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Janet Lynn Davis Averil Bones Lyn Lifshin Francis Raven Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI Kelley Jean White Rochelle Hope Mehr Corey Mesler Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti Sam Silva Yvette Merton Harding Stedler Joanna M. Weston            You know it's winter by Janet Lynn Davis You can tell it's winter when you peer through an opening in the vertical blinds and can’t see past a formless, five o'clock gray sky, no matter the time of day. You can tell someone's died when it looks like winter, at least till the initial shock has been rubbed away and everyone sits down to fried chicken and three-bean salad. Have you noticed nobody seems to die in summer? Or are we preoccupied then with swimming pools and tall iced drinks, with air-conditioned shopping malls and keeping the grass cut right?     Called back by Janet Lynn Davis And so, we’ve been allowed again to tread the slow winter scenery: the bare, coarse skin of seasoned tree creatures and the long taupe landscapes, occasional redness only a mirage. Our cries must have cracked the heavens last year, when we couldn’t bear more treks beyond the safety zones. We heard stories, or were them, of ice cold: soldiers’ final letters, dreams of hospital stretchers, eyes pried open to cerebral trenches, hopes careening down sloped sides. We’ve wondered why it was us, not others, brought back to consume December’s curious swill, lured by tinsel and torches and, later, the lip of spring. Obsessed with shortened lives and lives returned, we probe for reasons under crusted snow.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Airport MVCXCXVM by Averil Bones ...meeting in a cool dawn underwater lounge all set up for coffee drinkers and late night motel arrivals straggling from the night before... ...a man handed out lemonade, telling stories of robberies over the border... No cops; he lives right up the street.     The Brick Factory by Averil Bones The brick factory's there alright, looming with obese abandon, seeping dead zephyrs that catch in my throat. On the lines high-chested finches, buffed with brick dust, chitter. The old teeth of buildings lag blunt and brown down the dry dusty street. The sun lingers in shadows, languishing under the bulk of that great bessa built of bricks. A galah, dark, cornered by grey cages still tries vainly to speak, stretches his tongue to squark a lipless FREE to our cooing.     Voices by Averil Bones Copenhagen haunts me; today a man spoke Danish in my wooden ear, wooed me in Hans Christian Anderson's voice. The he slipped into German, lost my attention. Was gone.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         May, Drizzle, Virginia by Lyn Lifshin Sixth day of pewter. The cat coils under the microwave, ex- cited by garbage tracks as I open mail, a little cautious as if something dangerous could be there.  Bruise sky. Ozone’s cheap perfume in the trees.  I think of Robert Johnson with a poisoned drink in one hand from some one sure he’d been cheating with his wife, sang bury my body by the old railroad sign so I can catch a ride on the old Grey- house bus and ride and ride.  Dead at 28, a voice says as the cat coils on terry cloth as if it was purple velvet maybe dreaming of gizzards or being worshiped with flayed salmon and sparrows     North of Cottonwood by Lyn Lifshin rose lichen  gamble oak    globe mallow  bent in rain   Blue lupine   juniper mistletoe it rains and keeps raining these rocks  pulled from each other   two million years ago  wrenched like a woman   whose child grabbed  on a cattle car   smashed into stone  her eyes, streaked   like tonight’s sky  a Monday, all sipapu   a spirit entrance   into the underworld     Traveling by Lyn Lifshin  Past Superstition Mountain craters and black rock, octotillo  In love with names, Box Canyon      Bloody Basin   traveling out of   myself thinking  how my father never got deeper west from Russia than Chicago World’s Fair 1939     see him     riding the Wall Street Journal,     leaving with a     brown bag     of loss    how do we learn    to be    whole   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Clamoring for Authenticity by Francis Raven The queue for the breakfast buffet continues to get longer:  a half hour and then 45 minutes.  Salty meat and dry eggs have always made people want to stand in lines; waiting for the lodge sponsored activities:  the nightly rodeo with the perfectly timed tumble (the hat rolling to within an inch of the crowd, every night!), and the after dinner chuck wagon rumbling up the buttery buffet trout, and the hour long nag walks, and the dances and the bolo ties: It's awful and hokey, but wonderful in a way, that people can still pretend to believe that the world is still like this. I heard a man in red flannel say, or I wish I heard him say: "I just feel so good being here. It just feels so authentic; I feel a real connection to the old west here." Maybe the old west was always shrouded in hokiness, maybe it's Buffalo Bill's all the way down, maybe we're closer to the old west than we think. The line to get in on the buffet finally thins out. Presumably some of the buffeters have moseyed on over to the general store to buy a five dollar roll of John Wayne toilet paper, or a four dollar shaker of cretaceous salt, or a tee-shirt that you can color in yourself, or a pastel mug bearing a depiction of a Native-American woman holding a feather and the words "we can be whatever we give ourselves the power to be", or any of 8 varieties of shotglass from Southwestern Utah, and, of course, there are the ubiquitous collector's spoons. It's not that I think that I'm better than this place, It's just that it takes a slightly longer proof to convince me of the authenticity of any way of life.     Canyons on and on by Francis Raven Moab, Utah The shadows of mountainous clouds darken the burning red rock cliffs. Eight bicycles line the front of the Lazy Lizard Hostel, ready to roll into a raft that might float all the way down the Colorado. Pinon and Juniper forests are folded within the telephone book. The teapot will not whistle and the shower only sputters. The door slams and the sandstone weathers away into a fine dust that flies violently into your eyes.     