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Rochelle Hope Mehr Christina Delin Doug Tanoury Miles Hitchcock Kelley White Mia Ernie García  Guillaume Destot JB Mulligan Arlene Ang Debi Faulkner Joelle Renstrom Beth Pardue Kathleen Green Gardner      Gender Confusion by Rochelle Hope Mehr They got me so confused, those therapists. The one in Greenwich Village advising Me to act like Marilyn Monroe.  I Should have been flattered he thought I could pull It off but instead was highly offended. And what about the psychiatrist who Told me that I was, "A good little actress?" She thought I was already acting a part. I did realize that I imitated her clanking about In her stiletto heels but she was supposed to be A role model, wasn't she? I never could figure out their vision of Femininity:  Red smooching lips? Curvaceous hips?  Honey-tongued siren Baiting Odysseus?  To this day I wonder if I am too aggressive, a gamma ray. I never could properly act the part of a tart. Does this make me gay?     This Can't Be a Poem by Rochelle Hope Mehr It bears too much resemblance to reality It lacks the diffusion used in photography to scatter light to soften the shadows The shadows lengthen I try to run To keep one step ahead Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Studio Lens by Christina Delin Looking among the tiny shadows of objects lost & houses burned, Oh that they would move along the silver walk, Troubled by men in white & green. Doesn't he see the loneliness, the sunburst, the dragon in the mean? Mirrors, drawings, garbage & harmonicas, All huddled alone among the dwellings, Knocking, falling, tumbling up, Celery stalks around the rocks. Oceans, thimbles, sevenths & rests, Whatever happened to whispering        your best? Find them in the forest green, Seeing the willow trees gape at the traveling moon. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Dialog by Doug Tanoury It was sometime ago, Before my life became a short story Written by Gogol, That I was afraid of the dark and Would often sleep with the light on And the television playing some Black and white movie starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney Into the early hours of the morning, So that snip-its of the dialog Would drift eerily into my dreams. Somehow, I have become Freddie Bartholomew And Spencer is speaking to me: "Wha you tink a dat, leetle feesh?"   I have come to understand That the only way to fight fear Is to whole heartily embrace it, To make it your friend. Now, I love the darkness, relish its peace And wrap myself in it.  Yes, I wear it Like a new Brooks Brothers suit. I spend the evenings sitting in the house With every light extinguished And emanating only darkness. When I sleep the television is off And it is quiet except for the dialog In my dreams, spoken in the little boy voice Of Freddie Bartholomew: "Manuel, please, please don't go!"     Retail Egyptology by Doug Tanoury In the supermarket Where navel oranges are stacked high With great precision Like the great pyramid of Gaza, And Santa Rosa plums Form a lesser monument For a more mediocre monarch In The Valley of the Kings. I am the jackal-faced god, A duster of old bones And petrified flesh, Who breathes the desert air At 5:00 a.m. and peers wearily Over the meat counter, For a fleeting glimpse Of the floating head Of Queen Nefertiti In hopes her regal gaze Will fall on my English cut roast. Awake Osiris to the sound Of the Nile's water And sea birds calling from the reeds To catch the gleam of light On stainless steel countertops For it is the deli meats Hanging in long strands from the ceiling, Indeed it is the garlic bologna and hard salami That unite the upper and lower kingdoms. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Colaba by Miles Hitchcock On the streets of Bombay there is a woman who sits against a wall next to a Colaba fruit stall with no eyes with no mouth she smiles a hawk-like smile an obvious bold beautifully-worn bowl beneath her feet. This is a photograph. I do not give, I take. “you emotional westerners” she, absurdly, said.     Slum by Miles Hitchcock White eyes hollowed in a crescent lamp glow. Coughing from where water runs behind stone. Every tree is cut every brick trodden every stone laid pinging in tap blackness onto copper pots scrubbed to the glint. Every movement is work every rest pleasure. Women in red blow flames from trash smoke three walkmen pass hands around staffs. Every family is business every son a father every daughter work. Kerosene cans grow tomatoes thunder, someone smokes. Every business is pleasure every trade a gift In a doorway a naked baby holds tin coins a chicken is tossed out. Every meal is trade every child a meal every movement rest. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Five Poems by Kelley White blind eyes turned to a row of blind faces Philly row houses   cold wet winter day a lavender umbrella forgotten outside   Dusk steals the colors from gold leaves and deep green ground leaving sweet gray lines.   First rain after drought— I startle a grouse drinking from a mud puddle.   I fled the dance gray light on cold feet   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Asleep by Mia As pushpins on a globe, the journey is marked by rests, periods of silence in between long stretches and endless temptations that swerve, arc in mid-flight towards the ocean which is still free, only place that moves beneath your feet. Nothing else will save you not wings, not land, not prayers. You’ve been fed futures all your life: investments, securities, education and children fattened on insurance policies— those nets will not stop you from falling in their design merely meant to catch you. Rest assured you will be caught wondering what keeps you captive, tied to timecards and the clockwork of factories.  In dreams in panic, in motion, train wheels roaring, bearing down on you—your body sound asleep. