Children, Churches and Daddies

Janet Kuypers

As technology moves forward, there always seems to be people who wish to contradict science and push it backward.
Such is the case with the new trend in discounting the use of DNA testing in criminal trials.
In the past ten years scientists have used DNA tests to determine if someone who is accused of a crime actually committed it. Testing usually does not positively identify an accuser as guilty of the crime, but it can exclude an accuser from committing a crime. DNA evidence is hard, scientific evidence that can show that someone did not commit a crime.
And in trials, evidence - hard, scientific evidence - is what is needed to decide a verdict.
DNA testing has been very useful in shedding light on a trial. Especially in rape or rape/murder cases, DNA testing can clear someone’s name.
It’s comforting to know that as hard evidence comes in to a case, that more and more people look at it as irrefutable. That people accept science and trust evidence when coming to a conclusion about a crime.
However, the trend toward accepting this science is now being fought.
“DNA may be important, but it’s not the ace that trumps all other cards,• said Bob Benjamin, a spokesman for the Illinois Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Why not? Why is it not important that conclusive evidence that the human traces left on a victim from their attacker could not be the defendant’s? Why is the fact that hair, skin, semen or saliva left on the victim’s body could not be the defendant’s not important? No answer.
And cases are increasingly being tried even when DNA tests show that the person in custody did not commit the crime.
Virginia Governor George Allen turned down a plea for a request for DNA tests from a convicted murderer on death row. Allen stated that even if the DNA testing cleared the incarcerated Joseph O’Dell, there was enough evidence to still prove that O’Dell raped and murdered a Virginia Beach woman.
Virginia Governor George Allen turned down the plea, and O’Dell was executed via lethal injection on schedule.
Although prosecutors do not claim to discount the evidence from DNA testing, they do not discount other evidence that may lead to the opposite conclusion.
But two different pieces of evidence cannot contradict each other - one must be wrong. Which is more likely to be wrong - an eye witness account, for instance, or scientific evidence with fingerprint-style accuracy?

DNA testing is is nearly infallible if done properly. Only human error, such as mishandling materials, would cause DNA testing to come into question.
But that’s one of the strongest points DNA testing is argued on. Recall the O.J. Simpson trial, when hard evidence was refuted with claims that evidence was mishandled.
However, in the O.J. Simpson trial, hard evidence was also refuted with unfounded claims that there was a police conspiracy or the theory that this was a drug hit. And the sad thing is, it was these emotional pleas, and not DNA evidence, that won over the jury and decided the case.
And that’s the only way you can argue against logic and science - by making a plea to emotions.
If a defense lawyer’s job is to free his client, then fighting science would have to be done by any means possible - discounting the science: DNA testing is too young. Discounting the way the data was collected: the blood was tampered with. Emphasizing other contradictory evidence: O.J. Simpson was in his home during the murder. Listening to testimonials and opinions from friends and experts: O.J. Simpson loved his wife, he couldn’t do it. introducing additional theories with or without merit as to what may have happened, pleading to the jury based on the character of the defendant. Pleading to their emotions.
But remember that all of these pleas are just that - pleas - and evidence cannot contradict science.

People try to balance science and mysticism, or faith, every day. Scientists shed more and more light each day on the creation of man and this planet, but religion denies it, for instance. Once I had a conversation with a religious woman, and she stated that dinosaurs never existed and that “science was the tool of the devil.• Another religious woman told me that she sinned once and got pregnant while out of wedlock, but God saved her by giving her a miscarriage.
Amen.
Obviously logic and reason won’t win over a person who blatantly rejects logic and reason, but most people - especially in the United States, where science and technology have proven that people can live good lives - most people do believe in logic and reason, even if they have been taught otherwise. So their “philosophical lives• are spent trying to come up with a balance to these two opposing beliefs - of which there can be no compromise, but people still try. Okay, maybe the world wasn’t created in six days, maybe that was just a metaphor for the order and time lime things were created on the planet, one may decide. Okay, maybe there wasn’t a man made out of sand and a woman made from his rib, but maybe God started the ball rolling in the creation of man, one may think.
It is this belief in logic, science and reason, coupled with this clinging to faith and tradition that tries to allow both sides to be right. And it is this philosophical mind set that allows people to be sways by emotional pleas away from hard, scientific evidence.
That doesn’t change the fact that the evidence is there. It just changes how you look at it.

Aaron Vanek

We’re in a Lincoln Park one bedroom. The place is furnished by a Jennifer sofa, complimentary coffeetable, and a computer with designer desk. Large cardboard boxes with big black marker letters on the sides, i.e., “KITCHEN•, “BEDROOM•, “ART BOOKS•, “GLASS --FRAGILE• are stacked about. Some of them are opened, and their contents are scattered happily haphazardly. An upbeat, pop music song bounces from a new boombox in the background. The CLATTER of someone getting ready for work in the bathroom.

EXT CHICAGO STREETS MORNING
An old car, primer gray, Detroit-American, a Dodge or Chevy with a rusted out muffler, is stalking the roads. The bottom and sides of the chassis are rusted out, and two hubcaps are missing.

INT APARTMENT MORNING
TRACK slow across the floor, following a cat walking down the hall towards the bathroom. It stops suddenly and looks into another room as something scurries by.

INT CAR MORNING
Big, gnarled tree trunk fingers choke the wheel of the car, tightly turning the vehicle down another pristine street of well-groomed apartments. The front windshield is caked with a gray film that has streaks of clarity caused by eroding wipers.

INT APARTMENT MORNING
THROUGH THE WINDOW of MARLA’s apartment, we see a newer car drive down the street. Then we HEAR the old Detroit rumbler approaching...We see it enter the FRAME of the window. It slouches along, going the wrong way down a one-way street, i.e., it came from where the newer car went . This mistake may or may not be noticed by the viewer. If a one-way sign can be seen through the window, though, so much the better.