Falling Willfully by Francis Raven Monticello, Utah Black uniball pens fall into over-chlorinated pools in Days Inns all over the southwest. White hotel towels attempt to follow, but get stuck in cottonwood limbs waiting for water. Have you tried to fall and gotten stuck? Have you gotten stuck and liked it there? Disjointed pieces of paper, parts of an endless manuscript, try to fall on the hot asphalt, but get stuck on the air and float to an entirely unintentional parking lot. Red cars sometimes even fall off cliffs in the movies, never to be cars again, but only metal that falls into a scrapyard on the outskirts of any big city. All your towels are falling. All your hues are gathering more. You won't be dry again. Your cars down in the canyon will no longer take you there.   . Walking past your Tree by Francis Raven Motion makes a tree. The bee in my wine jumps to the branch, leaps, perhaps, faith.    Centripetal limbs curling. The pine needles did pirouettes. Six flowers fell, kissed the ground, and proceeded to get too old to move.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         It is the Age of Cucumbers by Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI I've always said: "A door that four people cannot open a dog opens with the end of its nose and goes on its way..." No one is surprised though. It is the age of cucumbers. A machine washes the linen, a man does not find time to wash himself. In certain bald heads there is everything but hair, and humanity. In the castles are wood worms, not sultans, living like kings... No one is surprised though. It is the age of cucumbers. French free verse translated into English free verse by Joneve McCormick—2004     Stopping Evenings by Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI There is no longer light touching my bedside; those evenings have aged in my dreams, one or two lines embracing my eyes, a revolution in my veins. I sip the evenings hidden in my dreams, shadows hurtling into my pupils, still looking for you before a statue. The evenings undulate like the song of a bird, my hopes lost, falling at a stopping; my sentiments drag along in my heart and I say that evenings stopping will never blacken. —Istanbul, 1975.  French free verse translated into English free verse by Joneve McCormick     They Have Woven a Net Around Us by Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI A feeling of nearness to suffering In our hearts While we reduce the dimensions Of the essence of light With our eyes In a local scuffle Them They have woven a net around us. Bearing the pains of life While watching the people with sullen faces And tired thoughts All along the years We have heard the whistle of whips... With well-concealed thoughts Those Never thought of us And... without any mercy Have woven a net around us. French free verse translated into English free verse by F. .J.  Bergmann., 2002   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         1960 by Kelley Jean White I wasn’t about to vote for no Catholic from Massachusetts even if I was a Catholic myself.  I said Catholic like my father and Republican like my mother. We only got one channel, 8, out of Poland Spring Maine. Every night we watched the weather report from the top of Mt. Washington.  Snow, wind, cold.  I walked down the road from the school bus expecting a hurricane and I most certainly wouldn’t vote for no southerner even if it was only for V P     Adjustment by Kelley Jean White I ought to pull out the drawer in my navel and organize my guts—here is a little pebble I thought would be useful, here is a used up stone, here is a broken brick, here bright leaves of fresh mint; now I’ll lay straight the rusted iron tools, the recorded used spirits, the reports of failure, and set a layer of thyme to keep everything sweet before I secure the lock.     Departure by Kelley Jean White Perhaps the dog will leave you. Perhaps your brother’s rebel angels will become real on your haunted door. Sick on bat shit, the night stars shooting past your cistern roost, drinking again, brother in a Christian chat room via satellite. Voices of the hopeful lost. I was a woman. With glass beneath my fingernails. I tossed old 45s into the woods and listened for the shots. Your empty vest. Your wool cap with the face mask pulled Frost in your beard. That rimy grin frozen in my mirror. Meteor shower on the TV screen. Nothing but static. And the leather glove cracked.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Release by Rochelle Hope Mehr I heard the silences and they shook me, More than the tessitura of the age. I stood back and felt the overtones rage— The implicit took me out of my cage. The trial and the error of my ways, Haunting metaphors not to be assuaged, The open book hooking me deep within, The curious fancy set on the page. Between the commonplace and genius lies A neutral ground.  Could it be anchorage? Rest on the meridian and time dies, Light flies, but where is the umbrage?     At the Italian Restaurant by Rochelle Hope Mehr I wanted so much to believe in something good and pure and simple the gleam of sheer delight emanating from the three-year-old perched on her father's lap the expectation of bliss awaiting her vanilla ice cream as we all crooned "Happy Birthday!" in a restaurant a public place she had us all eating out of the palm of her hand as she licked and licked     Apprehension by Rochelle Hope Mehr A not-so-pleasant discovery I made about myself: I want to be in complete control of my destiny. Nothing unforeseen should happen to me. Even something good. The unfamiliar frightens me, Shakes me up through my roots. I want to hang on to the familiar. I don't want to be uprooted. I don't want to be shaken up. I want to dig deep into the good earth. Resist everything but inertia.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         A John Berryman Nocturne by Corey Mesler “Nothing like peace of mind for the practice of art & life.”                                 