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Days of Nineteen Eighty Seven by Ernie García  It was all about September when the sun Sat farther away.  Where sweat was a Little boy's anxious waiting for the ball, And not the product of bad home insulation Or a busted a/c.  It was about Fist fights over first downs and that Hail-mary, fingertip grab that instigated Rematch, never repossession or Eviction, engine failure or bad wiring. The lines down our palms were crossing Routes to touchdowns, which say nothing About love. It was about the stinging of a thousand Needles when the football hits your chest In the middle of December and knowing Someone was ready to pop you in the teeth. It was falling down and getting up Bleeding in the street because you'd made the catch Of a lifetime, and you're yelling out loud Enough to make your parents step outside because the game went on Playing past dusk without a single person leaving until It ended. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Tundra Sleepwalker, A cataleptic stroll in unfriendly climates by Guillaume Destot If I could only bend and observe The mouths of these emptied burrows I might see I'm heading the wrong way; But evidence of previous migrations Escape my attention Aware of nothing but The back of my eyelids —a perpetual indoors whiteout— I proceed. Frozen lichen crackle beneath My slippered feet. Pajamas flapping anxiously In the enormous frosty sigh Of a semestral dusk, I propose to pitch Camp when I reach Unattainable horizons. From the permafrost rise the Weak heartbeats of comatose earth And somewhere, thousands of miles away, Nanny wakes up to find me gone. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         the aquarium of night by JB Mulligan ("The dream is the aquarium of night."  V. Hugo) Necrotic sea depth, surge and swirl of current and sand, and nebulous specters, seaweed-hung, bearing pearls in their hands, white irises in wide, bony eyes. Mermaids shining, swollen and luscious, singing an unending word of vowels and desire.  Their scales ripple with light.  The green smooth length of their tails. It is all real!  It is true!  It is sand in a public ashtray, where an old man plucks cigarette butts, and drops them into the pockets of a torn and crusted coat. Angels watch our sleep, and bet with demons, arguing odds and outcomes. We gulp at air and water, desperate. We clutch at doppelgangers.  We think we sleep.     drowning by JB Mulligan The kitchen clock is leaking— tip tap tip tap— the seconds, days and years seep into the floor, darkening the grout between the tiles. We were young once, the doors of the horizon opened out. I remember your hair. It was longer than the night I was in you for an hour and a half. (We laughed later, rubbed raw and polished to a glow.) I remember your hair. Now we are drowning in time. You are all I can breathe.     garden by JB Mulligan August.  Ash-dry light on the cropped, browned lawn. In the dawning time was bird-song, bird-rumor: hesitant, questioning, responding. Now the only music in the silence is the steady heavy hammer of the sun on the surface of the afternoon. The occasional whisper of a truck on the distant highway seems a softer sound than this. The garden, where in summers past, tomatoes plumped, corn wavered in wind, and thin tubes of zucchini inflated and stretched, is a jungle of weeds, fronds, several trees now shorter than I am, but growing, opening slender branches braced with slick leaves. Hours spent there, digging, raking, working in peat moss and fertilizer, and cutting and plucking the prizes— you spend your time, and the change you get is the time is gone that was there before and the worn-out coinage of memory. I would like, sometime, to clear it, rip out the trees, the fronds, the weeds, resuscitate the drained and broken ground, and set the seeds and seedlings, watch them rise and spread. Will I do that? As the years grow fewer, they shorten. The boxes on the calendar describe nobody’s life. But something is necessary, like light, like the voices of birds, like the bowed, bright fans of tall weeds, something necessary within itself to continue, if not the garden, something, in the hard unshining stillness of desperation, something, need pushing through the cracked dry skin, absorbing light and water, space and time, blossoming, something, some garden, something. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Home by Arlene Ang Small fingers clasping a latch-key turned the lock. The white door slowly swung open and disappeared into the house. 'Anybody home?' he ventured. Mumbled echoes answered from brick walls and wooden stairs that led the way to darkness. Out of habit, he tried a switch in the living room and another by the kitchen wall, forgetting that both had outlived their fuses and no one had time for light bulbs. In the close-shuttered shadow of an afternoon, he longed more than ever not to have to come home.     Little Man's Lake by Arlene Ang Listen to the waft of weeping from Little Man's Lake. Drowned in his own tears, Rumpelstiltskin will never sing his name again. The miller's daughter saw to that when she sold his gift of spun gold for a place on the wizened king's throne and sent him away with her derision drawing boils on his back. For days Rumpelstiltskin wept in his cavern of gilded touch until tears swallowed him whole, gushed forth from the earth to form a dark fishless lake. Listen to the waft of weeping and sing his name for him. Perhaps in time he will learn to laugh gold from his heart again. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       A Moment Ago by Debi Faulkner (1st draft) The flame sighed, burned her fingertips. The image of the room disappeared from the window (glow diminished to shadows).  