Return to Contents

Return to Top of Page

Priscilla Barton John Birkbeck Janet I. Buck Richard Fein Rochelle Hope Mehr D. B. Cox Scott Malby Kelley White Michael Paul Ladanyi Char Prieto Katarzyna Stankowska William Fairbrother          Before We Were Dancers by Priscilla Barton Coyote and I drink whiskey, but he never gets drunk.  He tells me it's genetic, that his father had a huge tolerance for what might kill another.  Alfred was the first Shoshone to die in Viet Nam, but they never found his body.  His wife believes he'll be home soon.  Linda makes dream-catchers, and sells them for a fair price at the trading post.  White people buy them, along with cigarettes and disposable lighters.  Jasper's house burned to the ground while he and his mother slept in their beds.  Other Indians tried to save them, but the flames won.  I don't appreciate being called Tonto, but I will answer to it whenever there's blood on the moon and my heart is a fist.  You take an interest in our culture, have a curiosity about certain rituals, ask me to explain the origin of our dance.  My father taught me the steps, but my feet are rooted to the edge of this reservation, and will dance only when owls speak the names of ghosts.     In Dreams by Priscilla Barton Lions kneel in the desert, lips bitten by every truth unspoken.  Smaller worlds flake off the crusted edges of maps.  Orion lies deep in the earth, and trees pretend they are birds while mountains pose as clouds. The sky is measured into perfectly stacked cubes, and the wind becomes a prayer held in the palm of an unborn child.  A canvas of white absorbs seven shades of brown and calls itself art. The bones of Abraham climb from the sand, carrying a sword of glass.  Planets burst like water balloons.  Lenin's statue comes alive, and two pink flamingos fall from his mouth. The moon is a ferris wheel, and a red mouse with yellow eyes sings the national anthem. Elvis is seen on the horizon, holding a pail of blue snow.  Freud smokes a cigar while Dali steals the hands from melting clocks. I wake with arrows in my wrists.     Visiting Day by Priscilla Barton He works the wood with a small knife, cuts and carves, whittles until a sparrow sits in his palm.  Just a pastime, he says, something to keep the fingers nimble. Those same hands had found the song within my mother's skin, kept its rhythm and called forth a child with a pearl on her tongue.  Wooden replicas of birds, dragonflies, turtles, and every wildflower once placed in a vase to grace yesterday's table, line the shelves; their creator lost to the next task at hand, easily forgetting what once was.  I am there, in the pile of wood chips at his feet, one more creation. Father mine, exquisite replica of what you were, I am forever your sparrow, you are forever my poem. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Accolade to the Bay City Majorettes by John Birkbeck          They are up front in spirited prance with the roll of the drums they go             skin a celluloid pink             and all aglow in the frost of the October night Under the stadium light bright as noon strutting their stuff in the floodlight glare.                    Impossible beauty beyond touch their batons teasing the hard night air for the beer-foggèd middle-agèd dumbstruck numb-drunken alumni from central Iowa insurance offices and gun shops and hardware stores                   are they real or a fantasy         these NordicValkyries a-strut on one magic night                  impossible beauty beyond touch of the cheering parade mob gone mad beyond lust chanting for blood impossible beauty beyond touch       goddess’ bodies and vapid eyes                 they’re up front—on the go to the roll of the drums and skin aglow stepping out—on the march—in quartertime swallowed by the gauntlet mob              impossible beauty                             beyond touch. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       The Question of Ahead by Janet I. Buck "Tennyson lifts the latch to a moated garden ..." Billy Collins Teacup tulips fenced a path once straight and sure. That was ancient bliss in assonance, in consonance in words as regal as hymns. Orchards of peace sit cardboard dry. No water.  No well.  No rain but blood thick as borscht, gleaming red, set against the skinny curves of truant moons. Body counts and skeletons for bookmarks in accruing storms. Maybe no angels, maybe no gods at all hover the beaten road. The choir now, a muted sigh fixed in cold lament. Laws of wrath are penning rules— just question children of Iraq or widows camped on every shore. The Phoenix is a drunken bird: it's up to our fitful souls to slap it awake, lift the plume through praline clouds bound by gritty sand. First published in Cold Glass     Group by Janet I. Buck Straight from jail to "group." I know what you're thinking: I don't need a circle of strangers stabbing the backs of my lies, watching them bleed, calling the darkness a crucial precursor of suns. You are simply foreigners and language is a facile trick to corner me, withdraw the crutch, its poles and pads my only friend. You roll in a ball like the snail that sleeps through winter in a brittle shell. Broken and hungry, afraid of the food sitting in an outstretched hand. We've dug these ditches carefully, defended them like bloody warriors going down in dominos. A burlap soul wants drugs of silk, not the honest walk through fire. Blame.  Blame.  Blame. My wife's to blame.  Haywire hormones. Greediness.  Nothing but dope would pacify her raging lips. It's a song with the pitch of nightingales— eerie and yet comforting. Repeat it and it sticks like snow to freezing windshields on the street. The shuffle for covering shame— I know that delusional dance— and yes, the feel of awkward knees that quiver in the reckoning.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Onstage and Off by Richard Fein The player onstage and the person offstage are cast in different roles, and develop their characters under different directors. The player trains for his craft then auditions. The person is unprepared when his curtain rises.     The player rehearses every syllable he will say, and says it all with practiced eloquence. The person rehashes everything he should have said, and regrets the babble that sputtered from his lips. The player is a professional who never misses his cues. The person is an amateur who first must learn what a cue is. Any surprises the player confronts are unpleasant, forgotten or flubbed lines, a scenery collapse, a broken leg, or someone beyond the footlights yelling boo. The person confronts similar mishaps, but the script is all ad lib and every once in awhile the plot miraculously flips from tragedy to romantic comedy. If the player stars in a mystery then it's always solved during the third act. The person always has a role in a mystery that is never solved, even after the curtain falls. The player stays up all night for his inevitable good or bad reviews. The person is one in a cast of billions, almost of all of whom are bit players and never receive notice, either good or bad of their short-run, off, off, way-off, Broadway performance.     The Clown Who Juggled Starfish by Richard Fein It's not my image; it's not my line; it's not my title; it's not my poem. But I'm not plagiarizing; I'm preserving. I'd tell you the poet's name if I could. I think it starts with an E or B. Recite the phrase "The clown who juggled starfish" and her face appears in my memory, but in no one else's. She would read her poems timidly in every Beat coffee house in the Village. She was often drowned out by pretentiously arty conversations, hip waitresses taking orders, and the awful gargles of espresso machines. I spoke to her once or twice before she died. She said her prayers would be answered if just one of her poems lasted, even if it were only a footnote to the Beat Generation. The three journals that did publish her have long since folded. I'd search for them in second hand book stores or on the web, but I can't recall their names either. I'm the harlequin who half answers her prayers, the bumbling guardian angel of her mortal accomplishments. I can't remember even one complete poem, only the title of one, "The Clown Who Juggled Starfish." Thus the title becomes the entire poem, her unabridged anthology, in the faulty memory of her lone biographer. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Temperance by Rochelle Hope Mehr I am suffocating on your good intentions. They cut off my air supply. What have you done? Nothing so awful On the face of it. But I wear down so easily When your hands grind me To a fault. I know you mean well. But I can't change my face. My way of looking at the world. It may not please you. But it's mine. And I cling to it. I won't put on the blush Or cosmetically remove the scar To appease you. Leave me the bar. Leave me this last semblance of my sanity. Of my sanctity. Let me retain Freedom so precious: My own measured thoughts Unfettered by exuberance. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Broken Toys by D. B. Cox “you better run through the jungle–don’t look back” — Creedence Clearwater Revival Another troubled night falls. The triple-canopy darkness closes around me like a body bag being zipped slowly shut. In the titanic darkness, the jungle breathes, like a living thing, & I sense the ghostly company of things that roam late. From the corner of my eye, I catch glimpses of shifting shadows that freeze in place whenever I turn my head to stare. Five months in-country, & still uneasy with the weight of the rifle in my hands. Still looking back toward old rules that no longer hold, & old order that has spilled over into chaos. A strange storm, just before sundown, seemed to bring some ancient evil from the highlands.  