John Berryman Into my sleepless night John Berryman, home from the Dream Songs, comes, a man too ginned up to stake the everyday. “John,” I say, “You really were the poet of the middle of the night— help me here.” John Berryman puts down his glass and looks at what I have written. “Not enough blood,” he says. And I know he’s right. Even on a night such as this, my soul in tatters, my mind a capharnaum of too much intention, even visited by the great J B, I cannot find the deathless voice. Of, course, at times neither could he, drunk as he was on madness, sick with the lifelong desire to take that last grave step off the bridge.     Nature Jar by Corey Mesler The snail shell my daughter finds on the sidewalk is dried out, a mossy something in its whorl. She loves it anyway and puts it in her nature jar, next to the locust husk, the exanimate moth, the firefly she thought would burn forever.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         rainy day prophecy by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti The rain will not address me. It will only whisper:  Elsewhere, I fall.  Secrets concealed behind some watery shield.  The brownstone tome.  Some other heart beats, pink, war, on her bed.  He is the rain's dark martyr and like the rain, whispers secrets. You are uninvited.  Shut in your lockbox.  Streaks blue the vision.  Unclear.  A psychics half-prophecy.  The clouds sheet all.  Lovers wrapped in cotton cloud.  A mackerel sky.  A fish eye, a dream of a fetus conjured by you.  Conceived by two.  Lightning brights the land, halogen white.  It is blank.  Blank and soundless.  Nothing left for you here. You rise through the darkness like helium.     you're by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti sweet, untouchable, marble and solid.  it's always to you that I turn.  you're a fast-pace runner, streaking joy through my street, your bicycle wheel click-clacking the play card we pegged on your spoke.  remember, how we spoke on the roof, drank tea. remember that?  remember me? you're the touchstone, the reference the referee, always with some sage wisdom, your old Cherokee blood turning in your vein versing down your arm, the steel plate that says, Someone here died.  When you died, I died too, I felt it, felt you leaving shouted No!  and you returned as if by some magic incantation I had conjured you home.  Touch stone, never leave say you'll always be with me.  Twin, thin, greyed and lovely cousin, brother, lover.  I turn to you, in the night, in the day light I sway and when I fall it is you who is there to break it as if you know I would shatter on impact.  you're the one, the number one fan, the one who always understands the sparks that light so bright to you they are the Champs Elysees, they say all roads lead to Paris.  I see you biking fast around the columns, lighting up the night.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       While the Light Comes Easy by Sam Silva As if to wake to eternal meaning Sundays are so good for old men in their gardens or in a house beyond the park gazing toward the wood soaking in the sunshine of the pure art of its gleaning and waiting for the dark. Sundays mean forever! A house much like a poem ...we have ceased in all things clever ...my wife who paints the sea and storm and I who doze the sunny Sunday and dream eternal form.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Iris by Yvette Merton In those eyes dwelling of souls combined sea urchins embedded with pain and sparks of dark winter coloured dots march on oil canvas beauty flourished pain vexed tidal waves shading the sun caged birds learning to fly in orbs of timeless passage a campus of stars immutable and undefined In those eyes a leaf in the breeze.     Hearts and Diamonds by Yvette Merton Zip a jacket around the heart don't let it roll down the sleeve keep it in its iron tomb, It can be soft, so soft, still warm or vacuous stone. Bitter twist of lemons sting jabbing the air, drinking the silence of thumping drums, It can appease all senses at will, Clear diamond...animated. Deceived organ, hurting, soft, quiet and still. Pink animus trumpet steel wool, scouring pans, building walls too hard to climb. Rolling heart sitting in the passenger seat riding a roller coaster, sleeping with vagabonds.     Jail Baby by Yvette Merton Transcend this place, fetid air paying homage to her residing behind metal panels, slabs of wielding arrows aimed at what she did, not what she didn’t do, carcass attired in clothes dressed with stripes along her trousers resting with slaves, there for no reason. Witness blind sighted paid with favours to lie, to keep her tightly bound to break her down, smiling deception empty burning holes in her side jail baby asks why, fighting off the hunter saving her grace jail baby, longing for halcyon days.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Too Long Absent by Harding Stedler   My ear belongs to the window, listening for that lost sound of rain. I forego sleep that I might hear the gentle, soothing sounds that will resurrect the green.   To be here when rain comes calling is an answered prayer. I cushion myself among the drops, wishing night would last forever.     Behind, the Beach by Harding Stedler I will not leave this beach behind. Persistent sand clings to my inland legs, pale with winter. Sun shades my pigment as brown as pine straw and, with enviable tan, I abandon breakers in reflections of the sun. My pockets are full of seashells and, like coins, they jingle memories of these days. Tomorrow, I will wade inland, where there are no tides. There, I'll re-create an ocean that wakes a different sun.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Framed in Light for Ron Taylor by Joanna M. Weston the artist threads diamonds on a winter hand opens the wall to windows of apple blossom weaves light between trees braids shadows into dusk and sails out on waves bright as dragonfly wings     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page