Memory led her; he lifted wine to his lips (no reflection); his eyes ghosts, her hands nothing (beauty not required in the dark liquid that flows at night) (2nd draft) “there is a smell of clothes thrown on the floor, and an            absence of flowers”—Neruda long blades of ice drip    from gutters,             hang in the sun        too bright even    for shaded eyes,            she         (he backed out         of the driveway blinded) touches       the  window, leaves fading fingerprints,                    keeps  the cool     mark in her         hands (final draft)                            ring of water bleeding into the table, glass held to her           lips—his face taking shape through the bottom;                           questions asked, answered (a sleight of hand, altered glance—          weight shifting left, right, left again) you may ask                            "and what of it?" nothing except the sigh of air across lips           Still Life With a Clock by Debi Faulkner I he shudders         into sleep (the late hour wrapping him          in its cool arms)                  (my body) I take his breath (breathe, breath, breadth) into my own           lungs,                  touch his ribs                            his heartbeat (small                  assurance of life) before turning (hands           on a clock) leaving (again, in time)                               him there for my own                    darkness II          stones lying                   at the bottom of a pond          (silent                    as night on the edge of the horizon)           dictate the rhythm                     of water (slow pulse                      of a pendulum):                               below           the surface (the pull                             of moonlight sinking at impossible angles) (breath drawn                            released) III we wake           to rain           (silence)                   breathe in the early                   tide (rhythm of waves) (rhythm                     of breath) (pulse of your heart) (that                            stone) we rise          in this hour embraced                                   apart                (hands of a clock)     Still Life With Eclipse by Debi Faulkner Hand passed in front of eyes (face hidden/exposed) behind glass (behind sheer curtain-like clouds in a window) with a view, without a view—obscured by rituals of cyclical seasons— one sun, one moon, one vase of cut flowers: watching an eclipse through shadows Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         And So God Chose County Cork by Joelle Renstrom Madonnas began to levitate, floating on the helium breath of God, arms bent as if cradling pigeons or a small burden of boys. Virgins stirred restless all over County Cork trying to break their status, trailing after people like shadows, ghostly grey of a gentle exhaust. People came with lawn chairs and second-coming wares, others drew the blinds and waited for the apocalypse praying that the eyes of the silent mothers would return to fly half-mast like the flags in Belfast. Boys knelt in alleyways and saw worlds between their hands; girls wove flowers into their hair after mass. Yet stone was stone, was still stone. Violets sprouted on the famine roads.     Full of Emptiness by Joelle Renstrom Pastel couch cushion, wax hardened         from last night’s candle, light left on in the kitchen, darkness standing before it like a solid shadow draping the room in grey, stove shining with wandering oil. Fan in the window hums a hymn for Tuesday night, burned spot on the lampshade sizzles under its breath. I watch the quiet like stored rain,         and the cloud:  the backpack lolling on that kitchen chair, its belly         a proud, full achievement, licking its zippers one by one.         I can almost see it on your back, a crazy         monkey, sleeperhold round your neck. That almost happened.  I should put it away, unpack it. Resting on the chair next to it, how close you came to leaving. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Picture by Beth Pardue I have this picture You in that old olive recliner Me poised on the arm. We’re mirrored From the green Izod shirts To the blonde strands of hair. It sits in a frame. It hangs in my heart. I remember you young & tan Before too many things Sank into your skin. When I had pigtails And called you mommy. Maybe time fades pictures, curls their edges. I’ve taken a million steps away From that moment It’s still clear, it’s still happening Whenever I close my eyes     Disillusioned by Beth Pardue Why don’t my fingertips feel like soft petals covered in draping pearl drops of dew? The skin peels too easily like an ancient stonewashed man sitting, waiting in the garden listening. A marinated soul Dripping with envy, rage Pick your character flaw, your label Seal it into your woven skin Like a brand so that everyone will know What it is that you don’t do quite right. Windows have withstood wind Pushing Intentions slide Ripping, tearing Like the tip of a briar turning Plate glass to shards Crumbled, shattered What we once preconceived About the functions of this Disdainful earth But it is not in this to define me— I want no mark protruding from my casing Forgive the affliction of how the world Turns us inside ourselves Pretend your interior still holds passion. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Rust by Kathleen Green Gardner Reflection in trees overshadowing yards played in, front doors no longer resist hands sidewalk overgrown in weeds garden long past winter food farm house with weathered attitude. Shutters missing and faded wooden floors creak a hall shorter than remembered. No sounds of toy cars on scratched wood floors no fresh bread no smell of apple pie the rocking chair empty like flowerpots.  Dusty sofas, chairs and carpets worn, draperies stained from a distant storm and cracks in the walls long before. Plastic in the attic embrace earliest dolls in a bureau drawer waiting for a prodigal return, a rusty bar a collection of dresses from graduation prom and wedding ruffles. A last look her presence remains. Youth, I am reminded of my abandonment of you. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page

