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Shadwynn Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal George Trialonis Lyn Lifshin Kelley Jean White Scott Malby

J. D. Nelson J. Sallini-Genovese Terry Lowenstein Thomas D. Reynolds Christian Ward Angelo Giambra

Rochelle Hope Mehr Priscilla Barton Jai Britton Robert L. Harrison CL Bledsoe Thomas Michael McDade

  

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The Wall

by Shadwynn


Hands pressed to silent, standing slabs,
fingers feeling etched evocations of irreparable loss,
sharp edges from the past
making fresh incisions into the grief-sutured heart,
its tender tissue torn anew,
stabs of inner anguish
a reaction to the recall
of national angst, civil schism:
student rebels,
raw recruits,
adolescent soldiers
grown up and dead with a single shot
—their blood running red, white, and blue
on the national news,
passions for peace,
slogans on signs,
speeches in the street,
anti-heroes choosing conscience over conscription,
clashes between different kinds of courage.

Black, vertical swathe of stone,
low-lying, a dark-ribboned recollection;
America's wailing wall
beneath the ruins of Manifest Destiny and domino theories,
monument to the triumph of the Tragic Spirit
and the flag-draped dead on their final flight to Dover;
commemoration of sacrificial finality
in a war without victory.

Names who marched into the jungle jaws of death
now lettered inscriptions upon granite shine,
an endless stream,
a posthumous salute
to the left-behind from the lost-in-action,
every marbled moniker
a chiseled scar of remembrance,
a marker of memories to keep the hurt alive;
sweet and sour the poignant pride,
the retrospective regret.

 

 



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The Blue Beast

by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal


The sea slopped against
the ship.  Its salty kiss,
violent and malicious,
an albatross of sorts,
wanting to sink the ship
into a watery grave.
The thunderous sea,
not growing still for
any man or ship,
imposing its will,
without mercy like
war crazed armies.

 

 

Bag of Bones

by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal


with his bag of bones
the skeleton man
searched for skin
to make his people
in the image of his dreams.

 



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The Book of Judas

by George Trialonis


Three days before the Passover
My Master sent for me to say:
“I bid thee search the mark’t for
A Book unwrit and cloth’d in red.”

“Where in the market, Master, and
What inscription this Unscripture bears?
And pray tell me to what end
Thy bid compares.”

The Master laughed and raised his hands
To hug mine throbbing neck in loving care,
And to ears propensed to obedience
Whispered thus—seeing not, but ever aware
Of eleven spiteful looks of burning glare.

“Beloved Judas, on such forward and guileless lips
As yours, little angels test their airy wings
Before they descend on punic scripts
that hold peoples’ minds in eclipse.

“The Book is in the care of Uriel,
A vender blind and ear lobeless.
Ask him if he the name of the Lord ever sung,
And he to thee his outer garment shall impart,
The left pocket of which is committed to conceal
The Book; and the message Uriel shall speak.”

Thro’ the dimmed Jerusalem market stalls,
Deaf to the din and clatter and calls,
I search’d for Uriel whose nipp’d ears never tire
In the service of my Master’s desire.

“Who’s Uriel?” I asked a boy in rags and in fingers fast.
The boy raised his grubby digit and pointed
To the stall of the market’s biblioclast,
And there stood the man whose visage I searched.

“Hast thou the name of the Lord ever sung?”
I asked Uriel in manner rather urgent.
He rolled his cloudy eyes to the sky strung
With pins of shimmering light and
Handed me his garment in acknowledgement.

Then, he spoke thus:
“Thirty pieces of silver, Judas,
Thirty Shekels of Tyre,
Are yours to receive
For a kiss to surrender thine Sire.”

 

 



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Septemberly

by Lyn Lifshin


the wind and suddenly
the flat glare of July and
August, season of sweat
and sensuality’s over.
When you walk out
barefoot for the paper,
bricks are cool.  The
maple tree’s going
sienna and yellow.
No light in the bed
room until late, the
slant so different.  In
just a month, the heat
that slapped you around
retreats.  It’s getting
dark too early.  Shadows
that weren’t there a
day ago are.  Lights
across the street
go on earlier.  More
leaves gone each
morning and heat that
held you like a too
anxious lover, playboy
who wouldn’t stay,
a mistress leaving
you cold, edges out,
is leaving you

 

 

Octoberly

by Lyn Lifshin


leaves inside out,   
drying and the bedroom
staying black the time
of year  I think of fall
on Jackson, taking
the bus to class, cloud-
less sky, a red smell
of burning. I was 23,
24 and I thought what
ever mattered was behind
me.  Each week, each
Tuesday I began non
stop work on a paper
for the handsome dandy,
the Harvard professor.
Each weekend my new
husband and I drove
to Café Lena and I
imagined a poet or folk
singer might look my
way.  Janis Joplin played
at a bar a two minute
walk from our flat.
No admission, no
minimum.  I rode on
Josh White’s lap
over a bumpy road
upstate.  He told my ex
when he coughed, “that
sounds like my come
cough,” as he slid his
fingers over my thigh
where no one could see

 

 



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I'm afraid of heights, but I'll fly

by Kelley Jean White


I’ll wire my arms to an airplane and spin a little rubber band                          
with my teeth.  Then I wouldn’t feel that air-sickness I get
when you don’t answer the phone.  I’d follow the telephone lines,
but you’ve gone wireless.  I’ll swallow magnets and wear a compass
on my wrist.  I’ll get goggles with windshield wipers and dislocate
my shoulders for better lift.  I’ll grow bat wings.  Peacock plumes.
I’ll fly high enough to pray.  But you aren’t coming home.
I’ll be lucky if I make it upstairs.  I’d put my feet on backwards to walk
you home.

 

 

Independence Day

by Kelley Jean White


My head is a rocket aimed for the ground,
fuselage wrapped in leather fringe and sequins
Oh, the shine of my mirror skin!  its sweet cold
and bitter ardor, its blue bitter chocolate.

I am stuck to the ground.   Me, Molly Pitcher
at the Battle of Germantown.  My wheels roll
toward Boston.  Night has called them.  Clicketty
Clack, Step on a Crack; Mother of destiny,
blown by sea-breeze—shake the doors on convention

Madre, you will climb the braided tower, wear
the hawk’s talons.  Eagles tuck you in bed.
Con fiebre.  I am a firecracker pinwheeling in flight.

 

 

Induction

by Kelley Jean White


What is your self?
The master would say:
       If you answer
             I will hit you with a stick
                           thirty times
       If you do not answer
             I will hit you with a stick
                          thirty times
I say, “Go get a stick.”

 

 

I sang in wind

by Kelley Jean White


                    and you did not hear me
I moved with the high leaves
                    and you did not see
dust in your road
the creak in your old gate
                    but you do not taste me
coldness, and you ask for heat

I bowed with the branches
                    at the coming thunder
still water, and the darkling deep
lightning, and the haze
                    of midsummer
you did not touch me
nor the meadow sweet

each blade of grass is companioned
each ant celebrates a feast
I alone call fullness empty
I alone make myself weep

 

 

I was going to be your memory, save

by Kelley Jean White


your collection of pebbles
your mother’s hat set at an angle
your father dancing
your first girl in the woods behind the train

I was willing to keep your memories
after you forgot them
I hope you took them with you
now that you’re gone

(and I never wanted you, so
forgetful, to forget
me)

 



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Cupped Stars

by Scott Malby


Maya is as Faberge.  A diamond offering.
Reaching for a knife, she slices through skin.
On gleaming egg shell placing servings
as if by whim; some thick, some thin.
We eat her flesh as she feeds our bodies
to unknown gods and when she screams,
like agate rabbits in a carnelian landscape
we stand still as stone, praying her wrath
passes us by.  Like grave robbers we burrow
into the glittering treasure of her body
until our own gasps pull us back.  Like lovers
we press against her curves in slow motion
to stay the impermanence within her
as she whispers: Of nothing can you be sure.

*

A voice; sound.  A language; touch.
The structure of our bodies breathing
together, the perennial haunting through
immortal mews where back street boys
brawl with their thighs.  Toward all things,
slack intelligence arouse to point of pause.
Probe till critical.  The body awakening
to the motion of itself, both gesture
and process; a liquefaction of rhythms
the tinker of modern sculpts into joys,
into aches, into flames that bend
and fold into sanctuaries of being
the primordial somersaults through
whispering:  Note in passing all is passing.

 

 



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pyramid one

by J. D. Nelson


I wasn't born a fool
under the full
moonfish.

I was born into
the caste of the tomb builders—

another slave,
a stave in a barrel
bound by iron rings.

remember:
your first words,
the names of
things?

start with an antelope:
*gerenuk*

faster than gasoline
and good eatin', too.

 

 

free jazz:  bottlecap

by J. D. Nelson


spin the wheel
blast music

back

square letters:

aliens! aliens!

this is my biscuit—
I'm bleeding,
baking.

are you
en-joying
your bruised
fruit salad?

 

 

11:32 AM—hot lunch

by J. D. Nelson


Sloppy Joe
& french-fries

No milk
money

Warm
fountain
water

 

 

Green Plastic Chief

by J. D. Nelson


because

it made sense to
someone—

there even used to be
machines that made
them.

feel the vibrations
of the big beetle?

 

 

It's Always 3 AM in Norway

by J. D. Nelson


that was me on the radio
sounding like a cat from Oslo
in his pajamas

where are you,
my old grandfather?

hunting in the woods

 

 

microphone dream

by J. D. Nelson


last night,
I had a dream
that I was
speaking / singing
into a microphone

& something
I said
(or sang?)
caught the
metal grill on fire.

it was a supernatural
kind of fire—
bright white,
glowing purple

I watched as the
metal grill melted.