The CAT turns toward another, unseen room, and crouches down, ready to pounce.

We come into

INT BATHROOM MORNING
MARLA, 26, is getting ready for work. She teases her short blond hair with a bottle of hair spray in one hand. She is well dressed in an aggressive yet slightly feminine suit. She wears gold jewelry and sings softly to the SONG on the boom box.

HONK!

The car horn bleats, short, a lot like a little scream.

Marla doesn’t hear it.

INT APARTMENT MORNING
The cat ATTACKS its unseen target at the same time as (MATCH CUT)...

INT CAR MORNING
The meaty hand pushes on the horn, and another, longer, HONKING, LONG AND LOUD, demanding, insistent, cries out. Something is not quite right about the horn, as if there’s an animal scream of pain underneath it.

INT BATHROOM MORNING
Marla turns and looks toward the window. She’s cute, spunky, intelligent, but not world-wise. Not yet.

MARLA
Shit.

She hurriedly throws tubes and bottles into her purse, and runs into the

INT APARTMENT MAIN ROOM
and grabs her coat on the way out. The cat starts following her, licking its lips. She rubs its face, and gets something sticky on her hands.

MARLA
Eew.

She grabs a tissue and wipes it off.

HOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNK!

MARLA
(to the cat)
Be good.

She smiles at the cat, who sits, watching her go as she shuts the door.

INT CAR MORNING

The sound of some mean ol’ BLUES plays in the background; John Lee Hooker’s gravely croak, or Robert Johnson crackling about the Crossroads. A cigarette lighter pops out, and fingers like evil oak branches pull it out and bring the lighter to the big face of MEL, who drags on a rolled tobacco cigarette. Mel looks like an old football player left to dry in the sun. He moves with the slow deliberateness of a Titanic-crushing iceberg. His beady black eyes squint as he breathes the cigarette fumes and looks over to Marla, coming out the door and hurriedly bouncing down the stairs. He watches her.

Marla runs over, and jumps in the car.

MARLA
Hi Mel.

MEL
Marla.

Marla adjusts her coat, puts her purse away, and fiddles with her jewelry.

Mel watches her as the car IDLES like a hungry tiger.

MEL
You all set?

MARLA
Yeah thanks.

Marla finally fixes everything, and reaches back for the seat belt.

MEL
There’s no seatbelt.

MARLA
Oh.

MEL
Don’t worry, I’m a safe driver.

Mel signals, looks around, and urges the car to lurch forward.

The car interior is old and frayed. An AM radio belts out scratchy blues between waves of static (blues music will continue to play unless noted). The dashboard is cracked and faded from years under a cold sun. An old Indian rug with cigarette burn holes drapes over the front seat. Cigarette smoke curls around Mel’s head, suggesting ghostly images, before he opens the window and the smoke gets sucked outside, as if it left the car in a hurry.

Marla tugs at her window, but she can’t open it.

MEL
Yeah, that window’s busted, too.
I’ll fixit this weekend.

MARLA
Mmm. Thanks for doing this. I was able
to hit the snooze button this morning and think
(nyah nyah nyah voice) I don’t have to get
up now, I’ve got a ride.

She smiles, then quickly coughs at the smoke.

MEL
Sure. All the temps we get in the shop come
and go so fast, I never really get a chance to meet
any of them. They just come in, do their stuff,
and leave. I always feel kinda bad about them.

MARLA
Yeah, it’s hard sometimes. I feel like I leave
the job before I can get really started. Isn’t the
woman I’m replacing supposed to be back
on Monday?

Marla pulls the sunshade down (it sticks slightly) and starts primping herself in the mirror.

MEL
Hm? I guess. She’s, uh....well, she has some
things going on. It might be a while. You say you
just started?

MARLA
Well, this is my second assignment. I’m just
temping to make some money to keep me going
until I get a real job, you know. I’m paying for
my computer and art history classes at the Art
Institute, and I have an interview with a gallery
downtown next week, but I need some money
for food and stuff.

Mel doesn’t look at Marla as he talks to her. His eyes are on the road.

MEL
You just move here?

Marla touches up her lip gloss.

MARLA
Mm-hmm. From Springfield.

MEL
How do you like it so far?

MARLA
I haven’t really decided yet. The people here
are really nice...

As she says this, Mel clears his throat, a sound like curdling tar. She doesn’t notice.

MARLA (cont)
but I haven’t met that many, and there’s a lot
to see here, but I haven’t had a chance to do
much sight-seeing either.

She finishes primping and forces the shade back into place.

MEL
What’d you want to see?

MARLA
Well , I’ve always been interested in the Prairie
school of Frank Lloyd Wright, so I want to
see the Robie House down in Hyde Park, and...
well actually, there’s a lot of Hyde Park
architecture I’d like to see. See my father’s an expert
on the 1893 Colombian Exposition, so I’ve seen a
lot of old pictures from the era, but nothing for real.

Mel is only half listening to her. He’s thinking about something else. She stops talking.
There’s an awkward pause for a moment.. Marla looks at him, then back out through the dirty windows. She ventures forward with the conversation, although now uncertain if he understands any of it. She talks a little slower and simpler

MARLA
I did my senior thesis paper on Wright’s
influence on painting, and how he still affects
artists working today. It’s interesting how one
thing, like architectural design, affects something
else, like oil painting, you know?

Marla looks to Mel to see if he’s lost. Mel glances back and smiles, a rather unsettling experience, since his teeth are slightly yellow.

MEL
Huh...I learned a little bit of Chicago history.

Marla politely gives him her attention. Mel focuses back on the road.

MEL
Yeah. Been here all my life. I learned a lot
from uh, from staying in one place. Like living
with someone all your life, you know, you get to
know them. Even cities have secrets and scars
and wounds, just like people. Chicago’s got a lot
of ‘em.

