andrea weeping and throwing things around upstairs.  "I hope you're packing," Sharon whispers to the ceiling.  She dumps the clutter off the couch and lies down, putting her feet up  and reaching for the remote control.

The telephone is ringing as Sharon unlocks her office door.  She fumbles in her haste and drops her keys.  "Please," she says.  "Oh please."  The phone goes on ringing, almost calmly, as if it could wait for her forever.  Sharon hasn't had a client for a week now.  She knows she's got to sell this caller on something big, something like the Executive Package, if she is going to keep her job.  Once she gets the door open, she dashes across the room to her desk.  "Good after… morning.  Thank you for calling Perfection Resumes.  This is Sharon Winston, Career Counselor.  What may I do for you today?"

"That sounds so canned," the caller says.  "So phony for someone as real as you."

"Hi Eric," Sharon says, calmly.

"Sharon!  You do remember me!"

"How could I forget?"  Sharon unties her sneakers and wiggles her toes against the air conditioned air.  "Are you going to keep your promise?"

"What promise?"

"I believe you wanted a resume.  I believe we had a deal, Eric."

"That's true," he says.  "That is very, very true.  But you never answered my last question."

"I have a slot open at nine o'clock this morning.  Are you close enough to make it here by then?"

"Yeah, but…"

"Good," she says.  "We'll talk then."

"Okay," he says, a little hesitant.  "You aren't gonna call the police or anything, right?"

"Do you know what I'm doing right now?"

"What?"

"I'm unbuttoning my dress," she says.  "I'm sliding it off my shoulders.  I'm not wearing a bra, Eric."

"You're crazy," he says.

"I'll see you at nine."  Sharon hangs up the telephone and looks up at the clock.  It is eight forty-five.  She is sweating and her heart has begun to race, but she is not afraid.  "This is it," she whispers, yanking the telephone cord out of the wall.

At 9:02 Sharon hears footsteps in the hallway outside her office door.  She holds the telephone cord tightly in both hands.  She is shaking with an unfamiliar excitement, a sense of outrageous power, as if she has swallowed a hurricane.  She will give him the answer to his question, and she will see to it he keeps his promise, in fact she plans to make him beg.

                                                    
                                                    

 

Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

---

 

                                                                                                

Circle Dance                                                          

by Fred Johnston

irst time like understanding water, the skin of water in bright light, turning makes poetry, each line a muscle, stanzas rippling out like language assembled; this, with sealight churning on a white plaster ceiling, chairs squeaking, no looking elsewhere; how a girl could do this, stockinged on the planked floor, by a turn of hand a word formed, the graceless day rearranged, sun on the brass of a door, the ropes of the sea gathering up against the harbour; first time to catch in her open eye the Fish of Utterance, Salmon of Knowledge, say what you like, this is witchery, floor a heath; at the threshold, stone Colonial staircase in rain up into the lofts of splendid houses, B&B windows fogged in early fretting breaths, doors sad unknocked; where the great ships berthed now a silence, beckoning away and she dancing still against high flamboyant windows, dead fingers on the desks, we could go now but no— bad manners— she flails with lovely energy in the white neon; body moulds itself into the putty air, children fidget; is this what it is to dance? Call the poem out— priests ribboned for exorcism; have it roar in the shape of her, quiver in her or under the skin of her; imagine tracing with a permitted finger the soft moist loops and whorls, stain the half-moon face radiant with allowance; what of taxis and unused ‘phone kiosks and chip shops larded with pulp-thick air; what of the young men cross-footed, already fat-arsed in their pissory, hungry here?  To breathe her, bending the knee; with two hands ends the turn, back to her seat, solemn in applause, the Baptist’s head in her hands; have you not thought, no, imagined, the blushing neck of her against your open mouth at the last moment, making you make language?  And the damaged sea in a window of old glass, and white painted frames; and flowers in vases for greeting, and Atlantic liners going away?

(for T.C.)