I'm going to need a
new microphone,
I thought to myself.

 



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The Annotated Abyss

by J. Sallini-Genovese


The college rests on the lip of a yawning conspiracy
where dandelions and power plants bloom.

A lone shriveled proctor
with running eye and the crust of ages in his beard
searches the corpses for pipe tobacco.
The lucid toll of the asylum bell makes him forget
stacks of gowns emptied of their wisdom
and a final the devil himself could not fathom.

When it rains he sometimes scuttles around the quad
and laughs at the city dwellers who have no tea.

 

 



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in search of an unmade bed

by Terry Lowenstein


as september arrives
mantled
in a cocoon of fog

fall peels back
the sticky web
of dawn

and exposes
the raw
energy of life

clouds
shake off raindrops
that ferment

flowers rouse
the grass ripples
households stir

and our slumberous cat
yawns and stretches
and seeks out an unmade bed

 

 

epimetheus wakes startled

by Terry Lowenstein


pandora's box has reappeared

anamnesis again echoes
and atlas awakened shudders
as elusive truth is unearthed

iterate past and present collide
and feeble hope rides dragonfly wings
across an unfathomable ocean of lament

 

 



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My Father's Hands

by Thomas D. Reynolds


On the lowest limb,
hind legs gripping bark,
his pet squirrel stretches

for the walnut
my father offers,
its hands eerily human,

although more nimble,
smooth like velvet,
and red as blood.

Just for a moment,
that tiny hand rests
on my father’s palm,

as if to steady itself,
each digit gripping
the whorls of skin,

before opening up
almost prayer-like
to grasp the prize.

then it vanishes
into wet leaves
and drizzle.

The rest of the day,
even months after,
I see that hand

upon my father’s palm,
the size of mine
inside the womb,

when we were
as incapable of
expressing love as now,

and in my mind,
if not in body,
I repeatedly grip

the dark furrows
and endless coils
of my father’s hand.

 

 



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Finding a wasps nest in my aunt's house

by Christian Ward


I found it nestled in the corner
of a wintering cupboard, a paper
coral made out of regurgitated
wood pulp and last month's news.

The wasps hummed their Talmud
as I slept that night, every word
creeping through the floorboards
into my head.

They wouldn't be there tomorrow.
The hooded scarecrows would flood
their home with mustard gas, under
an auspice of peace,

falling as if it were a biblical scene.
There would be no one to sweep them
up and bury them as the sky mourned.

 

 



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Vintage

by Angelo Giambra


I look across the room
to where you lie sleeping
on the sofa, the tv chattering
in your soundless ears.

Evenings are like this, you
asleep, me, settling into
a book or watching reruns.
These past thirty years

we’ve harvested our differences,
squeezed out the essence,
thrown the pulp away and
poured what’s left into the

oak panels of this darkened room,
where it has clarified, drawn character,
an earthiness you can taste
on your fingertips.

Some day, perhaps, we’ll hammer
in a spigot to savor that heady bouquet.
For now, I’m content to sit
in this lovely darkness, fermenting.

 

 



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If I Forget Thee

by Rochelle Hope Mehr


It’s quiet here, it’s quiet now.
But who knows for how long?
Was there something I forgot
Long before the first Katyusha hit?
Was there somewhere I was meant to be
Unpummeled, unreticent—
Free?

So feeble, I hobble here—
I should stride cobblestones

Glistening.
The air here is sanitized and stale.
Yours reeks with the redolence of ages.
Each footfall a step, a break.
Each breath a leavening I make.

 

 


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Ain't Nothing Amusing About A Muse

by Priscilla Barton




Arms crossed and long skirt trailing,
she paces, stirs the air while I sit helpless
in her presence. I have adored and despised
her for too many years. Sentences fall from
the soft bend of her elbow—thoughts without
direction or even the slightest connection:

God has sued Gideon
for gross misinterpretation.
Milk curdles and only the cow
knows why.  The tulip shuts its
velvet lips, creates a tomb for
the bee.  I will swallow the moon
with my other white pills. These hands
tremble, but still reach for fire.  I have
held a man while he wept, and been
hated for bearing witness.  Mercy has
never lived here.  I am no one's disciple.
My eyes have seen more than they ever
understood.  Every teacup holds a river.
Over there, under last night's prayers,
lies the person I should have been.
You knew only my name, and even
that was a lie.  There are no effective
weapons for the heart.

She knows I would die without her, and
has left me to prove her point.  I have cried
into my palms for her return.  She is the color
of my blood, the view at the edge of my cliff,
the words on the tips of my fingers.

I refuse to take credit or blame
for this poem, it lacks substance,
definition, and style.  Wake me
when you want the real thing.

I despise her.

 

 

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar

by Priscilla Barton


One of my poems was analyzed, taken
apart and given new meaning by a man
who knows about these things.  Apparently,
I was speaking metaphorically about man's
inhumanity to man.  Knowing I never speak
in metaphor, it was difficult not to disagree. 
He rambled on, explaining my true intent
to all.  Even I was impressed with just how
brilliant I must be.  All that was left to say
was:  Yes, you're absolutely right—that's
exactly what I meant!  How incredibly
clever of you to understand.  Beneath
the burning creativity, we are all whores,
lying about our intentions and sleeping
with the highest bidder.   Metaphorically,
of course.

 

 

Body Language

by Priscilla Barton


I watched a woman wave, and realized
there was no way of knowing whether

she meant hello or good-bye. We’ve all
been taught one motion for both words.

However, if we look closely, there is a
subtle difference noted. The hand that

waves good-bye tends to hover in midair
just a little longer, and fingers seem to

always touch the mouth, in search of
that last remembered kiss.

 

 

Breakfast With James Dean

by Priscilla Barton


Terrible things happen in diners while waitresses
refill coffee cups.  I could never be a waitress —my
clumsiness would annoy customers.  And just how
many times can you say "I'm sorry"?  I watch you
put ketchup on your eggs, and the smear of red and
yellow has always sickened me.  I've never been sure
of who you are, but I know myself very well.  I'm your
tiny audience; the one who loves you madly, beyond
any point of measurement.  You talk like James Dean,
slow and arrogant, head tilted, eyes squinted—focused
on the air behind my left shoulder, so unconcerned with
being overheard.  You're trying to explain why we need
to stop seeing each other, and the two women in the next
booth are pretending they can't hear you.  I'm pretending
it's the day before we met.  There are more words said,
and I think I nod my head.  The waitress pours me fresh
coffee, and spills some on the table.  She wipes it away
with a napkin, and keeps saying she's sorry.  I know she's
sorry, but it still makes me cry.  You look embarrassed,
and I tell you that I find the clumsiness of others touching. 
I want to throw my coffee in your face, but I'm afraid I'll
miss and hit the two women in the next booth, and then
the poor waitress will have to clean my mess.  People try
to act civilized in public, and no one really wants to know
how close you are to the edge.  I'm so angry that you were
able to eat eggs while I was dying, that you could lose me
and not your appetite is obscene.  Stomach full, you pay the
check and leave.  I go to the ladies room and vomit food
I ate five years ago.  The clumsy waitress knocks on the
door and says "Are you okay, hon?" I tell her I'm fine,
and flush the lie.  Terrible things happen in diners.

 

 

More Than Meets The Eye

by Priscilla Barton


She had something in her eye, and
he leaned in to help.  He heard a leaf

fall in Asia, a hummingbird's wings, and
the earth sigh.  He saw the Sistine Chapel,

the Pyramids, and the Great Barrier Reef.
He watched himself spin past Orion and

Saturn, held his breath as he fell in every
direction.  On the tip of his finger was a

single eyelash, proving the existence of
forests, unexplored jungles, and secrets

that hold to the roots of a desert flower.
She laughed and blew the lash from his

fingertip.  Shaken, he began to mourn
losing even the smallest part of her.

 

 


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Catalyst

by Jai Britton


She moved out of the light of the stage
by force of habit
and hid her chewed thumbnails
behind her back.  She watched

them go by, as they always left her,
swiftly goose-stepping, a panting jog,
a full-out lung collapsing run. The heavy
red felt curtains barely acknowledged
any passing.

After the rush, contemplation hung as power cords
above her head.  As a whore thinks she is the catalyst
to a happy marriage, so did she
think she was but a movement
to their next great symphony, one
that left her
standing still.

 

 

Glass Ceilings

by Jai Britton


I was never a mermaid

finding a glass ceiling the divisor of sky and sea.
There are planets on the ocean floor
I could not speak of with authority.

But I’ve heard stories

and tales of creatures so bewitching that sailors
toss themselves into their lair
if only to touch their water-swept hair.

I have only ran,

following the wind to see where it may stop.
I turn my face to the stars, dip my toes in the jetty,
and wait for sailors to drop through the atmosphere.

 

 

Split Grapes

by Jai Britton


all I want is the cornucopia of time spilling
grapes, wet and purple-black,
into your open mouth.  i want to chew the stems
and watch you think on things awhile:
like who are the predators of wasps, of dragonflies,
about the velocity of honey, what shape
the clouds take if you keep your eyelids
at half mast.  i want to have so, so many minutes
that we can forget about wasting any.

when did we plug in and step out;
how is it skipping rope, or skipping stones
became something to be taught?  i know nothing
about being the middle management
consolidating rebus puzzles and dot to dot
coms.  i want to spend my tiny coin
of time not by remote or wireless router
but on my back, in the grass, beside you
daydreaming about the horn of plenty
tumbling fruit salad into our laps.

