Prose
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Let
Me Tell You About a Life
Paul Beckman
SerialThe Outlaws Barnali Saha |
Art
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Seven
Untitled Works Nathan
Combs |
Good luck, America Bill Britton
Prose
|
|
Let
Me Tell You About a Life
Paul Beckman
SerialThe Outlaws Barnali Saha |
|
Seven
Untitled Works Nathan
Combs |
Good luck, America Bill Britton
by Robert H. Demaree, Jr.
We have seen our girls get honor,
Helped them raise up their young.
We have watched the sparkle of silver and blue
Along the Oyster River.
We have heard Leontyne Price
Sing the “Vissi d’arte.”
Fashion
by Robert H. Demaree, Jr.
Our grandson, starting high school,
Wants to be sure he has the right book bag.
I think back to the salt & pepper sports coat
In which I went off to college,
Random flecks of this and that
Against a background I recall
As a vaguely purplish blue.
Mortifying.
I paid to have the pleats
Removed from gray flannel slacks,
That useless belt and buckle
Appended to the back.
(This was 1955,
As you perhaps have guessed.)
When I finally got myself
A proper muted brown
Herringbone jacket,
It was from the wrong store.
The Fishing Boat That Never Returned
by John Grey
One fishing boat did come back.
Its was the “Susannah.”
It’s decks were drenched.
Its nets were torn to shreds.
The crew stumbled onto shore
like drunken men,
didn’t even bother to unload
their scant catch,
dropped into the soggy arms
of anxious loved ones,
were hauled away into waiting cars.
Not one of those who walked,
heads bent, up the winding road
toward the hilltop church,
asked of me, in strict confidence,
to save my poems
for the “Susannah”
and its miracle.
They kept on wailing,
“What about the ‘Bonnie Doon’?”
Spider and the Shower
by John Grey
I cannot bring myself to kill the spider.
It crawls up the side of the bathroom wall,
fighting shower spray as it struggles toward
the safety of the ceiling.
Maybe I’m like Robert Bruce,
too busy drawing inspiration
from its perilous crime
to notice it’s a creepy-Crawly.
Or could be it’s a compromise on my part.
I’m willing to let this monster live
because, behind the scenes,
its arachnid hunger
rids the darkest alcoves of bugs.
Or is it that my respect for all life
extends even to these critters
with more legs than there are seasons,
absolutely no aesthetic value,
but living and breathing beings for all that.
Suddenly, a stray drop of water
whacks the spider full on,
drops its semi-weightless body to the
bottom of the tub
where it’s spun, by swirling water,
around and around
and down the plug hole abyss.
There are many reasons why
I cannot bring myself to kill the spider.
But there’s just the one explanation.
String of Pearls
by John Grey
The string of pearls rolls
around in the palm of my hand.
The third eye of Buddha
so they tell me.
A symbol of Christ. Of Mary.
A favored jewel of Venus.
And didn’t Cleopatra
drink a toast of a dissolved pearl
to Antony, her lover.
But then there’s
the teardrop symbolism.
A sorrow frozen hard.
Beautiful but indifferent
to the eye it fell from.
I return the pearls
to their owner.
I do it gladly, reluctantly.
She takes it thankfully,
guardedly.
Worth is once again conflicted.
It leaves me grasping.
It goes for her throat.
by A. J. Huffman
You lead me
outside the night.
And I burn.
Before your eyes.
You smile.
You like to watch.
The colors streaming
from my skin.
Not smoke exactly.
But close enough
to make me believe
the water I’m laying in
is my friend.
Resolutions
by A. J. Huffman
Champagne.
And death.
Fix your bubbles
in my fist.
A twist.
A shake.
A splash.
A crash.
Is all it takes
to get your wish.
Back
from my lips.
And the grip
they have
on your throat.
by Isabel Kestner
We have no hearts to sell here,
only bad dreams and make-believe.
You can buy the wings, made of
swan feathers drowned in the sea
and sewn together with vain
intentions and bad weather.
You see, here, we can only
sell you the glitter.
When Wishes End
by Isabel Kestner
I wanted to tell you how I could
swirl with gold laced indigo hands
and sand castles in mountain hills.
Wanted to shine in sky, but as winds
hurricane, hearts sing screams and
ashes dust my empty hands
Control
by Isabel Kestner
Lights a cigarette, likes the fire,
smoke's a wonder haze he knows.
Wishes the wind was his,
hates how he always knows
what's coming in the air,
how it's all beyond his hands.
He lights another cigarette,
likes just a little control. .
Sick Prayers
by Isabel Kestner
My paper moon hangs with my
rosary off the headboard.
Belief in itself is a strange thing,
an odd blend of ingredients;
need and fantasy, all those
unanswered prayers, the bicycle
God didn't get you for your
birthday, and all the miracles;
the odds of Russian roulette, the
car that died two blocks from home,
the scarcity of heroin in your
most desperate years, the pills
that should have killed you,
but didn't. You think that
maybe God was there, just not
answering your prayers. And
they were such sick prayers.
In Midnight
by Isabel Kestner
I wanted to take the sun
into the palms of my pale hands,
press it to my chest,
a fire to burn darkness into light.
Caressing the candle, fingers
full of blisters, the only flame
I could touch. Three years
into midnight, it looked like
the sun.
by Joanna Kurowska
the soldier plays tough--though
his mustache still refuses to grow
on his face, eagerly shaved
not so long ago; now he is busy
killing the evil people
mother’s “darling, don’t be late”
still echoes in his ears
tears pressing from under his eyelids
he waits until his voice calms
and says, “bad guys watch out!”
still, those unmanly tears,
this baby fear that “us”
does not equal “just”, bother him
so he swallows his saliva and shoots
the baby in his heart, right in the heart
Untitled
for B.
by Joanna Kurowska
a star in your hand,
you initiate star wars
a cross in my hand
I set off to crusades
we will yet meet
on the sharp edge
of the blade that pierces
the earth’s tender flesh
The Wall—Incarnation
by Joanna Kurowska
the wall sometimes becomes human
it covers itself with a coat of skin,
puts on gloves of hands
when you touch it, it accepts the caress
motionless--smooth and hot
lofty like the August sky
you must push your hand deeper still
into the crevice where the heart throbs
to feel the fangs of cold
the wall is creeping forward and up and sideways
in silence interrupted only
by the rustling of stony scruples
Silence
by Joanna Kurowska
this sudden silence
comes like a stranger
bereft of the tongue’s impatience
the lips’ excursions
the fingers’ cleverness
the skin’s warm pools
after all the I-love-you-s
and you-look-great-s
at first it seems oppressive
my breath withheld
slowly, I begin to discern
silence’s love-message
A Stain Glass
by Joanna Kurowska
mark cries loud
in the train, an old woman nibbles on a bun
eva washes her long copper hair
in the karaśnik lake
the wolves howl
inside the stove’s throat
by Jennifer LeBlanc
What thundercloud has come through here
and flung the woman’s tears onto the angel’s face?
On the stained glass window, the angel gestures boldly
as the woman turns away, arms held out in protest.
No, she seems to say. Please leave me alone. Go away.
It is four months, now, you have been asking me
and my answer is the same every day.
I thought there might be silence
when the storm calmed down,
the woman dropped her guarding arms,
and the angel spoke, pausing
a moment before commencing
to make sure he had her trust,
her attention,
and then mentioning her tired will
from the constant fight, would it not be better?,
the angel would secure the woman’s consent,
her grief-bent back pressed with more weight.
Ancestor Pantoum
by Jennifer LeBlanc
I want to go to Athenry’s grounds
and find the place you were born,
open the door to the ancestral house
and smell the soil of the dirt floor.
Finding the place you were born
would mean a table in the dining room,
the smell of soil from the dirt floor
your mother’s delivery room perfume.
On the table in the current dining room
would be a vase and crocheted runner,
your mother’s occasional perfume
never known to the current owners.
A vase and crocheted runner,
my grandmother might have from you.
I pilgrimage to this memory-owner
because I need to know, and know true.
My grandmother might have from you
secrets from the ancestral house.
I need to know, and know true,
I want to go to Athenry’s grounds.
by Abigale Louise LeCavalier
The core of the apple
is salt,
bitter seeds
and though skin,
the browning of exposed flesh.
A truth begets rumor
in the ears of people
not in the “know.”
Left to make evaluations
and comments
with information
from the mouth of manipulation.
And a duck will always be a duck.
Turning the knife slowly
from a well lit corner
of cyberspace.
Letting blood
stain the moon,
in a starless sky.
And what has been learned?
Nothing but afternoon traffic
on the 8 or the 805,
stop and go,
stop and go.
With the growing anticipation
that something will come of this,
even if it’s the death
of flowers
outside the door.
Being tickled
by the fingers of the devil.
Graduation
by Abigale Louise LeCavalier
Passive aggressive sarcasm,
sedated;
listening to the sound
of someone else’s drum.
My head hurts in the mornings
another secret slipped out,
and I gather
broken pieces of my coffee cup,
like life
spread across
a cold hardwood floor.
As my cat purrs in purple
standing guard
at the bedroom door.
I can feel the gravity
of the situation.
And the bitter taste
of stale air.
I’ve graduated;
putting glass in my Chuck Taylors,
cutting the toes
I just painted pink.
Just Not Getting It
by Abigale Louise LeCavalier
A bottle of the neighbors
pink prescribed pills,
rattle as she runs by.
Knowing;
her loyalty
only goes so far.
She has a bone to pick
with the world,
with the sun,
showing every unusual detail
of her face.
“Pleased to meet you!”
is not in her vocabulary.
But she’ll smile
to get what she wants.
And she doesn’t talk much,
just spits tobacco
in a Styrofoam cup.
When she has a cup
to spit in to.
by Duane Locke
When I want to recall the unseen
In what is called “a seen life,”
Although no life is ever seen,
Only surmised,
Guessed at, approximated,
Surrogated, I recall the long,
Thick boards of a warehouse platform.
It was during my bicycle days, a
Long time ago when no bicycle rider
Ever
Wore a helmet.
I would ride through a desolated,
Abandoned part of Tampa and
Pause to contemplate an abandoned warehouse,
Once used for profit, now deserted.
To me,
Its dull glow shined as if a shrine.
It became a sacred place.
I thought of it as my cathedral.
Inside was the void, totally emptiness,
Except for a circular iron band,
That once was one of the holders
That held together a barrel.
One edge of the band was folded-over,
The other sharp. It emitted a blue
Mystic luminous glow when touched
By light coming through a crack.
What impressed me most
Was the loading platform,
It was still covered white with spilt flour
Held down by the gold of spilt molasses.
I thought of it as parchment
Upon which to write a manuscript.
It was a manuscript, I have read my biography
On it many times. Each time what was supposed
To be same was different. There is no sameness
In this world, sameness is a fantasy. Nothing
Can be repeated.