How long can my angels shield me from the fangs of this forever-hungry beast? A trickle of sweat, finds a trail down the center of my back. My dexedrine-charged heart slams, like a ten pound hammer, against my chest, intruding upon the heavy silence. How much more mad input, before this heart is stopped for good? How many more blinding-white days & bullet-torn nights until I reach the cold understanding that the best part of me already lies twisted & rotting in the dense, tangled green.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Pacific Coast Highway #1 by Scott Malby a.  Soul Catcher  In this house built from sand the cliffs are many.  You click as you go.  Capturing visions.   Knowing no image can communicate the truth of it all.  Here, inside light are clouds; dark moons  only prayers can travel through or the dead enter, where images perceived take on the shape of question marks and what you see depends on who you are inside, somehow  knowing that truth can’t be photographed.  Only hinted at. b.  This Venerable Shindig  Such distended mysteries in an Owl’s hoot.  The surprise flying in on unexpected wings. Slapping at your gut from inside out with witching syllables deep enough to drown in.  The unearthly keen of its madness opening up the night like a knife slicing dark fruit as if in looking upon heaven and hell, the Owl in you returns to your road of in betweens, spreading its news in a language no one but itself can understand. And I,  I who am also all things in between, crave the sites and sounds of this road.  The clarity it brings that penetrates. Ocean sounds, pizza parlors, the wealth  of grocery stores, gas stations, movie houses; exuberant metaphors of the tangible  in the geographies of unfinished places and their irregular affirmation of symmetries  wherever road meets coast.  Between San Diego and Seattle are secret sea beached coves, puddle towns of pagan intensity with a hoot my soul confronts open mouthed in gasps of wonder no dream of heaven or hell could match where elemental passions are forged from  inside out becoming a mystery absorbed, dominating time and distance and like the sound an owl makes, once breathed in, such places are never fully breathed out.  c.  Nam  A question of interconnections.  A question of permutations.  A question of contradictory implosions for high on the fever of a spectacular day the storm came, turning my world into a trash bin of war.  Blood on the sand mixing into the rainbow colors of dead smurfs  like melting angels against washed up kelp, stranded by high tide and lying on their sides in the shape of a burnt cross.  I should have gone to plywood school, married a plywood makers daughter, become a Wal-Mart greeter.  The death of optimism came when I realized there were no big trees left,  history was written by the victors,  all our gods have died and the truth of man is in his exploitation. Religion is a mystery in gilt wraps.  A spotted owl.  A jubilant and redemptive prayer or all thunder and rain.  From the ocean the death ship came.  Sailing on red, white and blue wings. The coffin of small destructions.  The face of doom muttering through its lips both  prayers and curses until these thoughts frothed into drops of blood in me and  I became, not pessimist nor idealist but both in one. d. The brotherhood of bone Night of uprooted fears and interrupted voyages, up from the wilderness inside like ravenous bats out of hell winging up the trough of my own human fallibilities, cavernous shapes flapping  magnified wings of multiplying shadows.  Mountain ash, St. Helen’s ash, ash of all our memories, where did we go so wrong?  In my own mouth the ashy after-taste of whisky. We're trapped.  Attempting to make sense of the landscape ahead of us erupting with physical explosions into arboreal shafts of light.  Aaron’s rod.  The staff of Moses.  Manna from a nuclear heaven drawing its truth  from a radioactive earth igniting the air we breathe with all possibilities baptizing us into this  brotherhood of bone.  We who are blind from birth, are bent but not broken,  seeking our own fragile atonement before the sun sets like a dragonfly's wing  carrying our hopes into the silence of incestuous tunnels where nothing lasts. e.  Respecting those languages I cannot speak Burdened by my own inadequacies, I stand and wait.  Mesmerized by these waves teased by turbulent heaving wind into stiff erections; white walls of water roaring as they  break into their own destruction.  Compared to this what have I to offer?  Meaning is not easy. It struggles not to be born.  It comes when it comes, coming to those who are able to love and are resigned to struggle, building through faith the truth behind their own striving to make all things whole again.  Can you hear me?  Our lives merge together into a maddening flight of radiance  eyes find it hard to follow, blinded by our own shadows, wondering why they hug the ground,  knowing without knowing why the earth and sky open as we end; as we collapse they  open their arms, like a father or mother might reaching for the hand of a diffident child.  f.  Seven Devils Road Obscuring this road of in betweens we melt into; an icy maze of curves our clouds cast,  opalescent October shadows press eerily against the gnarly weight of moss strung trees we speed along,  needing to find some way out, our way back to the way things were, what we had together, knowing how the secret lies in still wanting to care, the very thing we’ve lost  these wipers seem to screech as our scars battle with wind, these thoughts bend seamlessly joining the road ahead as if I’ve already given all I’m able to give.  Deep in the darker silences of myself something in me no longer cares, no longer tries to reason open the answer to that distance driving us apart.  When all is metaphor how can a man offer up the small truths of himself but by his own reflection casting that felt but unseen into shapes he comprehends.  We see by negative space, hiding ourselves from the truths our irrational presence reflects,  knowing no more of them then the yearnings they represent; what we want to see.  Out of wet mud and the sludge of my own expectations I was made.   Now, no longer loving you, not liking myself  because of it nor the murky labyrinth my life now speeds along.   Turning on these lights.  Unable to turn them off.  Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       If you were dying I'd come by Kelley White If you were dying I’d come even in this body I’d whisper whatever you asked me to sing I’d bring you the letters you wrote in the morning of lifetimes we both wished we never had lived     It's nearly a whimper by Kelley White It’s nearly a whimper in your breath and my body beside yours rises in silent desire begins to fold into a  waking memory body song lifted and forgiven, living and thrilled Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Goatmen by Michael Paul Ladanyi She stares through damp wicker blinds. Late June is a blue-redolent greenhouse, choking flowers eyeless and holy against the paint-chipped porch. Dirty men work in the yard; they are her goatmen.  She hears them as mouths gnawing her inner thighs with pointed bronze teeth. Death and lust are in their working, their labor a sweat of lies.  Her hand is wet, cavernous, full of eyes, tangled-throated against her stomach. They are still goatmen, dirty and plain, walking bags of bones muttering drunk, late night songs; their long mouths full of pubic hair and new blood.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Grandmother by Char Prieto Almost centenarian But now you are gone But still Among unlighted candles Without champagne And lemon cake I still can look Into your clear eyes And see that grief That sadness All that past That stone That adobe farmhouse The fig tree That little town Your tragedies The hunger The death The two Spains The story of a country Parted by a civil war   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       light/night by Katarzyna Stankowska the light lasts but a second only darkness me the night rises from the day's corpse finally set free the hour suspended the painting of the sky the reality froze still torn by a mute cry the clouds velvet curtain slowly falling down shelter now darkness light in a crimson crown life stops stares frightened beauty it can see the world falls again apart only darkness me   defeat by Katarzyna Stankowska another drop from the cup of time lingers still on the edge of falling. tiny black drop, so many dreams inside bound to fall as the earth is calling. i stop to watch it. it shivers.  it's cold. my eyes are fixed on the hopeless fight a desperate cry, defenses won't hold and all disappears as every single night.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       We imagine the human spirit by William Fairbrother We imagine the human spirit as translucent, perhaps illumined— at least see-through. We recognize the form as human, or perhaps geometrical— spherical or gaseous— all in all 3-dimensional, even if made from what appears to be the materialessness of air— without surfaces. We imagine the colors faded, or ghostly white-grey— more as if a projection than an object. There is movement. Floating. Always out of reach— usually just slightly above, off to one side, or in front. We can see and hear the human spirit is bored and sad— silent or whispering, sighing with a hollow voice, or booming like an echo. Our conversations circular. We envy its immortality— it envies our impermanence. We encounter a human spirit which is empty handed— oddly in clothes. It has eyes and thinks. Though sometimes touching us like the charm of a breeze— we feel nothing at all when we attempt to touch it.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page

