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Kelley Jean White Joseph Veronneau Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal  Priscilla Barton Iolanda Scripca Diane Andrews

George Trialonis Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb Peter Roberts Scott Malby Felino Soriano Aurora Antonovic

Rob Plath Justin Arbuckle Bob Bradshaw Davide Trame Sam Silva Joseph Lewis

  

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Another Fib by Kelley Jean White One day you put a rose in my mailbox.  I thought “he must love me.”  That was one lie, a lie sweet as the roses that bloom in her garden.     ArsPoetica by Kelley Jean White Make art of this—your mother’s a little girl, her mother’s widowed, they have to take in laundry, little dustbag Okie town—best customers these loud plump businessmen and bankers with their big ol’ white sheets—washed and hung out to dry on her ropes by the trainyard, neatly ironed ‘til the white pointed hoods stood good and sharp.  You could count on them to pay on time.  Art?  A living? Sure, you did what you had to to make ends meet.  Hard careful work in the cause of raw death.     Forgive me Fidelity by Kelley Jean White Oh faithless fidelity, falsehood falls from you—thou infidel future, faceless foul foe.  Forever faithful, I felt free to fatten, forgot you’d feel free to be unfaithful, forgot you’d find thin faces, thin figures, thin feelings, thin principles frightfully, flagrantly, fulfillinger than me.  Oh, I freely forgot falsehoods, flights of fancy and fair false flirtations— but fie on extra-marital relations! Foolish fruition may feel fairly good— fair vows forgotten, rings slipped from fingers. Forbidden fruit is not freely given— fruit of such freedom is not forgiven.     I dreamed I should carve: by Kelley Jean White —for my father— steady as oak, shaped by a good hand; sharp as an ax .   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Manners by Joseph Veronneau Well, we all have it coming sooner or later she said while chewing gum nonchalantly at the dinner table with friends,. one of them afflicted with Cancer. Bread was being passed around and smiles exchanged while the guilty man recounted her words stiffly. Darkness drifted outside the closest window as a breeze passed through bringing the man back to consciousness, rippling the fold in his shirt, as he clenched the napkin in his lap for dear life.     Offering by Joseph Veronneau Sun waved back and forth between tree branches, awaiting scraps of fish the fisherman stroked. Dissecting the muscle made the hands quiver, an offering to nature made in open palms. The lake rippled with its own anticipation, awaiting the first taste of guts spilled forth. A trail of eggs was the first to enter the mouth of the water, the lure pried loose carefully. Perhaps a bear shall come and feed on the remains, the rest floating out underneath the starry evening..     Hearing the Secret by Joseph Veronneau I’d never hunted with you, but there I was, a proud eight year old holding the necks of two geese as a feather curled to the grass. I can hear the blasts of your rifle as I imagine the vacated fields ready for the taking. And so you did; walking through pools of mud to locate your prized catch, and a pat on the back from your comrades; slightly agitated that their own shots went astray. Hosing down your boots upon returning home, you recapped the process to me; following with your eyes as if you’re flying with them; your back turned to the rest of the world, muscles tightening as you draw them in, one by one.     Playing With Death by Joseph Veronneau We had been moving them all day, pine and steel boxes. They served as rest benches as needed, flipping lids up and down, mocking our own postures in some of them. Hands neatly placed atop our chests at ease with ourselves. We ate our lunch sitting on one particularly rough one, testing to see if cut trees could really withstand simple weight configured in a small row. Impressive tables they were, we figured it improper to stay too long in such a place, in such a manner. Propped like hand-puppets well knowing earth's ventriloquist would maneuver us to such relaxations in said time.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Neat Puzzle by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal I fell asleep On the train tracks. I had no fear Of the train and What it might do To my body. I’m not much to Look at.  Pieces Of me spread all Over would be A neat puzzle. Life makes me cry. I have wasted My days on earth. I could have been A somebody.     Nothing Made Sense by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal Yesterday I found You in a garbage can, A book of poetry. I reached in there. In an instant my hand was Covered with ants and Smelled of rotten food. A Homeless man told Me not to read you. He told me the more he read The younger he felt. I didn’t listen to him. I felt he lacked wisdom. I took you with me. I read a few words. You filled me with hope. Yet, the more I read From you, A strange thing occurred. I felt like a child. Nothing made sense anymore. What the homeless man told me, I should not had ignored. His wisdom was large. Nothing made sense anymore. I had to find you a place To rot, your words demanded it     Long Night by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal It will be another long night. I can taste the tension in the air. Doors will be splintered. Voices will scream throughout this shamble of a home. I can hear the birds outside, a plane’s engine roaring, what I wouldn’t give to exchange places with the birds or one of the passengers on that plane for one night.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Thirty-three and Counting by Priscilla Barton I Phone to my ear, I listen while my sister explains what the Orthopedic man and the Chiropractor have to say about her crushed, slipped and herniated discs along her spinal column; how the MRI has shown the serious damage caused by years of manual labor; how she must learn new ways to move; how the pain may lessen, but will never really subside.  Each year she appears shorter.  I imagine her spine folding in on itself, then back out again whenever she reaches or bends, like the accordion pushes its music into a room.  The spine is a mean instrument, no music there—only a grinding.  Those bones are going to ash.  She mourns those bones. II The media films college students on campus as they cry and comfort each other.   Panic in the classrooms. A day of terror.  A day of blood spilled.  A day to last a lifetime.  Thirty-three dead, including the shooter. Almost as many injured.  Shot by their classmate.  The one in the back of the room.  The one wearing sunglasses. The one who refused to speak.  The hatred was growing while the plan was unfolding.  As a poet, Nikki Giovanni recognizes death when it looks at her.  She orders it gone, while those without eyes offer death another seat in  another room.  Signs ignored.  A candlelight vigil is held, while video of the day’s events are revisited on everyone’s television screen, over and over again.  The same question asked and never answered.  Why?  Virginia mourns her dead. III Here in New York, I wonder where my daughter is staying tonight.  I hope she is safe.  She’ll stay wherever someone will allow her to sleep for the evening.  Drugs have stolen all that she once was.  She has lost everything; husband, home, job, friends, car—all gone.  She has taken all the money I had to give, and still asks for more.  There is no more.  Everything she says is a lie.  This is not my daughter.  My daughter has been gone for a long time.  She has to stay away from me.  She cannot be trusted.  I am afraid of her . I am afraid for her.  I am afraid of the people around her.  I talk and advise.  She is not ready to hear me or anyone else.  I mourn the living. IV Our President offers comfort, then places a rifle in the hands of our graduates.  They are ordered to aim and fire for a country that despises our very existence.  One soldier removes his helmet to scratch his head and becomes a statistic.  There is a humming almost heard beneath every debate in Congress.  It is the whisper of the unborn, hungry for answers.  Why?  They mourn their coming.     Losing My Religion by Priscilla Barton My days in Catholic School being a part of the group plaid jumpers and white blouses sitting in neat little rows intimidated by a Nun Sister Alice Joseph Alley Joe to her students deadly chalk-missiles shot through the air perfectly aimed to get your attention yes, Sister no, Sister thank you, Sister I'm sorry, Sister and the Priest would visit outranking Sister good morning, children good morning, Father little soldiers of Christ little ass-kissing sinners Mary Margaret Mary Elizabeth Mary Catherine Mary Ellen Mary Jane Mary Ann and one Priscilla knowing, even then, I would never fit in.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       A Note Left Behind (To a Son) by Iolanda Scripca I was born underwater with lungs oversized, With gills immature in a world full of smog, I'm filing petition to be cauterized, And end other chapter in life’s fragile log.   I was born black and white with extremities gray, The plaintiff accuses what I might hide, It's nothing but SOUL constantly at play, With spoonfuls of turquoise rolling down off life's slide...   Implosion of rainbows will probably be The cause of my passing unknown and alone. When thrown overboard and deep into sea I'll finally return to my home long time gone...   I've moved in a place with no windowless chamber, Where time has no meaning and waiting is painless, If I had any hopes, I swear—don't remember... And don't recognize him, his sorrow is senseless.   I have died underwater, reborn in blue nights, Don't need oxygen to play with the whales. Remember when watching those great Northern Lights That Mother is smiling behind Nature’s veils.     Attempting Freedom (My Survival) by Iolanda Scripca Free to be an owl— Nightmarish clues at dawn— The sunrised death distorting A kind and lonely soul. Free to kill for hunger In moonlight's smiling poison. The lasting dream reoccuring A hummingbird in prison. Free to be mysterious— Lethal games with mice. Repulsing limbs accusing The need to throw the dice. The blinds are shut forever, Maternal instincts cry. Free to kill the echo... The bird will ever fly?     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Subterranean Soul by Diane Andrews Trust you, I must—so I slide deep into plum-dark waters Arms out-stretched in front palms diamond-shaped, supplicant Depths of the water I cannot tell in blackness the sides I can't see Yet blindly I will come to thee drawn across the unknown sea though your soul you do not show Languidly you swim breaststroke in my held-breath direction I cup my hands and row my body the surface but barely ripples spinning onto my back I break the veneer with my elbows In the dark we can't see each other only the torn, inky surface I feel a hand brush my nipples Dark secrets known to no one reach up and grasp at me I plunge in to the abyss You wallow, waver, turn full circle stroke your arms away from me I choke and I struggle blood flows to my wrists damp skin floats from my bones black arms and legs bind me but I slash and cut them You call the name I call myself I rise up through the waters your mermaid, selkie, siren I climb naked now upon the rocks and call but you hesitate My arms fall useless to my lap bloodless lips mouth silence on the rocks lie barren, unloved hips my hair floats freely in rock pools Yet still you have not seen me when you look straight at my face I am but a fragment of imagination longing for a scrap of admiration     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Transformation...At Lust by George Trialonis Flesh, she— fullness, roundness. Contour's the culprit, the serpent. Bloodshot desirous of flesh, I kneel like a Camel and she rides and, lo! I’m transformed, a Lion. I devour the journey up to a lush, wet oasis. Satiated at journey’s end I’m transformed again, an Eagle. Blind to her geometries, I soar to claw-frosting heights until vision succumbs to contours again, and am desirous of flesh, a Camel, a Lion, an Eagle again.