Yes, I have read my ever-changing biography
On this parchment many times, this parchment
That was spilt flour glued to a platform
By the gold of spilt molasses.
Later on, the warehouse was tore down
And replaced by a Disco, where no one
Had natural colored hair. All hair was
Dyed, green, vermilion, purple. I suppose
These colors became the author of
Many biographies.
The Disco went out of date, was torn down,
Replaced by an asphalt parking lot for a bank.
A Stroll Down
A Sidewalk
Where A Can Of Paint Was Spilt
On The Way To A Grocery Store
by Duane Locke
What was near on sidewalk where
Curb loses
Its mica-speckled non-
Image
Reflecting mirrors to become
Floating silvers, embedded
Although apparitional arising
Out of a soft gray rough surface
To become a slant down onto
The mind finding an absolute, concrete,
The street
Was
Spilt red paint. A whole can full. Its impasto,
An airplane photo
Of
A red mountain top, wrinkled, once
Being an ancient river bottom.
The perception, intensely attentive,
Was an ordination,
A de-ordonnance,
Logic became illegal and the law
Was the hitherto- unknown, a defiance
Of everything that had been
Spoken--the frantic false facts
Called in street wisdom
And in college classroom lectures.
Truth.
I felt I was every instrument in
A symphony orchestra playing
“The Ode to Joy.”
After Leaving
Amsterdam
Where I Gazed At Chicken Wire
Displayed As A Work Of Art
On A Wall Of The Art Moderne Museum
by Duane Locke
Meadow meander,
A memory,
A puddle mist
Arose
Slightly. Some times
Higher when curled. Arose
Like an aria in an opera, a
Tenore grazie pianamissio,
To a Lapwing’s ankle.
A leg’s darkness, now amorphous,
Appears in the mist transparency.
Mist ceased it climb, and now
The border of the Lapwing’s dark straight leg
Was cerulean blue.
There were at least twenty
Lapwings still, motionless by silver-surfaced
Puddles that morning in Holland.
I recalled T.S. Eliot used the Lapwing
As an image in one of his poems,
But it used as did Donne a bird,
Turning an existing perception
Of a living thing into an allegory.
Eliot turned the bird into a signified,
A flightless life, Donne into a cross.
Instead of transforming a Lapwing
In something other than a Lapwing,
I will
Subdue
The lie-imposing capacity of the human mind,
And let
The Lapwing,
Up to ankles in mist, a Ding au Sich,
Transform me.
I Was Thinking
About
A Sociological Self
And The Narcissus Story
This poem is for Constance Stadler because
She loved Wallace Steven’s word combination,
“Chinese Chocolate.”
by Duane Locke
Should an argument be begun
To augment
My declining-market abstractions, or
Ut pictura
, to be
Horatian in 21st century many-stadium Tampa.
Should I underpin
With something sino, my deficiency
In meta-narration caused by Lyotard.
Should I, for example, for Connie, insert Chinese choreographers.
Should I simulate a style that makes my words steady
And not slippery. Or should I sow
My wild notes by speaking in tongues. Glossolalia
Is a globe-trotter.
I am constantly being distracted by glancing out
Through the glass doors of my balcony
At the Chinese chiaroscuro of the Chinaberry,
Or inside
At my neo-classical chinoiserie chair.
Should I do what is au courant and easy
Write about not having a self. I could
Quote Charles Taylor or Thomas Metzinger.
I could start figurative, write “I sing of
An armless man who constantly caressed
Guavas.” Or I could write vita altra:
Thomas Traherne seeking his enclosed
Secret self. But I am wary that it might
Turn out to be a post-Ovidian
Allegorical poem with an extra-terrestrial
Cousin of a chameleon confessing
His cavalier life-style.
Sur-symbolist style about the
Afterlife of the nymph Echo
After the disappearance of Narcissus.
Rumble Seat
by Duane Locke
It was a recall, a visualization on the one
Of the screens in the many home theaters of the brain,
With an off-screen commentary coming from a place unseen,
A historic flashback to a night of black-hooded gulls
Asleep in rows on a cement balustrade.
Strong winter winds uplifted feathers from small white bodies.
And we, even obsolete in the past, sat is what is now obsolete,
A rumble seat.
Chilly air blued our faces, we had blue faces like the blue faces
In early Picassos. Her young face even looked like
The face of the skinny woman in a loose slip holding up
A blue iron over a blue ironing board. My face,
Although smooth and young, felt like a blued wrinkled face
Of a white-haired guitarists failing to play a blue note
On a brown guitar.
Although completely normal, I felt deformed, although six feet,
A dwarf. Perhaps she saw me as the dwarf in a Velasquez
Waiting to entertain with a somersault an infanta. I don’t know
What she felt, she who hid the gold twist of her hair under
A large wool hockey cap.
It was not her concealment in wool that precluded my understanding.
I never understood what she was feeling
When she wiggled in a bikini during summer on beaches.
She was always inarticulate, although she a large vocabulary.
It would take a master descriptivist of in articulation
Like William Faulkner to suggest more than what was said
From her minimal utterances.
Between us on the rumble seat sat my roller skates,
Leather shoes dyed white, with riveted wheels.
I gazed at the wheels
That were said to be round, but appeared to my perception
As ovals.
That night when alone I burned my skates.
The leather flames, sent out repellent scents.
The metal stayed intact, survived,
Scorched a brilliant gold.
by Joan McNerney
As if you could come so swiftly
unnoticed like butterflies tapping
wild flowers with soft yellow wings.
Appearing before me quietly
while morning mist curls through
coolness of mint-green spring.
You walking over roads through
fields where tree shadows make
heavy slants against the sun.
As alive as day...saying my name...
filling me up with the taste of you...
kissing my mouth awake again.
By touch and whisper how we would
imitate long leaves weaving, undulating
and finally surrendering to silence..
by David R. Morgan
Tartan slept most of the way there,
her chins spilling over onto her scales
in green tartan waves of almost flesh.
I watched her in the rear view mirror
as the trees rolled by,
silently and unchanging.
My parents were waiting for us
at the front door as we pulled into the drive.
I could see their smiling, bobbing faces
through the rime – scraped window.
They were excited.
It was Tartan’s first visit.
I carried her in my arms into the kitchen.
She was still sound asleep,
her four arms and three legs flopped about.
My parents cooed quietly so they wouldn’t wake her.
They were both eager to get a turn to hold Tartan.
As I gazed down at her,
my mother said I looked just like my father
did when he used to hold me.
I didn’t take my eyes off Tartan
as I lifted her high above my head.
I slowly turned her in my outstretched arms,
and I could hear my parents’ muffled protests.
They sounded as if they were a world away
from the two of us.
Tartan’s three eyes burst open and met mine.
The blades of the ceiling fan,
just above her convoluted head,
floated slowly like wooden clouds.
It was in that instant I knew
that everything would be different for her.
She smiled and her face erupted
into patterns and silver gums.
A thread of red spittle slipped from her mouth,
held there,
and fell toward my face like a liquid ruby.
It landed above my lip
and I felt it with my tongue.
It tasted like trust.
Shining
by David R. Morgan
There is something waiting here,
still as the caught breath.
Specimens in the bar blow kisses
at never-never princes – frogs in bottles.
Rooms that once thrust forth dreams
bursting wet with magic,
simply stay ruminating.
Metal chisels down flesh to magnify destinies of rust;
electricity magnifies rock that once was a shooting star.
Beside an en suite sarcophagi
a ghost in a myth-mask hits top C
and whipping slantwise disappears.
Artificial light turning alien with curious claws
tears reality asunder…
and what remains? Figures in a frieze;
worrying nursery rhymes ready to happen.
There is something waiting here still as the caught breath.
It is not a silence built of empty air;
It is the mystery, of an untrod stair.
by James B. Nicola
Morning. Gray blade and I approach your tree
and half-smile at the limbs we used to climb,
grasping at possibilities, now gone.
A breeze stirs fallen leaves. Vines cling and yawn
learning their job’s to leave their limb, their time.
And I, too, rooted here, try to shake free
and shiver in your memory, and sigh.
I have a mission and a sadness. How
an image will dissolve but does not die
and with the seasons coalesce again
into the hopes of lives that might have been.
I roll my head and scream a little. Now
the axe gasps, halting on the first hard splinter.
Then we resume. We need the wood for winter.
Progress
by James B. Nicola
There’s been so little progress in our sport
it wouldn’t matter much if we adjourned,
would it, the way I’ve lobbed one in your court
and wonder now if it will be returned?
Of course the game ball is a heart, so take
your time: one well-placed smash, and we are done.
But careful, lest it burst apart and make
a mess I would not wish on anyone.
by Scott Owens
I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king
and its fighting men. March around the city once
with all the armed men. Do this for six days.
--Joshua 6:2
The sound of marching is heard once again
in the ancient streets of Jericho.
--NPR Report, 14 Nov. 2007
You’d think they’d have it down by now,
the marching, the men, boys really,
standing in lines, four deep,
in squads of a hundred or so,
lining up on the right shoulder
of the one in front of them, arms length
apart. You’d think after 3000 years
of forming rank and file in Jericho,
Cairo, Jerusalem, they’d be experts,
soldiering genetically encoded
or handed down like words some 800 generations.
You’d think thousands of years
of civilization would be enough
to make practice unneeded,
the art of war second nature at worst.
Water World
by Scott Owens
We’ve been here before,
more times than you might think,
and not just in Noah’s flood
or Enlil’s or Atlantis or even
before evolution’s innovation of lungs.
How many mountain towns have been drowned,
interred in water behind the dam,
river rising past door jambs,
windowsills, attics, chimneys
until not even steeples remained
above the transformation to lake.
I call on the lost limits
of Judson and Fontana, Lisbon
and Petersburg, Hunt and Price,
Neversink and Bittersweet and countless
others whose streets ran wild
with water, knocking down trees,
displacing the living,
burying the already dead,
for now it seems we’re headed there
again, bound to be beneath
the runoff of melting icebergs
and warming seas, hoping
against hope to relearn
the tricks of breathing in water,
skimming off salt, or building
one good boat to hold us all.
by Iolanda Scripca
Midnight's hollow streets...
Rolls Royce crushes cigarette butts as sinful, cold drizzle of animalistic
desire
lurks on shadowy corners of locked buildings, for a price... negotiable..
Balconies bear yesterday's broken beads as a jazz musician is soundly asleep.
So much hard numbness in those easy to open bottles...
It rains over useless signs: " Do Not Park On Bridge!"
Skid marks end in despair...
A street light dies totally alone...
The phone rings with a grin looking for a Call Girl.
... Hello?
I tear out my heart and replace it with a wallet
Lipstick crosses boundaries of good taste so romance cannot develop.
I lay down frames with pictures of loved ones, face down...execution style...as
I
pour myself a glass of Morality Suicide...I drink it before I let myself go for,
yet,
another night of desensitized numbness...
by Lee Stern
You’re not holding the map steady enough
for me to be able to read it to you
and give you the synopsis of what I have been able to determine.