 

 

   

Topless   Rob Rosen Voices in the Dark   Clifford Thurlow Feldman's Idea  Jack Goodstein Welcome Home  John C. Brown

New Ground  Laine Perry The Wake  Melody Claussen Stuttgart  Martin Green Unremitting Memory  William Gladys

 

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Topless                                                                                                                                                       Carol Doda, 1964

by Rob Rosen                                                                          



y friends and I rounded the corner of Broadway at Columbus after having finished a truly stupendous Italian dinner in San Francisco’s famous North Beach district.  We were stuffed, yet still full of energy, and decided to cap the night off with a drink or two.  And wouldn’t you know it, we were standing directly in front of the historic Condor Club just as we made this decision.

Now, I’d never been in this particular bar before, but I was well aware of why it was indeed historic.  San Francisco is the birthplace of television, the martini, and the fortune cookie—just to name a few.  But other less, shall we say, noble inventions were created in the city by the bay; namely, topless dancing.  The Condor Club happens to have the distinction of being America’s first go-go bar.  On June 16th, 1964, Carol Doda appeared atop a white baby grand piano in nothing but a bikini bottom, and an era was born.  (I wonder if she had an inkling of just how far the “art form” would come in a mere forty years.)

The Condor Club today is, I’m sure, nothing like it was back then.  It’s now a bar, a restaurant, and a nightclub.  The go-go booth still resides center stage, but no one goes topless anymore.  And still, we ventured in, though there were plenty of topless options just a mere half block away.  Proximity, you see, outweighed pruriency.

Anyway, the bar was hopping.  Being surrounded by stellar Italian restaurants afforded it a great location.  I’m sure the history of the place didn’t hurt none either.  And that’s what caught my eye upon entering.  The walls were lined with photos of the club’s past.  So while my friends went and ordered our drinks, I perused the memorabilia.  Ms. Doda, naturally, comprised quite a few of the black and white snapshots.  Besides being an innovator in her field, she was also a pioneer in the use of silicon.  And it showed.  A knockout back then, I wondered what the queen of striptease looked like today.  But my reveries were quickly cut short when I spotted one of the photos that was situated mid-wall.

In that picture, for all the world to view, was a face (and body) I wasn’t expecting to see; at least not in a nightclub, and certainly not topless.  Though I could have been mistaken.  I mean, really, it was forty years and many pounds earlier.  Still, the resemblance was uncanny.

“Looks like you’ve seen a ghost,” my friend Marc said, and handed me my drink.  I downed it in one fell swoop.

“Yeah, John, you’re white as a sheet.  What gives?” added my friend Charles.

“Oh, it’s nothing.  Must be something I ate,” I lied and veered them away from the wall to a table on the other side of the club.

The rest of the night went by in a blur, and an alcohol induced one at that.  Still, nothing could wipe the horrific image from my rattled brain.  Try as I might, I knew it would forever be etched in my memory.  And so, I decided to piece together the puzzle of why my grandmother may have been a stripper at the Condor Club back in the sixties.  (Oh please, dear Lord, let me be wrong on this one, I thought and prayed.)

***

“Ma,” I said, a few days after my finding, when I was over at my parent’s house for a visit.  “Mind if I look at your family albums?”

She looked at me like I was crazy.  Normally, she had to force those things on us kids, as well as assorted guests; most notably any and all girlfriends I was crazy enough to bring home with me.  “Um, sure, okay,” she said, handing them to me.  “Is everything alright?”

“Yep.  Just wanted to see something, is all,” I answered, cryptically.  Really, I wanted to see if the girl in the picture at the club matched what my Grandmother looked like back then.

I scanned all the albums.  They started at her mother’s wedding day and continued to the present.  Grandma was a looker, even back then, but she was also quite appropriately dressed in all the photos.  Conservatively, I’d even go so far as to say; and not a bathing suit to be seen, topless or otherwise.  And though there was a passing resemblance, someone in a wedding gown or a matronly skirt and blouse can hardly be compared to a topless go-go dancer.  It’s like that old apples and oranges argument, only with strippers and Grandmothers.

“Um, Ma,” I said, looking up from the albums.  “How come there’s no pictures of Grandma before her wedding day?”

My mother looked at me funny, but otherwise gave no indication that she had any idea of what I was getting at.  “Well,” she offered.  “Cameras weren’t widely owned in her day.  Not like today.  Most people posed for professionals back then.  Like for wedding and baby photos.  And Grandma’s family was poor, so her wedding photo might be the earliest one there is of her.  I suppose she may have a baby picture of herself somewhere, but not that I’ve ever seen.”

Little did she know that a photo hung in the middle of the wall at the Condor Club that may or may not have been her mother.  I’m sure she’d be less than happy about it.  Of course, far be it from me to inform her of such a thing, I figured.  So I simply let it go.  But not before I asked one more pointed question.

“Ma, what did Grandma do before she got married to Grandpa?” I asked.

“Do?  What do you mean do?” she asked in return.

“You know.  For a job.”

“John, you know that women of her generation rarely worked.  And Grandma was only twenty when she married Grandpa, so what could she have done before then?  I suppose she helped out around her parent’s house, but other than that, I’d have to say she’s never worked a day in her life.  Least not for money.”

Oh to be so naïve, I thought.

***

So, it turned out, the source was to be my only option.

Luckily, Grandma lived nearby and I frequently dropped in to say hello.

“Hi, Gram,” I said from her front porch.

“How much do you need now?” she said, by way of greeting.  Okay, fine, I dropped by to say hello usually when I needed money.  Guess she knew me pretty well.  Now it was my turn to get to know her a bit better.