 

 

   

• At the Carnival at the End of Summer  Catherine Talley

• Rooster Run   Crispin Oduobuk

• The Missing Shoe   A. M. Matson

• The Museum of Fools   Richard Meyers

• MECONOPSIS   H.W. Reynolds

• The Pretty Little City of D****   Saskia van der Linden

• The Shop   Laine Perry

• "Don't Kill Mother!"   Stoyan Valev

 

---

                                             

 

At the Carnival at the End of Summer                      

by Catherine Talley

                                                                                                                                              

he traveling carnival arrived at the edge of town marking the end of summer.  Between the end of the harvest and winter's edge the local people were joyful and ready to spend if the harvest had gone well or in need of distraction if it hadn't.

On this Indian summer Saturday Tommy meandered down the entry path that was peppered with well worn game tents and refreshment stands, his money burning a hole in his pocket.  He was excited yet still bone-weary from the month-long harvest.  If the truth be known, he was kind of looking forward to going back to school so that he could just sit and think for a while.

Having grown nearly a foot since carnival time last year, Tommy was feeling a little awkward about going on the rides.  Yeah, it was probably kid stuff, but he still liked the same rides.  But the guys might make fun of him.  Looking around trying to decide what to do first, he noticed a tall girl, pale with a shock of curly black hair busy inside one of the canvas tents.  There was nobody with black hair where he came from.  He had never even seen anybody with black hair before.

He kind of startled himself by staring at her, but if anybody could look exotic making cotton candy, she did.  She moved quickly, her hair tossing across and sticking to her face.  Without realizing it, he turned and walked through the drying grass toward her, searching her face for her eyes.  Sugar swirled thick in the air, still he sought her eyes through it.  Instead he only found tears spilling from unseen places over her cheeks.  He quickly glanced away, more to spare himself discomfort than her embarrassment.

"Cotton candy?" she asked.

"What's wrong?"  he whispered, barely able to speak.

She flushed.  "People don't usually notice me." she replied.  "But nothing is wrong.  I'm just hot.  I hate being hot."

"That's nothing to cry over," he said.  He was trying to sound comforting but was surprised to find he sounded like his mother did when he was sick

She tossed her hair away from her face, then tried to wipe her face on her shirt sleeve.  He trembled as he finally glimpsed her deep black eyes framed by moist dark lashes.

"Here," he said, withdrawing a worn white handkerchief folded into a small square.  "Please don't cry.  I'm Tommy.  What's your name?"

"Rachel," she replied.

"Do you always work so hard?"

"It wasn't so bad when I could make snow-cones," she answered, "but they said that I didn't sell enough.  And the ice kept melting." she explained.

Haltingly he reached out to stroke her arm.  He barely touched it, then yanked it back, instinctively looking at his hand.  Puzzled, he looked from his blistered palm to her soft face.

"I told you.  I'm hot," she  said as she reached for a paper cone and began to gather another cloud of cotton candy.

                                                    
                                                    
Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

---

 

                                                                                                

Rooster Run                                                                 

by Crispin Oduobuk

say, the headmaster’s wife has some really big roosters,” Peter says to Okoro the Lip, waving aside the orange Okoro is offering.  It’s break-time and though Peter is hungry, he’s positively sick of oranges; too many would-be users of his me-alone slate have come to barter with oranges.

Eyeing a multi-coloured bird perching on a long blade of grass nearby, Okoro, veteran of a thousand verbal matches, sucks noisily on his orange.  He says nothing.

Peter sighs.  It’s as if the hunger he feels has a voice of its own, dictating right into his ears what it would be fed with.  “Really big roosters,” he says softly, more to himself than to Okoro.

“You’re a newcomer,” Okoro says.  “That’s why, trust me.”

Peter shoots him a dark look but stops himself from asking in anger what that means.

It never fails to amaze Peter.  Despite the fact that he has seen several moons in Forneeso and has heard his name change from Peter to Peter the Menace then to King Peter, and then to Peteroo in the village, he’s still the ‘newcomer from New Town’.