 

 

   

• Golden Boy  Owen Kilfeather

• From Grotli to Geiranger  Rochelle Mass

• The Boat  M. A. Haarhaus

• Brothers   Corey Mesler

• In Memoriam:  My Not-Yet-Dead Sister   Saskia van der Linden

• No!  Emile Alexander Dodds

• Twilight:  Maywood, New Jersey  Martin Bayne

• The Dreamhouse  Richard Meyers

 

---

 

 

Golden Boy                                                            

by Owen Kilfeather
                                                                           
       

usybusy today.  Right now, my left ear I have the feng shui consultant flitting about the office telling me the place has good positive chi, my right ear pressed to the phone a woman youngsounding she wants me to drag her by the waist into a powderblue Beetle, stuff an amyl nitrate-soaked satsuma in her mouth and a freezerbag over her head.  I tell her to hold the line.

Chi is the energy that everything in the universe living or no possesses.  It is Chinese, and has replaced vibes as the word of choice.  Living or no, everything has an energy field peculiar to itself, although influenced by and connected to everything else.  The great stream of being, the feng shui consultant calls it.

Everything has a flow.  Work with the current and one is harmoniously positioned in the universe.  Peace prosperity good health follow.  This office is, she can see, a peaceful and productive one.  Clutterfree.  Potted azalea to absorb electrical pollution.  My walnut desk with curved edges.  

“Money will always slip off of a desk that has right-angles to it so we say,” she says.  No trophies or pictures of family or whatnot.  Serve as distractions.  My photo of Marion still facedown in the middle drawer at any rate.    The feng shui consultant hangs a set of metal windchimes above the door.  Enliven and purify the air and dispel sickness, according to the good lady.

The office across the corridor is a different story.  She has not yet met the occupant but she knows whoever it is has read Kafka.  To get behind the desk one has to climb over it.  Teetering bookshelves.  “Not conducive to healthy business,” she says.  I tell her that statement pretty much sums up George Fox.  Words with him later on.  Exit feng shui consultant, to wave her wand across the corridor.  Windchimes tinkle, enlivening and purifying the air, dispelling sickness.

I take the freezerbag lady off hold.  “That’ll be just fine come into the office we’ll sort out particulars and payment.  Directions.  Coming from the river drive past the old mill you’ll come to a church in the middle of the street.  Street ringing right around it, that’s correct.  Take the ten o’clock road off it, Annesley.  We’re on the righthand side.  Greenglass structure.  Can’t miss it.  Look forward to seeing you.”

Ailbhe on the other end now.  “Greg Shurety on line two,” she says.  She punches it through.  Shurety.  Shurety.  Ah.  Last week’s gangland.  Perhaps to complain about the considerable amount of his whiskers that came off with the electrical tape.  But no.  Wants to thank me.  Late last Friday night we hauled Greg Shurety out of his bed, tossed him in my trunk and hung him by his bound wrists on an S-shaped hook in a meatlocker.  Slapped him about some, in the style of The Long Good Friday (1981).  “Thanks again,” he says.  Since then he’s been running his restaurant with a newly applied vigour.  “Never felt quite so alive,” he says.  I am genuinely pleased to hear this.  “Well,” I say, “Usually the result of a vicarious experience with death.  Don’t mention it.  Merry Exmas to you too.”

Ailbhe on the other end now.  George on line three.  She punches it through.  Traffic hiss in the background.  His voice has a hounded waver to its tone I’ve been hearing a lot of lately.  Right now I don’t feel like having my fine humour punctured.  “I’m busy and can’t it wait?” I say, “Good.  Good.  Marvelous.  Bye George.” 

Return to my paperclip-chain ball.  Coming along nicely.  Size of an infant’s head already.  Thus I occupy myself until I run out of paperclips.

Have not stepped outside my office all morning.  Decide to remedy this.  I open the door against the sound of Ailbhe speaking on the phone.  Windchimes tinkle, enlivening and purifying the air, dispelling sickness.  My eardrums pop and I feel like I’ve burst through a membrane or somesuch, everything restored to full sound and brightness, stirring the air.  Voices burbling, clackclicking keyboards, dark tang of coffee, swarming colours, the gorgeous hustle and glow of the everyday.