MARLA
A lot of secrets?P align="justifty"> MEL
Yeah... Like here, you know...where
you live...Lincoln Park was named for
the assassinated president the year after
he was killed. And I think it was this street,
or...somewhere, somewhere near here, I think
it was...back in the 50’s you know, this was all
slum. Lots of immigrants crammed
ten-twelve deep into these little one or two room flats.
And they didn’t have any air conditioning, so in
the summer, it was like living in a broiler. Back
in 54, or 55, it was about a hundred ten every day
for a week. This Italian man who worked as a
janitor or groundskeeper at DePaul came home one
day and lost it. He used a wrench on his
wife and two daughters, and beat his sons to death
with a hammer.

Marla gasps and winces at this news.
Mel takes another drag on his cigarette and talks as he exhales the smoke.

Cops finally came by a few hours later and
found the guy sweating in a pool of blood. I heard
the window was open, so a lot of flies got in.

Marla folds her arms across her chest. Maybe she’s cold, maybe not. Mel turns the heat on and keeps going.

MEL
The heat makes people do weird things
you know? Like a few years ago, we had
this really bad heat wave, and a lot of old
folks died all alone. They could have gone
somewhere, ‘cause we got these cool houses
now, but they didn’t want to leave their homes,
so they just died in their beds.

MARLA
I heard about that on the news. That’s
horrible. That’s so sad.

MEL
Yeah. Some people they just don’t know,
though. They just don’t know any better.
They’re like sheep, you know.

Marla changes the subject. Her voice isn’t as chipper as it was before. And she is frowning.

MARLA
So, you’ve lived here all your life?

MEL
Yep, all my life. I wouldn’t want to leave, either.
Something about the city, the way it moves,
that you just get used to. The way people act, or
look at you on the street, or the El, or whatever,
you just get used to, and that’s, that’s what you
expect. (beat) I kinda think that the city expects me
to stay, too. You know (laughs). Like I owe it
something for bringing me up, so I gotta stay until
the city’s satisfied. But I’ll probably die here.
Chicago keeps dealing me good cards, so I
figure (pronounced “figger•) might as well stay
and finish out my hand.

Marla slightly picks up a bit.

MARLA
That’s interesting, you know, when I was in
London, I felt the same way. There was so much
history there, so many stories, and it was all there
in the buildings, and the statues, and the art and...

MEL (interrupting)
Oh, yeah, look over here.

He points to a parking lot at 2122 N. Clark Street.

MEL
See, there used to be a warehouse right there...
That’s where the St. Valentine’s Day massacre
happened...

Marla deflates again before the talk of violence.

MARLA
I heard about that.

MEL
You know what happened?

MARLA
I’d rather not know, if you don’t mind.

Mel hits the brakes suddenly; a Geo or VW darts in front of him. Marla grabs the dashboard quicker than she should have.

MEL
Sorry. No, listen, it’s kinda interesting. Four of
Capone’s men dressed up like cops, and had
these guys line up against the wall in this old
warehouse. Then they shot them all in the back with
Thompson submachine guns. One guy took nineteen
bullets, but he still didn’t die. He tried to crawl away,
and made it as far as the door before someone plugged
him in the back of the head with a shotgun.

MARLA
And now we glorify and romanticize violence
by making movies and TV shows out of it.

MEL
No, people just don’t want to forget it. That’s
what all these (gestures with hand) statues and
war memorials are for.

(If there’s any kind of memorial near 2122 N. Clark, they pass it in the car...I’m not sure if there is, though)

MEL (cont)
There’s good and bad in life, and sometimes
you gotta look at ‘em both. (beat) A lot of
good came out of that, actually.

Marla’s shirks away from Mel, rolling her eyes in barely disguised disgust.

MEL
I mean, the Valentine’s Day... It was the first
time police started using forensics like
trajectory and rifling to tell what kind of gun a
bullet was fired from. They knew how to do
it, you know, but this was the first time it was
used as admissible evidence, and on a big
trial, too. People finally started to wake up to
what was going on, and got rid of the prohibition
laws. Now it’s a parking lot.

Marla gets an edge to her voice.

MARLA
So now they know what kind of gun kills people,
but they don’t know why we keep doing it.

Mel takes a long drag on his cigarette, finishing it off, then crushes it in the ashtray with a dozen others. The smoke cloud hovers, catches the light strangely, casting devilish shadows over Mel’s face.

MEL
Some people don’t.

Mel turns the corner.

MARLA
Oh, you’re not getting on Lake Shore?

MEL
Nah, I hate dealing with the people. Quicker
this way.

Marla looks over at nearby Lake Shore Drive.

EXT CITY STREETS MORNING
Lake Shore Drive traffic is fast-flowing as the old gray car slowly slinks away from it.

INT CAR MORNING

MARLA
You probably know all the shortcuts, I guess.

MEL
Yeah, well, I like to know the city I’m sleeping
in, you know? Sometimes when I’m walking along
the streets at night I look down at my feet, and
I kinda expect to see blood, or ash, or something,
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see something we forgot,
but that the city wants us to remember.

A distant church bell softly knells as they wait at a stop light. Marla is deathly quiet.

MEL
Anyway. So, have you tried Bigby’s yet?

Marla, looks down at her feet, wriggles them slightly, then glances around at the area they are in. She doesn’t recognize any of it.

MARLA
No, I haven’t...What’s that?

MEL
It’s a restaurant right around the corner from
the shop, to the west. I don’t know if you like
burgers or not, but they charbroil...

Marla interrupts him

MARLA
I’m a vegetarian.

Mel stops for a second.

MEL
Oh. So you don’t eat meat?

MARLA
No, I haven’t eaten meat since I was a kid.
I don’t even like the smell of it.

Mel shakes his head.