Either your hands are shaking because you’re excited.
Or the room in which we are traveling, now that we’re prepared for it,
has taken it upon itself to object to where we are going.
And what our plans will turn out to be once we get there.
The fact that we live in a world of maps and maps that are meant to be read
shouldn’t alert you to the possibility that there are other things that we
have to do.
Our hands may shake.
But so do the trees when there’s this kind of a big wind that’s on the way.
And everything you want to say about it is there,
but only when you come ill-prepared;
only when the bridge you want to cross is looking cross-eyed
at you. And the family you sheltered doors away from plentitude.
On the roof of an atlas made of chalk.
by Kelley Jean White
In those days children could wander
alone in the woods. We trusted trees.
We even trusted people. The stranger
with candy sounded like myth, like
the witch in the Black Forest, the Ice
Queen, Blue Beard, Lucifer. A child
of five could wander all day in a meadow
picking flowers, could pack her lunch
in a paper bag and drink Kool
Aid out of a thermos, share
an apple with ants. Her mother
could sit all day over coffee and breaking
marriages with the other mothers. People
went into each other’s houses through
unlocked doors. TV didn’t play
until evenings, radios played only
sad songs. The children listened.
On lost dirt roads and along fading rivers
they the sang ‘on the wings
of a snow white dove’ and ‘Johnny
don’t leave me. Johnny be true.’
Sang those other songs too, songs
that were only rhythm and sobbing.
Songs of the birds they were, whose wings
were breaking as they entered the world
nobody’d expected.
Heatwave, at the Gazebo
by Kelley Jean White
music a string
looped and folded
throws a dozen flower petals
into the trumpet air
spins birdflight
piccolo sweet
and knot
knot
knot
tosses a rope
around my ear
to tap
my toe
He told us crop circles
by Kelley Jean White
are braided at the edges in
intricate patterns. I think of
mother earth bending down
with a wet finger to iron out
her little ones’ untidy heads.
by Suzanne White
Forget
salted flesh like earth
heavy over pelvis,
legs wrapped in passion's
engulfing kisses, deeper
than cavernous childhood memories.
Remember
loneliness must be a monster-
invisible and large
as your apartment.
Remember, alcohol quietens
its calls
for you to cross over.
Forget yourself in her waves
of masquerade hair.
Hide in her smile
she's practiced and perfected
for the likes of you.
Yearn through her
conversation like quicksand.
Just don't
remember how time stopped
and your room was a painting,
sore with life on my skin.
Biography
by Suzanne White
You are my ill-fitting back pack.
The strap is stuck, it hurts my spine;
all your biographies inside that I haven't had time to read.
But I like their antique bookstore odor. I fiddle with the cloth
pages, whoosh cream and black past rose
colored glazed donuts-
your imprinted letters on fibers wet my lips.
I want the parts about the Oregon County Fair.
Oh, to sit naked in Ken Kesey's sauna
reciting your bios that I know by heart.
Your mother smokes her medicine,
cultivates Da kine
since a happy mind is far from cruelty.
"It's good to see you", she says,
the pitiful epitome of love.
The sun charges to the end of midday;
I race to lasso it, and
SHAZAM misses by a flea.
I'll get it next time, and you'll fall in love for longer.
Like a bewitched magician,
you home your pigeons to their deaths
de donde venimos tú y yo.
They stop in England for High Tea with ghosts
of hippies and The illustrious Sir Willnot, your defunct biographer.
El Prado
by Suzanne White
Hot sung stone
footfalls in sauna summer,
we linked pinkies
smiling at grass
oases of art
amid city heart abeat with grapes,
tomatoes, and aspen trees.
Sacred works would wait for us
in God's other house
while we breakfasted on gigantic olives,
bread's crust still warm.
Insatiable Spanish sun
stroked us to sleep the siesta.
Heady oleander dressed us up in period costume.
Holding hands, we dreamed regal horses
as fine as days spent nestled
in the palm of history;
safe spectators of the esperpento.
Blue Flamenca
by Suzanne White
child-like wind floats in through white to touch
your cheek stoic purposeful hands curl to frame
humble offering clothed in tradition reverence
joy suffering as turbulent as earth's crust guitar
howls within unseen walls of meticulous form
drips terra warm and green fertility feet clack
stomp moving fire from core of ancestral song
your muse your roar primordial like womb of
civilization where you dance on breath of death
blue flamenca wind-kissed in fields of amapolas
by Les Wicks
The evening’s come like sodom rain. The Wreck
of the Hesperus, I pass
Angela’s Beauty Warehouse berserk sale I begged you to
like I do
love my soot.
There’s a squeak & tweet, this street of men, we’re
sailors all.
If you listen carefully our prayers have no words. We linger,
beach bums outside the Seabreeze Hotel,
orchestral disarray. Waiting for you.
Mail re-direct c/- Atlantis,
We can hear the bikini girls singing they
are about to make sacrifice with
percussive knives & pretty twitters.
I had real mast on, you were tied -
your howls were paper to the moon.
I cried, then you too
as the ropes gave up.
You went back to your island –
brine & ice, hot water bottles.
This carbon season, storm. Fire.
Scuppers the Sailor Dog wears gold buttons,
an admiral’s play suit made from
crisp Brandeis blue blockout curtains, he stumbles
into unforecasted pride. With my valued cargo of splints
a dirty clarinet hung off the lip
I think I head to nothing
to higher, to quiet.
The cliff face, This Man’s Woe
Mrs Cooper’s soul collection.
My cloak of parrot feathers
moults in a southerly, the compass pretends.
Journey to the other end of this.
Sun shines on our Necropolis, wish we were here.
But that rough inclemency.
Human Error
by Les Wicks
Tipthrow through the
kiss her on the
tulips.
When we slips out
it’s just skin.
Begin
with chemicals. Your neck right there
& life is forever
tripping us up.
Triptow to the dewlaps of cloud,
pinched by sunlight.
Cannot make sense.
But our senses arc
frolictricity. Even
at this age, wear
the luxurious ideology of love for modesty.
I borrow everything from you
& pay you back with interest.
by John Sibley Williams
The fog pervades Prague until it is no longer
Prague but narrow trenches to filter dust
though light. Though the sun is masked somewhere
above, behind a cloud or tower, the slick streets
smell of night and the cobblestones sparkle
like diamonds in a jewelry store case.
Winding through the claustrophobic avenues that open
to courtyards paved in the concretest sense of time
and held motionless by a thousand camera eyes,
we drift to different sides of the Vltava,
you by the castle, me the cemetery,
with only a bridge connecting us
and a sunless apartment, blank walled,
and a desire to reconverge like parted waves
regardless of the direction our feet have taken
and our tongues trapped between language.
Kafka wrote from this gray heart of love and disconnect.
Surely he’d be struck wordless by the vast, giant
oneness of sand and sea. But here, beneath weighty circumstance
and transparent chains held together by veins, muscle, bone,
brick, he reached for his city like a coy lover’s hand.
But nobody’s words can judge the shy heart of acceptance
or if a great journey fails.
I can see you straddling both ends of the river
pulling them together by will alone, until the Jewish dead
rest below the castle walls, until its doors open
as easy as a page. On such pristine moments of hope I forget
ours are also the unending paths twisting toward the visible
yet unreachable, each spire a footprint,
each shared dream an afternoon fog.
Varied Views From the No. 49 Tram
by John Sibley Williams
The morning train catches me off guard,
engrossed in the suns caught by post-rain puddles,
and upon looking up through the dance
of paper cups and foreign news and leaves
I see only guillotined heads
floating behind glass like matching balloons,
all facing forward into backs of other heads.
Alighting, I wonder what happens to my own head
in that waiting girl’s young eyes.
From here, though moving, I see the bodies
as well as the heads
as if long torso queues pack each station
with newspapers they cannot read
to collect their helium skulls
and begin the day.
From here I see the Volkstheater, Museum Quartier,
and bodies with heads
passing behind laggardly, edges slightly blurred.
Disembarking, for I have reached line’s end
where mechanical circles begin anew,
I regain my body, feet sunk
in those tiny glistening suns,
and through this self-rejuvenation, this healing,
everyone else again regresses.
|
Let
Me Tell You About a Life Paul Beckman |
Six
Stories That End Abruptly M. V. Montgomery |
by
Paul Beckman
—
top or I’ll
tell my mother, she told him when they were five.
—Stop or I’ll tell your mother, she said when they were ten.
—Stop. I’m not going to do that. She said when they were fifteen.
—Stop, she said when they were twenty and home from different colleges for a
break.
—Stop already. I’m sore. She said on their wedding night when they were
twenty-five.
—Stop. You’ll wake the kids, she told him when they were thirty-five.
—Stop. Is that all you ever think about? They were forty.
—Stop with the TV and come to bed, she said. Don’t you find me attractive
anymore? They were forty-five.
—Stop. Where are you going with that suitcase? She asked when they were fifty
and she had rebuffed his advances once again because she was going through the
changes.
—Stop, her eyes pleaded with him in the courthouse. They were fifty-one.
—Stop thinking about those wasted years, she said as they stood with the
children and grandchildren in the garden and got married once again. They were
sixty.
—He was sure her idea of the wasted years was different from his—that they
were their years apart. She knew what he was thinking, but her thoughts on
which years were wasted were no different than his.
Anderson Takes The Short Way
by
Daniel Clausen
* In that dangerous space between her two dark eyes and my
imagination a living breathing persona emerges. She is an anti-establishment
take-no-guff goddess with a lifestyle fueled by caffeine drinks, Insomniac
Machine Gun Monkey comics, and angry punk rock. This much is obvious to any
casual observer of purple geek destroyer. In the more complete version, she is a
dedicated pulp fiction addict with a goth aesthetic through which she works out
her rage. Out of anger, pushing at the limits of class and gender, she studies
at night school—prelaw—in the hopes of someday being a lawyer.
by
veryday
on my way to work I catch a glimpse of her. At the counter she wears her purple
hair and dark lip gloss proudly accentuating what would otherwise be a
conservative work uniform. In her finest moments, as I walk past, I see her left
eyebrow raise ever so slightly, the menacing look of a trained killer, perhaps,
just before her costumer-service oriented smile appears. If her face had a genre
it would be purple geek destroyer. For a brief moment in my day she exists, and
the rest of the day she lingers on the tip of my imagination.
She is the lovely and dangerous face of the Sunville Shopping Mall's finest
bakery, the terrorizer of my imagination, and the undeniable queen of my heart.
Considering success the ultimate affront to the system, she looks forward to the
day she can rub hers in the face of every cocaine snorting friend she once had
and every hypocrite teacher who lectured her while trying to make a grab for her
butt.
Though the familiarity of her face had in no way dimmed my love for her, it did
make every look her way less immediate than it should have been.
I realize that now.