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       The Neighbors to the Left by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb They think I'm strange— a weirdo, they said; I have thought about this, more specifically, using it to my advantage but instead wistfully wonder what predisposes people to such presumptions. Perhaps they overheard my use of human language transformed into bird calls, high-pitched and scrub jay shrill telegraphic speech in a context other than that of children or pets, so now I am considered with the typical discomfort afforded an unknown eccentric. And maybe they're right, but as long as I'm not living in Salem during the 1600s, I really don't care to correct their projections.     Desert Tortoise by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb Gray bubbles in the distance like raging surf foam rolling under desert blue, over sparse cactus forests where flower-topped saguaros reach upward to spring rain; we drive to beat the lightning, uncomfortable with shadows coming quickly, painting rocks behind, darkening road ahead, rough, even for a pickup truck. It is not our inclination to move slowly, but it is yours, and despite our vibrations, you crawl, scaly neck stretched out in curiosity, perhaps in greeting, up the middle of the road, your ruddy-splashed, sage-hued shell approaching the cave between our front tires. An ambassador from this land, serene, cholla-blossom eyes beckon us to pull over, to take notice of how rare you are, to ignore the streaks of brightness cracking from ground to sky. You are a reminder this place is stepping ground only— our wheels reveal that we are from a nation other than yours.     Rattlesnake Basking by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb Body cool, curled on a ledge, at the edge of a dream, tongue split, tasting juniper dust as it floats on wind, she feels her young move within.  Vibrations from without slither through her rock, mingle with the heat; she senses the approach of human footsteps, step, then step, then AGood shot!@ She dreams no more.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       metabolism by Peter Roberts 1 we come together, flesh to flesh amid succulent weeds, afloat in summer. a tree, slow flame burning sunlight & air, holds to earth, rising above it. 2 we part again a final time, cold air separating us, alone, as always. in winter, just the tree-frame, flame without fire, holds above the snow-quenched earth. 3 in spring, green sparks rekindle life     cold comfort haven by Peter Roberts dimly limned in distance, placid, plastic-perfect, heaven inholds glory's glare, righteousness' reward. such high-held heaven hope of logos-lit afterlife kindles comfort, salves the soul; it does not die—until you're dead.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       We are not interested in what you write by Scott Malby Doing the work of the period "." or toward which it portends. What is tangible?  When our sentence is carried out nothing is forgiven and everything has already been said. Every completion is full of minor, little deaths. If the detectives of words were to press against their own transparencies and shapes, language would show itself to be both blind and dumb pitching to sunrise a belly full of shouts.  Art froths in its saddle, rides nightmares through to an ambiguous countryside pickled in brine, in pig's feet where nothing is what it seems as poets jump like fish from the roof of their fatal mistakes only to land on a tattered page with the tongue of an asp biting back at mirrors and smoke.  Shouting fowl play. Cluck.  Cluck.  Cluck.  In the Capistrano of poemdom tiny swollen swallow throats stretch their chords. When Jackie Robinson took the field, Everest straddled Tibet and Nepal.   But it is hard for swallows to reach for their throats or lambs bleat from a tiger's throat. Going down for the count.  Tell me, aren’t you ashamed? Where do you come from?  What is your name? Do you cuneiform?  Though my pockets are filled with barking dogs, it's the silence that draws me naked through an inch high broken door where time sings in its bowl and the ocean I sail fills with hearts I now name:  talisman of symbols, icon of memory, hieroglyph of love, craft, compass, poem.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Vagabond's Vision #55 by Felino Soriano A bone of contention battles eye of metaphor and realistic eye.  Through a standard peppermint stained straw found near the sole of my irreplaceable foot held at eye level, imagination controls "would a building sucked fully holding shape stick holding stiff solidly centered, completely whole without fear, within the body of my found- by-foot straw?" Recalling waves wound into circling clings of blue rolling knots, eventually flattening— dying before exhaling a last request to feed sand's sprawling thirst. Sitting facing a tall intact wall, the bridge of a decent thought across three other mind frames runs toward trying to make sense of the beforehand. As I head toward this destination, realization becomes my realistic eyesight, a hollow hallway of curious wants.     Vagabond's Vision #56 by Felino Soriano Experimental exhales representing tentative existences, translucent documentation coiled inside left-handed lines of oxygenic gifts, right-handed wind wrapped birds flown quickly from fractured west-facing windows. Million eyes of minions opened, following footsteps of blind-believing leader, nocturnal neophytes, green personas cascading legs of night's dramatic, overbearing living. Seemingly seamless dangling voices of heart beating stutters, softly in the surveillance of beforehand, the experienced are never experimental, tentative, rather preserve a casket called stilled shadows, delineating protruding lifelong lunar appendages, forming secondary equations into barely breathing takeaways.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Star Gazing by Aurora Antonovic with only the stars to light our path the air heavy laden with the scent of crushed strawberries we’d make our way down the gnarled trail our sneaker clad feet crunching gravel as our ankles got mosquito-bitten down the wooden staircase over the wall we’d land on the beach settle ourselves around the fire toast marshmallows and watch the stars mysteriously float across the sky telling us stories the next morning, we’d awake the residue of smoke hanging in our hair our mouths still full of sticky goodness and memories of the cosmic wonder that lit our way for years to come     Inheritance by Aurora Antonovic family friends I’ve not seen since I was five debate which long-deceased parent I resemble more while they argue about eye shape hair colour jaw lines and cheekbones I’d rather they tell me I have his integrity her gentle spirit     Boomerang by Aurora Antonovic one hangs unexpectedly in a new neighbour’s home the spidery signature and date stamped with a decided period on the bottom right-hand corner, as usual another found in an apartment lobby while running from a rain storm still another in a restaurant to the right of a dinner companion the image I made smiling back at me eerily this is how it is, when you’re an artist: you never know where you will be how it will be presented when your own mortality reaches out and you see your own reflection rather puzzled half smiling recognition sure in the glass of your once-favourite painting     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       The Sun Doesn't Stop by Rob Plath The day after her father died of a heart attack on the sunny sidewalk in Brooklyn next to his steel scrap truck at age 52 she stood in laundromat across the street she appeared to be a small calm young woman on the outside feeding coins into machines carrying out her daily duties but beneath she wanted to scream at all the rows of equipment: how dare the machines turn, the dryers spin?     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Walking the Dogs by Justin Arbuckle walking the dogs at dawn when their ecstasy is noisy mist and coffee won't clear the blear from our eyes we see the hills hundreds of them marching home after a long night.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       The Stammer by Bob Bradshaw As I pierced the water in a high dive Judy was in the bleachers cheering.  The smell of chlorine that season was as sweet as any perfume. The school dance was approaching as fast as any test. I longed to ask Judy out. She leaned in her garden of herbs and perfumes towards me but when my mouth opened out came a jackhammer stutter. I was like a coyote who's tried to cross through its first barbed wire. Flailing I ensnared myself more, and exhausted I watched Judy slip down the hallway, covering her mouth as if my stammer was an airborne disease.     Leaf Blowers by Bob Bradshaw The leaf blowers gather at 7 a.m.  They are invisible, low paid workers that our children have no dreams to aspire to. Their roar awakens us as if a nest of outraged bees was reverberating outside our window. But each leaf blower wears ear muffs, and isn't aware of the cries of a child being thrashed. Or of a couple's firefight, cups and dishes flying like shrapnel. Each moves slowly down the street and has the time to think, a commodity we only dream of.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page     Aside by Davide Trame Far off on the island, out of town, I pedalled on a gravel path, passing by an old, restored house, small, simple, familiar in its Venetian style, the plaster a full red-brown like the texture of an oil painting, you could almost taste it neat against the quiet morning sky with the still green flame of a cypress. Eternity aside. Moses' lit bush. The poet had come across a miracle like this, a simple settled light. But, even he then, had left and forgotten it. Going into the straight, absorbing line of the future, the illusion, our destiny. I can’t do anything better except to go back for an instant to the fullness of a pastel red-brown plaster and the fiery, airy green of a cypress that grabs the wind with a firm fist when I turn aside and my heart drowns in the sudden joy of a glance.     Weather Change by Davide Trame It has broken the dim stillness, the spellbound stare. Nooks and crannies are swept over now, rust and dust set loose, eyes caught off-guard taking in unveiled outlines with fear and a half-smile. And the horizon so utterly visible, agitated like an exposed nerve, an eel’s heart. Then, the snow-pregnant air, a grey blade, we, surveyed by an eagle silence, the whole sky spread over us, ready to be breached and wounded. But just before the whooping cold it was the moment of transition that we loved: the sun already branded with a foreign light under strips of outlined violet-veined clouds, the crisp gusts of wind rising on the lagoon with rippling shivers on teetering wave-crests, a sudden, bright, scoured, piercing world and two jet-black cormorants dashing, skimming the current’s tendons, testing the reaches of a breath.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       The Way That You Never Grow Old by Sam Silva All of this stuffed suffocation when May streams into summer heat and scattered shadows mark the yard. A TV in some distant room droning sick and mindless words, sucking air and hope from me ...the airways and their frightful birds! ...bloodless light in syncopation! ...causing the soul to shrink and sigh. Cigarette smoke in all summation! Story of the modern bard counting each dull phrase for the nation, learning to fall asleep ...and die...   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Mist by Joseph Lewis Outside in the morning sun the massive pines divide the sky. The sun spreads its light down the bark and over the ground still damp with dew. The whole tableau is covered with fog, early walkers are shrouded with clouds before the sun burns the mist away and the day becomes as clear as the sky.     Rain by Joseph Lewis A day of rain means a time of rest. New buds form on a barren tree. The rain falls steadily on the road As the earth renews itself again. The rain revives the trees to green As flowers grown in the new lawn. Birds come back from a distant land To sing in the sky at dawn.