                                                                                               

                                                    
                                                    

Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

 

---

 

 

The Black Beach Party on the Black Sea                          

by Troy Morash

here are many holidays in Ukraine and Independence Day sometimes gets innocently lost in the repertoire of festivals.  It is sometime in August.  It's not the most important holiday in the country, probably not even in the top ten.  But it is a nice one, people are able to relax and take a couple of days off work. 
 
Living in Odessa is particularly sweet as it's possible to have a lovely picnic by the seaside—though finding a peaceful place undisturbed can be quite a chore.

A series of friends, Tolic, Susan, Natasha, Pyotr and Vladimir decided to celebrate Ukraine's independence from the puffed-up Soviet Union by having a picnic by the sea.  Tolic being somewhat of a cook made all the edible arrangements.  He bought and pre-prepared shashlik and potatoes.  His girlfriend, Natasha, made Greek salad; Pyotr brought beer and wine.  Vladimir brought some other little snacks and they all went out to Fourteenth Fountain, a very quiet and picturesque part of the Odessa shoreline.  It was twelve o'clock in the afternoon, still quite early when they set out in the hopes of finding a quiet place far from the tipsy holidaymakers.

The day was beautiful, warm and sunny.  They parked the car at the top of the cliff and walked down the path to the grassy hillock overlooking the beach.  This was Susan's first trip to Ukraine and her first time to this part of the shoreline.  She was busy working day and night teaching English.  She had been looking forward to this little break for a few days.  She was hoping something might happen with her and Pyotr.  They were co-workers at her school and had by now grown quite comfortable with one other.  If nothing were to come of it she would have been ready to make a pass at Vladimir even though he was not quite as cute and had a bit of a stomach. 

But beggars can't be choosers, she herself was no dreamboat; she over the last few years had been mysteriously putting on weight.  At twenty-seven, she was looking thirty-two.  She wasn't a virgin but that was just a technicality.  She was desperate for sex.  She knew and had heard of many men wanting to come to Russia and Ukraine and catch themselves a wife so she wondered why she couldn't do the same.  Although she wasn't much interested in finding a husband.  She quickly came to that conclusion after being here only a month but she didn't see any reason why she couldn't have sex and lots of it, enough to last a lifetime.

Pyotr was not typically Russian.  He nodded in  agreement when she had mentioned it to him.  He was Ukrainian and proud of it and went to great lengths to explain the differences.  She didn't understand, she hadn't been listening closely, but apparently there were lots of differences.  So after they had drunk a bottle or two, she was hoping Pyotr would be game tonight, perhaps on the beach itself.  She was ready
and prepared.

Unfortunately by the time they arrived there were already many people camped out and some already halfway to drunksville.

"I can't believe people are already drunk," she said to no one in particular.  Pyotr and Tolic smiled, Natasha shrugged.  Vladimir apparently didn't hear or pretended not to hear if he didn't understand.  Only Pyotr's English was fluid.  Natasha and Tolic could get by but Vladimir's was not much better than Susan's Russian.

There were no free spots on the grassy knoll so they went done to the beach.  Technically making a fire on the beach was illegal but they doubted they would see any police today.  It was a poorly enforced law and as long as they cleaned up properly afterwards, there was no need for any problems.  But there were a lot of people even on the beach.  They walked for ten minutes.  Soon they came to a small rock formation. Tolic climbed around it and there was no one except one lone man lying down in the sand with his cap over his face.  His clothes looked soiled and everyone presumed he was a drunk.

"This looks like this will have to do.  I don't think we will find anything more secluded than this," said Tolic.

"What about him?" asked Susan, pointing to the drunk.

"Him?  Harmless, he'll just sleep all day, we can start a fire over there and when he wakes just ignore  him, he'll go away," said Pyotr, speaking as if he knew the man personally.

"As long as he wakes up fairly sober we won't have any problems," said Tolic.

Vladimir started opening the wine for the ladies while the men started in on the beer.  Tolic and Pyotr unpacked and started a fire.  Once they were all settled alcohol-wise, the two ladies decided to go for a short walk.  But they didn't go too far, there really were a lot of people and they didn't want to invade anyone's private space.  A few looked at them and over at their camp, but Susan was used to this; she couldn't understand how but she knew they knew she was a foreigner.  She didn't know if it was the clothes or her posture but they could tell.