In truth, an everyday love affair with a face you cold never talk to is better
than a dream-filled, unfaithful, you're my everything, break-up, make-up, won't
you please give up reading comics, no never, nail-pulling reality of a
relationship. But the everydayness of her features, the purple hair, nose ring,
I hate everyone, going to kill Congress aesthetic she manages to pull off
working a customer service job blinds me to an approaching future where she'll
be gone.
She'll be gone or I'll be gone, which in the strange universe of our
relationship means she'll be gone, because to her I don't really exist. I
realize one day that through an unknown progression of tragicomedic events out
of the corner of my imagination she'll finish night school, marry the handsome
quarterback from high school she never really realized she loved until now, find
a better paying job or go crazy trying and end up attempting to blow up the
bakery.
One way or another, the face of purple geek destroyer will be gone.
It's a horrible morning the morning these thoughts pass through my head. I'll
have my shoes on. I'll be on my way to work. I'll take the bus to the commercial
district, a business suit molding protectively over my body. Palm pilot and
cellphone at the ready. When I get off the bus I'll take the long way, not so
casually, but this time desperately. I'll go through the mall, look into the
chain bakery shop with eyes sharp like laser pointers. Sniper eyes, tense
muscles—and the whole of me will shake, quiver.
My mornings for as long as she's there will be a miserable desperate wish.
But no, not today. Today, I take the short way. I finish what already began so
long ago. The quiet lease over that bit of reality need not be fixed to her
palpable image, I realize. Instead, I sell her sweet image to my imagination,
where the purple geek destroyer, who wants to kill congress with poison-tipped
swords, kiss girls just for me, and raise insomniac machine gun-toting babies
with my nose will remain safe forever.
work in a Gourmet Shoppe. I am a female stock boy and I wish that I did not have
to talk to anybody I work with.
“Hey,
can I talk to you?”
Jarvis
calls her a tapioca cum dumpster but she is still Anka the manager. Her hair is
now the color of the Wilkinson’s rhubarb jelly I am stocking. She is the buyer
for the store and competent as a buyer.
“When
you get a chance, can you stock the Turkish Delight?” It sounds like a
question but she is my manager and a phony.
It
is dirty and smelly where I work with many mice that gorge themselves on
The
Shoppe is 1,200 square feet, but because it is crammed with every international
delight, customer and cheap shelving unit that you can find in this Yankee city,
and the main floor and basement are split at an even 600, the whole Shoppe has
the effect of a maze. I leave the small step ladder in the aisle so that someone
may trip on it later.
On
my way to get the big ladder for the towers, a customer asks me where to find
the Foie Gras. He is from a legendary rock band and sour grapes. I say,
“Sure”, and point him toward the Heinz’s Spotted Dick.
Artie
is so wild about tea that he's been to the Darjeeling Estates. Artie is one of
the managers who we treat as a co-worker who is knowledgeable about Camellia
sinensis. We call Artie a Lemon Head Jew. And Artie and the others have been
caught calling the Blacks Tootsie Roll niggers on the surveillance cameras that
we were told recorded no sound. We all call the pre-releases Wonder Bread trash.
Marypaz is a seventy-year-old fellow stock boy from
The
towers are four rows of shelves that run above and the length of both sides of
the Shoppe. They hold pounds of holiday Stollen and other surplus product that
is eventually trashed because the mice are year-round economists too.
I
lean the ladder against the refrigerator that holds the Lox, Fage and other
specialty dairy and, standing on my tip-toes, push the basket of overstock onto
the wooden walkway above. I look over and up eight feet to the lowest shelf
above the deli and continue up eighteen feet to the top shelf. I pull out the
ladder and ascend.
Reaching
over the edge of the walkway, I push the basket onto the third shelf, grab the
ledge and put my right foot out into the corner of the first shelf; I can
already see myself flying from the edge of Italy with Savoiardi Lady Fingers to
the edge of Belgium with LU Petit Écoliers, to the edge of Germany with Bahlsen
Hits until, pushing down on then sliding over my right foot, I see the sticky
trap stuck under my sneaker. I look down between my legs at the planks, so
called because of the loose and filthy strip boards that run the nine feet of
the nearly two foot-wide deli, and inadvertently squeak. “Fuckin' hate this
job.” I curse to myself. I let my leg hang and backtrack against the ledge
until I'm standing again on the walkway and cursing myself again for canceling
my GED exam again.
“Fuggin'...you
know this fuggin' store was built on a Indian burial ground, right?” I hear
Franky say.
I
look down and see him at the scale weighing some Humboldt Fog as Knäckebröd
head stands on the other side eying the big cheese greedily. In two months,
staff at the halfway house where he and Rob, another pre-release, are staying
at'll find a baggie of jolly beans in Rob's room. Then two cops'll come in and
order their comped sandwiches before going down into the basement, searching Rob
and Frank's lockers and taking them away.
“Yup,
it's true.” Jackie says. She's at the other end of the deli bent over the
slicer with the Brie rind that she always wears around her head like a crown, no
doubt shaving the meat of mouse turd. Next month she'll likely relapse while
AWOL.
I
sit, letting my legs dangle over the refrigerator signage, and listen to the
popular story without a story told for the benefit of the new cashier whose eyes
are wide with a naive horror I wish I still had; and as I look out over the
sixty-year-old Shoppe at re-occurring customers and the woman from the Health
Department stopping, starting then scurrying in and out of aisles, and back at
the cashier who won't be here next week because she's crying again because she
fucked up on the new POS system again, I stand and descend, knowing that a
fictional burial ground doesn't explain the whole truth of the state of things.
The
back hallway is only four feet away, but since the path is blocked I follow the
equally packed U of the tea aisle where I pass Darnell silently threatening Zak
in front of the Elephant Tea, most likely because it got out recently that some
deli workers make more than others and are also paid under the table. Darnell'll
be fired soon for being stupid about having sticky fingers, and Zak, despite
being the last one standing out of us all, will be “laid-off” under
third-generation management.
In
the entryway, Anka is posting next week's schedule above the time clock. Leroy,
one of the holiday stock boys, is coming upstairs so I wait because the stairway
is a little over a foot wide.
“Uncle
tom Oreo”, he says, passing me.
“Pate-loving
faggot”, I say, descending. Anka never says anything and neither do we because
everybody knows the bitch's father is dying.
I
step left at the bottom of the stairs and peek into the kitchen and see Ed, the
deli manager, at the counter simultaneously eating and preparing a large bowl of
pasta salad. His six-year-old is on all fours pushing around a toy car. Since
Joe from the wine department has an angry wife and another kid on the way, he'll
finally succeed in becoming the new deli manager.
“Hi
Joey”, I smile.
“Vroom--vroom”,
he says.
I
turn around, trip over a box and, cursing Leroy, make to hang a right toward the
office in the corner of the basement.
“Uh...”
Then
I turn to see Luke thumbing towards the bathroom from the dead-end L of the
shipping department. Luke is the shipping guy and did way too much LSD in his
college days and boinked several girls in the Shoppe, including Anka. The only
plausible explanation is the rumor that he has a penis like a Sopressata.
I
walk a short L between the lockers and pause before the mustard-yellow door. I
knock lightly. “Uh, Gene...?” I say. “Uh, Amy's havin' some problems on
the register...”
There
is another silence and then: “What!”--inaudible murmurings--“Fuckin'
moron!” followed by a big splash.
I
back away from the door and, feeling the edge of the locker, slide down onto a
low box of a super-sized battery. The toilet flushes and the door bangs open.
“'S
that product?” She says gruffly.
Gene
was the sixty-something owner of the Shoppe who inherited both it and femininity
when his father died. There is also Sue, our computer technician, and Anna from
payroll about whom there is a running bet until this day. The day I started this
job, I was hazed by warnings that made me jumpy and gender-suspicious of
everyone, so much so that I nearly misidentified him when he approached me with
a Shoppe shirt and told me gruffly that I would supply fifteen dollars should I
need another and my own khakis.
If
I were naive, I would tell Gene that the battery box has been in the same spot
since I started six months ago, but in a Shoppe where boy means girl and
product, everything, I stand in consent. I look down at the nut-cracking hands
with the blood-red nails and picture the framed display of Remington bullets in
her office, then up at the half untucked shirt and think about how she is still
“dad” to her adult children, and then further up at the soft,
shoulder-length gray curls and about how I was cleaning out a basement aisle
last week and found a miniature lollipop stand labeled “Vagina Pops”, and
become gravely confused anew. We mostly make shit up about Gene because
everything in our sight is a superfluous superfluity and everything beyond, a
family recipe.
He
stalks away, stomping up the stairs, and, covering my mouth, I stumble over to
Luke and in my best Cookie Monster voice say, “Are you product?”, before we
fall over each other in silent hysteria.
“Dude.”
Luke says.
“Yo”,
I say, catching my breath. I point to the gift basket he's working on. “Yo,
can you make me an Office Party?”
He
looks at the basket then back at me. “That'll be seventy dollars”, he says.
Then we fall out again because we all have house accounts with a generous five
percent discount off all product.
We
climb the stairs for a smoke in the back alley and see Marypaz in the hallway
sitting on a box and drinking a cup of coffee. Her fingernails are five
different colors.
"Hi
Marypaz.” We say.
She
starts to mumble something into her cup that is probably Spanish and offensive,
most likely because when she was helping me stock the towers yesterday I lost
track of gravity and let a bag of Kookaburra licorice fall on her head, but,
looking at her nails, I say: “Qué linda!”
She
appears momentarily confused then looks down and bursts into laughter. “Ah, sí,
sí!” She says, following us as we squeeze through dozens of boxes of stock
and out the back door, “my Nietos!”
Anka,
Franky, Rob and Jackie are all outside smoking. Franky is talking about joining
the iron workers when he makes parole, Anka about going back to college, Rob
about another idea for a patent, and Jackie about a visit with her teenaged
daughter tomorrow. I listen to all the popular monostories without a story and
start to light my cigarette when, suddenly, the door opens and a
frazzled-looking woman stands looking out at us.
“Oh
my god, I'm so sorry.” She says. Then, chuckling, “I was just trying to find
the Camembert!”
Chuckling
myself, I pocket my cigarette and step towards the door.
“Is
that a sticky trap under your shoe?” She asks me.
I
look down then around and we all laugh hysterically.
Fire in the Water
by
Mike Florian
“It’s time,” said Ollie as he
shook Sam roughly in this midnight hour of the day. “It’s time,” he said
once more to make sure Sam heard. He stood in the stinking room until Sam’s
leg dropped over the sideboard of the upper bunk. Only then did Ollie turn and
make his way back up the engine room ladder. He pulled himself into the
companionway adjacent to the captain’s bunk and walked quietly past the
sleeping skipper. He waited for Sam in the wheelhouse. Ollie did a quick check
of his surroundings; the oil pressure gauge, the strobe light on the mark buoy
bobbing a quarter mile away, the steady beat of the Detroit diesel, the tide
table. Ollie heard the sounds from the engine
room being muffled as Sam climbed the steel rungs. The sliding door opened and
closed. The skipper continued to sleep like a dead man. In the bunk above him,
John, the cook, snored softly, his wig stuck sideways on his balding head. Ollie
still had a few minutes left on his watch so he let Sam pour himself a cup of
fresh black coffee. Mug in hand, Sam entered the wheelhouse. The two men stood
quietly side by side. The small strobe light sparkled among the stars shining
brightly along the horizon. “Nothing exciting,” reported Ollie.