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Not finding you   Saskia van der Linden Coma  Diane Andrews Thinking About The Night of My Conception  Rob Plath From The Window of My Hotel   Iolanda Scripca Memory and a Restaurant in San José  Louisa Howerow

Turkish Taksi  Quentin Poulsen The Jazz Musician  Anne Cammon Him with His Heart in His Head  T. R. Healy Officer Dan, The Drug Awareness Man!  Joe Reese

 

 

 

 

Not finding you                                                                                        

by Saskia van der Linden

                                                      

ad this been a film, I’d have seen you at once.  Extreme close-up:  my finger on the green button that opens the door to the park.  Long shot:  my leaving my bike at the entrance.  Slow shot:  my walking down the narrow stone path.

Depending on the kind of film, the camera’d now zoom in on my skirt and boots, on the rose in my hand or on the look on my face.

I don’t find you there.  This is not a film.  This is the lowest kind of reality, in which I have to knock on a wooden door to speak to the porter.  In his small office he looks you up in the database.  He gets me a number that he writes down on a yellow post-it note:  11691.

I walk back, I walk on, I walk backwards and forwards, but I can’t trace the number back to you.

Once I think I spot you in an especially festive corner, full of colourful decorations.  That would have been your kind of place.  But it’s full of children instead.

Again I knock on the wooden door.  The porter, annoyed now, takes big steps to show me the way.  I can hardly keep up on these heels.

11800 is the lowest number he can find.  He’s no longer annoyed with me, he now mutters, "I’m so sorry..."

I’d read about other people who didn’t make it in time to see another person alive.  But I was never prepared to be too late for a grave visit.

With those big steps of his he’s worked out where your stone used to be.  "The bones are still down there, but the stones have been removed and destroyed ages ago."

It’s not for you but for these words that tears start streaming down my face.  Ten years at the most, and then they dig you up to make place for others; but maybe if I mark this piece of soil with my rose, they’ll leave you alone just a little bit longer.

 

                                                                                                        
                                                                                                         
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Coma                                                                                  

by Diane Andrews

May 14, 2006 9:30 A.M.
hen Douglas Craig took a breath it sounded like a bagpipe bellows being filled..  The inspiration and expiration was monitored by a 240 volt current, myriad confusing dials and switches.  A thin line blipped from left to right on a screen above his head like the machine at the seismic institute—each labored breath a small earthquake.

Beside the bed a figure looking a bit like Gollum in a black dress but with a little more hair pleaded with Douglas Craig’s body to make a sign of life.  Her arms played a game of charades—a rosarian attitude, fingers the stones.  She nibbled till they bled.

A string of words lengthening into a sentence—a life sentence—bored into Douglas Craig’s head like a shot.  His wife raised her eyes but nothing registered.  If anything the idea that nestled in her mind, formed from some vague sounds emitting from a doctor's mouth, gave her slight respite.  The bed was abeam of the nurse’s station, in earshot of the conversation.

“Nurse Reilly, the plug must be pulled.  It is time to end it.  There is no hope.  We need the bed.  After she leaves…we’ll do the deed.”

“Should I get a priest?  I know he can’t speak but his rites can be read,” to which the doctor said yes.

Douglas Craig’s wife stood up and turned to leave.  Color returned to her face.  It was as if she knew life was about to start, for her.  She would be put out of her misery just as her husband would be.  At that moment Douglas Craig sat up.  His eyes opened with the sound of a bat in the night.  He looked at his wife.  She screamed and cried.  The nurse came running, hoping the deed had been perpetrated by itself.

“My god!  My darling!  You’re awake.  I never thought… Six months ago… An accident at work … The scaffold… Oh my god?”

“No!  It was a few seconds ago.”  The living corpse spoke, “…in Lake Street.  I was on my way to my wife—just nipped out from the Tower and across the street.”

She was about to protest.  The nurse suppressed her words with a hand on her shoulder.  He worked at the slipway, on boats, had slipped off a scaffold and nearly died.  He hadn’t breathed by himself in six months.

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May 14th 2006 9.35am

Craig Douglas woke beside his new bride.  His hard lips tasted the sweet skin of her cheeks.  They moved down her long neck.  Tingles brushed on the gentle hills and valleys of her naked form, which made her squeal.  He knew he had to get up, a few things to do at the office and then it was off to Greece for their honeymoon.  He pressed his wife's stomach, imaging a child might already be nestling in its warm folds.

He ran from the apartment on Abbott St—decided not to take the car.  He was, after all only going around the corner to the Tower on Lake.

It took him a few minutes to leave a note for his secretary.  It was something he'd stupidly forgotten to do before the wedding.  He stepped out of the lift.  In front of him he saw only his tall beautiful wife.  He sprinted with joy onto the pavement.

Dark blue surrounded him.  Something swooped along the street on his left and lunged at him.  He leapt away but the monster struck out.  An onlooker later told the police it made a sound like a sonic boon she'd once heard at an air show.  A man in the next street thought it was the windows in the Tower shattering.  Craig Douglas' new bride found out it was her husband's head cracking.  She passed a lady in the hallway as she went to see him in the hospital.

She had a big grin on her face, “I've had wonderful news,” she muttered under her breath, then she stopped as she saw the tall girl crying, looking like Gollum, trudging towards the ward she'd just left. “Oh, what is it?”

“A coma... my husband...” the girl whispered as she brushed past, not hearing the words of comfort, that it could be overcome.

                                                                                                         

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Thinking About The Night Of My Conception                           

by Rob Plath

                                                                         

t would have had to have been in late May, 1969, springtime in Brooklyn.  Maybe my father had just dropped off my grandmother (his mother) on Cornelia St. after she babysat the children while my mother and father were at Hong Fat’s in Chinatown.  My father devouring several appetizers half drunk on wine, and my mother tipsy after one mixed drink stirring it with her finger, giggling.

Them arriving back home at 11:30, and my two brothers and sister asleep in the old railroad apartment.  My grandmother’s cloud of cigarette smoke still hanging in the living room while the television is still playing the news a report on Vietnam.  My father pinches my mother while she fills the percolator’s metal basket.  They’re a long way from any war.

Maybe Bobby Darin’s Beyond the Sea is on the small radio in the kitchen.  My father is smoking a cigarette.  He is happy even though he had to walk five blocks after he parked the car on Woodbine.  His heart is strong, his lungs powerful

He is thirty two, a father of three, soon to be four .  He is husband and the boss of my mother.  My mother’s father dead 7 years.  Beautiful thirty-two year-old half-orphan who used to dream as a little girl of being a nun, now a wife, mother of three.  She looks like a young Elizabeth Taylor with her dark eye liner and little black dress.

My parents, two half-orphans,  talk small talk in the little kitchen, maybe about renting a cabin in the Catskills in July, their personal tragedies locked in their young bodies, pushed far down by a springtime lightness, a long life ahead.  In three years they’ll buy a house in the suburbs, but for now though, it’s Brooklyn.  This is where they were born, where their grandparents grew up, raised children, worked jobs.  But now the power base is slowly shifting to them , they are ones who run the holidays, raise the children, bury the old.

They fall down kissing on top of the covers on their queen sized bed, my father smelling of wine and cigarettes, unzipping his chinos with one hand and my mother with her skirt fallen back above her lean thighs.  They grew up a block away from each other, met at 15.  My father enters my mother.  This is the year we put men on the moon.  He lasts ten minutes, a few quick spasms and then he exhales only once in a manly way, slightly distant and semi-low.  My mother moans and says her husband’s name, his sperm are warring down paths to the egg, the last child set in motion.  This will be one of the last times they make love so openly and defenselessly.

 

 

                                                                                                        
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 From The Window of My Hotel          

by Iolanda Scripca 

heavy darkness opened my eyes.  I didn’t know where I was but for sure I was not at home.  My mouth and my soul were dry and the fear of the recent flight gave me waves of chills continuously.

I stood up touching the coolness and the warmth:  the floor tile and my husband’s chest.

I felt secure and decided to head towards … the window of my hotel.

Seconds seemed an eternity…voices from the past were sending me back to bed to lay down, quietly, with my hands on my chest.  Life’s curiosity was pushing me forward, giggling playfully as the corners of my mouth had the tendency of forming upright arches.

“Dusa, what time is it?”

…and I opened the curtains of the window of my hotel:  The Caribbean Sea!

The turquoise of the water flooded my lungs, the sky of a pale violet played tricks on my imagination while the white of the sand rinsed my retina.

So that’s what Heaven On Earth looks like!

Infinity messed up my hair while hot kisses overwhelmed me with the evaporated humidity of the sea lips.  For sure my Dad and Mom were there, with me, embodied in those superb forms of Nature.

The Caribbean Sea was holding me in its palms, like a spoiled little kid, protected from all the Evil in the world.

“Let’s go snorkeling, Dusa!”

We left together—my husband and I—to become one with the innocence of the sea waves, to say “Hello” to the rainbows of fishes and, for the very first time, to have the illusion of breathing through my own gills.  Today, yesterday and tomorrow ceased to exist, eardrums became grandfather clocks of the underwater eternity while the violet clouds were bullfighting with swords of fire above The Heaven on Earth.