“Can’t a guy drop by just to say hello to his Grandma?”

“Yes, that would be nice, for a change.  Okay, come in.  And wipe your shoes off.”

I did as commanded and entered the home that hadn’t changed one iota for as long as I could remember.  Neither had Grandma, for that matter.  She was, for lack of a better term, grandmotherly, and had always appeared that way to me.  She was on the short side.  A good twenty pounds heavier than she’d probably like to be.  Somewhat wrinkled.  And if I had to say so, she was sort of on the pretty side.  Kind of like my own mother with an extra twenty years added on.  But she definitely didn’t look like a stripper.  Then again, I didn’t really know what she looked like, or, for that matter, acted like forty-some-odd years earlier.

Grandma fixed me a sandwich and a glass of milk and sat with me at the kitchen table.

“You’re looking well,” she said and ruffled my hair as I ate.

“You too,” I said and set the sandwich down.  “Speaking of which, I was over mom and dad’s the other day and I noticed something funny.”

“Yeah, I told your mom to try some room deodorizer.  I think that smell is your father’s socks.”

“No, not that.  But I think you’re right on that one.  No, mom was forcing me to look at our family photo albums, and I noticed that there weren’t any of you from before you got married.  How come?”

Grandma squirmed in her seat and remained silent.  She looked down at her orthopedic shoes, her hands, and the table, but not up to me.  Instead, she cleared away my plate and started scrubbing it in the sink.  Eventually, she said, “Oh, I’m sure there’s a picture of me here or there.”

I knew exactly where, but was biding my time.   Instead, I said, “Show me.  I’d like to see what you looked like.”

“Why?” she asked, putting the dish on the rack to dry.  “I thought you hated family photos.”

“Hate is such a strong word,” I lied, for truly I did hate looking at them.  Especially since I’d viewed them all a hundred times before.  But there were, I now assumed, some I hadn’t seen.

“Okay,” she said, and left me alone in the kitchen.  Five minutes later she reappeared and tentatively handed me another album; one I’d never seen before.

This one was of her family.  The one she came from, not the one she produced.  All the pictures were ancient and browned from age.  I’d only seen her parents in the photograph she had on the mantelpiece.  Now there were aunts and uncles and cousins, all from a distant age and a far away land.  Grandma was born in Russia.  Grandpa in Ireland.  It made for a strange mix.

“You were a cute baby,” I said to her, when I’d gotten a few pages into the album.

“Yes, you got that from my side of the family.  Be glad you didn’t look like your grandfather when you were born.  Your mother might have left you at the hospital.”  She grinned at me and handed me a cookie.  I accepted it and continued perusing the album.

Mom was right about one thing; Grandma did grow up poor.  You could see it in her clothes and the furnishings of her parent’s home.  Still, someone had a camera around.  And from one page to the next, I watched as my Grandma grew up. And out.  The latter pictures were probably the reason my own mom had never seen this particular album.

“Yikes,” I said.  “I didn’t know that you…that you were…”

“Such a looker?”  Grandma finished my sentence.

“Well, to quote someone from your generation…hubba hubba.”

“Yes, that was the general response I elicited.  Back then.”

Of course, I had been right about the girl in the picture at the club and the woman now sitting next to me.  There was no denying it.  Grandma was a go-go girl.  I gulped down my cookie and looked up at her.  “Um, Gram, guess where I was the other night?”  I asked as she sat down and admired herself in the photos.

“Where’s that, dear?”

“Oh, some bar in North Beach.  It’s called the Condor Club.  Ever heard of it?”

Grandma stopped looking at the album and looked over at me instead.

“So that’s why you wanted to see these old pictures, huh?” she asked, closing the album.  “Well now you know.”

“Does mom know?”

“Heaven forbid,” she said, and grinned.  “Though I’d sure like to see her face if she ever found out.”

“It would be more like the back of her head,” I said, with a grin of my own.  “Cause she’d be passed out flat on her face.”

We both laughed at that one, but then found ourselves in an uncomfortable silence.

“And Grandpa?”  I finally asked to break the quiet.

“Where do you think we met?” She blushed.

“You met Grandpa at a strip club?”

“Well, I assume you’ve been to one.  So why not your grandfather?”  Now it was my turn to blush.  The apple, apparently, didn’t fall too far from the tree, though it did, apparently, skip a generation.  “Anyway,” she added.  “It wasn’t like those clubs today.  It was more burlesque.  A show.  And not any of that sleazy stuff they have around these days.  I was one of the first, you know.”

“To go…um…er…”

“Topless.  Yes.  You can say it.  I’m not ashamed.  I needed the money.  Actually, my family needed the money.  Though they had no idea where I got it from. You know, back then, a poor girl like me had few options.  And the money rolled in.  Especially once we went topless like that.  The tips practically doubled overnight.  And we girls had fun.  It beat secretarial work by a mile.  That Carol Doda sure knew what she was doing.  Still does, actually.”

“You still speak to her?”

“Sure I do.  We’ve been friends for nearly forty years.  She still looks great too.  Better than me, unfortunately.  And I only worked for six months.  Carol reigned for nearly twenty years.  Now she owns a lingerie shop on Union Street.  She even heads a rock group from time to time.  We play canasta together every other week.”