It’s not something he really bothers about because even as a mere babe just getting his crawl on, he has always been able to live with things as they are.  Not that changing things never crosses his mind, he simply prefers as little boat-rocking as possible.  When he makes up his mind to effect a change though, he very often nearly sinks the boat.

“What’s being a newcomer got to do with the roosters?” he asks as calmly as he can, knowing that he won’t learn much in anger.

Okoro gives him a look of pity.  It hurts.  Peter lowers his eyes.  Imagine small Okoro!  He remembers when all the looks he got were that of respect and envy.  Now shorn of his one-in-the-village sandals, his formerly sparkling white uniform totally browned-out like that of the rest of the pupils, he has only his ubiquitous me-alone slate to set him apart these days.

With the extended absence of his New Town-based mammy wagon driver father, Peter has had to rely more and more on the novelty of being the only pupil in Forneeso Primary with a whole slate for his personal use for his daily upkeep.

Since the passing of his grandfather and guardian, and the mind-boggling nonchalance of his present official minder—his tight-lipped hunter relative—Peter’s me-alone slate has seen more swap action than the communal well bucket.  And all this has been brokered to reasonable profit by dint of Okoro’s vigorous lip-work.

“I asked you a question,” Peter says, looking at Okoro evenly.

“I heard you,” Okoro replies.  He’d cunningly set himself up as Peter’s broker—food for the use of the coveted me-alone slate—his commission being a small percentage of the takings and occasional use of the me-alone slate when it’s not out on barter.

“So?” Peter asks.

“I say it’s because you’re new that’s why you don’t know, trust me.”

“Know what?”  Peter is uncertain if there’s really anything worth learning from Okoro.  He knows the Lip can turn water to oil and oil to blood if you give him time to work his mouth.  He’s just hoping whatever Okoro is holding back would be worth the wait, especially since his stomach is not giving him any respite.

“The headmaster now has a KAPAW! fire,” Okoro says.

“Not true,” Peter’s upper lip curls involuntarily.

“It’s good.”

“Who gave him KAPAW! fire?”

“You may wish to ask him that.  I just know he has one since they stole his white bicycle, trust me.”

“Like Captain Yonson’s own?”

“I heard it’s a small one, but still a KAPAW! fire all the same, “ Okoro says, squeezing the orange tighter.  “They say it can kill in the same way as Captain Yonson’s big KAPAW! fire.”

“Where did you hear it?  Who told you?”

“I just heard it.  It’s true.  Trust me.”

“He won’t bring it out,” Peter says.

Okoro gives him the look again.  “It’s good.  But how do you know?”

“He can’t bring it out!”

“Even if that’s true, you can’t catch any of the roosters.  You won’t know how, trust me.”

“Who says?” Peter asks, twisting his big toe in the grass.  He’s now eyeing the multi-coloured bird too.  He remembers he had one like it in the not-too-distant past.  Like many other pets he once had, it ended up in his stomach.

“Me,” Okoro smacks his lips.

“I think I can.”

“You can’t.  They’ll blind you.”

“Eh?  Why are you so sure?”

“That woman is a witch.”

“The headmaster’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“Ha!  Is there anybody at all in this Forneeso that is not a witch?”

Okoro throws away what is left of his drained orange.

“I’m not,” he declares.  “My parents are not, nor are my brothers and sisters.  That’s all I know.”

Peter laughs uneasily.  His hunger is reasserting its preference.  The really big roosters with their red combs and wild eyes are prancing about in his mind’s eye.  They’ll fry well in palm oil, he tells himself, feeling his mouth begin to water.

Okoro rubs his small potbelly, belches then throws up his hands in exasperation.  “Just about anybody could be involved in that witchcraft business,” he says.  “It’s why I keep salt in my pockets.”

“Eh?”  Peter gapes at Okoro.  “Salt?”

“Witches can’t stand salt.  And you know they’re everywhere.  You just don’t know who’s who.  I can’t even swear for my own grandmother.”

“I can swear for mine,” Peter says confidently, imagining carrying salt in his pocket.  What nonsense!  He picks up a pebble.  The bird flies away.

“Mama Owinchi?” Okoro asks, looking at Peter with dramatic disbelief.

“Yes.”

Okoro sighs heavily.

“Man, Peteroo,” he says matter-of-factly, “if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you got all your tallness by standing on your mother’s upturned mortar and leaning on the pestle.”

“I’m not!  And my grandmother is not a witch!”

Okoro shakes his head.  He’s sorry he mentioned Peteroo’s mother, knowing, as the rest of Forneeso knows, that she ran away with another mammy wagon driver while Peteroo’s father had been up north on a delivery run.  But it’s truly sad, he tells himself, that Peteroo does not know that Mama Owinchi is a hardcore witch.  It must be true what they say about people from New Town; weak in the head.

“It’s really sad that you don’t know,” Okoro says softly.

“I KNOW THAT MY GRANDMOTHER IS NOT A WITCH!”

“Man, no need to turn into a machete-wielding masquerade.  If she is; she is.  And if she’s not; she’s not.”

“She’s not!”

Okoro sighs again.

In a strained atmosphere, they return to class and Peter sits out the rest of the day sullenly.  When the final bell goes, he strolls home quietly along with the throng of pupils.  However, when he sees the sun turning yellow on the horizon, he makes his way back to school.

From the shadows of one of the classroom blocks, he stands watching the headmaster’s compound across the road.  A while later, he approaches the compound through a roundabout route.  Though darkness has enveloped everywhere, he has no problem locating the roosters’ man-made roost, after all, they can barely keep still.

Opening the cage door, the first one he makes a grab for flies over his head making enough noise to rouse the entire household.  The second lunges at him, missing his eye, but hitting his nose with its beak.  And then it escapes in a flurry of wings and feathers with as much noise as the first.  By this time the rest are making such a racket that Peter concludes that his hopes of getting any are doomed.  He wonders if Okoro hadn’t been right after all.

Dispirited and in a fearful frenzy about getting caught—but still vividly conscious of the biting sensation in his stomach—he grabs blindly for the rest of the roosters hoping to land one.

He does.

Just then, a rough voice he recognises from school shouts, “Who is out there?”

The rooster Peter is holding squawks louder and lunges at his hand.  Peter hears a door open and makes a run for the nearest scrub of bush.  The rooster squawks even louder and attacks again.

“Who is out there?”

Peter dives into the bush, nearly being blinded by a stick jutting out of the ground.  The rooster regains its freedom in a noisy racket that belies the fact that it’s finally free.

“Who is out there?”

Peter stays down like a clown playing silly worm-like pranks.  Silently rubbing his hand where the rooster has left a bloodied mark for its remembrance, he curses Okoro for having been right.

“WHO IS OUT THERE?”