“ Please take off your shoes!  Excuse me!?!  Take off your shoes!”

I took off my shoes and gave them to be checked for hazardous materials in the airport.

“ You know, Madam, we need to do that.  It’s a safety issue…after 9/11”

I grabbed my sandals off the conveyor belt of the X-Ray machine but it was too late…I already had fins…

I put the white sand back in the pocket of my soul, I placed the shells of the past echoes safely, among my clothes so they wouldn’t break and, I admit, stole a little turquoise from the Caribbean Sea so I can flood my memory with a little Eternity.

“ Hurry, it’s time to get in!”

I closed my luggage sighing deeply and proceeded through the tunnel back to Reality.

 

 

                                                                                                        
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Memory and a Restaurant in San Jose                           

by Louisa Howerow

his is what I remember:

We were celebrating our last night in San Jose.  The restaurant, located down the street from a Japanese car dealership, had an extensive wine list and an imaginative menu.  The waiters, dressed in black and white, were efficient and courteous.  We chose a fine red Rioja and a first course vegetarian dish, a bread dough basket filled with colourful and varied vegetables.  We drank and ate well—not better than we had in the last three weeks, but certainly more expensively.


This is what I do not wish to remember:

Except for the couple who entered after we were seated, we had the restaurant to ourselves.  The man was compact, with a small moustache.  He moved with assurance, found his own table, greeted the head waiter by name and ordered without looking at the menu.  The woman was much younger.  She was tall, very thin and black.  The waiter brought her a salad which she proceeded to quietly push around the plate with her fork.

All this time the man had not addressed the woman and she had not spoken to him.  His cell phone rang and he proceeded to answer it.  My Spanish is rudimentary, but even I could guess that the phone call was of an intimate nature and not a business call.  He talked for what seemed to be a long time, never hurrying the conversation.  When it was over and my second course arrived, he motioned to his companion and she placed her fork on the greens, got up and followed him out the door.


This is what I remember and what my husband has chosen to forget:

I asked my husband what he thought about the two, if anything.  He told me the man was lucky.  When I presented my position that perhaps this was a case of exploitation, he told me I shouldn't assume.  How would you label this relationship, I persisted.  I wouldn't, he said.  He looks like a lucky man.

He had his own thoughts on the subject and that they were decidedly different from mine.


This is what my friends wish I would remember:

I have tried telling my friends this story.  They want to know the name of the restaurant and whether I would recommend it.  The address, too, is important.  They plan on passing this information to their colleagues at work.

I carry the girl, the man and my husband in my story.  My friends are not interested in shouldering any of it.  Who's to say what exploitation is or isn't, they say.  Our lives are hard enough.  Who's to say they are wrong?

 

 

                                                                                                      
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Turkish Taksi                                                                                                   

 by Quentin Poulsen

slid gratefully into the warm interior of the taxi and pulled the door closed with a muffled clump.  It had taken ten minutes to flag one down.  Normally they came in swarms, cutting each other off to get to you first.  But on rainy days the tables were turned, and when it rained during Ramadan, you might be lucky to get one at all.

"Merhaba," I greeted the driver.  "Taksim, lutfen.  Karmashik Sokak."

The driver nodded in assent.  He seemed a respectable sort, middle-aged with streaks of silver in his hair and crows-feet forming at his eyes.  He was attired in a chequered sports jacket and dark green polo-neck.  I relaxed a little in my seat.  You never knew what you were going to get with these taxis.  I had been fortunate with the vehicle too, a late-model Renault with smooth suspension and a barely audible engine.  Hot air swirled around my damp legs as we waited at the traffic lights.

"So, my friend," the driver smiled at me, "Where are you from?"

"Denmark," I told him.  "But it's okay.  I can speak English."

The driver was visibly put out, having no doubt anticipated 'America' or 'Britain' as the response, and having some oft-used follow-up at the ready.

I stared out the window at the blurred forms of the office blocks.  Suit-clad figures hurried back and forth.  A cream Mercedes with tinted windows moved up beside us, tires swishing over the wet tar-seal. 

"Earopean Onion, yes?" he enquired gruffly, finding his feet again.  "And what do you think about Turkey entering to EU?"

"Why not?" I replied diplomatically.

He leaned toward me, smiling with his wizened eyes.  "Turkish people very friendly, yes?"

Before I had chance to answer, the lights changed and, amid an orchestra of blaring horns, the Renault surged forth, dodging through the lanes, cutting off rivals and sending tardy pedestrians scrambling for cover.  Eventually we emerged from the pack and raced along at breakneck speed.  I glanced anxiously at the driver and tightened my seat-belt.

"Very friendly, yes?" he picked up where he had left off a few minutes before.  "It is our culture.  Hospitality—very important."

He lit a cigarette as we swerved around a bend.  Even at this velocity we were overtaken by a dolmush, the big yellow taxi-van rounding the curve like a Ferrari.  Another intersection and the lights changed from amber to red as we sped through it.  The driver flashed his headlights at the encroaching cross-traffic, and they duly made way for him.  That was something, I thought.  Most places I knew they would have blasted their horns in anger.  Here at least they all seemed to work together.

"You like cigarette?"

I declined the pack he thrust beneath my nose.  The cab was already full enough of smoke, and I would have preferred him to concentrate on the driving.  Even as he tucked the cigarettes back inside his chequered jacket he was forced to brake for an old woman in a shawl and headscarf.  She was halfway across the road, a veritable mound of cloth with a cane, and showed no sign of hurrying to get out of his way.

Approaching Taksim the traffic got heavier and the rain fell harder.  The driver worked his horn like it were a part of the machinery that made his vehicle run.

"Baaah! Taksim!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air.  "Every time problem!"

I gazed ahead in silence as his ranting grew more vehement.  A bus had got caught in the intersection and was impeding our progress, though the lights were green.  The driver switched back to Turkish, possibly to avoid offending me, though more likely because he lacked a sufficient repertoire of English swear words for the purpose.  Either way, his entire manner had become decidedly intimidating.

He threw himself about in his seat, peering out each of the windows in turn, a trapped animal in search of an escape route.  Then abruptly he began to back the Renault up, and before I had time to protest we were hurtling down some narrow, bumpy side-street, forcing startled pedestrians to leap onto the sidewalk.

"No, no, no..."  I muttered under my breath.

A Turkish taxi driver's detour invariably takes twice as long as the orthodox route, even allowing for the traffic.  But it keeps the meter ticking over at a rate more to his liking, and my fare was about to be doubled.

On this occasion, however, we were in for further difficulty.  The alternative road the driver had sought was cordoned off for reconstruction.  A little beyond the orange cones was the bizarre spectacle of a beefy police officer screaming at the top of his lungs into the open window of another taxi which had evidently progressed too far, knocking one of the cones over.  So fearsome was the cop's demeanour I half-expected the taxi driver to get out and rumble with him, knowing how ill-tempered some of these drivers were themselves.  But the cop had a gun in his holster and the law on his side, and the driver did not emerge from his cab as the tongue-lashing continued.

My driver, meanwhile, backed up again and resumed ranting.  "Taksim! Taksim!  Her kes Taksim'e gidiyor!" 

I understood enough to know he was angry with me for wanting to go to Taksim.  Ludicrous as that was, I kept quiet.  Arguing the point would have antagonised him more.

We drove around the side-streets for a while, the driver pausing from his tirade only to light another cigarette.  He reached a crescendo when we turned a corner and found ourselves behind a hand-drawn junk-cart.  It was several minutes before he was able to negotiate his way past it.

When finally we emerged back onto the main road we had been on earlier, we were a mere two blocks on, but with an extra three-and-a-half lira on the meter.  A crowded bus which had been behind us was now waiting at an intersection a hundred metres or so ahead.  Once through that, I observed, it would be into free-flowing traffic.  I shook my head in disbelief.

But worse was to come.  The driver now decided this predicament was not to his liking either and began to back up again.

"No!  Hayir!"  I shouted.  "Just stay on this road."

"Allahallah!" he growled, and continued reversing.  "Taksim! Taksim! Her zaman chok trafik!"

"Hayir!  Stay on this road or let me out now."  I gripped the door handle to ensure he understood my intentions.

At this he slammed on the brakes and thrust out his hand.  "Eight lira!" he demanded, though the meter showed 7:10.

"I'm not paying.  You haven't taken me where I want to go."

His dark eyes bulged menacingly. "Polis!"

It was almost comical.  Having broken at least half a dozen traffic rules on the journey thus far, he was now threatening ME with the law.

"Oh, Polis?" I scoffed.

He glowered back at me with the self-righteous indignation of a head-mistress.  "Polis!" he thundered, as though expecting the word to reduce me to a quivering mound of jelly.

"Yes!  Police!"  I nodded animatedly.  "Chok iyi.  Take me to polis."

Seeing that he had no intention of doing so, I opened the door to get out.  In the process I was dealt a heavy blow to the back, right between the shoulder blades.  I spun around and swore at him in Danish.  Though even in my anger I felt a twinge of apprehension as his own door clicked open.  He was a burly fellow and evidently volatile.  I had no intention of backing down, when I was in the right, but neither did I fancy the prospect of it coming to blows.  It was to my relief, therefore, that he appeared to think better of it, slammed his door closed again, and roared off down the side-street.

I stood there on the crowded sidewalk shaking, and not just from the cold.  The rain poured down with increased intensity.  The noise of the traffic was a river swishing slowly by.  The rancid exhaust fumes formed visible clouds in the frigid air.  There was not a vacant taxi in sight.