Ailbhe, while inspecting fingernails of a loosely clenched hand through lidded eyes, is listening and speaking to a disembodied voice which is being broken up into bitty little digital pieces on the way from wherever it is and then reassembled and channeled into her ear by means of a moulded-plastic earpiece manufactured by some Third World nonunioner wearing a nappy and earning about ten cents a week:   “…way the week is carved up.  Oh isn’t it just.  It always seems to be Friday.  They toss you a scrap of a weekend.  Here you go.  Play with that like a good little girl.  And god forbid you get bline drunk and miss most of it.  Um.  Must go.  Love you bye.”  She cradles it.  She faces me.  Looking tasty as lead paint today.

“Ha.  It’s alive,” she says, “Was waiting for a funny smell to seep out under the door before phoning.”

“In medieval France, smelling funny was a sign of personal virility,” I say.

“Feel like anything special for lunch then do you.”

“Thinking about going downstairs.  Laziness prevailing.”

Pink wet tongue slides out partway between pursed lips to indicate disapproval.  “Ack,” she says, “Mass-catering.  Everything is shiny.  Even the mash.  I’m on this new detox thing.  Meat is out, which I don’t miss.  So is cooking.  I was told that during the Second World War the Japanese gave their Brit and American prisoners raw rice and veg by way of rations.  And being Westerners, they cooked them.  Cooking all the nutrients out.  So I’m going to this new place.  Venerable Cheese, if memory serves.  Pita wrapped around peppers cucumbers almondbutter and garlic guacamole.”

“Sounds good.  Better bring me two.”

“Come if you like.  No man is an island.”

Nuh huh.  I’m a continent with a small peninsula.  I tell her, “waiting for a client.  Said she’d be in around this hour.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Nah.  Grab and bag.  Possible asphxophile.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.  Powderblue Beetle again.”

“Second this month.”

“Popular eh.”

“Could be topical.  Tell you what.  I’ll bring you back yours and have mine here too.  Back shortly.  Toodles.”

Fortyfive minutes.  Not a sniff of Ailbhe.  Ich habe hunger hunger hunger hunger.  Clock display in bottomright corner of my monitor changes from 1:46 to 1:47.  Feel like I’ve seen something supposed to go unseen, interrupted a private moment maybe.  Wonder if this is the first time I’ve seen this.

Windchimes tinkle, enlivening and purifying the air, dispelling sickness.  George.

Curses.

“Fantastic Mr. Fox,” I say.

“Hallo Dave,” he says.

“Ailbhe coming by with lunch if you’re hungry.  Delinquent in her return so far but I’m sure she’ll persevere.”

He shakes his head.  Fine.  Don’t want to break bread with me you can fuck yourself.  Keep this to myself.  Only my groaning stomach speaking.  A hungry man is an angry man.

George is more root-faced than usual today.  Jacket hanging just-so on his frame.  He could have been my partner way back when.  Offered him a groundfloor-in to David Blaize Garland pee ell cee.  Could have had an equal share in my concern for ten thousand.  This was when money was actually worth something mind you.  He declined.  

Too risky, he said.  I employed him instead.

So far, he has not done right by me.

His personal demons are heavyweights it would seem.  I gained a smidge of insight as regards this at the staff Christmas ‘do on Saturday.  Place beside the Tivoli called Nettie’s.  Had heard good reports.  What I got was a modern art masterpiece of a meal.  So George, after polishing off two Spanish reds by himself, told me that each morning he looks at his face in the mirror while shaving and thinks to himself:  Not yet.

Not yet.

This interests me.  Like he’s constantly waiting for some fixed point in the future when his looks and talents are to suddenly magnify, or realise themselves.  Ailbhe, sat the other side of him, said, “Nothing but now, George.”

Bless ‘er.

George paid no heed.  Never underestimate the faculty of the male mind for overwriting existing unflattering data with something entirely more egofriendly.

How this attitude finds its mark upon George’s professional life is he makes for a formidably crappy kidnapper.

This means clients yell the safe-word.  Call a halt.  This means refunds.  Which I am understandably loathe to give.  One client a while back told me as I tore up his cheque he didn’t feel at all during the experience that George was in control.  And the client was the one blindfolded and trussed with bungee cord remember.

Result:  He slash she takes his business elsewhere.  Cocks a snook at Death elsewhere.

George has his palms out already.  “About the McFadden package—”

I raise a hand to shush him.  “George, another instance like that and my hands are tied.  Next one.  I am withered threatening.  I am now a man of action.  Been looking over your progress just now,” tapping monitor screen with fingernail tinktink, on it a page of a site devoted to celebrity skin conditions, “and things will not go on as they have for much longer.”

“Whatwhy?”

“You ask why, George?  Why is the sky blue?”

“Simple:  what we see is dust suspended in our shell of air, quadrillions of prisms shattering pure sunlight into spectra.  Blue is the colour that scatters.  The moon’s sky is black and the sky over Mars is red.”

“Listen you.  I’m going to have to see some agreeable numbers on this screen sharpish or your position here may become untenable.”

Where’s my lunch?