It’s your head, Peter is tempted to say.  But he keeps the thought to himself.  From inside the house he hears a feeble voice inviting the owner of the rough voice to come back in.  He hears the door close, waits a while, then crawls out of his hiding place.

Shuddering from a combination of hunger, anger and cold, Peter considers whether to make another grab at the rest of the roosters.  A rumble in his stomach gives him all the encouragement he needs.  But the bloodied mark on his hand equally provides enough discouragement.

Further distressed by the mental picture of a smiling Okoro wagging a short, pudgy finger and saying, “I told you you couldn’t get those roosters,” Peter decides he’s better off accepting failure and heading home.

Just then, a small figure steps out of the darkness and Peter holds his breath.

“Okoro!”

“Man, Peteroo, I came to give you a hand,” the Lip says.  “I knew you wouldn’t know how to get them.  I bet you don’t even have salt in your pockets.”

“Eh?”

“Here,” Okoro says, holding up two strangled roosters.  “I can’t take them home, but I know you can.  I’ll use your me-alone slate for a week.  It’s good, trust me.”

                                                                                               

                                                    
                                                    
 

Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

---

 

 

The Missing Shoe                                              

by A. M. Matson

yes open.  Go.  It is going to be a morning like all Construction Project Manager Mornings.  Rushed.  Mondays were for meetings.  First one is always at eight o'clock sharp with all the principals of the job generating the most revenue.  The heads of all crews, electrical, plumbing, wood workers, and the super, the architect, her assistants, and the client's rep.  This meeting will be on site, Upper East Side, as always.  It's where they all live, the people who pay tens of millions of dollars to redo apartments.  The Hateful Motherfuckers, the sheet rock guys call them.  They were right.  Miserable Hateful Motherfuckers.  The only saving grace about working for them, is the constant reminder that they, the very rich, are just as miserable as everyone else.

Job number one is behind schedule, with a change order problem.  There will be threats, bullying, and hell to pay.  He has to get it back on track.  His main job is to keep all sites on track, on budget, in profit. 

Christ, it's already six oh one.  Up, he's up.  Slow as he can he gets out of bed.  Doesn't want to wake up his wife.  She'll start articulating about some grievance or other, and he'll be late.  Got to walk in at seven forty.  Before the enemy, make’em feel shoddy.  Don't want to wake the kids up.  Just slither into the bathroom, try not to bang into anything on the way, shave, shower, and, get out.  All right—all clean and ready to blame it all on the architect.
   
It is his fault.  It's always the architect.  They always think they can pull it over on him, but they underestimate him.  The Baby Face Bulldog.  Only had one job in arbitration in over ten years.  Never gonna let it happen again.  Client was a dentist, spent his free time measuring the spaces in the grout between the bathroom tiles.  Jerk.  Wonder if that fuck was dead of a heart attack yet.

OK.  Here we go.  Ready to dress.  Where are his new shoes?  There.  Good idea he had left out that ad for Churches’ Shoes.  She finally got the hint.  Damn good shoes—only ones made that were really all leather—not even a rubber sole.  Wish she could just remember, once a year they go on sale.  Soon he'll have all four of the styles he wants.  He has the Oxford, and the Monk Strap, and now he's got the Oxford in brown too.  Got to take the black in for repairs, hole in the Oxford's toe, might not be able to save that one. 

He's out.  He's on his way, gonna be the first one there.  Grab a coffee on the road.  Few blocks before the subway station, gulp it down in time to get on the train holding nothing but his scruffy, black leather brief case, and he's off.  Down the steps.  Onto the number five train, came right along like clock work.   Even got a seat.  Zero, fat ladies on the train!  Gonna be a good day.  Starting out great.  Didn't wake her up, didn't have to hear her nonsense, no kids moaning in the hallway, and no fat ladies!

Brooklyn to Sixty-eighth Street should be twenty minutes, twenty-five tops.  Now it is, let's see, seven fifteen, give or take, he'll be on the case by seven-forty at the latest.  Shoving those dumb excuses down his lame architect throat. 

Yeah.  Try to shove a fifty-thousand dollar change order on to my side, say we asked for it, oh no, not on my watch.  The whole crew won't even be in yet, the super should be though, backing him up, if he likes his job.  Got to give that turncoat architect's assistant a kickback for the info, but watch the bastard.  No loyalty.  Eight-thirty he'll be out of there and on to Fuck-Up-Number-Two, the leaky townhouse.  Crap, now what?  Brakes squeal.  Lurch.  Black out.  Gasps.  Silence.  Announcement:

—Ladies and gentlemen, stay on the train.  Do not attempt to descend onto the tracks.  Stay on the train.

Then nothing.  Still no lights.  His eyes begin to adjust.

—Hey!

—What?

—You got nice shoes.  Give me your shoes.

—Fuck off.

—I’ll cut you.  Give me your shoes.

—No.  Get off my foot, jerk!

—Hey he hits! Shit! You busted my nose!

—Let go of my foot.  I’ll break your fucking jaw!


—Ladies and Gentlemen. This train will be boarded by the Transit Police momentarily.  Please stay in your seats. You will be advised by the Transit Police.  Stay on the train.

—Hey!  He got my shoe!  What you gonna do with one shoe, idiot?   

 

****

—You want what darling?  I can't hear you.

—I want you to bring me my shoes.  To my office.

—Why?

—I don't have time for this!  Just do what I am telling you.  Now!

—You sound upset.

—I am upset.  God damn it! Go to the closet.  Get my black shoes.  And bring them up here.

—The old ones?  The oxfords?

—Yes.  Yes.

—Hold on.  They, I think, they, yeah, I'm at the closet.  They have a hole in the left toe.

—I know!  Please bring them up here!

—Why?

—I need them.  Get on the subway and drop them off!  I am furious. 

—Why?

—I was mugged.

—I can't hear you.  Why are you whispering?

—I WAS ROBBED!  I DIDN'T WANT THE WHOLE OFFICE TO KNOW ABOUT IT!

—Are you all right?

—No!  I am not!  Now will you please bring me my damn shoes?   

—Are you hurt?  Did you call the police?   

—God damn it!  Just this once, do as I ask without all your questions!

—Hello?  Hello?

 

****

That's not how it happened.  I lied.  The truth is that right up to the point where the lights went out it was like I said but there was no mugging.  First the train lurched.  Then the announcement came on like I told you but no one bothered me.  We all just sat there.  People started mumbling and complaining. 

Then something started to bother my foot, like I had something in my shoe.  I untied the shoe, the left one, and there was something in it.  Amazing how just a tiny little thing can drive you nuts.  It was a scrap of cardboard from a price tag.