Then it seemed I was in luck.  An occupied taxi had stopped up ahead to unload its passengers.  I hurried over and waited beside it while they paid the driver and got out.

"Taksim," I said, clambering into the back seat.  "Karmashik Sokak, lutfen."

The driver's eyes fixed me in the rear vision mirror.  "Hayir, Taksim'e deyil," he said, shaking his head gravely.  "Chok trafik.  Prob-lem."
 
My heart sank as I observed the finality in his tone.  Was I going to get to Taksim at all?  I climbed back out and blinked disconsolately around in the rain.  What to do?  Take a bus?  That would only get me to Taksim Square, half the remaining distance.  But it would get me through the worst of the traffic, and I ought then to be able to complete the journey by taxi.

The first bus that came along was so packed I thought I'd have no chance of getting on.  But I was able to gain the boarding steps, and there I remained when the door hissed closed behind me.  Twenty minutes later I stepped gingerly out at Taksim Square.  Even in this weather the place was a hive of activity; crowds swarming in and out of the metro in their raincoats and shapkas, a veritable sea of umbrellas progressing up and down Istiklal, blue-uniformed policemen milling about their armoured trucks and patrol cars, shoe-shiners huddling beneath the overhanging roofs of the flower stalls.  And amid the teeming traffic it was not difficult to locate a vacant taxi, albeit an old Toyota with various dings and scrapes on its panels.

I got in beside the driver, a bent old man with white whiskers and a crescent of white hair around his bald pate.  He looked too frail to be working these chaotic streets, and should have been enjoying his retirement somewhere on the Mediterranean coast, I thought.  Only the tips of his nicotine-stained fingers protruded from the sleeves of the tattered coat he wore.  Drowsy Turkish folk music crackled out of the radio.

"Iyi gunlar.  Karmashik Sokak, lutfen."

He squinted at me with watery brown eyes in that expression of acquiescence peculiar to the Turks.  Then, with startling alacrity, he swerved out into the traffic and put his foot to the floor.  It was at this point I discovered my seat-belt did not work.

"No prob-lem.  No prob-lem," he assured me with a toothless smile.

I stared back at him in horror.  "Yes problem!  Istanbul traffic crazy.  Seat-belt very important."

He waved his hand dismissively.  "Amerikalimisiniz?"

"Hayir. Danimarkaliyim."

"Danimarkali?"  He raised his eyebrows in interest, then proceeded to ask me in Turkish the same questions his predecessor had asked me in English.  Did I think Turkey would join the EU?  Did I agree that Turkish people were very friendly?

The motor droned, the chassis shook and vibrated ceaselessly.  Every bump seemed like a speed bar, every pothole a crater.  The old driver refused to put the wipers on automatic, preferring instead to flick the switch himself every now and then, so that we spent more time peering through a rain-blurred windscreen than we did through a clear one.

Before I realised it we had passed my turn-off.  I explained this to the driver with some irritation, and demanded he turn around at the next opportunity.  But that did not occur for another half-a-kilometre or so.

Rather than driving back along the main road, however, the driver took us directly into the myriad of side-streets.  He seemed to know what he was doing, so I left him to it as we bumped and rattled along the little alleyways.  Then the driver stopped the car and stared wildly at me.

"Nerede?"

"You're asking ME where?  You're the taxi driver!  Don't you have a map?"

He gave an exaggerated shrug to show he did not understand me, and my best efforts to communicate with him in Turkish were greeted by the same gesture.

Another car swung into the alley and the old man was forced to back up to let it pass.  Before it did so, he wound down his window and engaged its driver in discussion.

"Karmashik, Karmashik," he repeated several times while they spoke.

The middle-aged, mustachioed occupant of the other vehicle scratched his chin thoughtfully and babbled in a tone which was not entirely reassuring.  The upshot was that we continued down the alley we were on, then turned left into a street literally swarming with cats.  One of the ground-floor apartments was evidently the back of a fish market, for two middle-aged men were gutting fish in the doorway and tossing the scraps to the mangy felines.

Another block on and the driver turned right, at which point we found ourselves on the edge of a busy market place, and no amount of animated horn-blasting on the part of the driver would open a path through the throng.  But two things served to cheer me; firstly, the rain had eased considerably, and secondly, one of the minarets of the Green Mosque was visible beyond the buildings up ahead.  I had my bearings and could walk it from here in ten minutes.  When I told the driver my intentions he demanded the fare.

"I'm not paying.  You haven't taken me where I wanted to go."

"Four lira and eighty-five," he repeated, this time in English.  The frightened rabbit look in his watery eyes had given way to dogged resolution.  Next thing he was shouting at me and thumping his dashboard.  But I figured I was safe this time and would not be assaulted as I made my escape from the taxi.

No sooner had I got out than I was confronted by a broad-shouldered youth in a heavy black overcoat.  "Hey, Yabanci," he said, stepping into my path.  "Why don't you pay my friend here?"

It irked to be addressed as a foreigner by this stranger and I told him to mind his own business.

He calmly reached inside his overcoat and, with a vague smile, produced a 'Polis' badge.  "Pay!" he barked into my face, and pointed to the driver.

It tested the limits of my self-control to refrain from arguing with this fresh-faced cop, perhaps half my age.  But, of course, I did as he ordered.

"Here," I snapped at the driver, handing him a twenty lira bill.

He glanced at the green note and shook his head firmly.   "Bozuk para ver."

"You can't change a twenty?!" I stared at him in disbelief.  "I don't have anything smaller."

The cop gestured at the market stalls. "They will break it for you."

So there I was, running around the crowded bazaar in the light rain, endeavouring to get a twenty lira note changed for a taxi driver who had not taken me where I wanted to go.  An adolescent boy of Kurdish appearance worked busily at his shoe-shine stand.  An old woman in a head-scarf hobbled about begging for coins.  An overweight man stood on a stool in a shopping cart fixing the electric sign above his store as the masses bustled by.

Then the Call to Prayer burst out of the minarets of the nearby mosque in sonorous, warbling Arabic.

 

 

                                                                                                        
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The Jazz Musician                                                   

by Anne Cammon

ere.”  Gabriel leans in.  His face is broad yet angular, classically Lithuanian.  He places a cool washcloth on my forehead.  The old women, whose houses he sells for a living, say they like his looks, he is like a star from the pictures.  And he does look like an old movie star, tall and thin, but not gaunt.  He smokes like one, too.

I see that he is dressed, showered, grey hair combed and face shaven.  I am apparently lying on the couch.  The blood thumps grievously through my head; heat transfers to the cloth.  The carpet muffles the sound of his footsteps as he walks away.  Water glugs from a pitcher in the next room.  He returns.  His hand trembles.  The glass rattles against the table before resting in the center of the coaster.

I pull the cloth over my eyes, eager to obliterate the sickening brightness of the late morning glare.  I hate skylights at this moment.  My eyelids quiver; salt burns, water trickles from my eyes.

Sinking into a familiar repose, I turn the washcloth over repeatedly, fanning it until both sides cool down.  Partial recollections from the previous night surface like the slippery sides of a submarine.  I discover a swollen bruise on my thigh, lumps on my chin and brow.  I pray for the aspirin to take effect.

The cloth is lifted and replaced.  A fresh surge of heat rushes into it.  A large, rough hand covers my own.  It smells of bleach and laundry soap.

"How ya doin?  Feelin any better?"  His voice is rough from years of cigarette smoking.  It is full of the comfort of east coast townspeople—nasal, at once indicting and commiserating.

"I'm Ok."  I say in a small voice."  My head still aches.

"Baby's gotta watch herself," he says in an experienced tone of warning, "this stuff, it catches up with ya.  I've seen it many times..."

I clutch my head, thankful for the cloth.  Somehow the presence of my hand seems to lessen the pounding.

"I'll let you get some rest."  He says, patting my forearm lightly.  He rises and disappears quietly.  From the next room comes the curt sound of a lighter igniting, and smoke drifts over.  I pull my hand over my nose and drift into sleep.

The choppy voice of an AM radio announcer extinguishes the silence.  I concentrate on trying to piece together the evening.

***

I was standing before a fireplace, naked save for a shawl around my waist.  The fire felt good on my chest.  Gabriel had rented a room in Bed and Breakfast in Lenox.  The walls were close and the ceiling low, and the feeling was of being wrapped in a giant quilt of wood and wallpaper.

We were drinking from a single glass, our fingers lingering over one another’s as it passed between hands.  The quart-sized Dewar's bottle glowed with an amber light.  We talked, laughed, idled through the afternoon.  I was adept at disappearing to get more ice.  The liquor was replenished seamlessly, so that it seemed to trickle from an unseen spring between the rocks, a balance of fire and ice.  I hadn't eaten since breakfast at the inn.  We had attended groggily, arriving minutes before they were scheduled to pack up.  Our hostess, a blonde Canadian named Lynn, smiled wanly at us.  She was accustomed to such offences.  Night fell.  We turned on the evening radio, and prepared to go to a jazz club for supper.  I fluttered about the room screwing on caps, folding up newspapers.  I resisted Gabriel’s suggestions to get dressed.  I reveled in the tautness of my stomach: the lightness, the vertigo.  I was a queen on a rocky precipice, my footing maintained by a skeletal grace.

Somehow I became asleep on the carpet.  He asked if I wanted to nap in the bed.  He would wake me in fifteen minutes.  That must’ve sounded good—I don't know.

Clutching a prickly pair of breasts, I rose, stumbled, caught myself on the bedpost.  I asked how he manages without them. We laughed!  It was a witty thing to say.

Next he was pulling the covers off of my head.  I pulled back, but found myself oddly weak, unable to win the battle.  He began to beg.