MEL
I heard once that if everyone was a vegetarian,
we wouldn’t have enough food. There just isn’t
enough crop space to grow enough plants to feed
everyone. Some places are only good for cattle
grazing.

The car passes a burger joint with “soylent green• on the menu.

MARLA
It takes more land just to grow the food to
feed the cattle. Why not just use that land to
grow edible plants for humans?

MEL
I guess. Some people are just meateaters at heart.

Mel honks at someone who cut him off.

MEL (cont)
I’m sticking with my Bigby burgers. They’re
really...really good.

Marla twitches slightly with sarcasm Mel doesn’t seem to catch...

MARLA
I’m sure they are.

or does he?

MEL
Meat is what made this city, you know?
Chicago’s meat-packing industry kept the
Union fed during the Civil War. They
named the biggest company the Union
stock yards on Christmas of 1865. All the big
cattle drives, you know, that you hear about,
they all came to Chicago. This was the end of
the line. That’s what the city was built on.
(softer) The end of the line.

They pass a billboard ad for “Moo & Oink•.

Marla coughs some more and tries to open the window again. Then she remembers it doesn’t work, and fiddles with the air vent before crossing her arms again.

MEL
The Fort Dearborn massacre, you know?
Indians came out of the hills and killed a
wagon train of women and children. A
soldier’s wife had her unborn baby
(cont)
MEL (cont)
ripped out of her body and beheaded. Last
year some couple in the western suburbs
killed a woman and cut her baby out. (beat)
They closed the Union Stock yards in 1971.
Some parts of the floor in those buildings are
still stained red. The blood seeps into the soil.
Chicago is a city of butchers. It always has
been. And where did all the butchers go
when they closed up shop? Back into the city.

Mel pulls back behind a building, off a back street, in the Back of the Yards. He parks the car, but leaves he engine running.

Marla starts darting looks left and right.

MARLA
Hey what are you doing ...

MEL
Shut up and let me finish. They went back
between the brick buildings and narrow alleys
and cracked and potted streets. They never left,
they just went back into the woodwork. And
what’s worse, is not that there are butchers, but
that there will always be meat. We will never run
out of things to kill.

MARLA
I’m taking a cab...

She tries to get out, but the door doesn’t open.
Mel talks far too calmly.

MEL
Yeah, it doesn’t open from the inside. A farmer
friend of mine was watching all the animals as
they went into the slaughterhouse. He said that
there are three kinds of people in the world: sheep,
who go in happy. Cows, who know where they’re
going, but just make some noise, and the pigs,
who scream and fight and kick all the way in...

He turns the engine off. It suddenly gets way too quiet...even the outside presence noises are silent. The inside of this car is the entire world right now.

MEL
You can tell how smart the animal is by how
they look at death. (beat) And...and that’s
maybe also how they look at life. (beat)

Mel turns and looks at the camera, and his face is the face of death.

MEL
So...what kind are you?

BIRD’S EYE VIEW
Long high zoom out of the car, nestled in the folds of the city.

FADE OUT

“Katherine•
Puzzfreak@aol.com

I had a simple life. I had a great boyfriend, a beautiful house, the best friend in the world, and two beautiful cats. Little did I know that this was all going to change!

I had to walk to work this Friday morning because my car was in the shop.
On my way one of my heels broke; so I stopped to put on my sneakers. When I bent down, all the change in my wallet poured out all over the place. A couple walked by and started to help me pick it up. We kept talking about how exciting it was to be married, which I didn’t want to hear. After all I was waiting for Austin to pop the question to me. I have a feeling I will be waiting a long time. After the mess was cleaned up I noticed I had a run in my new $30 dollar pantyhose. So I decide to take a taxi the rest of the way. As if my day wasn’t already bad enough, the one I flagged down liked Opera music. He had the radio tuned to the 24 hour Opera station. When I got to work I had a pounding headache. At the door I was meet by Vicki, the gossip queen, who started telling me the first gossip of the day as we went up the escalator.

Luckily when I reached my office I saw a familiar face. It was Natalie.
We had been best friends since second grade. She was always coming up with ways to spend my money. She greeted me with,• Hey you! What’s up?•
“ Natalie you know my life is dull, boring, and simple. So why do you always ask?•
“ I thought it might have changed. You need to loosen up and add excitement to your life. Treat yourself to a shopping spree or a cruise.•
“ Just because I have money doesn’t mean I have to spend it in order to have fun.•
“ I know, but it’s better than letting it sit in the bank.•
“ Letting it sit in the bank is making me more money, Natalie.•
“ Oh well, then leave it there. I might put some of mine in there too!•

Natalie and I work at a newspaper. I also own it. We both had to walk home after work so we decided to go to Natalie’s. Her house was the closest to the office. Plus a New York suburb was much safer than walking through the city to my house on the other side of New York City. After a long frustrating day of nothing but work, we finally packed up at 4:15 and headed towards the door. As usual Vicki was waiting by the escalator to tell me the last gossip of the day. Natalie wondered how anybody could hear so much gossip in one day and still get their work done in time to wait for us at the escalator. Neither Natalie nor I really cared about what Vicki had to say but figured since I was the top boss she felt she had to report it to my.
Three blocks later Natalie saw a young woman who walked hurriedly by. She was dressed in rags and covered in dirt. She obviously hadn’t taken a bath recently. The women had very pale skin and coughed several times. She was not alone for she had someone with her. A baby in an old and white basket. She was carrying her close to her heart. In the woman’s left hand was a black trash bag. Natalie assumed it was carrying her and the baby’s things. Natalie was so stunned to see this that she didn’t know what to do. She grabbed my arm and said “Sarah, did you see that woman pass by? She looks so poor. I wonder if she is going to be OK?
“Natalie, I’m sure I will. Now would you like some ice cream? Maybe that will make my day a little better. It certainly can’t get any worse.•
“Sure, why not? I haven’t been to 81 Choices in a long time.•