The sea was calm and relaxing as it washed ashore.  Susan decided to sit and watch it for a while, while the rest set to work preparing the picnic.  She was their guest and didn't feel obligated to do anything.  After a half an hour she offered to help just to speed things up, she was hungry and didn't want her stomach to be heard rumbling.  She particularly wanted to help Pyotr.

"It really is beautiful here," she said.  "You are lucky."

"What do you mean?" asked Pyotr.

"That this is your home."

"You would say that," said Natasha.  Susan couldn't tell if she was joking or being sarcastic.

"Why?"

"Well you're American, you comes with money, live as rich person, see only what you want to see, and see what is only best and later leave and go home none the wiser."  Susan had the urge to correct her English as was her habit by now but suppressed it.

"That's enough," said Tolic in Russian.  Susan was making a somewhat concerted attempt to learn basic Russian.  She at least understood what Tolic had said.

"Well I've been here three months, and I think I know what you're talking about.  I've seen many unpleasant things.  But there are unpleasant things everywhere in the world.  Intelligent people know how to avoid them and hang with the nice things, whenever they can.  Ukraine is the same."

"I don't think that comparing Ukraine and America is altogether fair," said Pyotr.

"Why, have you been there?"  Her outburst surprised her and immediately she regretted it.  Pyotr frowned and turned away.  "Sorry, but you know, I think the attitude people have here is half the problem.  Look around for god's sake, it is wonderful.  People are out picnicking, the birds are singing, the trees are alive.  Even the man sleeping over there is a pleasant sight, if we were in America right now, he would have been arrested long ago and thrown in jail and it would have created an ugly scene."

"If we were in America now, that man wouldn't even be lying there drunk," said Pyotr.

"What do you mean?  Are you saying there are no drunken people passed out in America?  Of course there
are."

Pyotr didn't answer and they all worked and drank until the shashlik was ready.  It took an hour and they talked about other things, like music and Shevchenko. 

As soon as they started eating Susan was soon dominating the conversation again.  She was describing trips she had taken to California, Georgia, Florida, Canada and France.  Everyone was interested.  But she didn't seem very impressed when Natasha interrupted to tell her about their trips to Spain and Turkey and Egypt.

They ate and drank and told jokes, it was by now five in the evening.  Soon Susan started in again.  "In Ukraine things are bad because people expect things to be bad, they expect the worst and go out and seek the worst and then say, 'There!'  But it isn't that bad.  Ukraine has many things that America doesn't have. I'm thinking primarily of holidays and family.  People here live more.  Yes there may be some suffering but there is suffering everywhere, isn't there?  But I think that all of these things put together is what makes life here feel so alive."

No one said anything. They were too drunk by now to keep up with Susan's English.  She had a feeling she wasn't going to get lucky with neither Pyotr or Vladimir tonight but she didn't mind so much, there was always tomorrow and she was drunk so she didn't feel too much bothered, the wine had dosed the flames of lust.

After everyone had had their fill, Tolic and Natasha went off a few meters to be alone.  Vladimir was on his mobile phone talking business and Susan and Pyotr were alone, sitting by the dying fire when an old beat up van with Ambulance written on it pulled up on the road above the beach.  Three people got, one carrying
a bag.  They looked this way and that.  A couple people pointed towards Susan's company. 

"What is this about?" she asked nervously, thinking that perhaps they had done something wrong.

"I have no idea," answered Pyotr.

The two men and woman walked down the beach towards them, then when they saw the drunk lying on the beach went over to him.

"This must be it," said the first man.

"Check the pockets."

"Why?  The police would have emptied them."

"Check anyway."

The woman sighed and bent down to check the pockets.  She found only a small piece of paper, "a note from the police, that's all," she said.

Tolic walked over to them, "What is the problem, need any help?"

They all three looked at him indignantly.  "No problem," the leader said.  "Just here to pick up this body."

"Body?"