George retains the presence of mind to stay silent and nod solemnly.  Tacit.  This is why he stays.  I reach into a drawer and press into his hands a crystal paperweight as he stands.  “Here.  This absorbs chi and spreads it around the room.”

He looks at me like I handed him an eggbeater and told him do a raindance.

“Keep it on your desk.  Bring you luck.  Keep it on the opposite side to your peecee though.  It emits electrical vibrations as well as absorbs them.”

Hand on doorknob, over his shoulder at me, “Your life turn out at all like you pictured it Dave?”

“Hell no.  Imagined I’d be in a funk band with twenty others and we’d all wear capes.”

Windchimes tinkle, enlivening and purifying the air, dispelling sickness.

Ailbhe returns with lunch.  It fills the large George-shaped hole in my soul.  Phone jangles.  Ailbhe tells me freezerbag lady is here to see me.  Windchimes tinkle etc.  She appears to be between eighteen and twentyeight.  Lopsided Louise Brooks cut.  Slung on crook of arm a tan and cream bag looks like it may contain a bowlingball.

Introduce myself.  She says, “I see.  This is your baby then is it not.”

“Mmm hmm that's right.  Three glorious years.  Story goes I was on the Tower Bridge one summer afternoon.  Spotted a boy and girl sporting identical Jack the Ripper Tour teeshirts.  Jack The Ripper tore women’s faces off and slung their innards over their shoulders as they breathed.  Both on the bridge looked to be about your age.  Triumph of marketing or a triumph of marketing.”

“I’m sure.  David Blaize Garland.  Quite a handle.”

“Dave Garland to those who know me,” I say, “but I feel the presence of a middle name lends it an air of infamy.  Like they call famous murderers by their full names.  Sets them a comfortable distance apart from us.”

“Mark David Chapman.”

“Zackly.”

“Charles Julius Guiteau.”

“John Wilkes Booth.”

“The current occupant of The Great American Hovel.”

“Now now.”

“Jaime Ramon Mercader del Rio Hernandez.”

“Have a seat.”

“The Donatists of fourth-century North Africa,” she says, legs crossed high, “were so keen on the idea of death and martyrdom that they would stop strangers and demand to be killed by them, threatening death.”

“Might put that in the brochure.”  I glance at her form.

“Frudie.  Quite a handle.”

“Christened Isabella.  Called myself Frudie as a toddler and it stuck.  Isabella too thorny a word for a twoyearold tongue to wrap around presumably.”

“Okay Frudie.  What do you want?”

“A more authentic life.”

“Come to the right place.”

“Metaphysical consolations are not enough.”

“Good for you.  Got any pets?”

Shifts in her chair.  “A golden retriever.  Kumiko”

I ask her how to spell that.  She spells it.  I jot it down.

“Frudie, Kumiko is to be your safe-word.  You yell Kumiko, I stop the show.  No refunds.  ‘Cept extenuating.  If you are unable to yell, strike me anywhere.  As you can see, that’s a lot of available surface area.  Anywhere.  Arm or head say.  Shave-And-A-Haircut.  You know Shave-And-A-Haircut?  Like this.  Right.  Tell me. What is the safe-word?” 

“Kumiko,” she reels off.

“The knock?”

She raps walnut with one knuckle.  Dat dat dat-dat-dat.

Redtape:  waivers, consent declarations to be signed.  I give her the spiel, then, “That it?” she says.

“That it,” I say, “Unless…”  I stretch a rigormortis stewardess smile, “Choking or non-choking?”

Splutters a laugh.

“You can pay Ailbhe,” I say, “she’ll issue you with a receipt.  Answer any questions. Go about your week.  Do what you do. Your thing.  We’ll find you.  Bye until then.”

We shake and she sallies out of the room.  Spy a tattoo on her coccyx.  Small black circle.  Wonder what that is.  Celtic band.  Zero.  An oh.  The wheel of being.  Crosshairs for a tap.

Windchimes tinkle, enlivening and purifying the air, dispelling sickness.

Home soon.  I have seen what George goes home to every night.  Crooked little semi overlooking a pissyellow alley.  Cats yowl and screw all night beneath his sill.  Paint flaking badly.  White with blue trim.  Reminds me of a pair of Burt Reynolds’ underwear.  I’m stuck with George even if dee bee gee pee ell cee, my baby, goes over the falls in a barrel.  Perhaps have him on mopup a month or two.  Scrubbing gouts of cornflower syrup off tiles.  Applying Savlon to rope-chafed skin and the like.  Do him the power of good. 

Windowsill decked with Exmas cards.  Satisfied customers.  Beyond the cards, sun shines directly in my eyes and it is just gone four.  It is winter remember.  I see gridlock ant-trails, slow piddling streams of drivers with genuine murder in their brains.

Come see me I say.

I’m in the book.
                                                    
                                                    

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From Grotli to Geiranger                                    

by Rochelle Mass

 

he winds that had pushed her rented car to the side of the highway, sometimes so close to the edge she could smell the ocean below, were now quiet.  Something kept them low and playful.