When we got there we had to wait in line for about ten minutes. I already knew what I wanted, cookies ‘n cream, my favorite. Natalie didn’t care; she liked every type of ice cream the world had to offer. The lady behind the counter was so slow the ice cream was melting by the time you got it. Natalie gave my order first,• Umm... I’ll have the caramel splurge. No, wait. The bluebe...; no, the chocolate mousse; no, the goblin delight. Instead give me a scoop of caramel splurge, blueberry, goblin delight, chocolate mousse, and cream soda. “
“ Are you sure that’s what you want ma’am? “
“ Oh yes. I’m positive now. “
The lady turned to me next and said, “ What would you care for ma’am?•
“ My order is a little simpler and faster. I want two scoops of cookies ‘n’ cream.•
“ We’re out of that.•
“What? You’re never out of ice cream, that’s your motto. I have never heard of an ice cream store running out of ice cream. Well I guess I’ll have to settle for the sweet cream.•
“ Out!•
“ Zany vanilla?•
“ Nope, ran out this morning.•
“ Lemon ice?•
“ Yep, enough for two scoops.•
“ Good I’ll have them.•

The lady started on Natalie’s order and ten minutes later she had only gotten two scoops done. I was getting impatient and finally I went behind the counter and took over. I finished Natalie’s and mine in less than two minutes. We both took our ice cream with us and finished it three blocks later. As we turned the corner of the fourth block we sighted something that would change both our lives tremendously.

jason pettus

In my world, professional sports are a seedy, underground profession, taking place in back rooms and slum tenements, while porn starts perform at the United Center and sign multi-million dollar endorsement deals.
In my world, you can drink a beer, smoke a joint, or pull the handle of a slot machine and never have to worry about becoming addicted to any of them.
In my world, your job performance is based on how well you perform your job.
In my world, there is a television station called “JTV• which runs nothing but shows I like, 24 hours a day. Then, when I got out and get drunk, I come back home and forget the channel exists and I’ll be flipping through the stations and there’s nothing but shit on until I get to my station and I go, “God, I love this show.•
In my world, non-smokers have to stand outside.
In my world, women are overwhelmingly attracted to kinda geeky guys who are intellectually pure and possess an insight into the human condition. Really, did you expect it any other way?
In my world, rape is a capital offense. Of course, so is whistling in public.
In my world, everyone at Kinko’s is well-trained, know what they’re doing, and never overcharge or destroy your originals in the copy machine. For that matter, all employees of McDonald’s always say “thank you• instead of me, and when I say, “I’d like a Big Mac and a Coke,• they never say, “And what kind of drink would you like?•
In my world, if you see someone across the el who you think is really attractive, you can walk up to them and say, “You know, I’m really attracted to you.• They then have the freedom to say, “You know, so am I!• or “I’m sorry, I’m not attracted to you,• and your feelings are never hurt.
In my world, fourteen year old boys are allowed to buy Playboy, because, real ly, they’re the ones who need them the most.
In my world, every poem at every open mike night is amazing and groundbreaking and just makes you go, “Wow.•
In my world, Robert Mapplethorpe never died. And neither did Keith Haring. And neither did Andy Warhol.
In my world, Liz Phair knows how much I love her. And... she loves me back!
In my world, you can buy pitchers for four bucks at Sweet Alice. Oh, I’m sorry, that’s in your world, too.
In my world, Sting is still putting out cool albums.
In my world, there is a special section of Chicago set aside where you can take acid. It is full of trees and grass and sand and there’s no rave music and there’s no virtual reality movies and no guys trying to fuck with you, waving their hands in your face, going, “Okay, you see anything? Okay, how ‘bout this? You see anything now? Huh? How ‘bout this?•
Oh, and in my world minimum wage is 16 bucks an hour, and middle management doesn’t exist even though the middle class does, and the phrase, “You got time to lean, you got time to clean• doesn’t exist, and if your boss says something stupid, you have the legal right to slap them as hard as you can and say, “What are you, on the dope train?•
In my world, the Personals section actually works.
In my world, men have an “on/off• switch for their penis. Then, if they wake up one day and think, “You know, I really don’t want to deal with my libido today, they can just turn their penis off, and the rest of the day beautiful women can walk by them and they can still remain focused and concentrated and productive.
In my world, there are hoards of “straight bashers• that roam the streets of Lincoln Park on Saturday nights, stopping guys on the streets and yelling, “Hey, what are you, some kind of hetero? You like to fuck women? You do, you like to fuck women, don’t ya?• Of course, instead of beating them up, they just yell, “Shame on you! You don’t know what you’re missing!• then go down the street and have a drink.
In my world, I never have to finish my stories at open mike nights, but instead I can just

Caron Andregg

Some women can sense electric men
Even in crowds, even in the dark
Feel their uniqueness
Like a torch blazing
Smell them
Like a horse smells the barn
But I only smell the barns
Which are already burning.
Tonight, some big Irish felon
Oozing unconscious pheromones
Snapped my head around.
He might as well have had a little label
Suspended within his magnetic field
Like those delicate white placecards
Perched upon tripods at wedding receptions
One which warns of ‘Dangerous Curves.’
Like those road signs
Along the ragged Baja highway
Yellow as radiation warnings
Reading ‘Curva Peligroso’
The ones which I believe but still ignore
The ones which sing me out
Into the dangerous night.