“I jogged to the buoy once in the last hour and we haven’t moved for twenty
minutes. The old man got up a half hour ago. Engine’s fine. I think the tide
is slack as we speak. You might want to check out the starboard stabilizer.
There’s fire in the water tonight and we’ve got a companion with us. He’s
been hanging out by the kelp wrapped around the wire.” He paused. “It’s
nice to see the boat sitting low in the water. Tomorrow’s catch should put us
in the main slaughterhouse and then we’re off for home” “That main slaughter takes a long
time to fill,” answered Sam, looking about, trying to accustom his eyes to the
darkness. “It’ll take two more days I bet.” “I think Cappy put us on the spot
tonight. We’ll be home soon. It’s been sixteen days.” “Get yourself down below, Ollie,”
said Sam. You’re already up here into my watch. Don’t dream of home yet. A
couple more days.” Ollie turned and made his way back
through the companionway. Sam heard the engine room door slide open and close,
letting in the noise of the motor. The lead sheet lining on the door muffled the
sounds of the diesel. All was as quiet as it should be, thought Sam. He nursed
his coffee and checked the gauges on the back wall of the wheelhouse. The small
compact room was dark save for the light burning red over the brass Atlas
compass. The bow of the boat pointed northwest by north. A shooting star flamed
on the western horizon, its smoky tail dissipating as quickly as its flash. Sam
checked the watch on his wrist. He enjoyed these nights. There will be plenty of
time to sleep on the way home. It was at least a three day run down the coast. “Oh,” Sam started as he remembered
what Ollie said about the starboard stabilizer. He took his mug with him, topped
it off at the stove and then stepped out of the galley and onto the deck. He
quietly closed the Dutch door behind him. The heavy boat lolled in the gentle
sea. Each time that water spurted through the scuppers and washed over to the
other side, phosphorous plankton stuck to the deck and shone like opals. Sam
walked over to the starboard rail. All he saw were swirls of plankton where the
wavelets lapped against the hull. He stood at the side of the gunwales. The fire
danced and shone. Then he saw it. A small form, a sea otter, swam at the
surface keeping close to the stabilizer wire. The man glanced over the deck to
the port side just in case this little otter had a partner. Nothing over there,
but here, the animal frolicked in the middle of the night. Its body would leave
a trail of light behind as it dove and rolled in the ocean. Sam watched, keeping
his eye on the strobe. He took another sip of coffee. The otter played on. This made it all worthwhile, thought
Sam. He had been doing it for years. He raised a family and fishing was good to
him. Nights like these made him forget the bad trips and storms that inevitably
came his way. He never wanted to own a boat but he worked hard and always landed
a chance with a highliner. At sixty years of age, he knew this halibut fishing
was a young man’s game. He was even keeled and unflappable and all good
skippers wanted Sam on their boat. Like most men of the sea, having survived big
events made Sam confident. He had seen almost everything there was to see and
shipped with almost all types of men. Rarely was there an exception. Tonight as
he stood on deck with the fish hold a few days from being full, he was thankful
that this is how he had made a living. He visited the otter a little more and
wondered if it would be here in the daylight. He did remember seeing a few large
kelp patches, little floating islands. These should be safe harbors for the
friendly animal. He turned away to make his way back into the galley when he
spotted something strange under the horizon. In the distance, an underwater glow
slowly approached the boat as the man stared, confused. The sea otter continued
to twist and frolic. Sam kept his eye on the developing form. It was now a
hundred yards away. He stood quietly looking. The sea otter stopped moving and
hung onto the stabilizer wire. It wanted to make itself small. The blue-white
glow, now bulbous in form, moved towards them in slow motion. As it approached, he saw plainly, a
quiet form with a long, turbulent stream of plankton and fire trailing behind. A
massive head appeared just below the stabilizer. The form kept coming. Sam
looked into the water as he saw it glide under the boat. The otter didn’t
move. Finally the animal’s fluke came into view and it too passed under the
little, sixty foot boat. The comet tail was endless. Sam kept watching. He ran
to the other side, wishing for a few more seconds of this miracle but the silver
stream was gone. Sam continued to stare and then sat quietly down on the hatch
combing. He thought of a story he read long ago describing a tourist on a
Catalan beach seeing an old man standing in the wet sand just away from the
surf. He had a stick in his hand and quickly drew a mural in the sandy canvas,
yards and yards of art and imagination. There was a signature in the sand as the
short, balding man walked away. The tourist walked past the sandy canvas and saw
the signature ‘Picasso’ just as the surf broke and washed the beach clean of
any human scratches. It was Sam’s ‘Picasso’ that night. He didn’t long
to share the moment with anyone as he savoured being one with his surroundings.
A short distance away the mechanical strobe flickered. Some time later, now close to the end
of his watch, Sam noticed the otter treading water near the stabilizer. It
cautiously approached the fish boat. Its friendly neck extended, the otter
stared directly into the fisherman’s eyes. The exchange was longer than it
should have been. With a streak of blue light appearing
on the horizon, the night was over. Sam had better rouse the cook and get him
going on coffee and toast for the boys. He made his way toward the galley. As he
did so he glanced at the starboard stabilizer. The otter was gone. The fire was
out. 
he
laden fish boat sat calmly atop the flat ocean in middle of the Gulf of Alaska.
Its long stabilizer poles jutted out of each side, amidships, at forty-five
degree angles. Inside, a lone figure walked past the galley window during this
dark summer night. The man opened the engine room door and made his way down the
ladder and into the fo’c’sle.
by
M. V. Montgomery
egg bath
or a Spring project, I
had asked my students to bring in some plastic eggs. I thought we could
decide what we wanted to do with them later.
First order of business was dumping the eggs into a large metal tub. Some
students were a little loath to do this because they had wrapped the eggs in
Easter baskets, but the rainbow effect of mixing so many different colors and
sizes changed their minds.
I was somewhat overcome, too. After the students had returned to their
seats, I couldn’t help lying down in the tub of eggs and relaxing for a
moment—it was just too tempting!
After a long pause, I started to call on individuals. Corey, what do you
think the class could do with all these eggs? No answer. An art
project? A community hunt for kids? I suggested. Still no
answer—odd, I could have sworn Corey had been in class today.
I tried calling on others while still nestled comfortably in the tub.
Cynthia? Jacob? Antoine? Charlotte? Nothing.
Alarmed, I sat up suddenly, plastic eggs spilling over the side. There was
no one left.
hatchlings
It was my first day as an apprentice on the kitchen staff of an exclusive hotel.
I was assigned to pull around a cart of exotic animals. In a top tank were
fish, bright orange and yellow tang. On the next level was a large lizard
that hissed and clawed at its bars. Below that was a large egg about to
crack—I thought I could hear a muffled shriek.
I wheeled the cart past a dozen sous-chefs who looked up at me and shook their
heads. Last at the counter was the master chef, a touchy fellow often
difficult to please.
To my surprise, he greeted me with a smile. Then, in one skilled movement,
he scooped some hatchling fish out of the tank, saying that the octopus
special-of-the-day was no longer fresh and needed replacing.
He shook his head at the lizard, declaring it already too large and
temperamental to eat. Then another shriek came from the egg, causing him
to frown.
That’s a bald eagle! he boomed. You need to take it out of the
restaurant and release it into the wild immediately!
Things got a little frantic then. I pulled the cart back through the
kitchen as fast as I could, weaving in and out through the gauntlet of sous
chefs, who cursed and waved their knives in the air.
The lizard smashed against the bars, looking like it could break out at any
time, while the egg shrieked again, quivered, and began to crack.
how mean a thing’s a king
I was in a play, playing the part of old King Kreon, who figured into little
more than a death scene at the end.
Perhaps for that reason, or to avoid overthinking my lines, I wasn’t anywhere
near the theatre an hour before the performance. I was puttering around
the garden at the side of the house, not even fully dressed.
Suddenly I heard footsteps behind me and the stage manager’s sharp voice:
It’s time for you to die, Your Majesty.
mentor
My old film professor. She could always read others so well, understanding
that when ordinary people rose to a dramatic occasion, they generally made
clumsy actors.
After we had spoken at the reunion and I held our embrace perhaps a beat too
long, she simply remarked, You should meet my niece.
Then she added, by way of explanation: Some women are just looking for men
who will pick up their clothes around the house.
sluice ride
My daughter Rina and I were out morning shopping when we heard music coming from
across the plaza. So, a stop there first.
We got out of the car to find an artificial mountain with a log ride. A
man was testing out water jets that cascaded and looped around the mountain
three or four times. The place was not open yet. Another man stepped
into a DJ booth and started a broadcast for a music station popular with kids.
Neither paid us any attention.
It was just too tempting—much more exciting for Rina than the prospect of
trying on shoes. So we slipped through the gate while the DJ began
his usual palaver. We climbed the stairs, found a flat-bottomed log, and
pushed off.
Down we went! And I have to admit that the element of trespassing added
its thrill, enhancing our bumpy and uneven progress to the bottom.
There, a crowd rapidly gathered around the DJ stand. Several young women
brought presents because the DJ had announced over the air that it was his
birthday and he was inviting all his listeners to a party at Log Mountain.
They all held beautifully wrapped boxes with ribbons that stood up like the ears
of cute pets.
With a shout, Rina and I came crashing to the bottom, soaking everyone in a huge
flume of spray.
tea time
It was time to collect research essays, and I was amazed at my large class
turnout. Usually there were a lot of no-shows on this day and even more
excuses. But this group was seated and ready when I walked in the door.
All had neatly bound essays on their desks. I was pleased but also a
little put off: what a lot of grading!
I hadn’t blocked off anything else for this hour but collecting the essays,
usually a drawn-out process, so I wondered if I should stall a little.
Since I was making tea, I asked if anyone wanted a cup. Then I
procrastinated further by transferring the brew into a tall carafe, stirring it,
and pouring it out into little condiment cups.
Simultaneously, I answered questions. One student asked me if copies of
sources were really needed. Though I knew they weren’t and my
syllabus was simply out of date, I told him to go ahead and turn them in.
Another student, obviously pleased with her essay, asked me if I would like her
to write a self-evaluation, and I said no, not necessary.
Here, won’t you have some tea?
by David R. Morgan
ue
to CO2s and ever increasingly Global Warming, it has been incredibly oppressive lately, but
I was surprised to see octopuses wandering around Croydon.