 

 



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They Never Knew

by Robert L. Harrison


She was selling her past off
one item at a time
Old books went first
for food, for heat, for the taxes.
Next the souvenir silver spoons
from long ago vacations
were gathered and sold.
Old collectables now were fewer
as old memories disappeared.
She even lowered the thermostat
on winter nights and 
her children never knew,
never knew.
She always held out for the best price,
each deal was another few days
of not losing her pride.
Now not much was left to sell
and her children never knew,
never knew.
Her past was now sold out,
her treasures gone
and she expired
one cold night
sleeping under three blankets,
because her children
never knew, 
never knew.

 

 

Sun Streaked Hair

by Robert L. Harrison


His wife was a blond,
a real stunner, a suburban queen.
She used to pack their car
with soccer balls and kids
off to green field games.
Later she went back to work
and became a career chaser,
a late night candle burner.
Now she has retired
from her escaped children,
her boring husband
her paper pushing career
and tends to her garden
as if each new seed planted
would spout fresh blond hair.

 

 

Super Market Scam

by Robert L. Harrison


I saw her cut in line
like a quarterback sneak
only to be ferreted out
and be directed to a longer wait.

She had sixteen items
but the sign said twelve or less,
maybe the cokes 
counted as one.

The register jammed on her turn
and the manager was not around
maybe there is a hidden price God
that oversees supermarket justice.

 

 


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March

by CL Bledsoe


March is the Wednesday of months, full of shopping
and waiting, highways made of turn signals,
something over the hills is drawing eyes like a field fire.

Soon, there'll be movies to comfort us.  Soon,
we can sit in darkness with muffled coughing,
watch lives flash across a screen made from sheets,
not wishing they were ours, only,
that they'd move a little faster
towards somewhere we hadn't seen coming
halfway through.

 

 

April

by CL Bledsoe


A room with sock. Stained
yellow pillow in the closet.
Smell of life.  Skin
piled on shelves.  Space
to fill.  Afternoon light.  Hollow
as a tooth eaten by sugar.

A book is missing.  I don't recall
its title.  Wash the blankets.
Put them away.  Find shoes
good for walking in, not just
to stand.

 

 

Patience

by CL Bledsoe


Some morning I will scramble to the bathroom door,
that mirror, fogged over with waking,
and see myself naked, thick
and remember—

it's the tweezing of the eyebrows, makes them thin, not the press of air
against my face.  It's blinking, keeps the eyes moist, not the liquid
dripping from the roof of the world, that lake above
where an old man full of ideas waits,
counting his thumbs and painting them clear.
Before the day can start, someone
has to call it.  This is the purpose of need,
the exercise of the ears, to hear
that old man nod off, and Patience
holding her breath
until his chin strikes his chest.

If I rise before she pounces,
I'll remember.  Nothing more
can be wished for or earned.
Pull her hair.  Tie her shoes together.
Catch her before she loses her name.

 

 



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215 Willow

by Thomas Michael McDade


No tree fits
but the hill does
flare up
like a branch
in a gust.
No plaque marks
the house on this street
where Roger Connor’s death
house stands and seems
not far removed
from his last breath
in 1931.
Word of mouth is the map
that references
his passing
and Cooperstown fame.
Some pilgrims know that
Roger’s forever
233 triples minus
his 18 seasons
calculates
the 215 address
and share that fact
with the guy punching it
straight and boxed
at the Food Mart
across he way
who might be
inspired
at least
to stock
baseball cards
bend a sentence
or two in Roger’s
direction.

 

 

Country Roads

by Thomas Michael McDade


Cruising dark
North Carolina
country roads
squeezed in
a time
capsule
disguised as
a red Corvette
we made
our entries.
Remember this
George said
draining his
full Bud quart
without
a swallow.
Gary hid half
a Camel in
his mouth
and flipped
it back
still smoking.
He cranked
his Zippo up
and sucked
the flame.
Fit for hell
he added.
I had no tricks
so I turned up
Ben E. King’s
Spanish Harlem
song to add
to the atmosphere
in case we
ever found
ourselves
with all gone
but listening.

 





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Angry Young Men versus Furious Females   Saskia van der Linden The Reincarnation of Joseph Blanovich   John P. Matsis The Old Man Who Made Whistles   Tom Sheehan

Invariance   Kane X. Faucher Ways of the Camoufleur   Jerry Vilhotti The Curious Bathroom Incident   John Gorman Initiation of the Fat Kid   Joseph Musso, Jr.

 

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Angry Young Men versus Furious Females       

by Saskia van der Linden 

                                                         

hanks to my father I know that men don’t tend to fight other men.  They only beat up those they can easily win from:  women and children.  In my father’s case, this isn’t completely true.  He’d only attack the female child.  His daughter.  Me.  He must have always borne in mind that one day my brother would be a man himself and ready to take him on if needed.  So, he never touched him.

My mother has been depressed for as long as I’ve known her, but according to relatives she hasn’t always been this phobic, nervous wreck who stayed in bed for most of the day.  She did stand up to her husband once.  She used to fight back fiercely.  (I got my temper from her.)  Later in their marriage, she’d walk out and start divorce proceedings, only to reunite with him at the last minute.  Often she fled to her parents’ house, leaving my brother and me in his care.  He didn’t have to hit us to frighten us.  Just being himself did the trick.  Silent, closed and angry are the key words to his character.

Sometimes our mother took us with her.  Those few days spent at my grandparents’ house are my happiest childhood memories.  Money would be tight, but almost running out of food also meant a real treat for us children.  She’d dip pieces of white bread into a bowl with milk and eggs, which she’d fry and cover in caster sugar.  The recipe must be copyright of the war and the hardships my grandparents faced then—it did turn them into creative cooks.  I loved this fried sop.  It’s still my favourite choice of comfort food, perhaps because it also reminds me of my grandmother and grandfather and the loving people they were.  It was only when I got older that I realised that for my mother, the dish only served to remind her how dire her straits had become without her husband’s support.

Once, she took my brother and me to a shelter for abused women.  We’d had to leave the house without telling anyone, carrying only a handful of our belongings.  When the group leader took us to a big dormitory, I knew this was our only way out.  My mother’s eye was freshly blackened and two of her front teeth had only just gone missing.  Yet she had to take only one look at the untidy room with ten bunk beds to make up her mind.  I could read it in her face when she turned to me and asked, "What do you think?"  It was obvious to me that she didn’t want to stay, so I said, "It’s not very nice, is it?"  She nodded, but in my twisted memory she’s also smiling with relief.  If she went back to her husband that day—and she did—it wouldn’t be her decision.  It would be mine.  She let me decide.  I was eight.

For years she’d rub it in, too.  "Do you want to go back to the shelter, then?" became her catchphrase whenever I criticised the situation at home.  It also allowed her to play the martyr:  she could pretend she only stayed with her husband for the sake of their children.  But I'd learned the ugly truth about her at an early age.  It was the comfy life she loved, not us.

The last time my father hit me was after I’d just graduated from university.  There I was, already in my twenties, an academic who’d worked and lived by herself for years, a grown-up woman who’d been in grown-up relationships with grown-up men—and my father still behaved as if he could do with me as he pleased.  I made up my mind there and then that I wouldn’t let him anymore.  I severed all ties with my parents, for I held them both responsible—my mother by showing him over the years that he could get away with this kind of behaviour.  I did the opposite by reporting him to the police.  He spent a night in jail as a result.  This in turn made my brother decide to break off all contact with me.  My own life had finally begun.

All my life I’ve been running away from men.  Isn’t it ironic that I’ve ended up being held captive by five of them?

—from Stockholm Syndrome © 2006 by Saskia van der Linden

 

 

    

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The Reincarnation of Joseph Blanovich        

by John P. Matsis 

inety-seven is old, by most standards.  There are many examples—the yard-thick, half-dead oak tree near the intersection of Jackson Street and Fifth Avenue, which at one hundred years plus, is beyond its prime.  In human terms it is applicable to those few surviving World War I veterans—proud, staunch men that on the Fourth of July stand curbside, who endure the heat of a celebrated parade, their combat medals and ribbons pinned to their now too-tight jackets, men who wave the flag of memories as brave, young soldiers march by.  But there is no doubt, the unmistakable biological signs of cellular demise are there—the brittle, hardening of blood vessels, the sagging of skin and muscle of the jowls, the constant clearing of a scratchy throat, the wandering of the mind into matters of “what’s next.”

So it was with Joseph Blanovich, veteran and widower—his ninety-seven year-old wizened skin blotchy brown with imperfections, his creviced lips curled lyre-shaped at the margins, and several vertical inches from his prime lost.  But his mind was sharp, wondering at this stage of life if that was a blessing.

He was not an overly religious man.  In fact he rarely attended church, except recently for the funerals of recently lost comrades—Sam Capro, age ninety-four, Nicholas Latus, age ninety-six, and so on.  In fact the parish priest, Father Jim, had just turned seventy-seven and was just hanging on.  Anyone could appreciate it in the vocal strain to attain those higher notes during chanting, in the egg yolk shimmer of his lax cheeks as he turned his head from one side to the other, and in that misty gray ring about his pupils as he looked out from the altar.  The signs were unmistakable.

So it was during those funeral services that Joseph Blanovich started to think—time was running out and then what?  He pondered about the possible options and the only one with appeal was reincarnation.  That talk about heaven or hell was just that…talk.  Heaven did have some appeal, even hell, that if certain vices were guaranteed.  But it was reincarnation, providing a person had a choice, a single option, which had the greatest appeal.

And he would lean back in the pew during those funerals, his bones creaking like a hinge of a too-often-opened door, and think.  Perhaps if he put his mind to it he could make it happen; after all, the mind was a powerful force, he reminded himself.  He could come back as a rich, handsome man, or at worse, someone average as he was now.  There were many possibilities—that was if reincarnation truly was possible.