Caron Andregg

They encountered each other
Publicly, at a party
Packed with clients and friends
Embraced, chastely
With a superficial brushing of the cheek
Careful to conceal themselves
Yet still betrayed
By the swirl of her dress
Which reached around his thighs
And clung to him
On her behalf.

we arrive to our parties and hour after they start
we know full well when we are supposed to be there
but we show up late anyway
we don’t have any prior engagements
but we act like we do

and we make sure we’re dressed well,
but not too well
enough to impress,
but not enough to be over-dressed
you can’t overdo it
you have to look good, you know
but not like you tried to

and we don’t talk to anyone we don’t know
and we make sure our gaze
doesn’t wander for too long
because we have enough friends and lovers
and we don’t need you

and as soon as the party is starting to decline
we make our way to a bar,
bring a few friends with us
because we can’t stay in one place too long
because we have other places to go
we must move on to bigger and better things
we must get out of here

this is how we keep our friends
and this is how we keep our social standing
because this is the way it is
because this what we do

(written with D.J.)

I
you see, I was a girl, I didn’t climb trees,
but I always wished for a tree house,
one with a ladder so it would be easy to get to the top.
So I could see the world from a different view.
So I could feel like I have conquered.

II
Big trees, more fun,
that’s what I’d think.
Then when I’d get to about the height of a roof,
our garage as a matter of fact,
then the fear would set in.
Not fear of falling from where I was,
but of going higher.
Higher, then too high.
What is too high?

III
One of my co-workers decided one day that he
wasn’t going to try anymore. That no one cared
if he did a good job, so he just wouldn’t bother.
And I thought, your coworkers shouldn’t be the scale
you judge yourself on. You should be your
scale, you should be trying because you need
to know you can be better than what you are.
Then I thought, maybe he never climbed trees.

Once I was at a beach
off the west coast of Florida
it was New Year’s eve
and the yellow moon hung over the gulf
like a swaying lantern.
And I was watching the waves crash in front of me
with a friend
and the wind picked up
and my friend just stared at that moon for a while
and then closed his eyes.
I asked him what he was thinking.
He said, “I wanted to look at this scene,
and memorize it, burn it into my brain,
record it in my mind, so I can call it up when I want to.
So I can have it with me always.•

I too have my recorders.
I burn these things into my brain,
I burn these things onto pages.
I pick and choose what needs to be said,
what needs to be remembered.

Every year, at the end of the year
I used to write in a journal
recall the things that happened to me
log in all of the memories I needed to keep
because that was what kept me sane
that was what kept me alive.

When I first went to college
I was studying to be a computer science
engineer, I wanted to make a lot of money
I wanted to beat everyone else
because burned in my brain were the taunts
of kids who were in cliques
so others could do the thinking for them
because burned in my brain were the evenings
of the high school dances I never went to
because burned in my brain were the people
I knew I was better than
who thought they were better than me.
Well, yes, I wanted to make a lot of money
I wanted to beat everyone else
but I hated what I was doing
I hated what I saw around me
hated all the pain people put each other through
and all of these memories just kept flooding me
so in my spare time
to keep me sane, to keep me alive
I wrote down the things I could not say
that was how I recorded things.

When I looked around me, and saw friends
raping my friends
I wrote, I burned into these nightmares with a pen
and yes, I have this recorded
I have all of this recorded.

What did you think I was doing
when I was stuffing hand-written notes into my pockets
or typing long hours into the night?
In college, I had two roommates
who in their spare time would watch movies in our living room
and cross-stitch. I never understood this.
In my spare time, I was not watching other’s stories
or weaving thread to keep my hands busy
I was sitting in the corner of a cafe
scribbling into my notebook.
I was sitting in the university computer lab
slamming my hands, my fingers against the keyboard
because there were too many atrocities in the world
too many injustices that I had witnessed
too many people who had wronged me

and I had a lot of work to do.
There had to be a record of what you’ve done.

Did you think your crimes would go unpunished?
And did you think that you could come back, years later,
slap me on the back with a friendly hello
and think I wouldn’t remember?
You see, that’s what I have my poems for
so there will always be a record
of what you have done
I have defiled many pages
in your honor, you who swung
your battle ax high above your head
and thought no one would remember in the end.
Well, I made a point to remember.
Yes, I have defiled many pages
and have you defiled many women?
You, the man who rapes my friends?
You, the man who rapes my sisters?
You, the man who rapes me?
Is this what makes you a strong man?

you want to know why I do the things I do

I had to record these things
that is what kept me together
when people were dying
that is what kept me together
when my friends went off to war
that is what kept me together
when my friends were raped
and left for dead
that is what kept me together
when no one bothered to notice this
or change this
or care about this
these recordings kept me together

I need to record these things
to remind myself
of where I came from
I need to record these things
to remind myself
that there are things to value
and things to hate
I need to record these things
to remind myself
that there are things worth fighting for
worth dying for
I need to record these things
to remind myself
that I am alive

Tim W. Brown

I still hear the BOOM!
of sixteen-inch guns
lobbing shells big as cars
toward the Korean coast
when I think how they

sunk you in a coffin
of battleship gray.
Or maybe it’s the CLAP!
of you boxing my ears
not with fists, but words

that began at age eight:
every post card you sent
while working on the road
said, “Be a straight shooter,•
meaning to pee in the pot.

Up until age twelve I told
my friends I wanted to join
the navy, drink beer,
get tattooed like my Dad.
But I was born a land lubber.

Pushing a lawn mower through
a sea of grass was for me
like breaking in a horse.
Shaking your head, you called me
a “left-handed Jap bazooka shooter.•

When I grew up, you still
believed I wasn’t “working
with a full sea bag.•
Now I see you tried to pack
a sailor suit in a saddle bag

built for a bucking mule.
Those sea dogs sure taught you
some fancy knots, one
you used to hang yourself.
Unlike you, none will lasso me.

by Erin Bealmear

I was always looking for something
to do. When I was thirteen I spent a year
planning a way for Gilligan to get off
the island. Every time the Skipper
got angry and started to perspire
I thought he was going to hack up Gilligan.
My mother said I was too attached
to the show. “Tommy, you’re like a dog
fucking another dog, you can’t let go.•

Alan Catlin

Heat rose in layers
through the low,
hanging palm trees.
Black nightbirds
skimmed the skin off
his dreaming and left
a raw pain like fever
inside his black,
festering eyes.
Breathing was slow
and mechanical, a steam
engine at full throttle
with nothing left
inside to generate heat.
What he heard outside
was a pegleg tapping
on a boardwalk
of his imagination
disappearing precipitously
into a vacant, absorbing sea.
Every other step resounds
in his head like a
nightmare of a Treasure
Island for which he has
lost the map.