They tried to blend in, but it was hopeless, with their wet, distinctive skin
and four pairs of arms.esides, they tried to ride the buses without paying, and
the ones driving cars were inattentive.
It was like they didn't even see the lights change colour.
Tuesday our manager was missing; in her place was a large octopus. The thing had
the effrontery to drive up in her car, complete with "SUE8TH6" vanity
plate. I gave it short shrift and had sashimi for lunch.
Sue didn't show up Wednesday either, and she didn't answer her mobile phone. I
was half hoping for another Octopus (the first had been quite tasty) but there
was nothing, not even a shrimp.
That afternoon the air was especially bad and we had to wear the special masks, but
I noticed that my next-door neighbours had moved out some time during
the day. A small school of cod had moved in and I suppose they bought the place,
though how they floated the loan so quickly I cannot fathom.
Thursday the staff at the sushi bar across from my office had been replaced by a
school of plaice, and mixed in with the human students going to college, with
their oxygen cylinders in their backpacks, were flounder, sole, and even a few
skates (or rays; I can never tell them apart).They wore backpacks, t-shirts,
etc. just like the standard students, though the shoes just wouldn't stay on the
sole and none of them needing help with breathing!
Today I didn't see Joe from the garage, and they seem to have hired a large
jellyfish to take his place. Also, I'm not eating at the sushi bar anymore,
because they've made some changes to the menu. I can't read the Japanese
characters, but the photos accompanying the new menu items are quite disturbing.
I blaming all this on Climate Change.
Next week I'll bring my own lunch.
by Edgar Rider
he
owner Roger and my manager Jim were staring at a hamburger. Jim
places the cheese on the burger sideways. He then places the cheese straight on.
He reaches for the bacon Roger stops him.
“Start over. Cheese on top. Cheese on top,” says Roger who also owns a strip
club as well as this family restaurant.
“I just thought that if you put the bacon on top then the bun wouldn’t
stick." Jim questioned pleased with his professionalism.
“That’s what I want. Stick to the cheese. The cheese must stick.
Presentation is the key.”
“Yes it is.” Jim puts the cheese on top of the bacon it slightly
melts. He puts it on a bun. Jim and Roger look at it as if it is a work of
art. Jim smiles. “Perfecto.”
I was standing in the corner watching this spectacle. After Roger left, it
was just me and Jim standing there.
“You have potential but you just,” He said glaring at me. " You could
be like me management material." I immediately looked at his short brown
shorts white legs with black socks. And also remembered he had t-shirts that
said things like Sc-Fi is sexy. No I did not look up to him.
"I don't want to be in the restaurant business."
"Couldn't understand you. Mumble mumble business nothing nevermind."
“I hate you.” I retorted not being able to think of a more clever come back.
My manager and I began strangling each other. We thought for sure we were
going to get caught as we looked around no one was there. We continued our angry
horseplay. There was only one thing we hated more than each other and that was
our job. It was incidents like this that made me realize I needed to get out of
my job.
I contemplated my future in another hamburger place called the Burger Shop. I
put my keys in an envelope, sealed it up , wrote an address on it and sent it
through the mail. I wondered how the owner would take this no two weeks notice
in this case. Sometimes the only way to walk away is just to leave having no
choice.
Time had passed and I found myself working in another customer service job. No
Hollywood ending for me. Just another job. But as I stood waiting for some
people to order their Cafe Moca.I looked up and my old nemesis Jim was standing
there. By his side was an attractive Vietnamese woman, I immediately wondered
what chat room he met her in or what catalog he ordered her out of.
“Hey you. So you got out of that place. Me too I now manage a Burger King.”
Jim said with a smile as if he made a complete life changing decision.
“Yes well.” Sometimes I must admit I was not clever with the snappy
comebacks.
We looked at each other never having much to say anyway. After an awkward moment
that could have been considered a staredown, we looked in opposite directions. I
watched them walk away glad that I didn't have to deal with at least
certain people anymore.
I went back to my job of making coffee hoping desperately this was a BND a brand
new day and not the same ol shit or SOS for short.
by Andre M. Zucker
1
Six months of New York City living had
Amos selling flowers on Wall Street in front of the #2 and #3 subway lines. He
moved up from Maryland looking to fulfill his dreams of being on Broadway.
Singing and dancing in huge theater productions was his dream since he took his
first music lesson. It never happened. The mass financial hysteria of the summer
made the theaters go dark and actors lined up at unemployment offices. His role
of selling flowers was supposed to keep him funded, clothed and fed for a long
hot summer. The man in the blue suit looked at Amos
with a face of regret. He loosened his tie and spoke. “I’m buying these
because… because… I believed the algorithms!” Amos didn’t know how to
handle this display of hysteria. The man turned his back and returned to the
pits of Wall Street. Yesterday that same man (whose name is unclear) bought
flowers on three occasions. Time and again, the same people in business clothes
purchased flowers. All of Amos' clients were coming from the financial district. Amos showed up to work at the stand at
9AM of that day with the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. He drank
coffee from a blue paper cup, his hair was a mess, his eyes were blood shot. He
had commuted over an hour from the outskirts of Queens. Irises, roses and
carnations of the flower stand moved like a commodities market. Amos scanned the
morning paper for auditions. He passed time listening to a radio while looking
over the gray concrete. The sky was a little less blue and the city got hotter
with each passing day. His only relief was Rita Lee, downtown’s ice crème
truck driver. Another man came and asked for flowers, it wasn’t even 11AM. The
radio next to Amos played beautiful pop music while Amos waited for noon, the
end of this crisis and a better world. Another bird fell dead from the sky in
front of his flowers while the customer was paying. The man took his flowers and
looked at the dead bird on the pavement. “Poor bastard,” Amos said as he
approached the carcass. The banker placed his flowers beside its corpse and
walked away. Amos picked the dead bird off the hot concrete. He placed it
unceremoniously in a trashcan. It was the third time this week it happened. As
he walked back to the flowers for a brief second, Amos saw himself as a child
throwing a football back and forth with his dad. He blinked and the memory was
gone. Amos picked the flowers off the pavement and placed them back in his
stand. The economy was in a mid-nosedive when
Amos first learned how to properly name, cut and wrap all the flowers that were
on his beat. That was in May. These were not connoisseur flowers; they were for
people buying gifts on their way to somewhere else. Some bought flowers on their way to the
nearby hospital; others were bought by couples visiting in-laws, and of course
birthday flowers. Mother’s Day was a good day for Amos’ business; Father’s
Day was not. With the economy and mass unemployment sweeping the city, people
couldn’t afford to bring flowers into the hospitals or share them with loved
ones. By the end of June, only stockbrokers, bankers and hedge-fund managers
could buy flowers. Strangely, in the beginning of July
Amos sold more flowers than he did in both May and June. The clientèle kept
dropping but the same people kept buying flowers over and over again, eventually
more than once a day. At first Amos didn’t notice, but as the market was
shrinking, faces repeated in the heat. Noon of that day came and Rita Lee’s
ice crème truck turned the corner. The vehicle seemed to have ridden in from
Brazilian Carnival. The truck was radiating “Os Mutantes” music, which could
be heard up and down the block. Black and white photographs of Rio de Janeiro,
Bahia, and Brasilia covered the entire exterior while pictures of green Amazon
vegetation wallpapered the interior. When the truck was visible, the photographs
came alive inside of their borders. Scenes of people dancing, cooking and
playing moved and acted out the moments that were captured. During these moments
the sky brightened to the blue it was intended to be, the pavement would have a
new greenish tint and Amos would literally be about three inches taller. He
never figured out how this could happen, but he went with it. Amos approached the truck, and with
each step, New York faded away and the world became brighter and more vivid. A
step and then another until everything looked like it was made of overexposed
film. Rita Lee waited for him inside of the green interior, which was also
moving. All was motion and colors bleeding into each other. He saw Rita Lee inside the truck with
her hair wrapped in colorful fabric, sunglasses and white undershirt that had
“Teologia da Libertação” written across it. The song blasting from the
truck was a Brazilian pop classic and she was dancing to the music without a
regard for Amos, ice crème customers or the universe as a whole. Amos was right in front of the truck,
and that meant that New York City did not exist anymore. There were only
beautiful colors, sounds that came from Brazil, Rita Lee, and perhaps a griffin
or a sphinx flying by. Amos wasn’t sure. With the city gone from view, he
started dancing. The music was fun and fast. It's rapid
rhythms mixed with fast guitars, samba hand-claps, psychedelic electrics and
harmony. Os Mutantes was Brazil's answer to the Mamas and the Papas. They had
made music on the edge of euphoria and that made the outside world instantly
invisible. To listen to a record was to enter a state of mind. The music was
everything New York wasn't. Amos first heard the music in May when
the Brazilian Ice crème truck first appeared. He had never heard any sounds
like these. He approached the music and first laid eyes on Rita Lee. Her
appearance was stunning; she danced inside of the green interior. She said
nothing, yellow fabric wrapped her hair and she had a skirt with a black and red
African pattern. It all seemed to go perfectly with the music. Her first
appearance was not as spectacular as of late. All she did was play music, but
when banks started folding and the sky dulled, she changed it's colors. When
homelessness and unemployment swept the country, she provided the psychedelics.
Now that birds were falling dead from the atmosphere, she caused Amos to lose consciousness about how horrible reality had become. Amos kept dancing to the music and
suddenly realized that New York City had returned and he was standing in front
of his flower stand holding vanilla ice crème. “It always ends without
warning,” he said and saw another bird die while Rita Lee’s truck turned
onto Broad Street. The dead birds started to appear after
three banks folded in two weeks. Millions of people lost their homes and money
as the birds above New York City gave up on life. There was no pattern; they
would just fall from the sky anywhere. It was disturbing to the newly unemployed
and to the families facing foreclosure. At first people pretended it was nature
regulating itself, as if the life of birds was a privilege. But the heat of
August grew stronger and the bird carcasses were dispensing a pungent odor that
started to eat at New York City’s sanity. People began acting strangely that
summer. The insanity intensified around the financial district. The hysterical
purchasing of flowers was one of the symptoms of the season. Amos' job made him
a merchant of cynicism. The markets fell and indiscriminately; people around the
world were starving to death. Poverty like a war was rolled through the streets
of all towns and villages. Consumed by guilt and their own vague
sense of humanity, Wall Street traders would buy apologies from Amos… without
ever admitting their own crimes. Each petdal of a flower was a failed attempt at
atonement. People knew they had done wrong; they had harmed their fellow human
beings for profit. The birds pushed it all over the top; the traders wanted to
apologize but the forces of capitalism would never stop, and all those human
beings were left stuck in the pits of financial ruin. Amos again picked up the dead bird and
placed it next to his fallen brother in the garbage can. His mind drifted and he
saw himself again as a child in Maryland throwing a football. He saw a euphoric
smile on his face each time he threw and caught the football. He stared at this
vision trying to figure out why he was seeing it. But again, the vision suddenly
disappeared. Selling universal apologies crushed his
soul. He was meant to sing and dance on a stage, not clean up dead birds and
help people who wronged the planet. Infidelity never bothered Amos much, but now
with the birds dying in front of him, he couldn’t take it. The summer kept
getting hotter. At 3:15 of that same day, a stock
broker came to Amos holding three dead pigeons and said, “How did this happen?