I got it out and sat there in the dark just thinking about you and why you're always so mad about everything.  No matter how hard I work, no matter how much I listen to you complain, there is always more.  I was just sitting there wondering if someone else could have married you better.   I was also thinking about how well made those shoes are.  All that leather insides, that handmade, bench workmanship.  Is a shoe always better on a bench?   And I was thinking about Appaloosa Calfskin.  Why do they use it?    Why is it better than other calfskin?   I was almost getting the creeps about it, picturing the little appaloosas.  Then the train lurched again.

Then the doors opened and the Transit Guys came on and some lights went up but it was still pretty dark and I went to put my shoe back on, and it was gone. 

Fucking gone.  Everybody was pretty freaked out, because some Chatty Cathy of a Cop let it out that we were in a bomb scare, not just a stalled train, so my missing shoe was not really high on anybody's To-Do-List.  I just hopped up to the street and got a cab.  What else could I do?   I've been over it and over it and I can't remember putting it down. 

 

                                                    
                                                    
 Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

---

 

 

The Museum of Fools                                                 

 by Richard Meyers

or a period of some weeks at night I would close my eyes and watch my own private parade of players marching through the gates of my memory.  Processions of celebration came into view one after another.  I watched the pageants, as they seemed to pass before the window of my life.  Each night the curtain of my imagination opened to a variety of festivals.  The images were familiar yet enhanced by the ability to experience them again, sometimes simultaneously.  At one moment I would be dodging firecrackers in a Dewali revelry in Old Delhi or splashing water and being doused by Thai children for Sangram New Year in Chiang Mai.  Time shifted all around for in the next moment I was in the Mummers Parade of my childhood strutting down Market Street in Philadelphia to the strings of "Oh, Them Golden Slippers."  Festive flecks of light and exaggerated gestures and movements often floated in slow motion upon the stage of half-sleep.  Colors and dancing shapes accompanied me up those ecstatic steps that led to my temple of dreams.

The dreams themselves were not always so simple or celebratory.  In a certain recurrent dream I would find myself taking confused steps through the rooms of strange museums.  At first I would walk into hallways of stuffed animals and replicas of battle scenes of some historical relevance.  I felt that I was viewing mislaid moments of my predatory past re-enacted.  In one version of this dream a sleuth was brought in from London's Baker Street Agency to unravel clues and in another researchers and curators of what I believed to be the Victoria and Albert Museum were busy arranging objects and collected pieces to be placed in their appropriate rooms.  In the west wing were a series of rooms that contained an exhibition entitled "The Eastern Journey of Fools."

What this exhibit contained was not typical archeological findings or ancient relics.  Placed here in the west wing was something quite different.  The rooms contained what were called the archives of trances and diverse and sundry things that were labeled to be evidence of visions and psychoactive states.  In a glass case were the sandals washed ashore after a Brazilian named Coffee Beans walked out into the Arabian Sea to drown.  In a corridor was a long case displaying the smoking apparatus and famous syringes of early foreigner junkies living in Goa.  Also under glass was the shaved-off hair of reveling seekers that had been collected and codified by the Society of Premature Bliss and Seizures.

Visitors to the museum walked the halls gazing at everything, yawning while reading the footnotes to the rare objects.  Here hung a gold-framed portrait of Queen Mary, not of Scots but rather of hippie fame, whose mercy and money rescued hundreds of travelers from homelessness.  Next stood two ornately dressed figures of Desiree, "The Dutch Bride of Wonder" and her Canadian beau, "The Bridegroom of New Frontiers."  In another room, huge with chandeliers were portraits of travelers to India.  A velvet cloth hung from the ceiling stating the collective title of the paintings, "The Legendary Adventurers from the Western Lands of Failed Identities."

The corridors began to empty; the museum was about to close.  The viewers quickly took their last look at the sculptures of the avatars of the road:  A bronze of  French Bruno bellowing mantras from the bottom of the well and Eight-Finger Eddie, his mudras in marble, the pied piper guru preaching the freedom that was India.  "Was it in the sixties?" the viewers pondered.  "No, it was the early seventies," another visitor argued.  The west wing of the Museum of Fools was closing.  The exits were black with amnesia's beaded curtains.  "I'm sure it was the sixties," someone said.  Everyone forgot what was remembered yesterday.  "Let's ask the curator," another voice said.  Suddenly I was in the dream because all the eyes turned to me.  "Are you the overseer, the archivist here?"  I don't know but I must answer I tell myself upon awakening.

 

                                                    
                                                    
Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

---

 

MECONOPOSIS                                                           

 by H. W. Reynolds

imbo, there is nothing like a garden.  You know?  The green all around and stuff seems to reach out to you when you sit and take some time.  Smells all mixed up like a recipe gone bad, but still good in an Orwellian kind of way.  The pines grope towards each other in a blur and I lose myself in the throaty, red, light—swallowing hue of the wine."

"Church is where it is at.  You got that right.  Shiny, smooth pews lined up facing the front, as they should, waiting and expecting.  Quiet place, like hospitals, clean, ordered, and ready to operate and fix you up.  I like the incense on the high holidays—smoky fingers of history hanging heavy.  The swish of robes daydreams me back to sweaty, long Sundays in choking ties and shirts and ill-fitting suits waiting for something to happen.  Coming home."

"I was crazy once you know.  I don't know exactly what happened—one day I was fine and the next day I was nuts.  Not wacko nuts, you know, not the screaming, crying, searing red color nuts, but the fear of life nuts.  Do you want to know if I have been crippled by the disappointments and failures of life?  Absolutely.  Things do go bump in the night.  It is a question of sanity, defined by the will to experience the hardness and find a way to continue—in a good mood.  It is not easy being crazy.  People expect certain things from you.  Crazy makes you want to insert a screwdriver into your head and click off the mind just for a night in order to get a good night's sleep.  It knows that the morning demons are waiting to see how you deal with the new day."

"God, yes, he's in church.  It's where dreams come to die.  I see him.  I even ask the other people if they see him too.  I always ask.  Don't you?  You can tell you know because it's quiet and still and you can hear everyone calling him.  Don't you ever listen to the prayers?  I hear them all the time.  They tumble all over each other.  I don't know how he hears each one.  I don't know how he cares for each one.  Sometimes I have to stop listening, because it makes me sad.  I don't want to stop listening, but you have to catch your breath.  You ever notice the way a frozen apple kind of splits its side and oozes out?"

"Life kind of got to me.  I don't think a lot of bad stuff happened—no more than most people get.  I just didn't feel connected anymore.  It's important to feel connected you know.  Roads are connected.  Nothing like fresh, hot tar on a summer day—baked by the new sun in almost a paralyzing, life-giving haze.  Nothing like roads—they take you places that you want to go to.  And if you don't like where you ended up, you can go someplace else.  Magic."