As the days turned into weeks, his mind swirled with activity and at the same time, his heart grew weaker and his breathing more labored.  He knew the end was not too distant.  It was then that he made the decision—all of his remaining strength must be focused upon what he would be in his second lifetime.  He must flood his mind with no other thoughts in order to make it happen.

He became convinced that reincarnation could happen if he tried hard enough.  After all, brain waves were mere electrical currents of thought, easily noted and recorded by an electroencephalogram—spikes of electromagnetic energy that radiate and can easily be documented on a strip of paper by the movement of a stylus.  And like all forms of energy, there was a finite formula related to strength and distance.  In lay terms, he decided that his brain (in other words, his thought processes) would work best the closer he was to the object of his concentration.

There was no way to be certain.  But life was all about probabilities he concluded—a roll of the dice, the spin of the roulette wheel, the right or wrong gene inherited.

The thought that reincarnation truly existed brought a smile and during a brief moment of fantasy, a bolt of hope was captured.  His tired eyes sparkled as his weak heart raced with brief, renewed vigor and his mind was filled with wondrous thoughts of what his other life might be.

So during those last remaining days, he decided that all his energy should be spent in close proximity to the object he would want to be in the next lifetime.  He must be near the object (the person to be) in order for the brain waves to make the proper synaptic connection.

A plan was put into effect—having decided that there, within the neighborhood shopping mall, amongst the maelstrom of walking humanity, he would sit on a bench and observe the flow of people, allowing his brain waves to intermingle with the passersby like inquisitive probes.

The shopping mall, not only occupied with upscale stores such as Nordstrom and Nieman Marcus, but also with stores appealing to young, virile men would prove to be fertile ground.  There, he would observe those handsome men passing by, athletic and young with rugged chiseled features, some walking alone, others with attractive young ladies clinging to them.

With a deep breath of optimism he sat and watched as suitable subjects passed before him, and in his mind’s eye, pictured himself in his reincarnated life.  He had never considered himself a handsome man, perhaps average, but in his new life it could be a different matter.  As he sat observing, he felt his brain waves emanating, spreading across the mall like waters of hope flowing into every crack and crevice of opportunity.  His heart swelled.  In his second life, his plain features could be replaced by a more masculine look, his non-athletic body by supple, taut muscles, his short stature by height that would rise above most.  His eyes strained, watering with age as they followed one suitable subject after another; his gaze was like a radar beam honing in.

Brian Conrad, a handsome man of barely twenty-five, was not the usual mall-walker, in fact he detested shopping—the crowds, the bumping and shoving.  But today he had a purpose…in and out of the mall as quickly as possible, not a second more.  The gift carried, a handsome picture frame that he had picked up for his fiancée, was gift-wrapped in a shiny, metallic paper with a gold ribbon to match.  He held it snuggly at his side as he maneuvered with haste between one person and another.

Thus, on that fateful day, the young, handsome man strode with long, gliding strides, approaching the bench where Joseph Blanovich sat.  It was near the point of intersection when the chest pain swept across Joseph Blanovich’s chest, heavy and penetrating.  Ninety-seven years of age was reaching an end and Joseph Blanovich had little time left.

As his brain waves ebbed, he concentrated like never before.  Not far beyond, the young man with the broad shoulders and rugged looks approached.  So, according to his preset plan, he was to be the last person he would concentrate on; he would be the selected object for the reincarnation of Joseph Blanovich.

During that last gasp of life, Joseph Blanovich looked.  And as his body slid from the bench onto the cold, lifeless concrete of the mall floor, it was not to be the face of a young man with handsome, chiseled features, hovering, that was to be his last vision, but rather a reflected face—an old man’s face, deeply creviced with life’s experiences, which had been mirrored by a shiny, metallic, gift-wrapped package.

 

 

                                                                                                        
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The Old Man Who Made Whistles                    

by Tom Sheehan                                                                          

n a country that had no name because it had no borders lived an old man who lived at the side of the road and made whistles.  Making whistles was all he ever wanted to do.  Each time he made a whistle and tested it, playing out its tune, he would make a present of it for a boy or girl who passed his small house.

He was famous for his whistles whittled with love.

One day, when he had fallen asleep in a late afternoon nap, the sun warm on his chest where his hands were folded, a man passing by stole the old man’s knife that was laying there on the porch.  How sad the old man was that his only knife was gone.  How sad the children were when no whistles were being made.  In town someone said the birds had stopped singing, that the forest was a dark and dismal place that could frighten any soul.  Soon the leaves began to fall in the forest.  And then the snow fell.

All that long winter the old man tried to remember how it was, the way it was, when he made whistles and why he had no big dreams and no thoughts of grandeur.  Happiness, he found, controlled him and his life.  His house was a small house and once the forest behind his house had been thick and heavy with trees.  Now it was sparser because of all the whistles he had whittled out of its trees.  It seemed boys and girls everywhere played his whistles.  But the thinning forest still promised nice shade for spring and would again be a fine place to walk.  He was convinced of that all winter long.

Like a crocus popping out of the ground, spring came leaping and early.  With the light of each new day coming upon the birds, they’d begin to whistle and send out signals to their friends.  Each morning the man sat on his rocker on the porch and listened to them.  Very closely he listened, picking up every sound that came out of the forest, every peep and every chirp, and every new sound.  There was no bird’s song that he did not hear.  After listening a while he would settle on a sound or a song that best suited him for the day.  That’s when he used to set off for the forest to find a piece of wood to whittle a new whistle, to capture that sound forever, when he had his trusty knife.

Oh, he’d think, perhaps those days would never come back.  He would get sadder by each minute as he remembered how it used to be.  In the forest there used to be a kind of magic in his search for the right piece of wood.  Without fail that he’d find the right piece.  It could be sitting in its place as a nice branch on a maple tree or it could be a strip of oak that lightning had driven away from its home at the top of a tree.  Now and then it was the shape of a piece of wood that caught his eye instead of his ear.  But it was always the right piece.  And he had always given away the whistles that he made, with birds’ music in them.

Oh, how he loved songs the birds whistled, and he could tell practically which day of the year it was, or the day of the season, because of the birds that stayed or the ones that already had journeyed far away.  Some of the birds would end up way down in the other end of the world and would be gone for months.  Some little red birds stayed all year long, singing songs for the old man.  He loved the ones who stayed as well as the ones that traveled.

There was still glory in their music and but a full sadness sat in his heart while he was without his knife, sadder each day he that could not whittle.

Then one bright morning a new knife was on his porch.  It just appeared on the deck.  The old man did not know who left it.  Some people said it was the mayor who left it in darkness.  But that same morning the old man suddenly heard a bird calling from the forest.  Out he went and found a piece of wood exactly as he thought it should be.  The newly whittled whistle caught the new birdcall perfectly and the old man hung the whistle on his fence.

He was back in business, or so he thought.

But a strange thing had happened:  now all the boys and girls knew what had happened, why the old man had been so sad, and none of them took the new whistle away from its place on the fence beside the old man’s little house at the side of the road.

Next day the old man heard another special bird, found a special piece of wood and made another whistle.  That one too he hung on his fence.  But no one took it.  The children saw it, but none of them took it.  The old man was sad, but making whistles was what he always wanted to do, so he kept at it.  The birds kept calling and he kept making whistles and he kept hanging them on his fence.  And still, nobody came to take his whistles.

Day after day, for the longest time, he heard the birds and made his whistles and hung them for the boys and girls.  Each night he was sad inside his new happiness.  But he knew he would never stop making whistles.  Birds were beautiful when they sang and his whistles were beautiful when they were played and somehow someone would come along to play lovely tunes on the small shafts of wood.

Soon there were hundreds of whistles hanging on his fence and not a single one had been taken.  No boy or girl ever tried to play one or blow air into the mouthpiece or even tried to finger the little air holes.  Not a single boy or girl tried one out.  Happiness, he thought, might not be the answer after all.

And it was late that following winter the old man became sick and lay in his bed and the mayor and some other people came out from the town when they heard about his trouble.  And the old man told them his life had been a good life and he had no regrets except that he wished the boys and girls would come to take his whistles off the fence.  But even if they don’t, he said, he had been happy making his whistles.

And then, late in the afternoon, the wind began to blow from the edge of the forest.  It blew quick and steady down the road and along the length of the old man’s fence.  The old man and the mayor and the other people suddenly heard the most marvelous sounds they had ever heard, magical notes of every range imaginable, a music to be remembered forever.

And the old man who made whistles all his life closed his eyes as he heard music coming from the strangest organ ever played.

 

 

                                                                                                        
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 Invariance                                               

by Kane X. Faucher 

he small town in which I write has no more than ten thousand people, and so it is difficult to actually qualify it as anything more than a village, this despite a few of the common infrastructure amenities one would find among a larger population base.  No one leaves here for long before failing and returning; or else they have always been here.  Everyone under thirty dreams of leaving, and is obsessed with motion in a place of the unmoving and unmoved.  But only the motionless have a true appreciation for movement. I, myself, have given up those torturous dreams of escape since I know there is nothing better beyond the town’s limits, nor even anything beyond my front door.  The town is an invariant husk around a wildly variant seed.

I first discovered this while writing a calm retrospective on the life of a mediocre inventor one town over from mine.  The subject was of little interest to me, but the winters here are very long, and inspiration runs out faster than the cords of wood bought in autumn.  There is nothing to do but to stare with anticipation at the bleak white-grey landscape in hope of spring, or to turn one’s gaze to those projects that may take place indoors.  I was approached by a local publisher to write a few of these pieces that take a small bland slice of the area’s history, and to make of it a little sweet gateau for a mild readership.  The aim was to produce a small vestige of pride and provoke a slight feeling of nostalgia where there was none.  The inventor in question found a novel way of improving upon the pram.  This was enough to have a virtually empty small street named after him where young boys play with sticks or chase one another with snowballs in winter.