We believed the algorithms! Please give me $50 worth of any flowers you have.”
He gave Amos the money and walked away without taking his flowers. Amos looked up from the bill and saw
that the street looked like it hadn’t slept in weeks, disheveled and lost.
They needed more flowers, more atonement, they needed Rita Lee. It’s easy to
forget that these monsters that prayed for destruction were once like him, once
human. There was a moment when they could just smell a flower and not see a
commodity. The collective soul of the financial institutions (not just Wall
Street) was trying to break free, but they were too far-gone. Somebody needed to save Amos from this
world. Amos was only getting a daily fix of Rita Lee; the alternative reality of
ice crème and psychedelics was wearing thin. He needed to join her, he need to
stay in the world that she and her ice crème truck followed. He said out loud
at 4:45 of that day, “Give me a world without money; give me colors, pop music
and birds. I’ll pay for it all with this street.” That next day Amos decided to escape
the financial crisis. He was done; his humanity was starting to break through
his skin. He couldn’t help those people in suits anymore. Stocks and analyses
were an imaginary religion, which had managed to take reality down with it. This
world was lost to numbers and circumstance and had lost it's people. He had never spoken to Rita Lee, but he
had a plan. And right at the stroke of noon on the next day, he heard the pop
music of Os Mutantes. Rita Lee’s ice crème truck was approaching, the colors
were changing. He saw her and started to take slow steps, savoring the feeling
of New York disappearing. “Take me with you,” he said. “This truck will travel throughout
the cosmos delivering color and music,” Rita Lee replied. “Pop music.”
Dead birds sprung to life and flew out of the corner trashcan. “Get me out of here! I don’t want
to ever sell flowers again! Please… wherever you come from… wherever you are
going… take me there! I hate this financial meltdown. They cheated on us!”
Amos grabbed the side of the truck and he felt the energy of the truck course
through his body. He fell onto the pavement, which had turned into grass. He
looked at the sky and saw himself as a six-year-old boy throwing a football.
Amos shook his head, surprised to see himself show up in the hallucination. He
stood back up onto his feet. Rita Lee looked at him from deeper inside the
hallucination. “Everything you need to know is
behind you,” she said, and Amos turned around and saw himself still throwing a
football. “I don’t want to be a part of them.” “Pay attention to him,” Rita Lee
said, pointing at the little boy throwing the football. “What is he saying?”
He put his hand on the ice crème truck. Rita Lee nodded and Amos climbed into
the green interior. There were never any photographs of the Amazon; instead he
was standing in the middle of the jungle, he felt it’s humidity. Standing eye
to eye with her, Amos realized he had no clue if her name was really Rita Lee.
It just fit. The sound of the pop music became
overwhelmingly clear, the truck started to move and Rita Lee was more human than
she had seemed before. He saw New York City move outside the window like a
kaleidoscope. He passed through each of the boroughs; he passed the East and
West side, the lost dreams of Broadway and the evil of Wall Street. He heard
chants. “We believed the algorithms!” But those voices faded. The truck
started to speed up and the pop music became faster. And in that final moment as the truck
sped up and the colors blurred into beauty and the music played for the sake of
inter-planetary grace, Amos saw himself as a little boy playing catch with a
football once again. He saw his father throwing it to him and he saw his
six-year-old self throwing the ball back. The music became clearer, each chord
more divine than the one before it. The colors unified with Amos’ soul, and he
realized the one thing… that one thing... that they had all missed; the
financial markets missed it, New York City didn’t understand it, all the
flowers in the world would not clarify that one idea that six-year-old Amos
understood so clearly throwing that football in Maryland. It was always more fun…
it has always been better… to the throw it away and catch it again. It was
never worth holding onto. he
morning of that day Amos took a dozen roses and placed them on his cutting
board. He held them tight so they wouldn’t wiggle free from his hand. He cut
the bottom of the stems at a diagonal, wrapped them in paper and received a
twenty-dollar bill from a customer in a blue suit. Amos handed him the flowers
and was reaching for change when the customer stopped him. That was Amos’ tip
for his work. It was 10:30am on another one of those hot August mornings. By the
midmorning concrete was already boiling, fewer birds were in the sky and the Dow
Jones Industrial Average was falling faster than the day before, which was to be
expected.
Part
1
hen
the Eisenbart bunch came to visit me on a chirpy good old June evening not so
long ago, I was completely at ease. I had just turned in an exceedingly
nonchalant account of the farming conditions in the Cook County to my editor and
was enjoying a rather patriotic moment in my study with Sibelius and a glass of
wine. My legs rested on a velvety pink footstool, my right hand held my warm
drink, while the left played an invisible piano. The clock had hardly struck
eight when I heard a loud bang on the door. Then another.
I turned down the music and transferring the chumminess of my heart to my vocal
chords said in a honey-sweet tone, "Coming. One moment please." I
cannot tell you if I wasn’t a little surprised to hear the door knock at such
an unholy hour. You would feel the same if you had dwelled for over fifteen
years in the Jackson County, IL, home to a herd of mostly deaf and half-deaf old
men and edentate maidens. I hardly ever heard a sound in my neighborhood except
from the birds and the television sets turned on their highest volumes. But I
had gotten used to that. You see, it is not so bad living with old people. They
look at you with a sort of paternal gaze, inquire into the happenings of your
life, and, if you are lucky enough, invite you over to eat a hearty meal cooked
in good old country style. Overall, I would say that it is better living with
old people than living with those rummy young fellows who seem to be too busy
with their own God-knows-what business to even smile at you on a fine morning.
They would look at you with such a glum expression as if the whole world had
axed their ambition and rendered their lives fruitless. They would cross you in
the streets, their hands holding grimy carryout packages, their eyes dull and
grey, or blue, and their lips closely stitched by some invisible thread. In a
crowd of costumed approximations you might also end up being one of them. What
can you do? Morosity breeds morosity. I, on the other hand, am a rather cheery
girl myself, so, except when needed (and that need came more often than you
think), I seldom interact with the glum population dwelling outside Jackson
County.
I got up and putting on my plush pink slippers walked toward the door. I
unfastened the door-latch, and donning an ear to ear grin, opened the door. I
was shocked at once. There stood before me four Homo sapiens and an animal, a
dog, to be precise, and together they seemed like creatures from outer space
just dropping in to greet the inmates of our dear earth with a cheerful gesture.
I stood at the door, frozen. My eyes popped out of my head, my jaw dropped, and
my salivating tongue hanged out my open mouth like a little puppy dog. The
mortals who stood before me were all dressed in black. The family consisted of
what seemed a papa bear, a momma bear, and a set of twin baby bears. All of them
were dressed in the same way: leather biker pants, which were cut around the
thighs in clean U-shapes revealing a fairly beefy chunk, fastened to the waist
by four cowboy belts with heavy metal buckles; sleeveless white t-shirts that
shouted the words 'The Outlaws' written in bold black font on the chest area;
around their wrists they had black leather wristbands with shinning metal beads
mounted on them; about the neck they tied black satin kerchiefs; heavy
sunglasses covered their eyes and their lips were painted black; the two boys
and the father sported three horrible spiked hairdos and it seemed that they
that had just received an electric shock treatment. The woman had a dainty
metallic-pink country hat mounted on her head that sported in glittering letters
the word howdy. I reckoned she depended on her hat and not her mouth for daily
greeting business.
How long I stood frozen to the ground I cannot say, but it must be long since
one of the boys, which one I cannot say because they looked awfully similar,
grew impatient and said in a peevish sort of way "What is the matter with
her, Pops? Why is she staring like that? Won't she let us come in?"
My trance broke, and I hurried to make amends for my initial behavior, "I
am terribly sorry. Please do come in," said I moving from the door and
allowing my visitors to come in. One by one they walked in — four hearty,
healthy, well-rounded bodies. The dog walked in last sneering at me for keeping
it waiting for such a long time and greeted me with a contemptuous bark. It was
an old American Cocker Spaniel and had a dirty, unkempt, furry body.
"You see, I don’t see people at….." I could not finish my sentence
since the man who had just stepped in almost thrusting his sweaty palm on my
face said, "Don’t worry, happens all the time."
It looked that they were used to shocking receptions. "Oh, okay," I
said closing the door.
"We are the Eisenbarts," the man said as I turned around,
"and we are your new neighbors."
"Really, that's great," I replied, cheerfully, trying to find out in
my mind what was so great about having the weirdoes as my neighbor.
"I am Jason Eisenbart, and this is my wife Debra," he said pointing
towards the cowboy-hatted woman.
"Hello," I said, smiling. "I am Kathy Heinz. How do you do!"
"Nice meeting you. This place is great." Debra said looking around.
"Thank you."
"And these are out two sons, John James and Robert Michael. They are
twins."
"Yes, I see that," I said in a surprised tone as I examined the lads.
"Boy! They are really indistinguishable."
"Yes, they are," Debra said, "I too get mixed up, you know."
"Hello, John James. Hello, Robert Michael."
"Hello," the boys replied in an unenthusiastic chorus.
I directed the guests to the living room. "Please sit down," I said.
The Outlaws made themselves comfortable on my tiny Victorian sofa. Mr. Eisenbart
seemed rather too comfortable for he put his booted feet on my coffee table, and
before I could say anything, looked at me and said, "Beer, please."
I fumbled and then managing said, "Okay. And for you Debra?"
"Beer is fine," she said, showing a set of yellow teeth.
"Fruit punch, fruit punch," the boys said jumping on the carpet.
"I am afraid I don’t have fruit punch. Will orange juice be okay?" I
asked nervously.
"No, I want fruit punch, now!" cried one of the boys stomping his feet
on the ground.
"But, she doesn’t have fruit punch, honey." Debra said. And then
looking at me she said, "Orange juice will be fine."
The dog wagged its tail and stretched itself on the carpet. It did not ask for
anything.
I dragged myself to the kitchen reiterating in my mind the newly received order.
Two beers, two orange juices, and one dreadful evening. I was pouring the cold
beer from a bottle long been hibernating in my freezer into the mugs when I
heard the television set being switched on. I craned my neck from the kitchen
and found the Outlaws enjoying a dear family moment in front of my television.
Glued to the set, they were watching Demolition Derby. The father shouted
enthusiastically, the children imitated him, and Debra looked at them like
Mother Mary, happy and contented.
