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ken*again
, the literary magazine  
         
   

ken*again
is a quarterly, nonprofit e-zine presenting a
hearty, eclectic mix of prose, poetry, art and photography:
accessible, obscure, soothing, disturbing.

Wrap your mind around a good read.
 


 



Poetry


You know it's winter  Janet Lynn Davis
Called back  Janet Lynn Davis
Airport MVCXCXVM 
Averil Bones
The Brick Factory  Averil Bones
Voices  Averil Bones
May, Drizzle, Virginia  Lyn Lifshin
North of Cottonwood  Lyn Lifshin
Traveling  Lyn Lifshin
Clamoring for Authenticity
 Francis Raven
Canyons on and on
  Francis Raven
Falling Willfully  Francis Raven
Walking past your Tree  Francis Raven
It is the Age of Cucumbers  Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI
Stopping Evenings  Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI
They Have Woven a Net Around Us  Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI
1960  Kelley Jean White
Adjustment
  Kelley Jean White
Departure  Kelley Jean White
Release
  Rochelle Hope Mehr
At the Italian Restaurant
  Rochelle Hope Mehr
Apprehension  Rochelle Hope Mehr
A John Berryman Nocturne  Cory Mesler

Nature Jar
  Cory Mesler
rainy day prophecy  Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti
you're  Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

While the Light Comes Easy  Sam Silva
Iris  Yvette Merton
Hearts and Diamonds  Yvette Merton
Jail Baby  Yvette Merton
Too Long Absent  Harding Stedler
Behind, The Beach  Harding Stedler
Framed in Light
  Joanna M. Weston

Prose      

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

Art

Game of Life  Rita Kepner
Bunch up  Rita Kepner
Sitting 2  Rita Kepner
Sitting 7  Rita Kepner
Sitting 10  Rita Kepner
The Dinner Movie
  Jeremiah Stansbury
Life Inspection  Jeremiah Stansbury
Seated to School  Jeremiah Stansbury
Missile Stamp  Jeremiah Stansbury
Cart Your Cans  Jeremiah Stansbury
Kris  K. R. Copeland
Untitled  Konstantin Skoptsov
Siginak  Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI
Balayeur mon frere  Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI

And another thing... 

Winter Pastimes  Kelley Jean White  
 
 


 

CONTRIBUTORS

 

Averil Bones (poetry) lives in Australia and works to conserve threatened species and their habitats.  Her work has appeared in many journals and zines including Going Down Swinging, Southern Ocean Review, The Blue Fifth Review, Comrades E-Zine, Poetry Life & Times and Zuzu's Petals Quarterly, as well as in a number of anthologies.   bones@sublime.com.au

John C. Brown
(prose) is an American social scientist who works in the field of humanitarian mine action.  Currently he is the Country Team Leader for a nation-wide survey of communities impacted by mines and unexploded ordnance in Iraq.  He also loves to write and has scored a first few successes in publishing short stories:  two with the Ezine Pulse.  Born in Germany, raised in Mississippi, he now resides in Cambodia.   jcb_iraq@hotmail.com

Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI (poetry and art) is a poet, a writer, a versatile artist.  He was born in 1949 in Bor, one of the beautiful cities of Turkey, where he attended primary and high school.  He graduated as an Architect-Designer of Industry from The Fine Arts Academy of State in Istanbul.  His important works are  Akþamlarýn Duraðý and Karar; he has written many poems, stories and articles as well.  He has been drawing and painting since he was 14 years old.   ÇAYCI  currently resides in France.  He received The Award of Eagerness by the Radio NPS of Holland in 1999 and The Award of Palmares  by the Organization of Les Amis de Thalie in France.  He works in The Center of Adult Education (AFPA) at present.  uzeyir.cayci@wanadoo.fr

Melody Claussen (prose) has been writing since she discovered her father’s Royal when she was ten; she started typing fake letters to clients when she and her friend  played “secretary”.  Then, she realized the importance of the keys and the impact they made on paper.  The first story she wrote was about a doll with creepy eyes.  In 2000, Ms. Claussen attended California State University, Sacramento, where she received a Bachelor’s degree in English.  Her short story “Missed Spots” was
published in the Calaveras Station Literary Journal in 2002.  Currently, she is a full-time mother and part-time writer, but she is crazy about both positions.
melodyclaussen@hotmail.com