"Please, sweetheart, will you just get up?  C'mon, I want to take you out.  Let's just go get some food.  I want to go out with you!  Please, sweetheart, will you just try?"

Using all of my strength, I sat upright, shifted a sprout of hair from in front of my face.  Seeing him, I looked down.  Gabriel stood by the door in slacks and sports coat, smoking furiously.  The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing a neck and chest red from years of sun and smoke.

Without troubling over decisions, I hustled to put on the same red shirt, black pants, and kitten heels of the night before.  I wiped leaky make-up from under my eyes, daubed concealer into the dark moons, dusted the cheeks.

"Ready?"  He failed to conceal his rage.  I pulled my jacket about my shoulders, nodded.

We drove silently.  He smoked the entire way.

In the jazz bar we sat as close to the musicians as possible, our table at the edge of the stage.  A retired jazz musician himself, Gabriel drummed his fingers on the table throughout the sets, shouting, “This is great!  These guys are great!” above the cymbals.  He couldn’t see the tears trickling into my drink.

Coming home, I slammed the door across my face and leg.

***

"Do you know how much I love you?"  He asks through a smile.  It is hard to see more than an outline.  Diffused white light pours in from the sky-window, crowding his head.

"Do you?"  He asks.

He takes my sick hand into his.  They shake as one.  He has told me that he suffers from familial tremors, a disorder which causes one’s hands to tremble involuntarily.  It reduces with alcohol.  His face has the capillaries of a habitual drinker.  He smiles again.

"I'm gonna take care of you, baby.  For the rest of my life.”

He leans in for a kiss.  I close my eyes, offer my lips.

 

 

                                                                                                      
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Him with His Heart in His Head                                                    

by T. R. Healy

cigarette drooped from the corner of his lower lip, dribbling ashes on his lap, but Pfeiffer didn't notice because he was focused on the abandoned bowling emporium on the corner.  It was put up for sale nearly nine months ago, a hideous eyesore amid all the elegant townhouses and boutiques that had sprung up in the old Italian neighborhood in the past year and a half.  Many who lived and worked here would be delighted to see the dilapidated structure disappear, he suspected, as he drove past it for the third time tonight.

A block north of the building he pulled over to the curb and parked in front of a Lebanese carpet store.  It was a quarter to eleven and the store was closed along with the other businesses on the block.  Just in case, he sat there for a few minutes, making sure no one else was around.  Then he got out, quietly shut the door, and opened the trunk, which reeked of turpentine.  Hurriedly he gathered up the paper bag of soaked rags, shut the trunk, and walked back to the bowling emporium.  He smelled like a house painter, he thought, glancing around to see if anyone was behind him.  No one was, though, he had the street to himself.  For all he knew, he was the only person awake in the neighborhood.

He knelt down in front of the back door of the emporium and bunched some rags against it, threw a couple more under a window, went around to the front and piled the rest of the rags against the thick oak door.  Breathing deeply, he looked all around, once more making sure he was alone.  He was, so he pulled out his cigarette lighter and lit one of the soaked rags, which instantly flared into an angry orange flame.  Quickly he went around and lit the other rags then hurried back to his car as the old building burst into dragon fierce flames.

His heart throbbing in his throat, he sat for a moment in his car to catch his breath then pulled out his cell phone and called the central firehouse.  "I'd like to report that the old Timber Lanes Bowling Palace is on fire," he announced urgently.

"Where is that located, sir?" the dispatcher asked coolly.

"In the Antonelli District," he replied, "about half a mile from the bus depot."

"What is your name, please?"

"Wayne Pfeiffer."

"Well, thank you, Mr. Pfeiffer."

"My pleasure."

Smiling, he rolled down the window, and in what seemed like only a couple of minutes heard the howling sirens of the fire trucks.  His smile deepened.  Seconds later, two trucks appeared in his rearview mirror and, briefly, he considered getting out of his car and introducing himself to whoever was in charge as the person who called in the alarm.  But the dispatcher had his name so someone would probably contact him to thank him for what he did.  So he remained in his car and watched the firemen struggle to contain the blaze, the smell of burning wood filling his nostrils.

***

Pfeiffer had only been home from work a few minutes when he heard a knock on his door.  He assumed it was lonely Mrs. Balatico, his neighbor from the apartment at the end of the floor, but instead it was a representative of the fire department who introduced himself as Commander Cafferty.  He was not surprised, having expected to be contacted by some official about the blaze.

"Please come in."

"Thank you," the burly man replied.  "This shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes of your time but I wanted to speak with you about the call you placed last night.'

"Certainly.  Take all the time you need."

"When did you see the bowling alley on fire?"

"Just minutes before I reported it."

"A little after eleven, then."

"I guess."

"Did you happen to notice anyone outside the bowling alley?"

He shook his head.  "No."

"Did you see any cars driving by?"

"None."

"It was pretty quiet then?"

"Yes."

"How come you happened to be in the area at that time of night?"

"I dropped someone off at the bus depot and was on my way back home."

He grinned tautly.  "Lucky for us," he said.  "Otherwise the entire block might have gone up in flames."

"That would've been a calamity."

He nodded.

"So how do you think it got started?"

He shrugged.  "We won't know for certain until the investigation has been completed.  But the old building was a real tinder box so the slightest thing could have ignited it.  Someone tossing a lit cigarette from a car window, for instance."

"Well, as I told you, I didn't see any cars when I drove by."

"Oh, it could've happened minutes earlier," he indicated.  "Whatever the cigarette came in contact with could've just smoldered for while before it caught fire."

"I see."

"Anyway, sir, I believe you've answered all the questions I had," the commander said as he stepped toward the door.  "And I thank you.  Also, I thank you for being so alert and for taking the time to stop and call in the alarm.  If you hadn't, we could've had a major blaze down there."

"I am glad I was able to be of some help."

The commander extended his hand.  "You'll be receiving a letter from the chief's office as a token of our appreciation."

"Thank you."

"No, we're the ones who thank you, Mr. Pfeiffer.  If more citizens were as alert and responsible as you, this would be a much safer community."

***

Pfeiffer was too excited to prepare dinner, too excited even to walk across the street to the diner on the corner.  Instead, he cracked open a can of beer, sat in the living room, and silently repeated to himself the compliments the commander had paid him a few minutes earlier.  He had not felt this good in quite a while, probably not since he held the winning raffle ticket at the county fair three years ago for a weekend for two in Las Vegas.  He was smiling so much his mouth ached.  He didn't mind, though, he needed some gratification after what happened last week on the Little Knife River.

He was out in a canoe with his nephew, paddling past a narrow waterfall, when all of a sudden a scream burst above the racket of the cascading water.  His nephew, craning his neck, spotted someone in the water, waving his arms, and Pfeiffer started to turn the canoe then decided not to when he saw how swift the current was in the middle of the river.  He wasn't that experienced handling a canoe, having rented one only on two other occasions, and was afraid he might capsize it in the treacherous current.

"What about that man in the water?" his nephew asked, sounding concerned.

"Oh, he'll be all right," he assured him.  "He's probably just horsing around.  Besides, there are people on shore closer to him than we are."

"But don't you think we should check to make sure?"

"Nah.  He'll be fine."

He said a prayer to himself, hoping that he was right, and paddled downstream to the next bend in the river.

Later, while watching the evening newscast, he learned that a 49 year old man drowned in the river earlier that afternoon.  He was devastated, convinced that was the person his nephew had seen struggling in the water.  He didn't know if he could have rescued him but realized now he should have tried.  At once, he called his nephew who also had watched the newscast and said he was right, they should have tried to help the swimmer, and asked for his forgiveness.  The young man was disconsolate, said he wished he had never gone out on the river today.  Pfeiffer felt awful, somehow wished there was something he could do to change what happened.  But it was too late, of course, the man died from hypothermia.

***

The letter of appreciation arrived at the end of the week and he got a maple frame for it and hung it on a wall in his bedroom so it was the first thing he saw when he got up in the morning.  He was proud, felt it represented his true character.  It was one of the best things he had ever received, better than any Christmas gift certainly, and made the risk he had taken the other night when he went downtown worth it.  His only regret about setting the fire was that no one was inside the bowling emporium because then he could have rescued the person and been seen as someone who didn't ignore others in trouble, as happened on the river, but went out of his way to help.  Then he would have received more than a letter of appreciation, probably a medal of some kind, maybe even get a picture of the medal representation published in the morning paper.  People then would know the real Wayne Pfeiffer, they would know he was not the sort of person who would leave someone to drown.

He reached for a cigarette and sparked the lighter, set the cigarette in his mouth and stared for a moment at the dusty blue flame.  There were lots of tinder boxes downtown, he thought, lighting the cigarette, lots of opportunities to show people he was not the person he seemed on the river.

 

 

                                                                                                      
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Officer Dan, The Drug Awareness Man!      

by Joe Reese

rug Awareness programs took place each week in the auditorium.  Attendance was mandatory for all high school personnel, students through faculty, so all seats were taken by the time the English teacher Borkus arrived.  He always stood in the back, pressed against the wall.  He was interested by the reverse attendance patterns; for while the AP’s usually occupied the front seats during most presentations, they were in the back for Drug Awareness talks.  The front seats were taken by those students usually uninterested in everything that happened at the school.  Potential drop-outs, habitual lawbreakers, discipline problems—all of these flocked early to the auditorium, notebooks in hand, ready to participate, write, and listen.

This, Borkus had learned, was due to the charismatic presence of Officer Dan.

An ex-law enforcement officer and current full-time member of the State Drug Awareness Council, Officer Dan was young, energetic, and effective.  He looked more like a star halfback than the kind of man these students would respect.  Dark coated, spike haired, purple make-up wearing, tattooed—they constituted a rogues gallery of the school.