Just then, it hit me:  Carol with the big knockers.  Of course, why hadn’t I noticed that at the club the other night?  Guess the Grandma thing kind of threw me for a loop.  “Wait,” I said.  “And your friends Marge and Glenda?”

Grandma smiled and nodded.  “You should see us when we have a few too many and the music is playing.  Then again, maybe you can live without seeing that.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.  “Some things are better left to the imagination.”  Though some things are better left out all together, I thought.  Yuck, I also thought, but kept it to myself.

“So what do you think about your old Grandma now?” she asked, with an obvious twinkle in her eye.

“Pretty much what I thought of you before, only now I have a great story to tell my own kids.  Though next time you ladies are playing canasta, make sure I’m nowhere nearby.  A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a live performance might be overkill.”

“Deal,” Grandma said, patting my back.

“I Love you, Gram,” I said and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Same here, kiddo. Same here.”

 

Carol Doda today

                                                    
                                                    
 

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Voices in the Dark                                                           

by Clifford Thurlow                                                                          

n the vacuum there's no light, no sound, and the hours are filled with arbitrary flashbacks, memories and friends, all young still with bright eyes and unbending certainties. We drank too much, talking long into the night, knowing more than anyone, about everything.  Most of all, I think about you, Lizzie, with amiable scowl and sketchbook.  We swam at night, ran naked on the beach.  Greece: the colours radiant, as if from a postcard; white houses, blue sea, retsina, a pale translucent green, like a jewel; your orange hair.  I called you an orang-utan and it made you laugh, a low, self-conscious sound that took me away from the abstruse claustrophobia of childhood:  father in a cardigan, a job with the local council:  security for life; mother in a woolly hat turning life's flux to satire working in the library, the pleasant woman with earth-coloured clothes and craft fair earrings; a nervous tic.  I transformed satire to irony with good A-levels, a grant to study industrial design.  We are a middle-England family, basic by nature.

I'll never forget their house, Lizzie.  The rose bushes lining the crazy-paving path Father had laid himself; Italian china saved for guests; don't let the neighbours hear and ours is not to reason why.  My room had striped wallpaper where Che Guevara peered across the space at Eminem and dad chewed his lips and mum said it was only a phase, cheek twitching, and I sat locked within those paper bars reading foreign poets on winter nights rolling dad's dog ends in green Rizla.

Do you remember that day when we climbed to the top of the hill and I said I could see Atlantis in the distance?  You said it was only the horizon.  You were right; you were always right, but I loved the spark in your eyes when we argued.  The town looked small; the carpet of olive trees, the rocky coastline, a hint of mist and maybe it was something eternal rising from the sea.

We avoided the tourists and sat in the Plaka where artists sold paintings and the retsina lent the fish the taste of miracles.  We read the English papers:  royal sleaze, political shenanigans, cricket scores, cloud over middle England.  We talked about things at home and felt as if we belonged far away from people with neat gardens and dogs named Doogle; my father as he put the lawnmower away and reappeared with the car polish:  economy of time and motion.  There was a sign on his desk at the treasury that read "Think Ahead," the d just squeezed on at the edge of the card:  "Think Ahea...d."  If there'd been nothing else, I would have loathed my father for that sign.

I drank cheap cider, smoked too much, and a wintry feeling stole into me like a cold at Christmas.  There were friends with growing tensions, work boots, places at university.  We sat up all night listening to music, our words scripting the manifesto of rebellion.  There was something wrong.  We weren't sure what.  But we were going to change it.

I went to college and spent summers at home:  mother's hair turning grey, stains on her teeth.  Father with oiled secateurs and Julia, who I saw in the High Street, although she didn't stop to say hello.  It was Julia who had invited me to share a great secret in the park when we were both sixteen.  Three years had passed and she had become the Creature from the Black Lagoon with her perm and pushchair, a boyfriend with a lip ring and features from an artist's impression.  She must have sold her navy blazer through the free ads in the local paper.

London was a black and white movie of abandoned shops, hard luck stories, harmonicas spitting from vacant doorways where posters flapped and the smell of urine rose with mediaeval indecency.  I went to a barbecue and met Susanna; there was garage music, no wine; the wind too cold for her to take off her red tights and, anyway, you're only after one thing.  Susanna?  Susan?  Stephanie?  Simone?  Something that hissed like the old mens' harmonicas.

I told you and you laughed.  You wouldn't have taken off your red tights, either, you said.  But you did.

Dad said I should find a summer job.  I had never realised he had a sense of humour.  I stopped eating mother's cakes and puddings.  I stamped along the river bank growing thin and drawn, and when I arrived back at college that year you spoke to me for the first time.  You asked if I'd had a good summer and I said no and you laughed, shielding your teeth with your hand.

A grey pallor had eased the youth from my cheeks.  I had stopped playing cricket.  I had learned how to drink and sometimes it seemed as if only my words made any sense.  The more I drank the more sense they made.  Yet you always contradicted me, Lizzie.  When I said the world was selfish, you said it was evolution.  I called the middle-classes the enemy and you said they were frightened.  When I talked of war and want and suffering, you answered with the law of cause and effect:  Karma; it had a lot to answer for.  You were the same age as me, Lizzie, but you always knew more than I did.