K. R. Copeland (photography) is a poet/photographer residing in Chicago IL.  Her written work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including, The Muse Apprentice Guild, Wicked Alice, Saucy Vox, Sidereality, Cranky and Swivel.  Her photos have appeared in Rock Salt Plum and Lily.  K.R. is also one of two judges for the ongoing Beginnings Magazine poetry competitions.
andre-kim1@comcast.net


Janet Lynn Davis (poetry) is a former technical writer/editor and communications specialist who has focused on the crafting of poetry for the past year or so.  Her work has begun to appear in or is forthcoming in various electronic and print publications, such as Red River Review, Gin Bender, Tryst, Beginnings, Penwood Review, and others.  She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband.
hipjan@earthlink.net 

William Gladys (prose) is the  pen name of  Brian Rayner.  Under his pen name he published this year (through his own Derek Books) a satire, Monarchy:  Politics of Tyranny & Denial, an irreverent critique of royals and monarchy in Britain at the present time, which is being stocked by local bookshops and some branches of Ottakers.  He self-published because he was fed up with delays from interested publishers in Great Britain.   He has a BA in English Literature from Cardiff University, is a pensioner aged 68, married with three children with hordes of grandchildren rooting about his place from time to time. Writing short stories is a new venture for him.  His hobbies include stained glass work, walking his dog Daisy, and playing the blues on trumpet.  He is keen on flying single engine aircraft, but the cost is prohibitive at present.  He enjoys listening to Miles Davis and William Orbit and reading prose and poetry; poetry-wise he likes Sylvia Plath and will not apologize to those who consider her rather over the top and angst ridden.   williamgladys@tiscali.co.uk

Jack Goodstein (prose) is a professor emeritus at California University of Pennsylvania, where he taught English for more than thirty years.  His work has appeared in scholarly journals such as Critique, Theatre Journal and College English and in literary magazines such as The Maine Review, The Small Pond Magazine of Literature and The Jewish Digest.  Mr. Goodstein is also a playwright and an actor who has appeared in more than sixty plays throughout Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania, portraying everyone from Malvolio and Creon to Willie Clark and Al Lewis.  gstein@helicon.net

Martin Green (prose) is a retiree/free-lance writer living in Roseville, CA.  He has about 300 journalistic pieces published in local papers.  In the past two years, he has published short stories in a dozen or so online magazines.   mart_88@hotmail.com

Rita Kepner (art) is founder of the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council, listed in Who's Who in American Art, noted in Women Artists in America II, and has exhibited her work in Poland, Hungary, Germany, Canada, Seattle Washington, with the Quimper Art Group and Bruskin Gallery in Port Townsend, Washington.  Her sculpture is on display in public places including:  Warsaw Museum, Poland, City of Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, Seattle Public Library, Children's Hospital, Seattle City Collection at Seattle Center, Kenmore Public Library, Lowell School, and Washington Mutual Savings Bank in Seattle.  She completed works for The US Army Corps of Engineers in Savannah, Georgia and the Cowlitz Indian Nation.  She studied a year at Elmira College before earning her B.A. with a Fine Arts major, in 1966, at Harpur College, State University of New York.  In 1984, Accademia Bedriacense, in Calvatore Italy, selected Rita for an honorary "Diploma Maestro". Since then, she did graduate work at University of Oklahoma, Seattle Pacific University and Western Washington University.  Rita earned a "President's Scholarship" to complete an M.A. in Management at City University in 1998.  Rita is also wife and the mother of one son, who recently served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Russia.  As disaster reservist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency she has assisted victims after floods, hurricanes, firestorms, tornadoes, earthquakes, the Oklahoma City bombing and the crash of Egyptian Airline Flight 990.  For this work and other community involvement, she was selected for biographical reference in Marquis Who's Who in the World, Who's Who of American Women, and the Cambridge International Who's Who of Business and Professional Women.  lynx@olympus.net