But Officer Dan had reached them.

They gazed in near wonder at him as he stood, beaming down at the audience, during the last words of the principal’s introduction:

“You know the importance of Drug Awareness here at the school; and you also know the importance of having a great role model to let you students know the kind of things you need to be aware of out there.  So here, once again, to heighten your awareness of drugs, is Officer Dan Patterson!”

Huge cheers!

Black jacketed students standing, waving notebooks.

OFFICER DAN!  OFFICER DAN!

“It’s marvelous,” whispered one teacher standing next to Borkus, “the effect he has on them.”

And it was.  Usually students, whether in class or in larger presentations, sat with their heads on the desk, almost comatose.  But the moment Officer Dan Patterson took the podium, at least twenty five hands shot into the air.  And the hands belonged not only to students.  There were parents in the audience, and Borkus recognized the mothers of several of his students.

“Officer Dan!  Officer Dan!”

“Officer Dan!  Over here!  Over here!”

“All right!  I’ll get to you all!  Tommy!”

He seemed to know all of their names, and the next fifteen minutes were non-stop questions, one student after another being called on, Dan Patterson’s answers slowed only by the necessity of the students to write notes:

“Yeah!  Tommy!”

“Can you tell us something about fentanyll?”

“Fentanyl?  Sure!  And—by the way, if you miss some of what I’m going to tell you, it’s all available on-line.  Just go to www. streetdrugs.org.”

“What was that again?”

“Www. streetdrugs.org.”

“All lower case?”

“All lower case.  Now—fentanyl:  it was first synthesized in Belgium in the late 1950’s.  It’s got an analgesic potency eighty times that of morphine.”

There was a low murmur through the crowd.  Someone asked, wonderingly:

“Did you say eighty times?”

“That’s right:  eighty times!”

Borkus could hear pencil lead scratching as the students, especially those in the front of the auditorium, took notes feverishly.

“It was introduced into the medical practice in the 1960s as an intravenous anesthetic under the trade name of Sublimaze.”

“Could you spell that?”

“Sure.  S-U-B-L-I-M-A-Z-E.  Everybody got it?  I’ll wait while you write it down.”

Short pause.  Intense writing.

“OK.  Now—fentanyl is a good thing for you to know about;  carfentanil, on the other hand—listen to this—is an analogue of fentanyl, with an analgesic potency 10,000 times that of morphine, and is used in veterinary practice to immobilize certain large animals.”

“WOW” said the audience, almost as one.

“Isn’t that amazing?” beamed Officer Dan.  Another question:  Bill, in the back!”

“Yo, Officer Dan—what can you tell us about ketamine?”

“Ketamine?  Good question, Bill.  Ketamine liquid can be injected, applied to smokable material, or consumed in drinks.”

“So we can shoot up, smoke it, or drink it?”

“That’s right, at least according to the latest facts available to you courtesy of the National Drug Awareness Center in Washington.”

“How do you make ketamine powder?”

“Another good question:  this is found very clearly spelled out for you in www. streetdrugs.org, but I’ll go over it anyway, because I know there are a few of you who don’t always have access to computers.  The powdered form is made by allowing the solvent to evaporate, leaving a white or slightly off-white powder that, once pulverized, looks similar to cocaine.  The powder can be put into drinks, smoked, or dissolved and then injected.”

“What should we pay for this, Officer Dan?”

“Streetdrugs.org says that you should not pay more than $20 to $25 per dosage unit.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s all right.  Hey, the one thing I want you to remember is, we want you to be informed consumers.  The United States government is doing everything they can, and producing thousand of pages of printed material and on-line material just for you, to be sure that you know precisely how to use illegal drugs, and precisely what to pay for them.  Oh, Bill—did you need to know a little more about ketamine?”

“Just one more thing:  what effects can we expect?”

Officer Dan nodded:

“Bill, the effects are similar to PCP, with the visual effects of LSD.”

“Wow.”

“I know, that’s really something.  Users report that it’s better than PCP or LSD because the trip lasts an hour or less.  Now, listen to this and write it down if you need to:  low doses of the drug produce an experience called 'K-Land,' a mellow, colorful, 'wonder world'.”

“Who,” asked one of the coaches, “calls it that, Dan?”

“The government.  They go on to advise the kiddoes that higher doses produce an effect referred to as 'K-Hole,' an 'out of body' or 'near-death' experience.  Jessica, did you have a question?”

“Yes, I did.  Could you tell us just one more time how crack is made?”

Groans from the audience; mock disappointment in Dr. Dan’s face:

“Jessica, I’m a little disappointed in you!”

“I know, I know.”

“That’s pretty basic.”

“It’s just—I can’t get it.”

“OK, we’ll go over it one more time—“

A voice from the audience said:

“This time write it down, Jessica!”

She turned, smiling, and said:

“Fuck you, Chester!”

“Fuck yourself back!”

Officer Dan laughed:

“All right, all right!  We’ve got time!  This is important stuff, and let’s be sure everybody’s got it!  You can groan and complain, but I’ll bet you—I’ll bet you—that Jessica here is not the only one in this audience who doesn’t know how to make crack cocaine!”

Another voice in the audience:

“How much you want to bet?”

Howls of laughter.

Borkus could hear one of the coaches, standing a short distance away from him, whisper admiringly:

“He’s got a gift.  That guy’s just…man, he’s just great with kids.”

“All right,” the Drug Awareness Officer continued:  “Crack is a form of cocaine base.  Unlike the processing of freebase cocaine, converting powder cocaine into crack cocaine does not involve any flammable solvents.”

“Did you say not?”

“That’s right.  It does not involve any flammable solvents.  The powder solution is simply dissolved in a solution of sodium bicarbonate and water.”

“What is that exact ratio?”

Borkus looked to the right of the auditorium.  The question had been asked by Mrs. Richard Jameson,  Billy Jameson’s mother.

She was writing as feverishly as the students.

“I’m glad you asked that, Mrs. Jameson.  And by the way, thanks for coming!”

“Oh,” she said, with a radiant smile, “I wouldn’t miss it!”

“We appreciate all the parents here!”

“YO!” came the response from at least fifty voices simultaneously.

“Well in answer to your question, the ratio needs to be about forty-sixty.”

“Forty sodium bicarbonate?”

“That’s right.  Then—the solution is simply boiled, and a solid substance separates from the boiling mixture.”

“How long does that take?”

“About eight minutes.  And-by the way, I want to point this out again: if you miss any of what I’m saying, you can find it all on www. streetdrugs. org.  And if you miss that, just go to Yahoo and type in “Homework Helper,” and you’ll find the most complete drug charts on the internet.”

“What was that again?”

“Homework Helper.  Now, let’s go on with crack:  The solid substance is removed and allowed to dry.”

“And that’s crack?”

“That’s crack.  It is then broken or cut into “rocks,” each typically weighing from one-tenth to one half a gram.”

“How much?”

“One tenth to one half a gram.”

“What’s the exact relation of the pure powder to the crack?”

“One gram of pure powder cocaine will convert to approximately 0.89 grams of crack cocaine.”

“He is,” whispered the teacher beside Borkus, “so knowledgeable!”

“Well,” came the reply, “it’s his life’s work.”

“It shows.”

“Yes, it does.”

“How long,” came a question from one of the fathers sitting nearer the back, “does it take to get high?”

“Because crack is smoked,” Officer Dan replied, “the user experiences a high in less than ten seconds.”

Again, murmured admiration from the entire audience, many of whom simply shook their heads.

“This rather immediate and euphoric effect is one of the reasons crack became enormously popular in the mid nineteen eighties.  The euphoria is really quite pronounced:  people become completely convinced that they can fly.  We had three young men jump off the top of a barn over near Ferris.”

“How are they, Dan?” asked one of the principals.

“We haven’t found them yet.”

A somber, quiet moment in the auditorium.

“Crack is pretty expensive though, isn’t it?” asked one of the students.

“No!  Now come on, guys, you need to know this stuff.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s ok, but get it straight.  Crack is inexpensive both to produce and to buy.  Now—are we ready to move on?  Here, third row, Jason:”

“Could you tell us some things about GHB and GHB Analogs?”

“Good question, Jason!  Sure.  GHB is short for Gama Hydroxybutryric Acid.”

“Could you repeat that?”

“Of course I could.  It’s Gama Hydroxybutryric Acid.  That’s H-Y-D-R-O-X-Y-B-U-T-R-Y-R-I-C. It’s a lot like Rohypnol.  And do we know what Rohypno and its analogs are called?  Come on, who’s been doing homework?  Tom in the fourth row!”

“Date rape drugs!”

“YES!  Good job, Tom!”

Wild cheers—Tom stands and bows, opening and closing his long black trenchcoat as he does so.

“Sure, date rape drugs!  Now—you can make almost any date rape drug from GBL, which is short for gamma-butyrolactone—I’ll spell that a little later—which is a solvent commonly used as a paint stripper.”

“A what?”

“A paint stripper.”

“You mean, like, we could get it at a hardware store?”

“Absolutely.  I just saw two brands of paint strippers at Jones Hardware—one of them is their house brand, it’s even cheaper.  You can also use butanediol, which is a chemical used in the production of plastics and adhesives.”

“I found,” said the father who had spoken earlier, “that the butanediol works better.”

Officer Dan nodded:

“Well there you go.  That’s the voice of experience, and that’s the reason I think it’s so good that you parents are here.  Now everybody: what’s the main thing you have to remember about administering a date rape drug?”

Several voices shouted simultaneously:

“Mix it!  Mix it!”

