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Prose
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Angry Young Men versus Furious
Females Saskia van der Linden
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Remembering the Nam R. T. Tracy
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Young Girl
Carolyn Schlam |
Mr. Bloom P. E. Boslet
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CONTRIBUTORS
Priscilla Barton (poetry) has appeared in Red Coral, Some Words, Shades
of December, The Rose and Thorn, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Falling Star
Magazine, Rustlings of the Wind, Lily, Pebble Lake Review, The Hypertexts, Can
We Have Our Ball Back? and various other small prints. She was
nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Award. She resides in New York and works in
the mental health field. She is madly in love with poetry, and sometimes
it loves her back. AntaresStarr@aol.com |
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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
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
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.
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 conventionMadre, 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.
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.”
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 heatI 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 sweeteach 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 trainI 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)
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.
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.
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?
by J. D. Nelson
Sloppy Joe
& french-fries
No milk
money
Warm
fountain
water
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?
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
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.
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.
by Terry Lowenstein
as september arrives
mantled
in a cocoon of fogfall peels back
the sticky web
of dawnand exposes
the raw
energy of lifeclouds
shake off raindrops
that fermentflowers rouse
the grass ripples
households stirand our slumberous cat
yawns and stretches
and seeks out an unmade bed
by Terry Lowenstein
pandora's box has reappearedanamnesis again echoes
and atlas awakened shudders
as elusive truth is unearthediterate past and present collide
and feeble hope rides dragonfly wings
across an unfathomable ocean of lament
by Thomas D. Reynolds
On the lowest limb,
hind legs gripping bark,
his pet squirrel stretchesfor 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 handupon 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 gripthe dark furrows
and endless coils
of my father’s hand.
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.
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.
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 cobblestonesGlistening.
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.
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.
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 thatwaves good-bye tends to hover in midair
just a little longer, and fingers seem toalways touch the mouth, in search of
that last remembered kiss.
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.
by Priscilla Barton
She had something in her eye, and
he leaned in to help. He heard a leaffall 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 andSaturn, held his breath as he fell in every
direction. On the tip of his finger was asingle eyelash, proving the existence of
forests, unexplored jungles, and secretsthat hold to the roots of a desert flower.
She laughed and blew the lash from hisfingertip. Shaken, he began to mourn
losing even the smallest part of her.
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 watchedthem 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 SheehanInvariance Kane X. Faucher
Ways of the Camoufleur Jerry Vilhotti
The Curious Bathroom Incident John Gorman
Initiation of the Fat Kid Joseph Musso, Jr.
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
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.
Return to Prose
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.
Return to Prose
by Kane X. Faucher
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…
&n