The village of Grotli was like Main Street, North Winnipeg, with rows of dusty stores.  She stopped at the first coffee shop, ordered cole-slaw.  More carrots than on Main Street, and red wine.  At home she didn’t drink with lunch, but in Grotli, said her travel kit, that’s what they did, and why not red wine, the glory of the region. 

A pastry? the waiter suggested as he cleared the dishes.  What he brought was not as sweet as ladyfingers from Gunn’s bakery back home, but with deeper flavor.  Grotli was not North Winnipeg.   This was her first stop.  The first time she’d traveled on her own.  The marvelous thing about stopping on the way, she thought, is you don’t know who the people are, can’t get any help from the language, which was thick and slippery, so different from French. 

She hid her gratefulness when the waiter said pastry?  clear as an invitation to dance.  He brought it on a plate fluted like a wreath.  She moved the travel kit aside.  Hotel? Grotli?  She looked up to see the waiter smoothing his apron.  Hotel, Grotli, good.   Nice.   He pulled out a chair, sat across from her.

She shrugged, circled the fluted edge with her finger, looked at her watch, a full hour before she had planned to stop for lunch and hours before she was to spend the night in Geiranger.  Had a recommendation from Sally, at work, whose brother had trained for the Olympics there.  Great beds, Sally said, with real feather quilts, the best cinnamon buns.  That was her plan, but now a waiter was smiling across from her.

Drink he urged and she obediently took up her glass.  Cheers, you say?  She nodded; he looked in the direction of the kitchen.  Before she set her glass back on the white cloth, he was handed one and brought it towards her.  

The wine was warm.  He leaned forward, placing a dark hand on her map.  Grotli good place for lady.  She pulled at the neck of her sweater.  I not old and you not  he said as though reciting from a poem.   

Why rush off to Geiranger, she thought, letting the wine and his smile settle like the morning winds.  A tray of bread was brought to the counter and she was covered with the kind of optimism fresh baking offers.  

I show you.  Get hotel for night.  He said, his hand still on the map.  

Name—Elvo  he said quietly. 

Name—Marnie she answered.  

Now Drink!  he urged and as she took up her glass she knew he was right.
                                                    
                                                    

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The Boat                                                           

 by M. A. Haarhaus

                                                                                                        

s the road bent to her left, Emma kept a look out for the boat that was supposed to be there.  “It’s right there,” he’d said.  “You can’t miss it.”  Emma always had trouble stopping to look at things left on the side of the road.  It somehow felt like breaking the rules.  These things belonged to someone, and who was she to go pawing through it.  If they wanted to throw it away, then they should be able to throw it away.  She knew this was a silly thought process, but that’s how she felt about it. 

The view to her right was one from a dream she was sure she’d had as a child.  Or perhaps it was something she had seen on a postcard.  Water, encircled by bushes, trees and gentle little hills—just a glimpse of a house or two that undoubtedly had perfect lawns.  A bright red boat was rocking at anchor.  A family on a larger boat, close, intimate, happy to be with each other.  Another power boat pulling two water skiers along behind.  Picture perfect, idyllic, Emma thought.  She felt the bile rising to the back of her throat as her heart constricted from the pain of sadness.  A sadness arising from the knowledge that it was a dream, a dream she knew would always be denied her.

As the road bent, again to her left, the boat came into view.  It sat just off the road, entangled in brambles and honeysuckle vines.  The trailer it was on had seen better days, and, in fact, so had the boat.  Luckily, for Emma, there wasn’t a house in sight.  She pulled off on the opposite side of the street, and leaving the car running she got out to take a closer look.

The little boat was about 15 feet long by 4 feet wide.  It was a small sailboat that needed some TLC if it were to ever sail the sea again.  Emma was delighted.  It was just her kind of boat.  She ran her hand longingly along its keel and moved to the other side.  She lifted a stray bramble that was trying to board and pushed it back.  As she stood looking at the boat a sense of euphoria began to take over her mood.  All anxiety about stopping and touching someone else’s property began to fade.  She began to feel as if this little boat were already hers.  As she moved back around, she stepped on something soft and soggy.  Looking down she found that she had stepped on the “for sale” sign that had fallen off some time ago.  It was lying face up near the boat and her foot obscured some of the phone number that had been meticulously printed on it.  The numbers had been printed in a near perfect block letter style, by hand.  She stared blankly at the sign for a few moments before conscious thought came back to her.  It occurred to her that if she moved her foot and saw the whole number, she’d have no reason not to call and ask about the boat.  She didn’t have any money, certainly not for spending on a boat.  Why bother to call and ask about it?  He’d said if they wanted money for it, it was probably not worth it.  He’d said perhaps they wanted to just get rid of it.  Emma looked again at her foot and moved it a fraction of an inch exposing one more number.  Maybe he was right.