What I believed to be a routine sprucing of history, to lightly fictionalize for readers’ interest, came to a blockade when I was suddenly struck with a crippling kind of literary impotence.  If you think this is the general variety or strain of writer’s block, I can tell you it is much different, having myself been seasoned in dealing with these occasional ebbs of creative puissance.  Had it been just another dose of that, it may have been much more bearable.  Rather, it was something else entirely.

It must have been one languid afternoon when a friend came to visit for some tea and light conversation, bordering on a snow squall here or an obstinate machine that failed to respond in a time of cold need.  He had left in my care a small box of books that he felt may have been of some interest.  He said that I could have my first pick, and that he would be back the next day to collect the remainder for the local church bazaar.  I did not think twice of this, and it was late in the evening when I remembered that the box of books still lay in that box in my parlour.  I did not have much in the way of expectations, seeing as I assumed that these books had been collected from the usual stripe of uneducated locals, and so their tastes would be sourly reflected in the slim offerings within that collection.  I mostly came across old 1930s etiquette manuals, expired farming catalogues, Harlequin romances, mediocre bestsellers obviously given as gifts, one-time novelists faded from view, various high school mathematics textbooks that ranged from the general to algebra or calculus, a few “teach yourself” or “heal yourself” claptrap books with glossy covers and unbroken spines.  As I was sifting through the usually meagre literary detritus of my fellow townspeople, I came across a book by J. J. Gibson entitled Invariance.  It had been printed in 1978, and its relatively young age did not seem to pique my attention, but in scanning it I found that it was beyond the usual ken of the local readers.  A college book, to be sure, and a rarity in these parts where even the highest positions in the town were occupied by those who barely passed high school.  The subject appeared rather dense and complicated for that time of the night, and I wanted to get started on the article about the local inventor.  I set it aside and went to work.

The story of Ernest S. Heuwirth was bland and uneventful, save for the one event of his discovery for the pram modification.  I decided to skip the long and unremarkable preliminaries about the years of his personal formation, and instead focused immediately on the day that he came up with perhaps the one idea that history cared to record. I typed:

As Ernest completed his quotidian affairs, thoroughly exhausted, there was but one last notion that had taken residence in his mind since morning that had finally unfurled itself before his thoughts in all its glorious clarity.  He entered his workshop and headed toward his chair………………………

His chair.  I had no idea what his chair looked like, and it was unlikely that I would ever know.  It would seem to others like a trifling point, one that history could pardon should I fictionalize a tad and say that the chair was this colour or standing in a certain spatial position in the workshop.  There was no real relevance to even describing the chair at all, but I was stuck on this point.  What angle and perspective was it in relation to Ernest?  Why did that matter?  It bothered me so much that I walked away from the typewriter to clear my thoughts, to return when whatever obsession was plaguing me was past.

But it did not.  I began thinking of how another writer—should I be so fortunate or not—would record the placement of my things, their descriptions, etcetera.  Adjectives are usually a writer’s most trusted friends, carrying the burden of one’s style by their selection, arrangement and frequency of occurrence.  It is usually the mark of a good writer the amount of adjectives he or she knows, and how well they are employed to elicit just the right responses from a reader.  They give such vivid description, and yet I was paralyzed in using them now.  Despite the vividness of adjectives to paint a scene or express a concept, I found them…limited, falsifying, and thoroughly insufficient bits of language by which to express something as seemingly paltry as a chair—a chair, mind you, that had little to no significance to the story of the inventor.  All the same, I felt fraudulent, and I was unsure even if I were able to have been present during Ernest’s inventive day that this would have resolved my problem.  At what angle this chair, and how large?  In relation to what?  The colour:  was it blue?  If so, what shade of blue?  How would I convey the difference between one manifestation of royal blue from another?  What of those smallest patches or threads that displayed a slight discolouration?  What of the texture?  In all its places?  Does the texture differ even slightly from one part of the cushion to the other?  Is it a mere gradation of colour and texture, or was it a stark contrast?  If Ernest did not use the chair, and I just happened to mention its presence in the workshop, would it be any less of a chair if I had in mind that it was upside down or floating in mid-air?  Would the reader just assume that it sits as it would normally do upon its four spindly wooden legs?  What if it were slightly off kilter or leaning against a wall with only two of its legs touching the floor?  I have just mentioned the chair, and then I leave it at that, but the chair’s mention is an implicit failure.

At this point, I felt that adjectives were adversaries, and that similes only exacerbated the problem further.  I knew all too well the pacifying comments of the linguists who claimed that the link between the word and the thing is a tenuous and imperfect one, and that my obsession would only lead me to try failingly in conveying the Platonic form of the chair, or “chairness.”  The problem of referentiality, I think it is called.  I call it the damning problem of infinite variation.  But why obsess over this chair?  The chair is immaterial, I am afraid, for as I attempt to go further and lay out another prop, object, thing, idea, or person, I am faced with the same problem.  Poor Ernest himself would be damned to misrepresentation, regardless how skilled the author’s hand.  The writer would be the agent of falsification, the reader a complicit accomplice, and language the true criminal mastermind.  It is language that murders truth!—Just my saying this is doomed, for it is under the auspices of language that I must speak it.

I spent a feverish, sleepless night stoked by the fiery need to break this vicious cycle of criminality and mendacity.  One by one, I plucked the books that I had written from off their shelves and burned them all.  I hurled my trusty typewriter out a window upon the cement walk, a busted symbol of my slavery to the written word.  I would devote the remainder of my days to the craft of learning how not to write.  Once this is done, I will do the same with the cruelty of speech.

My friend came back the next day and saw the ruined typewriter on the walk, and was visibly worried.  He asked me if I was alright, that he had seen the mess outside.  I handed him the box of books with the Gibson text included, and with a smile I bade him farewell.  I was no longer interested in the world of words, mere words.

I can no longer make a living my literary agent can help me with.  She was notably confused when I cancelled future book signings.  She asked what projects I had on the go, and I confessed that I was taking a new turn, away from writing.  I thought of Ernest’s poor chair and how I almost mishandled it.  Better a chair than a man’s life!  It could have been much worse, indeed.  She was on the verge of ceasing representing me, at first giving soft ultimatums in an attempt to appeal to reason.  She said that she could not represent what was not there, and I disagreed.  Again I thought of Ernest’s chair and how I could not, in writing, represent something that had been there, a concrete thing.  I told her that she could not represent me or anything at all, and she erroneously deemed this as a vicious slight of her abilities as an agent.  I asked her if I was any less of a writer if never write a word.  She replied that I could not take the form of writer unless I performed the function as such.

I decided to let it go; she would not understand since she is still in the thralldom of the word.  I can hardly divest myself of this baggage either, since I still think in words.  But let us tarry on this point, and not be ignorant of something as pure as time (which always gets messy and falsified when it becomes represented spatially).  I am still a writer even if I never write a word again, for I had written once…and I may write again, although doubtful.  The chair is no less a chair if no one ever sits in it again.

At the risk of misrepresentation, I must say that Ernest’s greatest achievement was posthumous and had nothing to do with the pram; his life was the catalyst in my finally surrendering all bondage to that nefarious kingdom of words, and so now I sit blissfully speechless…

 

 

                                                                                                         
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Ways of the Camoufleur                                  

by Jerry Vilhotti                                                                         
 

o Byrom you say you now want to be a writer making millions of dollars!  That shows how the super elite hiding deep inside their bunkers have brain washed you into thinking you could do what they are the most afraid of—being a thinking person!  Why do you think our dear politicians have fabricated the notion that there is a so called free education and you will be able to serve your country with your brain when they made sure your brain would have water drowning it from putting two thoughts together to vuck with pleasure One on the Other to come out to an understanding?  That's why they keep hate alive by having races and ethnic groups calling each other ugly names. Were your normal school teachers like priests not allowed to marry?  They weren't because that would have cost money and that's the real god in people's hearts and if there is a true God he will compassionately say all you bastards must go to the great poet's ninth circle of hell for you have betrayed yourselves and all others who trusted you!  Did you ever read Luis Bunuel's words where he said:  'In any society, the artist has a responsibility.  His effectiveness is certainly limited and a writer or painter cannot change the world.  But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive.  Thanks to them, the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts.  That small difference is very important.  When power feels itself totally justified and approved, it immediately destroys whatever freedoms we have left, and that is fascism.' You know my dear Byrom Hoover Bush, your great country is now in the womb of all that with no enjoyment.  You and all the phonies are being swirled down a toilet bowl but you think it's a ride in an amusement part!  And it was you who wanted to come to this city that will find itself one day in Dante's ninth circle because these so-called leaders sold the country out while wearing their flags and phony smiles!  Don't they see they're killing the very thing that is sustaining them?"  Olivia said, while they were in the nation's capitol on Olivia's dime in a hotel overlooking the Potomac River, using the tone his father struck when displaying his condescension honeyed with venom.

How he had embarrassed her when he did three of his pseudo TB coughing attacks making many people run for cover in a great panic and the he settled the Capitol police down who were going to shoot him dead thinking he was a Bunny Laden though being eight inches shorter than the terrorist by doing his speech therapist's suggestion before saying words that began with a consonant:  "Officers (whistle) we are (whistle) Americans (whistle) from Ohio!"  His wink made all fifty police persons cock their guns thinking he were going to spill the beans in his code about the hundreds of thousands of voters denied the vote; pulling off a second smoke and mirrors feat within five years ....