“That’s right, y’all are sharp today!  You absolutely must mix it with some liquid—even water—because GHB by itself has a soapy or salty taste, that the victim would notice.  Now—way in the back?”

Borkus glanced to his right and saw—could that be?  Yes.  She was so small that it was difficult to see her, but there, in the next to last row, sat Mrs. Eudora Dickerson.

Eudora Dickerson was a legend in town.  She had been the Waxahachie High School librarian for, legend had it, forty years.  But it could have been longer, since no one seemed to know precisely when she had made her first appearance at the school.  After her retirement she remained a dynamo, serving as president of Ladies of the Leaf, among what seemed an endless array of clubs and organizations.  Now she had difficulty getting around, but, with her superb white hair and immaculate dressing habits, she still seemed capable of commanding the attention of everyone in the room.

“Mrs. Dickerson!  Is that you, Mrs. Dickerson?”

“Yeesss,” came the reply, though weakly.

“Did you have a question?”

“I did.  I did.”

“Someone,” the principal shouted from beside the stage, “get over there and help her!  We can’t quite hear.”

And, dutifully, one of the coaches made his way down the row, bent over, and, hand cupped to her ear, nodded as Eudora Dickinson spoke softly in his ear.  After a time, he straightened, and said in a firm voice:

“Mrs. Dickenson has a question about tryptamines.”

The entire audience seemed to cheer as one:

“MAGIC MUSHROOMS!  MAGIC MUSHROOMS!  YEA MRS. DICKINSON!  YEA MRS DICKINSON!”

She, for her part, smiled broadly and waved from her seat.

Mrs. Dickinson was back in the high school.

Borkus felt a tightening in his throat.

The cheers lasted for a good two minutes.

Finally Officer Dan was forced to restore order.  He simply said:

“You are never too old!”

More cheers.  More waving from Eudora Dickinson.

“Well Mrs. Dickinson,” he went on, “A number of Schedule I hallucinogenic substances are classified chemically as tryptomines.  Most of them are found in nature, but many, if not all, can be produced synthetically.  Psilocybin is obtained from certain mushrooms indigenous to tropical and subtropical regions of South America.  As pure chemicals, at doses of 10 to 20 mg…”

“Sorry!  What were those doses?”

“Ten to twenty mg, Pete.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.  At any rate, that kind of dosage can produce muscle relaxation, dilation of pupils, vivid visual and auditory distortions…”

“Yes!” someone shouted.

Officer Dan grinned:

“…and severe emotional disturbances.  Generally you dry the mushrooms…”

“Can you brew them?”

“You sure can, Tommy, you bet you can!  It’s a little complicated and time consuming…”

“We have,” a small voice cried out, “all the time in the world!”

It was Mrs. Eudora Dickinson!

Cheers went up through the crowd, and Borkus could see several of the coaches smiling and shaking their heads.

“She’s a pistol, isn’t she?”

“She sure is!”

After the roars had died down, Dr. Dan continued:

“The best way to find out exactly how to brew magic mushrooms is just to log on your computer to www.tryptamines .  Because, I’m telling you the truth kids, the National Drug Awareness Organization has spared no expense to help you learn about drugs.  These websites are all just incredible, and they’re all for you.

The same teacher who had whispered earlier said, in an awed voice, to Borkus as well as to the teacher standing beside her:

“Anybody who says the schools don’t teach anything, just ought to be here today.”

“Isn’t that right?”

“Just look at these kids!”

And she was right.  Borkus was forced to realize that this was the entire community becoming, as one, intensely aware of drugs.  So it hardly surprised him when, at the end of thirty more minutes of non stop questioning, Officer Dan held up his hand, quieted the crowd, and said his final, but perhaps most moving, lines of the day:

“I know you want to stay all day…”

“YES!  YES!”

“STAY ALL DAY!  STAY ALL DAY!”

“But I’ve got other schools I have to visit, where there are kids who want to learn about drugs just as much as you do.  I just want to ask you though, before I go, to look around you.”

The students did so; Borkus could see them all, turning in their seats.

“Look around you.  Think about who you are, and where you are!  Realize that this place is your home!  You are going to be here for years!  Given that fact, and given the fact that these are your teachers—and these are your friends and fellow students—given those facts—there is no reason you should not be thinking all the time—about illegal drugs!

Thunderous applause, and Officer Dan was engulfed in the crowd.

—from the novel  TAAS:  A Novel of the Standardized Examination

 

                                                                                                       

                                     
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B. A. Van Sise Peter Schwartz Steve Cartwright

Larry O. Gay Michael G. McLaughlin Nathan Combs

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Zfat, Israel

B. A. Van Sise

 

 

Cardo, Jerusalem, Israel

B. A. Van Sise

 

 

Tabaqat, Jordan

B. A. Van Sise

 

 

Shaykh Miskin, Syria

B. A. Van Sise

 

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the human show

Peter Schwartz

 

 

 

hero anonymous

Peter Schwartz

 

 

 

nine	Peter Schwartz

 

 

 

truth and amnesia

Peter Schwartz

 

 

 

metabolism

Peter Schwartz

 

 

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Old Troll

Steve Cartwright

 

 

Prisoner

Steve Cartwright

 

 

 

Gangster 2

Steve Cartwright

 

 

 

Swimming

Steve Cartwright

 

 

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Untitled

Larry O. Gay

 

 

 

Untitled

Larry O. Gay

 

 

 

Untitled

Larry O. Gay

 

 

 

Untitled

Larry O. Gay

 

 

 

 

Untitled

Larry O. Gay

 

 

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Patzcuaro Wildflowers I

Michael G. McLaughlin

 

 

 

Patzcuaro Wildflowers II

Michael G. McLaughlin

 

 

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Untitled

Nathan Combs

 

 

Untitled

Nathan Combs

 

 

 

Untitled

Nathan Combs

 

 

 

Untitled

Nathan Combs

 

 

 

Untitled

Nathan Combs

 

 

 

Untitled

Nathan Combs

 

 

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E Mail to Damnaso Lopez by Duane Locke   Rust-red Barn The rust-red barn left On Tuesday Becomes upon return A whirlpool In an urban river Where spinning debris When spun Is a debut party. The spinning, A transformational power Since nothing is What we see Or think it is, The storybook of perception Is a Gongorism And Good Samaritan On Good Friday. A gopher, a goosestep, A gospel, a grab bag. Objective is subjective, Subjective is objective, The last circle On the circles of water Is a Latin motto Above the mantel Of a fireplace In a wooden cabin Where is hung Frying pans Is brightly polished Backsides. Perception begins With the escaped parrot And becomes a Maple leaf Fallen on An outdoor checkerboard. Afterwards, the attic, The brass-hinged trunk, On back each letter The lipstick imprint Of parted lips, crevices With El Greco elongations, Elementary schools, Elevated railroads. A blue dragonfly With globular green eye On the cracked pane Of the window glass So the dreams at night Will be silver And the moon a leviathan In a sinkhole. A black swallowtail Sticks a proboscis In the black mud Presents the possibility That memory Will recall The Little Dipper Over New England And Locarno. It was a latch That emanated A host of deities and saints, Lares and penates, Lawyers, morques, And lavaboes. It was all, The continuation And extension Of a finality And its fragrance That became whispers.   Once More Once more about The time The morning nears noon When our togetherness Has been mutually thinking About matters Mycenaean, We pause, digress To consider hedonistic enhancements. So first we erase From our vocabularies The word “porridge.” We think how to embellish pork. We could find the recipe From Moravia. It was found in a lost saddle bag Of a horseman Was riding away rapidly To escape from schoolbook logarithms. There is a precise way The pork should be sliced into shreds. The cutting Requires the temperament Of an egregious egotist, A naïve person Who believes ex cathedra He is a transcended signifier, Who will leave after using The knife as a hammer leaves A mark of a cut On the blond raw wood Cutting board. We, looked at each other, Knowing we were a minority And did not possess The needed confidence To slice the pork According to this recipe into shreds. We were skeptics, Not the many Who have a false faith In their abilities. So instead of a Moravian pork, We cooked some Scrambled eggs.   Scripture The scripture Left my cup empty, The cup that sat inside A silver container Etched with acanthus leaves And pine cones And had a unicorn That had rubies for eyes. The scripture Left Samson setting Fire to the tails of foxes So local real estate men, His relatives, Could steal the property Of their neighbors, Who had daughters That were beautiful women, This scripture Left the bowl of my cup empty. But due to a miracle The empty bowl Became filled with a river That parted, disappeared, To provide a trail Of pavement, concrete, To the promised land. As we in close-order drills Marched to the promised land, We were ordered To keep ledgers According to the double entry system. And as we marched We were ordered to praise, Praise, praise, praise, Praise anything— Shadows, the weight of boulders, The stone statues on Easter Island, The hanging gardens of Babylon, The whore of Babylon, Praise, praise, praise. Write catalogues of praise Like Walt Whitman.   New Year Inventory The new year inventory Proved Our shelves were empty. Throughout the year we were happy, We Had Faith Our shelves were filled, Filled With marigolds, Sugar-coated pills, Runes, Runciated leaves. But the inventory did damage to our bones, Our thrones, Our tankards, Our tangerines, And our Taming of the Shrew.   Stars I with my telescope, Memories of Galileo, Watch Stars crack apart, Become A series of tongues That wag out Wriggling, brittle words That are printed By publishers looking For a profit In school texts To provide a text For every child to memorize Through the coercion Of A, B, C, D, F system. No one, no one, no one Refuses To be shaped, Shaped by something unknown, Unknown By those being shaped, Unknown By those who are doing the shaping, So the shaping Takes place Without anyone Knowing what shaping is all about. So Everyone Becomes A Volcano. Return to Contents Return to top of page