"It always amazes me the way the Jehovah Witnesses come right up to the door at dinner time and politely ask if you have been saved, holding out the most recent issue of 'Awakening' and asking for a fifty cent donation.  I suppose they are right you know—taking the gospel to the masses.  After all, 43% of us don't go to church, so if they don't come, we won't be saved.  I am waiting for the day when they come to the door and don't have nice suits on—then I might listen.  I don't think they really like Catholics—their faces get all twisted up when I mention that."

"Long days journey, right Eugene?  I read a lot of plays—Pinter mostly.  The characters always talk a lot—I like that.  Just like real life—a talking journey.  Take it all in.  The hardest thing to learn is to know when to tune in—not to the big moments—that's easy.  The small, smooth moments that circle the edge of the lake.  Gentle and insistently there.  Those moments that look like everyday trash, worn and ready to be tossed out.  TV is real life—better than life.  Oh, and I only urinate on the floor if I am thinking about something meaty."

"Of course you also have your Protestants.  Martin my boy, why couldn't you just take it like a man.  I don't really understand Protestants—I mean they don't have an infallible Pope, they don't have big families, and they don't have to figure out the difference between venial and big sins.  Damn, you got the hamburger for 49 cents and a free roll.  I mean Henry wanted to get divorced so he made his own church.  What could be wrong with a church with fewer rules?"

"I really am sane, Jimbo.  I don't want to give you the wrong idea.  I try not to make waves—it makes other people nervous.  I like to think that I am similar to my neighbors.  We all like to cut our grass and compare notes.  Grass is a funny thing—it is the great delineator in a neighborhood.  If you have crappy grass, then you are a crappy person.  Something is wanting.  For some reason, you have not been able to combine the simple rules of grass that are freely available—lime and low nitrogen-high potassium in the fall, high nitrogen and aeration in the spring, and water in the summer.  What ever you do, do not lime in the summer.  Everyone knows this is stupid."

"The cosmic God.  You know, everyone wants to know.  I am ashamed to tell you that I look up at the night sky with all that sparkly shit happening up there, and say a voyager prayer and send it away.  I feel like as ass, but I have to do it anyway.  What if the Jehovah's are right?  Then, some other night, I expectantly wait for an answer.  Sometimes I envision a booming voice from the burning bush in the 'Ten Commandments' movie with that lunatic Heston, and other times, I just expect nothing, not the nothing when you're broke—the other nothing."

"I see why people make wine.  Everything and everyone use wine.  It connects me to the earth with its cacophony of smells and tastes—hues and scents prying lose my imagination.  The only real wine is red—and the only real red wine is cabernet, and the only real cabernet will swallow every shaft of light from thirty feet around.  I really don't understand why people drink white wine—what is the point?  I mean it looks like water, so why not drink water—it's cheaper.  The blood of Christ.  You can't find the best wine by paying the most.  You need to spend time choosing the right one.  That's a mistake a lot of people make."

"Most people are asleep.  They move through their days and complete their tasks.  Only a few people are really awake and they live in a constant state of amazement.  Ladybugs—I saw ladybugs inside an office building on the sixth floor—how did they get there and how do they survive?  I imagine they eat useless shit."

"The thing about getting old Jimbo is that it narrows the window on becoming the person that you always wanted to be.  I also want to know why old people smell funny—do they sell old people laundry detergent?  What do old people think about as they stare straight ahead at the train station, waiting for their ride home, tightly holding that inexplicable shopping bag?  I sometimes talk to them and enter worlds that delight and shock me.  I sometimes think of my life as the number of tax returns I filed, and I sometimes think of my life as moving too rapidly, but I always think of my life as poised in front of the cheese isle at the supermarket trying to decide between the generic and the name brand."

    

Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

---

 

 

The Pretty Little City of D****                                         

 by Saskia van der Linden

east and peanut butter.  Ask any resident what this city most famously produces, and they’ll give you this reply.  Yet when I open the kitchen cupboards I find nothing but Cornflakes, marmalade and Marmite—not the bread and sandwich spreads I grew up with and now want to taste again.  I close the doors gently, as my hosts are still asleep, and wonder why I expected to find them in this of all households.  I’m sharing the breakfast table with English newspapers and this stranger who’s doing Europe in X days.  I so much wanted to speak my own language again…but in a way it’s reassuring to learn that during the past six years, I too have turned into a foreigner.  So much so that I can now be homesick while I’m back.

More than a holiday, this feels like a test.  I managed so well to avoid this place every time I returned, and I returned often enough.  Why did my friends have to find employment and a home right in the city centre of all places?  My pram was pushed over these cobbles before I changed to all the shoes I walked in from toddler to teenager.  I’d been declared an adult for some time before I finally realised I needed better transport than that.  A single flight to a foreign destination would do.

My friend, the hostess, must have an inkling of my state of mind.  She dragged me into the first train to leave D**** as soon as she spotted me on the platform yesterday.  Partying is better done in other places.  We stopped at the city station twice last night without getting off.  So, the sickly smells that come out of the two dominating factories’ chimneys (yeast and peanut butter, of course) couldn’t get into my nostrils.  It made me feel so safe.  When we finally got out the third time it was too dark for me to be recognised and I too tipsy to care.  I did flinch when I noticed the nameplate their landlord has yet to remove from the front door —he turns out to be an old colleague of mine.  Fate seems to want it spelled out that this city is small.

I haven’t stood the test yet.  Instead, today I woke up with a clear head to a morning that’s not quite so drizzly and dark as most of this November’s days have been.  A good omen?  It makes me reckless and I announce to the other guest that I’m off for a walk.  Can he join, he asks.  I think, "Alright, we’ll face my demons together then."

Demons in D**** wear my relatives’ masks.  I don’t bump into anyone of them.  I’m relieved and disappointed at the same time.

My jetlagged companion doesn’t have to notice—I’m good at acting cheerful.  "What have you seen so far?" I babble on. He answers he has been to the market place, seen the town hall, the cathedral, and the canals.  What else has the city on offer?  I admit there’s not a lot and suggest we walk to a famous gate.  I try to see D**** the way he must experience it: for the first time.  The patrician houses are pretty.  The wooden shutters that date back to late medieval times have their charm.

"I should go and live abroad," I hear the unfamiliar voice say.  "I’ve never lived anywhere but my hometown."

"Don’t do it if you’re happy where you are."   This is it, the one piece of wisdom I’ve gathered through the years.  He turns his head to me, curious.  Of course this wasn’t the right answer.  As a world-traveler, you’re supposed to be having wonderful experiences and a great time all the time!  Oh, and don’t forget the broader outlook on the world.  We’re so—cultural.  Well, I’ll tell you what: no one in their right mind gives up all they’ve got.  We are the fucked up, and the first generation to openly admit it.