We shared a single room.  You painted everything white, even your black velvet trousers and the sound system I'd brought from home.  I put your sketches on the wall and you took them down again.  You cooked Arabic food and didn't wear any clothes and I loved your skinny arms and pale sad eyes and orange hair.  I remember the Julias and Susannas and Stephanies.  But you were the only one I wanted.

We found enough money to spend a few weeks in Greece and when we came back I saw the future before us like a tunnel in an abandoned mine.  We consumed the months through winter and spring.  I didn't notice the vanishing raves and early nights as the exam date drew closer.  They would all become teachers and consultants:  Friday night cinema, babies named Rupert, baby sitters with thin knees tucked under the dashboard of the BMW still not paid for.  "Life's a cliché," I complained.

"Everyone knows that," you said and the lager cans rattled in the past and the empty spaces filled with the smoke from countless hand-rolled cigarettes.  I looked with eyes that never closed and felt different from everyone else.  We aren't living.  We're cloistered in our petty routines.  We can't do anything about it you said and I disagreed and you said it was reality I couldn't face.  There was something I didn't understand.  You said I must learn to love myself.  It sounded stupid and I got angry.  You talk about other people you said.  But what do you do?  Your eyes weren't angry.  They were pale and sad.  Nothing, I said.  Nothing.  But I'm going to.

You must learn to love yourself and I laughed and stamped around the streets and went to the library.  Light lay over the path ahead like moonlight over the sea in Greece.  I searched through chemistry books and made notes and bought sulphur and weedkiller, an alarm clock, a packet of six inch nails.  We talked and played tapes and I watched your shadow on the white walls of our room.  I was pleased with my secret mission.

I got up early, packed my goods in a bag and said I was going to see my parents.  You were bleary with sleep and your eyes wouldn't stay open.  I wanted to get back into bed and make love, but didn't.  Your eyes were afraid and I called you an orang-utan and you smiled; you smiled, but didn't laugh.  Don't go, you said.  But it was too late.  Karma was doing its thing.

I didn't visit my parents.  They would have said I looked ill and thin and wasn't eating properly.  Anyway, they were both at work.  I spent half the day wandering around the park, then went to the pub.  I didn't see anyone I knew, although the blue school uniforms made my think of Julia.

I went down to the river and watched the shadows.  I felt like climbing to the top of the bridge, kicking out the fairy lights, then jumping off, just to see if I would drown.  I imagined the headlines in the local paper; mother controlling her tears; dad wearing a black arm band, and everyone saying I'm sorry, as if they'd pushed me.

I wandered back into town.  I passed my old school and found myself on the same primordial journey that led to my parents' house.  The rose bushes had been pruned and the crazy paving path gleamed in the glow of the porch light.  Father would turn it off after the news.  I had a fleeting urge to go in.  I would have shouted and slammed doors and told them what I really thought of them.  I walked half way up the path, then changed my mind.  I had more important things to do.

The bag I'd been carrying had become heavy and I wanted to get rid of it.  I don't know why I had chosen the council offices, but if I was going to strike a blow, I had to start somewhere.  There had been a scandal.  They said the councilors were getting a rake off closing down the hospital.  It didn't matter if it were true or not.  I didn't really care.  I had no clear plan for the future.  But at least I was doing something.

The offices were dark.  I found a window at the back of the building which I covered with tape; when I broke it, there wasn't a sound.  I had seen it done in a cop show on television.  I dropped the bag through the gap and climbed in.  Once inside, I became nervous, but I had gone to far to back down.  I went from room to room and decided that the best place for the bomb was the treasury department, where they kept the records of people who hadn't paid their tax.  I set the alarm for half past eight.  I didn't want anyone to be hurt, but I wanted people to be about.  I wanted to shake everyone up, make them think.

I don't know what went wrong.  There was an electric blue flash and an explosion that must have been heard miles away.  I was thrown against the wall, then there was nothing.

I woke in hospital where I remained for a long time.  The burns on my hands and chest gradually healed, then I was discharged.  There was a trial, but I was only vaguely aware of what was happening.  People kept patting me on the back and I'm sure they said it was out of character and I was only young and I'd suffered enough.  All I can remember was your presence behind me.  Your smell was warm and musky and I wanted to touch your skinny arms and run my fingers through your orange hair.

In the vacuum I concentrate on the silence.  Only when you stop thinking will you understand.  Only when you stop seeking answers will you cease having views.  Close your eyes and see.  The faces from the past fill the blank spaces that aren't filled with you.  Close your eyes.  The whole world is inside you.  You are a reflection of the universe.  You are the father of creation, as well as the son.  I think of your words and I feel them growing as fragile butterflies that flutter against the silence and form voices in the dark.

The trial passed.  I was set free and my parents gave us the money to go to Greece.  I swim in the sea and feel the sand between my toes.  I am learning to love myself.  I still don't know why you care for me, Lizzie, why you bring me food and guide me through the days.  It doesn't matter what hour it is that you leave the bed and open the curtains, for my eyes shall never see the daylight and my ears shall never hear your voice.