Lyn Lifshin (poetry) has written more than 100 books and edited four anthologies of women writers.  Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the U.S.A., and her work has been included in virtually every major anthology of recent writing by women.  She has given more than 700 readings across the U.S.A. and has appeared at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum, and Huntington Library.  Lyn Lifshin has also taught poetry and prose writing for many years at universities, colleges and high schools, and has been Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. Winner of numerous awards including the Jack Kerouac Award for her book Kiss The Skin Off, Lyn is the subject of the documentary film Lyn Lifshin:  Not Made of Glass.  For her absolute dedication to the small presses which first published her, and for managing to survive on her own apart from any major publishing house or academic institution, Lifshin has earned the distinction "Queen of the Small Presses."  She has been praised by Robert Frost, Ken Kesey and Richard Eberhart, and Ed Sanders has seen her as "a modern Emily Dickinson."  onyxvelvet@aol.com

Rochelle Hope Mehr (poetry) lives in New Jersey.  She has appeared in San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, Lucidity, Writers of the Desert Sage, Improvijazzation Nation, ArtPage Images and many other publications.   rochelle.mehr@gte.net

Yvette Merton
(poetry) has been writing poetry for many years and has recently completed a manuscript of selected works.  Her poetry has been published in J.M.W Publishing, Pixel press Quarterly, Wildfire Literary Magazine, Marginata Literary Magazine, The Australian Reader Review and Pulsar Poetry Magazine (to be published in December.)  She is interested in creating poetry that is immersive and speaks of spaces that may otherwise not exist.  She gravitates to poetry that is rich in imagery and is layered with meaning.  Ms. Merton is the process of writing a novel and she is principal writer for a contemporary art installation project to be presented at the Biennale of
Electronic Arts in Perth, Western Australia.  vettee@tpg.com.au

Corey Mesler
(poetry) has been published in many literary magazines and has a chapbook of poems, Piecework, from the Wing and a Wheel Press.  One of his short stories was chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South:  The Year’s Best, edited by Shannon Ravenel.  His novel in dialogue, Talk, has been released by Livingston Press and garnered praise from Lee Smith, Frederic Barthelme, John Grisham and Robert Olen Butler, among others.  Mr. Mesler been a book reviewer (for The Commercial Appeal, BookPage, The Memphis Flyer, Brightleaf), fiction editor (for Ion Books/raccoon), a university press sales rep, a grant committee judge (for The Oregon Arts Council).  He recently won the Moonfire Poetry Chapbook Competition and his chapbook, Chin-Chin in Eden, has just been published by Still Waters PressWith his wife, he owns Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores.   resolemcrey@yahoo.com

Laine Perry (prose) has lived in almost every state—currently in Wisconsin, and is moving again soon.  She has dropped out of a couple of  good schools—Bennington and Columbia.  She started sending out stories last November.  A few of them have been published—Smokebox.net, theglut.com, and dreamforge have run her stories.   Laine is married to a hot shot commercial diver, and has a very sexy male weimaraner.   lainielives@hotmail.com

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotto (poetry) has been widely published and has appeared in The Harvard Review, The Boston Globe, Orion, ExLibris (Best of the Year), Adagio Verse Quarterly, Prism International, Illuminations, FireWeed, Publishers Weekly, The New Republic,  and many other publications.  She works as a writer and editor.  Her own site won Best of the Web from SquareSpace (http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com) and she is a regular contributor to http://www.blogcritics.org/ and the newswire Hearsay where her columns are widely syndicated.  She used to work as poetry reader for Peter Davison at The Atlantic Monthly before starting her own imprint, Lumen Editions. At present, she is a regular columnist for Blogcritics.org and a reporter for a newswire as well as Editor at Large for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  sadir_p@hotmail.com

Francis Raven (poetry) is editorial assistant at the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.  Broken Boulder press recently published two of his chapbooks: "Notestalk" and "Notationing".   Poems of his have been published in Pindeldyboz, Monkey Bicycle, Mudlark, Pavement Saw,
Poethia, Beehive, Gestalten, Untitled, The In Posse Review, The East Village, The New Colonist, and Taint, among others.  Essays and articles of his have been published in Clamor, In These Times, Fulcrum, Rain Taxi, The New Colonist, Taint, and Pavement Saw.
 francisraven@gmail.com
       