It was obvious that the sign had been on the ground for a long time.  As it hadn’t rained for days, the wetness of the grass would have been what was responsible for the sogginess and smudging.  Maybe the other numbers would be completely gone if she moved her foot, thought Emma.  It was a possibility, and then the decision to call and ask or not would be moot.  Emma moved her foot another inch; another clearly readable number was exposed.  With it, her anxiety came back.  There was something nagging at the back of her mind; a memory was trying to connect itself to her present activity.  It had something to do with a boat.  It was not a pleasant memory she felt, and she wanted to distract, or deflect the connection.  She started to move to the other side of the boat again in an attempt to redirect her thoughts.  As she took a step, she tripped on the edge of the sign and fell against the boat.  The memory she was trying to deflect came flooding back as if it happened yesterday.  Like an old black and white film, the memory took over all thoughts and actions.  Emma was glued to the spot until it was over.

Rocking, swaying, the smell of the sea, hard wood, a smack, and the taste of soda.  These sensations were what she remembered about the boat.  She was young, worse she was little.  The life jacket they made her wear was choking her.  She was on a commercial fishing boat with her aunt and uncle.  It was to be a day of fun, fishing and time away from her brothers.  Emma felt very alone, and sick to her stomach.  She was sick from the rocking and swaying of the boat.  There was no place to sit, or lie down.  She was definitely going to throw up. 

It started out as quite an adventure for Emma.  It was not often she got to be the one to do something the others didn’t.  She could only assume that her aunt and uncle asked for her.  Although she couldn’t figure out why, it didn’t matter.  She was the one going fishing, on a boat.  It turned out to be a gray, misty day.  She had on a sweater and a pair of tattered jeans.  Mother had put a scarf over her wayward hair, but it was not meant to keep her warm, and she was cold.  Her aunt sat forward, on a folding chair and was wrapped in a warm coat, gloves and a knit hat.  She was formidable looking and Emma was afraid of her.  But, she was the keeper of the cooler with food and drinks in it, so Emma put on as happy a face as she could muster to please her aunt. 

Emma was standing in the middle of the deck trying to stay on her feet.  The boat swayed drastically and the mist had made all of her clothes wet through.  Her stomach was lurching in the complete opposite direction of the boat.  She threw up—her aunt was on her feet in a flash.  She swooped down on Emma and slapped her soundly on the back of her head and pushed her down onto the wooden deck.  Emma’s head reeled—whether from the blow, or from having just emptied her already empty stomach, she didn’t know.  She curled into a small ball and waited to die.  Her aunt then went to the cooler and took out a coke, which she gave to Emma to drink.  At first the bubbles threatened to make Emma throw up again as they invaded the back of her throat and nose.  Fearing another smack, she swallowed.  The coke did, in fact, make her feel better.  She went over to a small platform made of slatted wood and laid down.  She couldn’t close her eyes, however, as it only made the motion of the boat seem worse.  She worried about what her mother would say.  She’d been admonished to “be a good girl.”  Emma sure hoped she’d been a good girl.  The look on her aunt’s face said otherwise, however. 

After what seemed a very long time, the boat docked.  She rose from the cold, wooden slats and made her way down the gangplank.  She saw her aunt talking to her mother and knew she had not “been a good girl.”  Her battered stomach took a turn and she threw up.  Mother grabbed her by the arm and raced her to the car.  Emma knew what lay in store and crawled onto the floor of the back seat and curled into a small ball.

Emma moved her foot to cover the numbers on the sign.  She took a step back from the boat and thought perhaps this was not the right boat for her.  He’d said that if they wanted any money for it, it was probably not worth it.  She’d have to discuss this experience with him at their next session.  Right or not she was angry with him for even telling her about the boat.  She was angry with him for the memories that kept coming back.  She was angry with him for caring. 

Turning from the boat she headed back to her car.  She had a lot to talk to him about.  She smiled a little at the thought of seeing his self-congratulatory smile as he nodded his understanding of what this new/old pain was all about.  As she put the car into drive and whipped a u-turn to go home, her anger grew.  It irked her that he would understand this so well.  Sometimes she thought he could read her mind and knew all of these stories already and then he would set her up so that she would re-experience the feelings.  Oh, she had a lot to talk about at their next session she thought as she watched the boat grow smaller in her rear view mirror.
                                                    
                                                    

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Brothers                                                                                      

 by Corey Mesler

 

is brother wasn’t like that.  It was the other boy and the other boy was their preacher’s son which made it worse, he thought.  As if a preacher’s son knew some special evil, or knew where his actions could take him and not curse him and he was safe and protected in his special desires, in his abuses.  His brother wasn’t like that.  Not normally, not during their everydayness and sometimes he took him driving in his new yellow Corvair, Jim liked that word, Corvair.