Olivia misunderstood Byrom's look of fear which was masking his deep concern that in fact he had used up all his capital and was going to be asked to leave her accommodations and he would be forced to go live once again in a marginal neighborhood to take on his roll of camouflage to allude definition and be caught by agents searching for him for the support payments he owed his wife with the four children of whom he knew for certain the last two were not his.

"Byrom.  Byrom you look at me with darting blinking eyes of love.  You think I'm far too wonderful to criticize and you always suck in your breath out of respect for me!"

It was moments like this he hated Berlin University educated Olivia, at least ten years his senior, and yet he realized if he were to make it by becoming one of her son's managers at one of his many custard stands in the great state of Our Kind of Democracy, Ohio—not far from Kent State where students got a good learning about disobeying authority—that "indeed" his father, The Old Warrior, often used that word and the expression "I'm, afraid" often in his dazzling display of superiority over those whom he felt inferior, his last chance for success would be dashed forever.

He too would have to watch his ways—if he were ever going to succeed in this survival of the fittest kind of world.

"(Whistle) let's (whistle) go (whistle) see (whistle) the (whistle) sights and our (whistle) great lea... lea...leader!"

" You decided all that by yourself?  Talk like a vucking human being!"

 

 

                                                                                                        
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The Curious Bathroom Incident                           

by John Gorman 

ut that still doesn’t explain why you treat your dad that way,” Laurie says to me.

“Well, it’s hard to explain,” I say, snapping the spaghetti into the pot.

We have one of those tiny pots that long spaghetti won’t fit into unless you snap it in half.  Usually I cook the bottom part first then whip the top over so that we have long strands, but she had me flustered with all the questions.

“There’s only one way I know how to explain it,” I say, “But you have to promise to let me tell you the whole way through.”

“Here we go again,” she says, “Just make sure you don’t skimp on the sauce.”

Laurie thinks I’m a monk the way I prepare things with such shameless simplicity.  She even bought me one of those brown robes, with the hood, it hangs in the bathroom, but I won’t wear the darn thing; instead I use it as a bathmat.

“You see, my mom stopped seeing her best friend after she accidentally walked in on her in the bathroom.”

“I thought you were going to tell me why you’re so mean to your dad.”

“I’ll get to that part, but I can only tell it this way.  Can you hang in there?”

“What do you think?”

Laurie had a legitimate gripe.  If she was going to become an official part of the family she needed to know the peculiarities that made us the Newtons.  She already knew some of the things that made us tick, which is why she still wore dresses when visiting my folks for Sunday brunch and made the effort to talk about quilts and evening bags with my mom and listened to my dad’s war stories with a straight face, even while I tickled her thigh under the table.

We’d been living together for three months before we got engaged.  We really hadn’t a clue what the other was like because we had diametrically opposed work schedules.  She worked the graveyard shift for a string of law firms because she made more money that way than doing her proofreading nine to five.  I was still subsidized by my folks as I was finishing up my Master’s in philosophy, something that had taken three years longer than it should have.  Laurie took the late shift hoping that she’d never have to see my mom dig out a handful of bills from the cookie jar when we visited them.

“It all started when my mom and her friend Molly, you know her, she’s the one who keeps thinking you’re Audrey Hepburn’s kindred spirit.”

“The one who has the beach bungalow in Ocean City, but never goes” Laurie says, “so why can’t we crash there?”

It’s true Laurie bares an uncanny likeness to Audrey Hepburn, specifically from Roman Holiday, only Laurie’s skin is bronzed, but like the star her hair is pinched back to the top of her head and it doesn’t muss as she dices the vegetables without making a peep.

“They were exchanging Christmas presents, in the middle of August, because they hadn’t seen each other in a while.  It was their birthday week too.  You could say they were killing a few birds with one stone.  They always told each other exactly what they wanted, clipped out pictures from catalogues in fact so that nobody was disappointed.”

“Sort of takes the meaning out of Christmas, don’t you think?” Laurie adds.

“It’s not as if she gave me my presents in August.”

***

Molly grew up in the very same tenement as my mother on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  Long before it was trendy.  Their building was full of Slavs.  You could smell stuffed cabbage and polish sausage from blocks away.  The Italians lived mainly below Third Street where mom preferred to do her dining and she received several invitations to Molly Cabella’s whenever her lanky brothers had early evening baseball games.  When the Cabella boys were home food was rationed for everybody else.

Back then kids lived for the summers cracking open the fire hydrants.  My mom was a tomboy, who in her day, could rip a Spalding two and half sometimes threes sewers long, armed with a stickball bat.  I found that hard to believe since she’s only five foot two in pumps.  Molly corroborated all the stories, but then again they’d told them together, God knows how many times, so how could you be certain what was fact from fiction.  They also loved to go to the local dances.  It’s hard to believe they went to Webster Hall, but back then there weren’t any fire-eaters, stilt-walkers or cage-dancers and there certainly wasn’t any Techno or Tribal music, they played Polkas.  The crowd was Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and all those other former Soviet sausage-eaters.

If you saw Mom and Molly together you’d think they were sisters.  They hated their own so much they pretended to be real ones.  One day they even pretended to cut their wrists to become bona fide blood sisters, spreading ketchup all over their wrists.  My grandmother freaked out.  No wonder I have such a warped sense of humor.

Now, my mom had what she happily referred to as staying power when it came to holding a grudge.  When her sister Tanya didn’t intervene when Laurie, who was just my girlfriend at the time, was stripped of her bouquet at my cousin’s wedding, mom didn’t talk to her sister for three years.  Mom didn’t know Laurie for more than two hours and already she was fending for her honor. This impressed Laurie, but it was the principle that mom was after.

***

The fact that Molly happened to be naked from the bottom down when my mom walked in wasn’t any big deal.  Although, if it had been the other way around I’m sure that mom would have had a conniption.  The great horror for my mom was seeing the strips of tissue festooning the toilet, acting as a makeshift seat cushion.  The implication was deplorable.  This was what you did in a public restroom, but in my mom’s house this was unfathomable, though I’m quite sure she did this wherever she visited, including relative’s homes, especially her sister Tanya’s.

Six months after the incident mom saw Molly haggling with a fruit vendor.  Molly was known to pull a scam on fruit vendors that involved a thumb-thrust till she punctured the melon or whatever she wanted for half price.  She had about a ninety percent success rate.  For that reason mom wouldn’t go food shopping with the woman, but she didn’t drop her as a friend because of it.

Window shopping was their big thing.  They could waste whole days loafing outside windows admiring the displays, imagining the glistening jewelry on their fingers, fancy outfits hanging in their closets.  The only thing mom preferred more than window shopping was going into those fancy shops and buying a thing or two.  Molly wouldn’t set foot in Bergdorf’s or Bendel’s; it was too intimidating for her. So she waited outside with her mustard-drenched pretzel.  She was always surprised when my mom came out with new toys, when she herself couldn’t even make it past the sales assistants.

Mom was in her shining glory whenever she led the sales people into believing she was a wealthy customer.  She had it down pat.  I know firsthand how she rejected certain items, not her style, wrong for her skin color, fragrances that were too cloying or simply outmoded.

This time however, Molly wasn’t smushing any fruit, she was instead eating a Golden Delicious right from the cart.  The whole situation was flummoxing.  How could she chew away at an apple, straight off the cart, from a sniffling vendor with cruddy fingernails?  She chomped away without a care in the world, without even wiping it down with a Wash and Dry.

Yet this very same woman, best friends with my mom over decades couldn’t sit on her toilet seat without covering it with tissues.  There had to be a good explanation for it, but mom didn’t care to know.  The same way she didn’t want to know why my Aunt didn’t intervene when my Laurie got stripped of her bridal bouquet.

Instead of asking her friend or even chastising her in front of the fruit vendor she just passed on by and I nodded my head to Molly who had that kind of expression as if her feet were being trampled by an elephant but didn’t want to make a fuss.

When we got home she blamed my dad for not fixing the lock on the bathroom door, which was always coming off anyway because it was one of those cheap screw-on jobs the ones you might see lurking out in the woods attached to a wooden slab of an outhouse.

“I can hammer it in but it’s just going to pop back out,” dad said, with a nail pursed between his teeth.

“You can’t do anything right,” mom said.

“Here, then take a crack for yourself.”

Dad pretended to lob the hammer in mom’s direction, but she made a fist.

There wasn’t anything for me to do but laugh.  To tell you the truth I got a terrible charge from watching them bicker over stupid things like that.  It was funnier than any of the comic books I read and if I played my cards right sometimes I was able to shake both of them down and get some new toys or stay up later than I was typically allowed to.

In the middle of dinner I noticed something peculiar.  It really never dawned on me before, but as dad unsuccessfully jabbed at the string beans on mom’s plate because she kept pulling it away I got to thinking that my mom had her own kind of cootie consciousness.  Dad stopped trying after a while then I pushed the soda bottle in front of my plate so that he wouldn’t breathe on my food.

When he was done and it was only my mom and myself I couldn’t keep from asking her.

“Why is it that you won’t let dad eat off your plate?”

Mom made that craggy face of hers the one she usually reserved for garbage detail whenever my dad and I fled the scene.  She held the salt shaker mid air and I could almost hear the pistons turning in her head.

“It’s, I don’t know, just one of those things.”

“But you kiss him don’t you, it just doesn’t make any sense to me.  I mean, I know I joke around with him, not to breathe on my food, but it’s all just a game.”

***

Two days later Molly was back over the house for tea with my mom.  The two of them were carrying on as though they were still both a couple of schoolgirls.  It was nice that she accepted her friend again, it was less of a burden on me so I didn’t have to feel guilty whenever I said hello to her on the streets.

Mom still wouldn’t let dad eat off her plate so I guess I overcompensated by leaving the soda bottles and milk cartons off the dinner table so that dad could have an uncluttered view.