David E. Cowen

panting in a pack
as if watching a hand
waiving a piece of moist, bloody meat

she seems to savor the moment
standing behind the wrought iron fence
with spiked posts
seeing them laugh at any jokes she tells
watching their eyes follow her hips and breasts
as she exaggerates her movements

some flexing their arms
some pruning their hair
some stroking themselves

she chooses one for the old mattress
under the crawlspace under the house
admonishing the others to return the next day

confident in her power
she lays back on the soiled bedding
as the chosen dog has his meal

her scapular of the virgin
folded neatly in her shoes.

Richard Fein
bardbyte@chelsea.ios.com

Her lips
are drawn tight.
Her eyes
are turned away.
Sunlight exposes
pimples on our skins
which
we had not noticed
the night before.
Everything
we said
was said
to create the moment
which just ended.
She rises
and opens the blinds.
The morning glare
blinds me.
Her nude form
no longer
lures my eyes,
and she is quickly
gathering her things.
Alone
I lie uncovered.
The blanket lies limp
off the side of the bed.

Holly Day

I can feel your bones through
your pale flesh beside me
curled like a baby bird
against my body unconscious
that you are touching me
and it’s not sex
and it’s not love
in your church of streetlights and stop signs
I had tried to forge a union
between metals that don’t allow
and in your sermons of candy and sweat
I have learned to give up on abstracts
contracts
love
blind faith

Rachel Crawford
luna@pacbell.net

On the shores of Tripoli
As the master said to me
Look in side yourself
And see the haunting
Try the buddha and the zen
Try the miracles of men
But you must look into yourself
And see the haunting
You must look into it’s eyes
You’ll be scared
And you will cry
You must look into
The face of the haunting
You have to see
Through the dark
Past the fire and the spark
You will see
With your soul
You are the haunting