"Here," I said walking in with the drinks and placing the tray on the
table. The dirty shoe marks on the glass almost made me throw up, but I somehow
managed to retain my composure. I sat on the chair and looked at my visitors
with an expectant expression, they, however, disregarded me completely. Mr. Eisenbart,
too engrossed in the show, picked up the mug, absentmindedly, and chugged the
beer at one go. "Bottom's up, bottom's up, Pops" the children cried,
and Pops kept their wish. Draining the beer into his mouth he burped and placed
the mug on the glass of the table. Debra was still finishing her drink, sipping
slowly from the mug; her eyes too were glued to the television. Tweedledum and
Tweedledee made bubbling noises with the drinking straws. Irritated and
exasperated, I made a noise too; I coughed to draw their attention. They did not
hear me and continued to enjoy the show. My condition in that situation might be
described as somewhat sore, if you know what I mean. You see, Demolition Derby
had never been my kind of sport; any sport, for that matter, exhibiting the
characteristics of destruction and unneeded aggression weren’t my kind of
sport. I do prefer a round or two of civilized sports like tennis or cricket,
but overall, I would say I never have been a very sporting person. And I derived
no entrainment whatsoever in seeing five or six drivers competing by
deliberately ramming their vehicles into one another. I stared at the
television, painfully, almost reaching the point of a temper tantrum when,
fortunately, Debra got up from her chair. I thought they were leaving, I got up
too.
"I need to use the restroom," she said.
"Over there," I replied pointing towards the restroom door.
She came back after a short while and sat beside me and we began talking. The
television was too loud to decipher all that she said, but from what I heard I
understood that the Outlaws came from Wisconsin. They drove all the way from
Milwaukee that morning, stopping in Chicago for lunch, and had arrived in our
neighborhood around early evening. The movers had not brought their stuff yet,
and they had come to enquire if I had seen the movers. "No, I did
not," I said. A little more talk with her revealed the greatest secret: the
Eisenbarts owned and operated a hard rock band which they called 'The Outlaws.'
"A rock band?" I said, surprised.
"Yes, and it is fun. We tour a lot across America. We have been to Alabama,
Memphis, Mississippi….ah…and...Oklahoma and Arkansans" Debra said
counting the places the Outlaws have toured on the phalanges of her fingers.
"Haven't you heard about us on the Channel 6 news last October?" I saw
the astonishment in her eyes.
"No, I am afraid, I did not." I said perplexedly. A rock band! Come
on. That's unexpected.
"This is an awfully quite neighborhood, don’t you get bored?" Debra
asked me as I was still gulping the newly received news.
"No, I like quiet," I replied. "How come you guys chose to come
here? You see, people like you hardly settle here."
"When Uncle Marty moved to Florida he sold his house to us. He gave us a
good deal, and we figured that since we needed a new place to stay; you see, we
lived in a trailer before we came here, and I was tired of it, so, we sold it
and brought this house here." Debra explained. Marty Kellison was a perfect
neighbor; I seldom remembered that he lived next door. He had recently moved to
Florida to enjoy the sun and I did remember seeing a 'For Sale' board sitting
near the house, but I had no idea that he had already sold it.
"Okay, so he sold the house to you," I said.
"Yes."
"Time to go," a familiar thundering voice said. I looked up, it was
Outlaw Sr. I accompanied my guests to the door.
"It was great meeting you, Kathy," Debra said giving me a good bye
hug. I think she wore men's cologne, the smell of which together with her sweat
was altogether unbearable. I tried to disembrace myself.
"It was great meeting you guys, too," I said, almost choking.
"Great meeting you, Kathy. See you." Outlaw Sr. said and went out with
the dog, which had been barking continuously in an aggressive sort of way for
quite sometime. The twins followed him, and sticking out their tongues at me in
a most disturbing manner left the premises of my house.
"Good bye" I said.
The Outlaws left for the day.
After cleaning the house and the carpet I forced myself to think that the new
neighbors might not be that bad. That it would be a nice diversion to see the
flamboyant family; after all, they did not seem that bad. I was rather
embarrassed by my evening behavior; I realized I wasn’t that good of a host.
"I would bake them a pie or something," I said to myself, and singing
a self-composed melody, headed for the dinner table.
The following morning I saw a moving truck. The movers brought out several
unmarked cardboard boxes and musical instruments from the vehicle. Outlaw Senior
stood in the yard and gave them instructions. It was around ten in the morning
and he held a can of cheap beer, his big paunch hanging monstrously out of his
trousers. He saw me at the window and yelled "Good morning."
"Good morning," I replied walking away from the window.
For the first couple of days everything seemed normal. The Eisenbarts appeared
as any other normal family living in the neighborhood, only not deaf, and a tad
younger. The sense of apprehension abated, and I got back to living my quiet
life. Hell broke loose on the third night. Around midnight, right in the middle
of my REM sleep, I woke up to a deafening crash. Surprised, I leaped out of my
bed like a frog, and before I could understand anything there sounded another
crash, a sort of metallic guttering sound, more violent than the first one.
Completely blank in the mind, I hid myself behind the door. A series of
crashing, metallic, clamorous, booming noises followed. The house shook, the
wall vibrated, one by one the pictures of my family and friends fell from the
wall. A Chinese vase that stood on a corner table wobbled on its place and then
fell on the ground and broke into pieces. "Earthquake," I shouted and
yelling "Help, help," I stormed out of my room and ran downstairs. I
ran out of the house as fast as I could. Shell-shocked, I stood out in the yard.
The thunderous noises continued to ring. I covered my ears and began running
once again. I was a few yards from the house, almost at the gate of the
community park, when the noises stopped, abruptly. I stopped running and looked
at the house, it was quiet as snow. Peevishly, I began walking towards it. It
seemed harmless. I was wrong. No sooner had I walked in and closed the door,
breathless, panting, there were the crashing metallic sounds once again. This
time the clanging noises were followed by voices —four non-harmonious,
discordant voices started singing. They each sounded overwhelmingly different:
one of them sang from the nose, the second one just shouted, the third yelled,
while the fourth, who was a woman, modulated her voice in the middle of what
seemed a eulogy to hell. Startled, traumatized, shocked and surprised, I
listened, and after a long while it ultimately dawned upon me that what I
thought an earthquake was actually a humble practice session of the Outlaws.
The clamor of the Outlaw crowd continued for another hour. I lost four more
pictures, an antic flowerpot, a couple of dishes and an ashtray; but most
importantly, I lost my mind. I sat on the sofa covering myself with the throw
blanket; and guarding my ears with my palms, prayed. Eventually, I fell asleep,
I don’t know how, maybe some fairy had dropped in and cast upon me a sleep
spell or something. Overslept, I woke up around noon with a banging headache,
and for a while almost forgot about the ghastly experience I had the night
before. My eyes eventually fell on the heap of broken glass along the staircase,
and I remembered everything. I was mad at once. "Those weirdoes have no
respect for people and think that can do whatever they want. I will call the
police; I will teach them a lesson." I shouted to myself. Boiling with
anger I put on a pair of jeans and a haggard shirt and went to the Eisenbarts.
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Below (7): Untitled
Nathan Combs
Get Back Better On
Eleanor-Leonne Bennett
Do You Feel White Frost?
Eleanor-Leonne Bennett
Feather on Bone—a Delicate Death
Eleanor-Leonne Bennett
Small Adults and Grown Large Eyes
Eleanor-Leonne Bennett
Concrete Lace
Jessie Carty
Look Up
Jessie Carty
Dry Dock
Jessie Carty
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The Devil and the Philosopher |
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Rachel Davis |
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Strip Clubs I'd Like to See |
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Sheila Hageman |
Below (3): Paths
Colleen Purcell
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The Webs You Weave |
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Bex Saunders |
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Ocean on Fire |
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Iolanda Scripca |
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UFO |
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Iolanda Scripca |
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Sky at Dawn |
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Iolanda Scripca
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Medusa
Sarah Anne Stinnett
Not Home
Sarah Anne Stinnett
Man in the Mirror
Sarah Anne Stinnett
Lou
Sarah Anne Stinnett
Good luck, America
by Bill Britton
s
reported, Sarah Palin’s PAC had a number of candidates under crosshair images
before the fall election. It is this type of irresponsible and inflammatory
politicizing that can push some over the edge. Sure, it’s freedom of speech,
but that rings hollow when seven people are gunned down. What cannot be denied
is the link between inflammatory statements in general and the climate of anger
that is running rampant in this country. Palin’s PAC website serves as a
potent example.
Some claim that all segments of the political spectrum make inflammatory
statements, but that is only partly true. The political Right has elevated it to
an art form, which can be heard on talk radio and on Fox News daily. When
travelling, I scan radio stations out of curiosity. The one major exception to
inflammatory language is NPR, which can be left-leaning but there is no spewing
of vitriol as is found on the Right. I don’t believe that anyone on the Left
can hold a candle to the statements issued by a Palin, a Bachmann, or an Engle,
which have been seen to spill over into their followers’ rally signs. And to
equate Olbermann with Limbaugh, for example, is ridiculous. Olbermann can be
both caustic and sarcastic, but Limbaugh is malicious to the core.
Some might read into this that I am in favor of censorship. But any “policing
of words” should be undertaken by the politicos and their talking heads
themselves by exercising self-restraint. There is nothing weak about a public
discourse grounded in civility. But to use guns as a metaphor for political
action can provide negative reinforcement to a troubled mind and is a total
distortion of the Second Amendment.
I spent 4 years in the Marines. The assumption on the part of people I don’t
know is that I am a Right-winger. Two examples: When I moved to Florida, a
neighbor who saw the Marine decal on my car began sending me links to what were
blatant, hateful lies about Democrats. Another time, while at the gun range, a
fellow shooter looked at my Marine cap and said, “I bet you’d rather be
shooting at a silhouette of Obama.” My responses were sharp, but given their
assumptions, were justified.
I think about anger in America and try to explore its roots, and at the end of
the day, it all comes down to personal economics—the alienation of the 17% who
are unemployed or have given up looking. They provide the tinder for angry
public discourse. The gap between the common good and the corporate conscience
grows wider each day. In other words, corporate profits trump “what is good
for America.” Many major U.S. corporations now have workforces dominated by
foreigners. Whose interests do they serve? And as we have seen, Wall Street
churns money for the benefit of the few and the despair of many.
A corporate oligarchy now rules America and has no interest in bettering the
plight of the disappearing line worker or the small business owner. I suspect
that the new Tea Party members in Congress will be gobbled up by the system and
will have only a marginal impact on the juggernaut of special interests that, in
actuality, run this country and, incidentally, are running it into the ground.
Government and business should be addressing a number of major issues in this
country, e.g.: (1) infrastructure, e.g., roads and bridges, railroads, the
electrical grid; (2) structural unemployment, i.e., retraining of the workforce
to replace jobs that are never coming back; (3) basics in education (including
much-diminished humanities curricula); (4) and admit that democracy isn’t for
everyone and let foreign belligerents fight their own battles (and in
tandem, reduce military expenditures substantially). I see only token progress,
if at all, on any of these issues. Good luck, America.