My mother lives in the street behind this gate.  He thinks it’s beautiful.  I take photos of him with his camera and so, turn into a tourist myself.

"Still, you’ve done it.  It must have been an interesting experience, if anything."  Not an experience, I think, just an escape.  Instead, I answer that you don’t get to know a country much better in two years than in two months.  At least, I didn’t.

"So, why did you leave?"

"Because I hate the ground we’re walking on."

"Oh."  He stops on the spot, taken aback.  "If you want to return to the house—"

"No.  I have to do this today.  I have to get over this.  I’m being childish."

Demons in D**** wear my relatives’ masks.  I don’t bump into anyone of them.  I’m relieved and disappointed, as I’m ready to face them today—and after today, I won’t be able to for a very long time.

                                                    
                                                    
                                 
Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

 

---

 

 

The Shop                                                                        

 by Laine Perry

he guy's name was Joey Ravioli.  That's what he liked to call himself.  He was a solid sort of chubby, balding in an unappealing way so that the absconding hair left tracks on his neck and cheeks as if to say, "ha. ha, try, try...but you'll never do it...you'll never catch me."  He would come in every couple of days, sometimes alone, more often with a companion in tow.  His companions always looked as if they hoped their presence on the occasion would settle up a debt.

Joey Ravioli was a friend of my boss'.  Those two must have realized that neither guy could survive an enemy on his own.  The friendship between them smacked of the binding atrocity they'd either been witness to, or complicit in.  I hated the guy.  I would grind my teeth when I had to wait on him.

"You ought to buy a real helmet, Mr. Ravioli."  I said to the him one afternoon.  "Joey..the girls call me Joey, honey, nobody calls me Mr. Ravioli," he said.

"I only call people my own age by their first names Mr. Ravioli," I said, striking up my position behind the accessories case.  He cracked a smile the way some guys cracked knuckles, one piece of relief at a time.  Maybe some one paid him to keep that smile out of sight.

"Look, Mr. Ravioli, Renata isn't working today.  She's practicing for the Little Miss Poland, pageant."

I thought that would about cap things.  He surveyed the room as if there might be something I wasn't telling him, as if hit men might be hunkered down, reclining slyly, incumbent on the linoleum floor.

"Really.  She'll be out tomorrow too," I told him.

I slid the glass door to the display case open and took out a helmet for Mr. Ravioli.

"But you really should buy a helmet.  I know you guys think it's uncool, but honestly, you're not 15 anymore are you.  Grown men should wear helmets," I told him.

"I have a helmet," Joey Ravioli said with a smirk.

"What you have there is a hat.  I think you know what I mean.  I won't even have those on the shelves. I like to call that model the soup bowl Mr. Ravioli.  If you hit a slice of concrete going a modest 55 mph fully protected by your hat, you'll have soup."  I punctuated that truth with a rattle of glass in its tracks.  I left the real helmet on the counter, though the likelihood of his transformation in character was not promising at all.

"You should just get over it, and buy the damned thing.  It'll save your life, I swear to God."  I couldn't stop.  I couldn't leave him alone.  There was something about this cat that bore under my nails and entered my blood stream.  He made me feel filthy, he was nothing if not my opposite, and yet clearly I was connected to him.

After the first customer crashes, you start to really care.  You stop flirting with these hulking cartoon heroes, and you become genuinely afraid for their well being.  Guys with stacks of cash come in here and buy Harleys right off the show room floor, never having ridden a bike in their lives.  A horse would be easier.  I try to tell them this as soon as they cross the line into my side of things, the accessories side of the shop.  The first time I saw it happen I was walking back from White Castle, with a big sack of mini burgers.  Darren, a mechanic at the rice burner factory across the road hailed me over.  He had been trying for three days to get me to accept a date.  He was witty for a mechanic, but I could not conscionably accept dates that linked me to those awful bikes.  It could start innocently enough, but the next thing you know we'd be jet-skiing, and then for Christmas he'd buy us twin Snow Cats.  The best I could do was offer Darren a burger as we sat on the crumbling concrete wall outside his shop.  The weeds shot up in random clumps throwing off the schematics of a garden of pop cans, broken beer bottles, and re-bar; remnants of a business that had once meant something to someone.

"What was this place?" I asked Darren.

"A ravioli factory," he said, his mouth full of bun mostly.

And then it hit me like a kid who'd told you, you could take the first swing, and lied about it.  A panhead came purring toward us, easy at first, calmly for a few seconds, almost confidently, and then growling, and frantic, with an abject whine.  The wall caved under us from the hit.

I hadn't seen the guy in the shop.  That's how quickly they'd make these decisions.  Over the course of a half an hour the whole transaction, paperwork included, and out the door into the world like a burned fist.  We got to our feet to have a look.  He was a slaughtered buck, his pride leaking out of his nose, and wounds.  He lay inextricably tangled, not with the bike, which had been sent out to the street boomerang fashion where it inched toward its former home on the showroom floor, no, he was in a scrap with the blueprint of his body which no longer corresponded to his frame.

"This is bullshit!"  I yelled at Jeff.  "How can they let these guys loose like that?" I yelled.  But Jeff was calling the ambulance, and hunting for blankets.  I ran back over to the job.

"What is going on Ronnie?  Why did you let that idiot out on the bike?"

Ronnie's brow puckered.  Sure, he felt as bad as the situation warranted.  That made it worse.

"Ronnie!  Did anyone give him a lesson?  For 37,000, I think he gets a damned lesson."

I yelled.  Ronnie shook his head as he stared across to the empty lot, watching a crowd gather, and listening to the low whine of a motor, and its man.

"He didn't want one.  He wouldn't let us give him one."  Ronnie told me.

"That's your job. You own the place. You have to demand the lesson.  NO LESSON, NO SALE.  That should be the motto Ronnie, and not HAVE CASH, HERE'S BIKE.  It's like giving a four year old a 45.  The ambulance pulled up quickly, Ronnie walked across to see to things.  The boy's money was still warm to the touch.  I had opened the cash drawer to test it.

The phone was ringing fiercely on my side of the shop.  It was Renata.  She was jubilant, her voice buoyant, tireless, and sure of itself, "Casey, I won!  I won Casey, can you believe it?  I'm Miss Poland!"  She told me.  I could almost hear the jewels tinkling in her crown.

"Oh, Renata, I knew you'd win.  I told you, you'd win, remember?"

I liked to always predict the outcome I desired.

"I know!  You were the only one to come right out and promise me," she told me.

"Well?  Take the next couple of days off if you want," I told her.

Some of her mother's family had come in from Poland for the pageant.  They'd wandered in to the Harley shop, on a slow Saturday, mistaking the back door for the front, and surprising a cluster of mechanics as they rooted the underbelly of a two year old Fat Boy, for the