"Yeah, fool drowned last night, probably went out swimming, drunk down to the ankles."

"Grab a leg Masha."  They picked the body up and dragged it onto the bag.

"He has been lying here all day," said Tolic with a frown.

"So?" the first man asked.  "Do you know how busy we've been cleaning up after every drunk who has fallen or drowned or overdosed today.  It's a big coast you know."

"Very popular holiday, you know," the woman stammered.

"He wasn't bothering you was he?" asked the second and they all three started to chuckle.

"No but he was lying there all day," Tolic repeated.

"So?" the woman sighed obviously annoyed.  "It's not like anyone was going to steal him.  He's dead so there was no reason to rush.  Do you mind?  We still have lots more work," the woman said impatiently.

The first man noticed Susan and grinned.  Foreigners, especially Americans always made him laugh.  He pointed her out to his two colleagues and said looking slyly at Susan, "What do you think this is, America?
There is no thirty minutes or it's free here!"

                                                    
                                                    

Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

 

---

 

 

A Mandelbaum by Any Other Name                                                                                      

 by Jack Goodstein

ven before the tarmac of LAX smacked the wheels of the 747 carrying Mandelbaum to perhaps fame, perhaps fortune, perhaps both on the back lots of Hollywood, the notion that a name such as his—Mandelbaum—was not particularly suitable for a star of the magnitude envisioned in his daydreams had occurred to him.  It wasn’t so much that his sobriquet stood unadorned by any prefatory appellation.  After all, was there not Garbo, was there not, Madonna?  Cher?  Prince?  It was more as the key grip on the set of the film shot on location in Mandelbaum’s Kittaning home town had suggested, that just possibly Mandelbaum might be a bit too—

“—cumbersome.”

“It sounds a little too. . .well you know. . . .long,” the script girl had chimed in.

“Too . . .” added the best boy.

And even as he waited at the luggage carousel for his brand new, green American Tourister Casual Forester II 30 inch upright, that notion had blossomed into a full-fledged thought, and while on the bus on the way to the Boulevard Motel that was to house him during his first few days in the city, that thought had become a mandate.  It wasn’t until he planted his massive frame on the slab of concrete that served for a bed in Room 213 that the mandate became an obsession.

Would Cary Grant have been Cary Grant, had the name on the screen have been Archie Leach?  Would Marilyn Monroe?  Tony Curtis?  A nomme de cinema was not merely desirable, it was essential.

That decided, the only question remaining was what name that name should be.

Like Ahab in quest of his destiny, Mandelbaum sailed forth after his own particular whale; a whale, however, proving no less elusive than that sought by the venerable captain of the Pequod.  Names barged into his consciousness with a flourish only to creep away in chagrin; single names, tri-partite identifications, as well as the more common given and surname combination volunteered themselves only to be excused from serving. Unworthy jurors for the panel that was Mandelbaum.

He would have sought help from others had he been of the sort that seeks help from others.  Unfortunately for Mandelbaum, even so much as communication with others was unlikely; asking advice was impossible.  Still, sometimes advice comes unbidden.

“Come to Tinsel Town to be a star, huh,” said the night clerk at the Boulevard.

Mandelbaum nodded.

“Better do something about that moniker.”

Mandelbaum nodded again.

“Something with pizzazz,” he opined.

Mandelbaum waited.

“Sprat Jackson.”  He surveyed Mandelbaum for a sign.  “Sprat Jackson, get it? Jack Sprat, Sprat Jack—”

“Vanilla Fats,” from the earphones delivering a dinnertime pizza.

The chambermaid:  “Elgardo Furioso.”

“John Falstaff,” opined a book-reading receptionist at a photography studio which offered head shots for “$99.99.”

All these Mandelbaum rejected with his usual silence. When the nomme juste came along, he knew he would know it.  No matter, for these, he was certain, were not it, although the last had given him pause and sent him to the library in search of the rotund knight, before its ultimate renunciation in the face of his buffoonish behavior in The Merry Wives.

Mandelbaum thought to contact the great man who he felt had discovered him in the hinterlands.