Rob Rosen (prose) lives, loves, and works in San Francisco.  His first novel, "Sparkle", was published in 2001 to critical acclaim.  His short stories appear regularly on more than thirty five literary sites around the world, and have been published in the literary anthologies Mentsh (Alyson, 2004), I Do/I Don't (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2004), Travel a Time Historic (Cyber Pulp, 2005), and Brotherhood (Alyson, 2005).  Feel free to visit him at his website www.therobrosen.com.    robrosen@therobrosen.com

Sam Silva (poetry) has had numerous poems and short stories published both online and in print, including Blue Magazine, Ink Blots, Neiderngarse, Adirondak, Poetry Down Under, Poetry Super Highway and Hippie Land Mag.   samsilva54@nc.rr.com

Konstantin Skoptsov (art) was born in Odessa, Ukraine in 1958.  His works are displayed at exhibitions and included in permanent expositions of  museums, associations and private galleries.  He specializes in symbolic paintings and graphics.  villon@farlep.net

Jeremiah Stansbury (art) graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, Art History cum laude, from The College of Communication and Fine Arts, The University of Memphis,  in 2003.  He spent a semester at The School of Visual Arts in New York City (painting) and a semester at the Memphis College of Art (drawing, design).  His exhibitions in Memphis, TN include:  Art Show at St. Georges Elementary School, March 2002; “New Works on View” Midtown Artists Market, August 2002; “Oil Paintings by Jeremiah Stansbury”, D’Edge Art and Unique Treasures, February 2003; “A Fresh New Look”, Painted Planet Art Space, August 2003.  His new works are currently on view at Painted Planet Art Space, Young Ave, in Memphis.
  He won the Jim Blevins Foundation scholarship to study Art History at The University of Memphis:  January 2000-January 2003.  Mr. Stansbury spent time in Florence, Italy in 2003 while conducting a close study of sculpture relating to the human anatomy in an attempt to further develop his ideas concerning abstract painting.   clipinpics@bellsouth.net

Harding Stedler (poetry) retired from teaching at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio.   He now makes his home in Arkansas and is a member of the Executive Board of the Poets' Roundtable of Arkansas.  He has recently been invited to join the corps of volunteers at the new Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock.  cabotrabbit@futura.net

Clifford Thurlow (prose) is the author of ten books and was described in The Daily Telegraph as one of the UK's top ghostwriters.  Most recently, his biography of the actress Carol White has been republished as The Carol White Story with ebookslibrary.com.  His collaboration with Jacky Trevane resulted in Fatwa—Living With A Death Threat; published by Hodder and Stoughton in January 2004, it went in five weeks into a second edition.  As a short story writer, Thurlow was one of the winners of the London Art Board's New Millennium competition and his story The Little Black Dress was published by Fourth Estate in the anthology Rites of Springcliffordthurlow@btinternet.com

Joanna M. Weston (poetry) is  married with three sons.  She has had poetry published in anthologies and journals for twenty years.  A middle-reader "The Willow Tree Girl" is  in print, 2003. 
weston@islandnet.com

Kelley Jean White (poetry and And another thing...) was born and raised in New Hampshire, has degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School, and has been a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for the past twenty years.  She has nearly 2,000 poems accepted or published by more than 350 journals including American Writing, The Café Review, Chiron Review, Feminist Studies, The Larcom Review, Minnesota Review, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle, and Whiskey Island Magazine, as well as several chapbooks and full-length collections of poetry:  The Patient Presents I am going to walk toward the sanctuary (Via Dolorosa Press,)  At the Monkey-Feast Table (Zebook Company,) Late (The People's Press,) and Against Medical Advice (Puddinghouse Publications.)  Ms. White received a Pushcart nomination for an experimental piece (from Gravity Presses) in 2000, her first year of submission,  and again in 2002.  She has read her work throughout the Philadelphia area and in Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York and will be a featured reader during the 2004-2005 Free Library of Philadelphia reading series.  She has been identified as a "Peace Poet," reflecting her active membership in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and for involvement with Poets for Peace locally, nationally, and internationally.  Her new book, A Gilford Offering, was published in October 2004.   kelleywhitemd@yahoo.com 


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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

 


 

 

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 sketchbookWe 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