 

 

                                                    
                                                    
 

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Feldman's Idea                                                 

by Jack Goodstein

                                                                                                                                              

t was on May 2, 1962 at eight thirty in the morning while driving in his Gray Rambler American to the offices of Bendel and Bendel where he worked as a clerk typist, this in the time before such miracles as word processors and cell phones, that Feldman got an idea.  This in itself might not have been so unusual were it not for the fact that for the thirty years, two months and seven days prior to this, counting from that auspicious hour when Feldman’s hairless head first pushed through to daylight, such an event had never before occurred.  It was not that Feldman never had thoughts.  He thought about the hard roll he would have with his coffee.  He thought about the scuff mark on the toe of his brown loafer.  He thought about how pleasant it would be if Mr. Bendel, the senior Mr. Bendel, would finally give him that raise in salary that had been talked of for the past three years.  In fact had he given the question any thought, Feldman would have thought that he thought all the time, continuously, incessantly.

And so when on the morning of the fourth of May, this idea somehow found its way to the virgin neurons of Feldman’s brain, the shock of its appearance so filled him with astonishment that he completely failed to take note that the Fairlane in front of him was stopping for a red light.  The damage to the cars was minimal, a scratch, a dent, a broken headlight.  The damage to the other driver was minimal.  "I always," he said, "wear a seat belt."  But after the two men exchanged their insurance information ("You never know," the other driver said) the damage to himself Feldman discovered was perhaps greater than he might have expected.  For not only had the unfortunate collision knocked out his headlight, much more disturbingly it had also knocked out his idea.

What had been so wonderful, so beautiful, so awe inspiring was gone as quickly as it had come.  And try as he might, and try mightily he did, during the rest of his commute, during his eight hours at work and his return drive home, even during the silent supper he shared with Sonia his adored and adoring wife, he could not coax that glorious inspiration back into his head.  And after he chewed and swallowed the last mouth watering piece of the meat loaf his beloved Sonia had so carefully prepared, Feldman washed it down with a glass of tea and began relating the momentous events of the day.

"And the car is alright," said Sonia when he had finished.

Feldman pushed away from the table seeking in the sanctuary of his favorite reclining chair the vision that had come so wondrously and gone so fickly.  But nothing came.  He looked at his newspaper but read nothing.  When Sonia talked of her day, he heard nothing.  Finally he stared searching out into space, but he saw nothing.

When eleven o’clock came, creatures of habit, Feldman and Sonia went to their bed.  But when she turned to kiss his cheek good night, there was only his back.  When she nuzzled him with her elbow, there was only a mumbling murmur from his still averted face.

"You’re sick?" Sonia asked.

"Mmmrrllmmllrll," Feldman replied.

And Sonia turned on her side, and back to back they lay until her snores filled his ears as he pressed his brain into his pillow and tried to think and tried again and again through the morning light and still wherever the idea had run off to, there it remained.

The next morning the alarm rang, but Feldman, still awake, remained stretched out on his bed staring now up to the ceiling in search of what, had he ever heard of it, had become his Holy Grail.

"Today is not work?" Sonia said.

"Mmmmrrllmmllrll," and Feldman turned on his side.

"He’s sick," Sonia told Mr. Bendel, Jr. when she called to say that Feldman wouldn’t be at work that day.  "Tomorrow, he’ll be. . . ."

But the whole day he lay in the bed, a bite of food did not pass his lips, not a sip of water, and that night again, his eyes he never never closed, and so tomorrow came and Sonia called again:  "Tomorrow,
he’ll. . . ."   But tomorrow became a week, and still Feldman didn’t eat or sleep.  A doctor he refused.

"I’m not sick," he said.  "You’ll call the doctor, I’ll leave the house."

Sonia lovingly prepared his most favorite dishes—succulent cabbage rolls, silken chopped liver, crisp skinned roast duckling.  And still he didn’t eat.

Weaker he grew as each day passed.

A golden chicken soup Sonia tried to spoon through his clenched tight lips.

"Open," she whispered through bewildered tears.

"Mmmmrrlllmmll," he said.

But on May 10, when Sonia at last found the courage to call, against Feldman’s commands, this in the time before there was Gloria Steinem and Martha Stewart, a doctor Adams at a number she found in the telephone book, it was too late.  Feldman was dead,

Sonia explained what she thought she understood to the doctor.

"Um," he nodded knowingly.

She explained to Mr. Bendel, Sr.

"Aha," he remarked sagely,

She explained to Mr. Bendel, Jr.

"Oh."

Sonia wore black for six months after they buried Feldman, but twenty eight is still young, too young for a woman with great love to give to mourn forever.  And after six months as she looked longingly through the dresses red and yellow waiting patiently in her closet, the white cashmere sweater, the open toed navy heels, Sonia got an idea, like a flash of light sent by, who knows, sent by Feldman himself from beyond the grave.  Surely it was a stroke of fortune, a sign of some sort, that when the wondrous idea came to bedazzle Sonia, she, unlike her poor husband was not behind the wheel of a Rambler American following behind a stopping Fairlane, for it is a certainty that had she been, the fickle bee would have flitted off to another flower.  Such are the vagaries of life.

Sonia smiled.

When a year had passed after Feldman’s death, Sonia married Ellenberg, a kosher butcher, and moved to Boca.

 

                                                                                                        
 

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Welcome Home                                             

by John C. Brown

he sun hammers the state park hard but shade from the Mississippi pines and oaks helps some with the July heat.  The light breeze that comes up off the lake also helps, but it's