“Look me up if you ever get to L.A.,” he had said.

But Mandelbaum found himself unable to make his way through the swarming entourage that cushioned that eminence form the outside world.  “Mandelbaum from Kittaning” meant nothing to these minions.

“Mandolin from. . . .?”

“Mandelbaum. Sounds like some kind of a cookie.”

And they promised to have the great man get back to him.  Patience, however—like communication—was not a Mandelbaum virtue.

Mandelbaum gazed into the mirror over the sink in his room.  He magnified the face that he saw a hundred fold, envisioning it blazoned on a screen in a darkened theatre.  And the face that he saw was not that of a Rock or a Sean or a Chris or a . . . .The face he saw was the face of a Mandelbaum.  There was nothing else for it:  Mandelbaum he was and Mandlebaum he must ever be.

“Are you positive, you wouldn’t prefer Falstaff?”

Mandelbaum shook his head no.

“It’s your head shot,” she said, “You’re the boss.”  Under her breath she added, “It’s your funeral, buster.”

A week later, eight by ten borderless photos of a huge mass of a man appeared on the desks of agents and casting directors all over the city.

“This guy could do a hood.  Mob muscle.  He’s perfect.”

“Comedy.  He’s a John Candy, back from the dead.”

“What about that Ernie Borgnine sensitive slob?  Remember?”

The massive face even poked its way past the Cerebus at the door to the great man’s sanctum and onto the great man’s desk, where along with his morning coffee it smiled up at him.

A light bulb of recognition appeared over the great man’s head.  He picked up his telephone and barked to his secretary:  “Get me Mandelberg.”

                                                    
                                                    
Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

---

 

 

Bath Time                                                            

 by Michael Graves

Only Baths

’m not allowed to take a shower.

Only baths.

Ma tells me: “Otis! You’re too young for showers. You might slip and fall and break your head open. You could die!”

See…she always goes on.

But, someday, maybe I can turn that middle knob.  Maybe I can wash standing up.

 

I Hate Baths!

I hate baths!

They’re icky!  They’re yucky!  THEY ARE!

First:  I rub and scrub, scratching my curls clean.  Globs of sudsy dribble ooze over me.  But then, I dunk under.  And one day’s filth is set free.  Sludge.  Grime.  Flakes.  I can’t see it since Prell makes the water white like half-n-half.  Still…I know it’s there.  IT IS!

Next:  I soap up my arms, my belly.  The gunk skips away and floats by.  All around me.

Then:  I clean my privates.  Dove can sneak inside, burning bad.  But things get very very very slick.

After:  I scour my bottom with a washcloth.  It usually needs fifteen wipes to rub clean.  All the tiny chunks worm loose and hide.  Sometimes, if I wash too much, it might start to bleed.

In The End:  I’m alone, sitting in a pool of sand, sweat, and shit.

If I could take a shower, it would all just suck down the drain.

But, for now, it’s dirty water.

Dirty. Dirty.

And I’m never clean.

 

It’s Bath Time

After Lotto Live, Ma starts in on me.  “Otis?  You take that medicine drink?”

“Yep,” I say.

“Swear on Papi’s grave?”

“Yeah.”

“Well…it’s bath time.  Come on now.  Lemme get the water goin’ for you.  And don’t start sassin’.  If you do, no picture show.”

Squirming in bikinis, I wait for the tub to fill up three-quarters.

Ma tells me:  “Feel this.”

I step on the bathmat and dip my big toe.

“Too hot?  Or just right?”

“It’s good.”

She cranks the silver X’s, twisting them tight.  “Get in.  Quick before it cools.  Remember to wash real good this time.  No more skid marks, Otis.  The brown ones or the red ones.”

Cussing, she coughs and goes.  Ma leaves the bathroom door open.

Like always.

 

Picture Shows

I do love picture shows!

They’re my favorite!  THEY ARE!

On the tube, anything can happen.  Those people yell and kiss and drive real fast.  They slam phones and get married and cry.  And everyone looks so gorgeous.

By eleven, life on channel five seems perfect.

It’s as wonderful as a dream.