***

“I hate your mom,” Laurie tells me, “that’s it, no more brunches!”

“Be reasonable,” I say.

“I am she’s not.  To think with what your dad has to put up with.”

“Believe me she puts up with plenty too, it’s just, people are weird.”

“Ugh, you’re so like your mother.”

“Take for instance the way you always stick your tuna fish in my face when you know I hate it.”

“But that’s silly because it’s delicious.”

“To you, but to me it’s yuck.  You never use my toothbrush, even that time yours fell into the toilet bowl.”

“Sharing somebody’s toothbrush is disgusting.”

“We all know how far our slippery slope slides.  It doesn’t make us bad people, just people.”

I do the dishes with a bit of a smirk, because I hate to do them.  Laurie winces noticing the rubber gloves draped over our diplodocus-necked faucet.  No cold water again just molten hot.

 

 

                                                                                                      
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Initiation of the Fat Kid                                                

 by Joseph Musso, Jr.

was never popular in school—even the teachers had it in for me.  I remember one day in the third grade, during gym, the class was in the playground.  I was on the swings, dormant, and asked the teacher to push me. “No,” she said.

She went on to explain that she might hurt herself because I was too heavy, which meant fat.  So I “pushed” myself, by swinging my legs until I had worked up enough speed.

Later, I saw her pushing the skinny kids.

Ever since, I have disliked teachers.

Call it an initiation.

***

Later that year, I was invited to a birthday party.  In the boy’s room, at the sinks, he smugly came up to me and said it was a mistake.  There were three Joe’s in my class.  He was one of them and I was one of them.  He said, “It wasn’t supposed to be you.”

When I got home, I told my mother about it.

That night I heard her on the phone, and later of course I didn’t go to the party.

***

After school one day, I fell off the monkey bars and tore the skin from under my chin.  There was about a four-inch by four-inch wound. I cried, and they called my mother.

I wore a bandage for a while, and was famous in class.  At first, when kids would ask, I told them I was in a fight with three fifth graders.  I told them I saved a baby bird from a cut-throat mob of tabby cats.  I told them I jumped off the roof of my house like Tarzan.

I told them, I told them, I told them.

I was a star.

The cute girl in class came up to me.  She rubbed my arm, and offered to share her lunch. She smiled at me.

Then, another kid ruined it for me.  “He fell off the monkey bars,” he told everybody.

***

I was walking home from school one day.  A girl in the eighth grade began teasing me.  She used my last name as if I were a bug. I threw a stone.

At home, crying, I threw myself on the bed.  My mother saw, and asked me what happened.  When I told her, she read to me from the bible.

Somehow, I felt better.

***

Years later, when I was in my twenties and in my prime, I saw that same girl in a luncheonette.  She was waiting tables.  It had been a long time, and at first she didn’t recognize me.  When she came up to my table with a menu, my penis was hard.

I asked her, “Do you remember me?”

 She squinted, and finally said, “You’re the boy I used to tease.”

 I was curious about her, and mentioned the motel around the corner.  She said, “I’m not desperate, you know.”

We didn’t go to the motel, but I left a big tip.  Somehow, it felt like I had just paid for sex.  With a hard eye, she watched me leave, scraping the money off the table.  I wondered how many kids she had, how old they were.

And if she teased them until they ran home crying.

***

I saw that teacher again too, the one who wouldn’t push me in the swing.  Life sometimes has a way of completing the picture.  The rocks in your life, the ones you stumbled over, often end up in front of you again.

You can either stumble again, or step over, and keep going.

It was at a wedding for a friend I hadn’t seen in years.  When I received the invitation, I asked my girlfriend at the time if she wanted to go.  I told her, “There’s an open bar.”

 The teacher was older, and had gained weight.  She seemed so young back then, just a child herself.  My girlfriend got drunk and went over to her table.  Slurring her words, she told Teacher, “You should see him in bed!”

 I loved it.

***

Later, when it was time to toss the bouquet, my girlfriend embarrassed herself.  In front of everyone, I picked her up off the floor. A dog had gotten into the hall, an Irish Setter.  I held out a hand.

My girlfriend came to.

One of them nipped my finger.

 

 

                                                                                                        
 
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Remembering the Nam                               

by R. T. Tracy   

                                                                       
Conclusion 

                                                                                                                                                                          

The police car drove slowly by at about 2 a.m.  Murphy shined the searchlight onto the park bench.  They could see Luke's sleeping form, his chest rising slowly, rhythmically.  The driver switched the light off and the car drove on past.  As it turned a corner and drove slowly out of the square, Luke moaned in his sleep, and turned over.

The dreams were once again upon him.

Blood red dreams, as vivid now as they'd been thirty-five years before, when he'd awakened screaming from sleep, scaring his new wife into insomnia, sowing the seeds for an early divorce.  Horrid dreams of throbbing flames filling the sky, a blast of heat on his skin, the hollow thud of a mortar round being dropped into the barrel, the penetrating outburst of an M16 opening up on the camp perimeter, screams of the wounded, shouts for a medic, the run, at break neck speed, through a tent hospital as it tumbled in upon him.

And then....silence.  The body, almost unrecognizable as a human being.  He knew her only by the name on the uniform remnant that he found in what had once been the operating room.  It was a direct hit on the hospital tent, the only tent in the camp painted with large red crosses on each side.  A deliberate outrage on Christmas Eve.

He knew the South Vietnamese Rangers guarding the camp would not rest until they had hunted down the V.C. responsible for this cruel attack.  He almost felt sorry for what would happen to them.  Almost.

And then, in the feverish nightmare of his dream, the enemy soldiers were being crucified upon three crosses, in the Roman fashion, hands and feet nailed to rough bamboo planks, heads hanging down, upper bodies writhing in agony.

Luke whimpers in his sleep.  The light of battle seems to be growing brighter.  It expands and fills the square.  He opens his eyes.  His breathing is heavy, labored.  He is almost blinded by the light that fills the square.  Is he still dreaming?  Where is that music coming from?  A familiar Christmas carol, but which one?  Why can't he identify it?  His glance travels rapidly around the square.  All the familiar objects seem to be suffused in a glow of some sort, an unearthly light.  A movement that he notices only with peripheral vision captures his attention.  Familiar, somehow.  Where?  When?

The movement of an arm, the motion of a head tossed back, of hair falling into place.  Susan's hair.  He remembers.  He knew her habits and mannerisms better than he knew his own.  He looks rapidly into the middle of the square, wide awake now.  His mind is as intensely focused as on the night of the mortar attack, forty years before.

He jumps to his feet, his eyes enormous, his mouth open, his breath halted.  No, this can't be happening.  I must be dreaming.

There, in the middle of the square, seated upon a pedestal that once supported a statue of bronze, is Susan, as he had known her forty years ago:  young, nubile, smiling, laughing, loving life.  Happy merely to exist.

She raises her arm and laughs at him, that familiar laugh that he loved so passionately as a young man.

"C'mon, slowpoke," she says.  "We haven't much time."

Luke leaps up from the bench, faster than he had moved in decades.  "I must be dreaming," he says to himself, "but this is a fine, pleasant dream.  As though I were in my early twenties again."

"You're not dreaming, Luke. "This is reality," says Susan. "Not the reality you're used to, but a valid reality, nevertheless.  This is our reality, if you want it to be."

He looks around, realizing that he's not in his home town any longer.  A large harbor, tall blue mountains in the distance, clear water of aqua green, brown Army tents, gray Naval vessels anchored out in the sun drenched bay.  Cam Ranh Bay.  He is in Vietnam once more, he has regained the full glow of his youth.

Susan jumps down from the pedestal and begins walking in his direction.  "I don't know why you're here now, but I've wanted to see you again.

"Am I dead?"  Luke asks.

"Not if you don't want to be," Susan says.

"Then where am I?"

"With me, as I've wanted for the longest time.  Oh, by the way, you're not responsible."

"Not responsible?  For what?"

"For my death.  I had to stay late anyway.  The girl who was supposed to relieve me got sick and I had to stand her watch.  You didn't know that.  You were wounded and flown out immediately.  It wasn't your fault.  It was my time."

Luke felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted off of his shoulders.  He felt lighter than the sunshine that filled the harbor scene around him.  He began to smile.  It really was Susan.

"You're alive," says Luke.  "My gosh, I can't believe it."

"Not in your sense of the word.  I'm not alive in your understanding of what that means.  You are though."

"Then where are we?  How can we talk with each other?"

"You're an immortal spirit, Luke.  We all are.  The essence endures.  We're in a different dimension.  We're outside of space and time as you would think of that reality."

"But how can that be?  We are creatures limited to space and time.  How could we possibly exist outside of space and time?  That's impossible for human beings."

"Unless the Being who created space and time, a reality so vast the human mind can scarcely comprehend its size, so wills this miracle to happen."

"Are we in ... Heaven?"

"I don't know," said Susan.  "Maybe.  We're somewhere.  You aren't dreaming.  But don't ask me to explain it.  I don't really understand it myself."

“What do we do now?"

"We'll know, you'll see."

"But Susan, I fear dying...."

"That's because you're still flesh, and the flesh clings blindly to the only life it knows.  In the fullness of eternity, the life of the flesh is less than a blink of an eye.  You shouldn't fear the end of the flesh.  Instead enjoy what is given to you while you have it, and help others to enjoy their lives."

"If we can stay here together, I won't fear a thing."

"I'm not in control of that.  I don't know why you're here now."

"Well if...." began Luke.

"Wait!"  Susan said, holding up her hand with its palm outstretched.  "It isn't time yet, you're to return to the park bench."

"To do what?"

"You'll know.  I must go now."

“But Susan," began Luke, only to feel himself being shaken, and a loud noise, as of somebody shouting into his ear.  Then a light slap on the face.

“Hey buddy, wake up."  It was the policeman shaking him by the shoulders.

Luke opened his eyes to a gray, cloud-filled winter sky and the face of Murphy, grinning like the Cheshire cat of Wonderland.

"Hurry up, you haven't much time;" said the policeman.

“For what?"

"Buddy, Sedgewick told me your whole story.  My old man was an alkie too.  Listen.  They're gonna put you into a county hospital, or maybe jail.  You gotta vacate this area.  Now!"

"But I have no money, no place to go."

Murphy's grin widened as he handed the vagrant a thick wad of fifty dollar bills.

"From Sedgewick," he said.  "I told you he was your friend.  More than five thousand smackeroos.  He said you know someone in one of the Carolinas who keeps inviting you down."

"Yeah, an old pal from the Army."

"Go now," said Murphy.  "Today.  Immediately.  Tomorrow is too late."

"But I need a wash and a shave and some new clothes."

“See that suitcase?"

"Yeah."

“There's some fresh duds in there.  I'll give you a lift to the YMCA.  Sedgewick said to rent a room, clean up, put on the new clothes and enjoy a Christmas dinner at the restaurant across the street.  Then hang out until the 6 p.m. train to the City.  From there you can get an overnight Amtrak train to the Carolinas.  You have his cell phone number, right?"

"Yeah," said Luke.

“Once you're settled, call him.  He said he knows a few editors in that part of the country who'd be interested in your work."

“Why are you doing this for me?  You don't even know me."

"Sedgewick is a persuasive guy.  Besides, he told me about your hundred yard dash into a burning tent trying to save a nurse.  I was impressed.  And y'know what?”

"What?"

"My grandfather died in a state hospital.  I wouldn't wish that fate on anybody.  If I can save you from their clutches, it's worth the effort.

"Looks as if I have no choice," said Luke.  "Let's go."

"Alright," Murphy shouted, "Let's go."  His grin widened.

"And a Merry Christmas to everybody," said the policeman.

***

That afternoon, following a sumptuous Christmas meal at a cozy restaurant magnificently decorated for the season, Luke went for a walk.

He still had a few hours to wait before the train to the City, so he walked all the way back to his favorite square, thinking about how polite the restaurant staff had been to him, and what a large tip he had left.  He smiled as he realized that a few hours earlier, before the shower and change of clothing, they would have kicked him out without hesitation.

"Been there, done that," he thought.  Nothing like hard core poverty to teach one the values of some people, he mused.

A light snow had begun falling, and when he arrived at Delancey Square ,the ground was covered with an inch of snow.

The square was lovely with the glow of carriage lamps and seasonal lights as a gray December afternoon wound down into a winter evening.  He thought of all the people in all of the houses and apartments around the square, and throughout the town, having their Christmas dinners, enjoying their families and friends, talking about the year that was, and the one to come.

And he thought about his dream.  Or was it a dream?  He remembered it as he remembered any reality event.  He remembered the youthful appearance of Susan.  All of the details of the event were as fresh in his conscious mind as any of his experiences of the past twenty-four hours.  Was it really a dream?

"You shouldn't fear the end of the flesh," she said.  "Instead enjoy what is given to you while you have it, and help others to enjoy their lives."

He looked briefly at the statue, resolving to help as large a number of people as possible to enjoy their lives, as he planned to enjoy the rest of his.

"Until we meet again," he said out loud, saluting the statue.  "And thanks."

The snowfall steadily increased as a sharp afternoon wind died down, replaced by the calmness of evening dusk.  The square seemed transformed in the quiet silence of falling snow.

Raising up his collar, and putting his hands into his pockets, Luke began walking in the direction of the railroad station.

 

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Carolyn Schlam Dirk van Nouhuys Jeremiah Stansbury

Amy Chace Christine Bruness Durlabh Singh

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Young Girl

Carolyn Schlam

 

 

The City

Carolyn Schlam

 

 

 

Lady with a Veil

Carolyn Schlam

 

 

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Shore

Dirk van Nouhuys

 

 

 

Ripples and Shadows

Dirk van Nouhuys

 

 

 

Blue Sky

Dirk van Nouhuys

 

 

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Delta Blues

Jeremiah Stansbury

 

 

 

The First Lady

Jeremiah Stansbury

 

 

 

Fly Away

Jeremiah Stansbury

 

 

 

Film Now Project

Jeremiah Stansbury

 

 

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Hand

Amy Chace

 

 

 

Dark

Amy Chace

 

 

 

Bleed On Your Drums

Amy Chace

 

 

 

Southern Rock

Amy Chace

 

 

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Frida

Christine Bruness

 

 

 

Psychedelic Sea Serpents

Christine Bruness

 

 

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Liberty Tiger

Durlabh Singh

 

 

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Mr. Bloom                                                                            by P. E. Boslet t wasn't Gordon's fault that the ceiling fell on Mr. Bloom's head.  As a matter of fact, Gordon wasn't even in his apartment directly overhead the night it happened.  But three years and four tenants after Gordon, old Mr. Bloom still pointed at his bald, scarred head, pointed in rage at the apartment above him, and muttered a mixture of Ukrainian oaths and "son of a beetch" and "Gordon," for whoever happened to be living above him at the time was still "Gordon" to Mr. Bloom. Mr. Bloom was crazy.  Everybody knew it, although newcomers to the building weren't sure if it was from the falling plaster or if he'd always been that way.  But everyone liked him anyway—everyone, that is, but whoever happened to unwittingly move in above him or whoever had a bedroom on the same airshaft as his and therefore had to listen to his loud, drunken obscenities every night. He'd lived in the same one-room apartment at 413 E. 9th Street for 36 years (in telling of it, he always mysteriously held up four fingers) and planned to die there.  But after all those years, the one room remained stark and almost empty.  The accomplishments and accumulated possessions of the owner's long life were represented by the apartment's sole personal item:  an incongruously artistic, gigantic black-and-white photograph of a toothless, bleary-eyed Mr. Bloom, smiling down benevolently from above the fireplace. This wealth Mr. Bloom generously shared with all who passed by, for, except when it was very cold, his door was always open.  He sat in the doorway in his wheelchair, sometimes dressed in his filthy gray pants ("Laundry won't wash, cleaner won't clean"), sometimes only in his filthy underwear, revealing an ancient, rusty, scratched and dented metal leg attached to his own just below the flabby white flesh of his thigh.  He sat there all day:  he ate there, he napped there, but mainly he just sat, waiting for visitors (he had a strange assortment of friends from his and neighboring buildings who came to look in on him or leave their keys with him for the plumber or the electrician, and twice a week the Public Health Lady came to clean the apartment and him) or waiting for tenants who forgot their front door key to ring his buzzer so he could ring back to let them in.  Letting people into the building was his sole function in life, and performing it gave him great pleasure.  And he performed well, with pride and gusto: he let the buzzer ring long and loud, sometimes long after the person at the door was inside, sometimes even when no one had rung his buzzer, just in case someone was about to. When he wasn't sitting in his doorway eating or sleeping or cursing at the long-gone Gordon or pushing his buzzer, he was sitting on the front door stoop.  It took him a very long time to drag himself the few steps to get out there, but his efforts were amply rewarded by warm greetings from all the neighborhood old-timers and even a few of the newer residents.  Mr. Bloom was a Fixture.  He sat there, his battered old gray hat pulled down low, his metal leg gleaming in the sun between his pants and his old black shoe (he never bothered wasting a sock on that foot), his gnarled, spotted hands clutching his pipe and a can of beer, his beady, blood-shot little pig-eyes seemingly observing the activity of the street. In fact, he was rarely aware of what was happening before him or who was walking by unless someone called his name.  Then he'd grin his insane toothless grin, his little eyes would become even littler, and he would raise one arm in a sort of feeble, shaky, half-clenched fist position and wave at himself.  It was a friendly gesture.  Sometimes he accompanied it with a guttural, gurgly "Hal-lo" or, mysteriously, "T'ank you."  Aside from curse words, in which he was amazingly fluent, those were his best-mastered English words.  He could also say "Gordon" and "ceiling" quite well, and had even been heard to say "World War Three" on occasion.  He actually talked quite a bit, possibly in some form of English, but few people were able to understand him. One day, while raising his hand in his fist-wave to a child who was in fact mocking him with a big "Hal-lo," Mr. Bloom toppled over sideways, his head coming down hard on the cement, his old gray hat somehow remaining firmly in place, his good left leg jerking straight out, his metal leg clanking against the step.  The old lady across the street who day and night peered suspiciously from behind the flowers in her window called the police, thinking he was just drunk.  The police had all heard of Mr. Bloom, and many knew him personally, either from visits prompted by complaining newcomers to the airshaft which they shared with Mr. Bloom or in response to his constant and usually unfounded complaints about the noise that the latest Gordon was making upstairs (a complaint which caused much distress to the upstairs apartment's occupants as they were often visited by the police at three or four in the morning as they were sleeping or making love or ingesting drugs). In a few minutes, the police were at Mr. Bloom's building again, and in another few minutes were clearing a path through the crowd of people which had gathered so that the ambulance men could carry him to the ambulance, hat still jammed on his head. It was too late.  The strain of Mr. Bloom's last friendly and, ironically, unseen act (before Mr. Bloom could raise his arm, the little boy had long since run off) had placed upon his heart the final bit of exertion that it could take.  He died in the ambulance, moaning in a universal tongue and repeatedly muttering in some Slavic tongue a word which sounded to the efficient and dispassionate ambulance attendants something like "Gordon."   The author in 2001 © 1968  by P. E. Boslet   Return to Contents Return to top of page