Michael Estabrook
MEstabr815@aol.com

“Hi, is Dr. Van Loan there?•
“No, I’m sorry, he’s at the hospital. May I take a message?•
“Nancy? Is this you Nancy?•
“Yes.• Such hesitancy in her voice.
“Wow. Hi. This is Michael Wayne, how are you doing?•
“Michael? Oh, Mike! Oh my God, wow, I didn’t recognize your voice.•
“That’s OK, Nance, it’s been 18 years, you know.•
18 years. My goodness. Has it really been that long? The last time I saw Nick and Nancy was back in the fall of 1978. I was working for Cranfield Electronics at the time, selling particle counters and cell sizing instrumentation to universities and hospitals and industrial accounts. My territory included New York state. Every month or two I’d head north from New Jersey stopping first in Albany, then going west through Utica and Syracuse, into Rochester and Buffalo, finally swinging southeast through Elmira and Binghamton, then down into eastern Pennsylvania arriving at last back home.
On one of my swings through beautiful New York state, I stopped in and had dinner with Nick and Nancy. I stayed the night in their guest room. He was doing his residency at the Utica Hospital.
Nancy made a big spaghetti dinner, after which Nick and I drank some red wine, and took a long walk around the block. Cool winds blew the dead leaves of autumn all around us.
“You can do whatever you want to do Mike, whatever you like. This is America after all. Once you decide what you want, just do it. You have to do it. You only go around once, my friend.•
“But I have to make money, Nick. I have two kids now and a mortgage and college loans and car payments and all the rest of it. I can’t just go back to school full-time and become a writer.•
He claps my shoulder. “Yes you can! If you know what you want to do, you’re a fool not to pursue your dream. I mean look at me. Took me longer than most, but I wanted it, so I hung in there and slugged away until I got it. Now I’m a doctor.•
“Yes, I suppose you’re right. I’ll work on it.•
Last time I saw Nick was the following morning. It was 7 a.m. and he was going off to the hospital. He strode into the bathroom as I was standing there in my underwear shaving. He stuck out his hand, “Good to see you, Hog.• His nickname for me was Hognose, not something I particularly enjoyed.
“Stop in again when you’re up here. You’re always welcome here, you know that. Good friends are hard to come by. And get going on that writing career of yours.•
And that was that. I never made it back to see them in Utica, one thing led to another, we moved, they moved, we moved again, they moved again. Now suddenly, here it is 18 years later. My God, but it has gone fast.
I have thought about them often over the years, always with fond memories, always with a smile on my face. But it was the cassette tape I found that triggered my call to them. I was straightening up my library, going through a box of memorabilia: the front page of a newspaper from the summer of 1969 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon; my Grandfather’s business card - Fred Fischer, Handyman, General Repair Work, Renovating, Remodeling, Etc.; my Daddy’s dog tags and wallet; a cracked plaster camel Grammy bought for me at the Staten Island Zoo; a cassette tape from Nick and Nancy.
Patti and I would talk for an hour then mail the tape to them in Belgium. Then they’d talk for an hour and mail it back. This went on for a long time. I guess we ended up with the final tape, from April 1974, two years after we had left Belgium.
“So how are you Mike? How’s Patti?
“Oh we’re fine. And you? You and Nick are still together, I guess.•
“Why yes, and how about you and Patti?•
“Yes, still together, 26 years now.•
“With so many divorces it’s amazing that we’re all still together. Did you know the Warners? No I guess not, you had left Belgium by the time they were there. Well, they’re divorced, and the Feinbergs, you didn’t know them either I don’t think, but anyway, they . . .•
I recall June of 1971, when I got it into my head to become a doctor. I was working at The Roosevelt Hospital in New York City at the time. A doctor there who had graduated from medical school in Belgium convinced me I could do it, that it was a great thing to do. This was my chance to break free from my poor background and mediocre beginnings, to make something important of myself. So off we went, Pat and I, just like that. Put all our stuff in my in-laws’ garage, gave my boa constrictor to the local pet shop, sold my ‘66 bahama blue Volkswagen beetle to my brother, Kerry, and off we went.
Nick and Nancy became our good friends for the two years we were over there. We saw each other a lot, in class mostly, but we studied together too, shopped and ate together, hung around together with other Americans.
But then I left the medical program, essentially because I decided I couldn’t stand the thought of becoming a doctor, of having to memorize all that crap about drug doses and symptoms, disease states and therapy protocols, all the muscles, nerves, bones, arteries, veins, blah blah blah. I simply couldn’t do that to myself, to my mind. At least that’s how I rationalized it at the time. “I don’t want to ruin my mind by becoming so completely immersed in sickness and death. I’m a Renaissance man. I need to know and do many things, I need variety of thought and life experiences.• Oh brother.
But the truth of the matter is, I’m from Northfield Avenue, a staid, stale, pathetic little suburb of middle-class America overflowing with factory workers, postman, garage mechanics, shop clerks, and frumpy housewives in pink curlers and aprons. In medical school I was in way over my head. And particularly, going to class and studying medicine in Flemish was a bit beyond the range of the potential engendered by my genetic endowment and the environment I was raised in. I had trouble expressing myself in English, let alone Flemish, for Christ’s sake.
So I quit. One night I cracked, took all my notes and books and tore them up, threw them all around in our stupid unheated apartment out in front of the Stella Artois Beer Plant and Distribution Center. “Pat, we’re going home. I’ve had it.• She didn’t argue with me. She had had enough too. Both of us hated living in Belgium. God, it was hard.
But my friend Nick stuck it out, even after failing and having to repeat his first year, he stuck it out. He passed his tests and is now a medical doctor, specializing in family practice.
“How did you find us?• Nancy asked.
“That’s a funny story actually, well not that funny. I found you on the Internet.•
“The Internet? We’re on the Internet?•
“The AMA has a listing of all the doctors in the country up there, all 700,000 of them.•
“Oh yes, of course.• Nancy liked to think she knew just about everything. But she’s a big-hearted person. “But how did you know we were here? I mean, you last saw us when we lived in Utica.•
“I knew you guys would end up in New Hampshire. You loved it so, always talking about the mountains and all. So I went to the Internet listing of doctors in New Hampshire, found you in Contoocook, then called information. I thought this was Nick’s office number, that’s why I was so surprised when you answered.•
She then filled me in on their family. They have a 16 year old son I didn’t even know about. “He’s training for the Olympics in winter sports.• And Annette is a senior at Keene State.
“I keep my hand in nursing part-time. And Nick is an emergency room doctor down in Nashua. He works 15 days a month, one week on, one week off. He gave up his private practice four years ago.•
But I didn’t ask about it. From the tone of her voice it didn’t sound like such a good thing to have happened. Perhaps there aren’t enough people in their little town to support an old country doctor. Perhaps he’s a bad businessman, taking care of his patients for free. I can see him doing that.
“Can you come up here and visit us? Some Saturday or something?•
“Sure, Nance, that sounds great. You’re only an hour and a half away. We can come up easily and visit for a day.•
“Wonderful, I’ll check Nick’s schedule, he has such a crazy schedule you know, then we’ll call you back. I’m excited for you two to come up and visit, can’t wait to see you again. We’ll call you. Say hello to Patti for me. Bye.•
But it’s been over a month now since I called Nancy, and left our address and phone number. It looks as if Nick isn’t going to be calling me back. The first week he didn’t call I figured, oh he’s working those 12 hour days at the hospital. He’s exhausted. The second week I said pretty much the same thing. As the third week came and went with no word from my old friend, I was surprised. But now, after a month, well, all I can say is, I’m flabbergasted, really I am.
I wondered if I had done something to offend, way back when. But I can think of nothing.
“Maybe he’s in a bad place in his life,• Pat suggests. “Maybe he hates being a doctor, or his practice failed and he’s an alcoholic or something. I mean you don’t know what’s going on. It’s been 18 years, they may not be the same people anymore.•
“But Nancy sounded so normal, just like the old days.•
She shrugs. “You don’t know.•
Or perhaps Nick is a doctor and simply has no use for me. I hate to think about it that way, but I’m not a doctor. I dropped out of medical school. I’m a salesman. I’m a failure.
And too, if I’m honest about it, I wasn’t the greatest friend Nick ever had. Us getting to know each other under the circumstances of attending medical school in Leuven, Belgium, was strange to say the least. I literally studied all the time, 14, 15 hours a day. I did nothing else. I was virtually a shut-in. In two years we spent maybe two weeks, cumulatively, sightseeing.
But Nick, well he was too excited about being in Europe to buckle down and study. He couldn’t help himself. He was there to have a good time, to “experience Europe.• He’s from a wealthy family, after all, so he bought himself a new BMW with a state-of-the-art stereo, and drove the autobahns in Germany. He had a cousin who lived in Amsterdam, so they were always visiting him, and touring and sightseeing, doing fancy dinners. Then there was the karate class he took, and the weight room at the gymnasium, and skiing, my God how he loved to ski in the Alps, and the beer, all the different beers from all the different countries.
So our relationship was in a sense strained. Me, a poor student struggling to understand bits of Flemish in the classroom and on the streets, never quite getting the hang of it, never immersing myself enough in the Belgian “culture.• And Nick, tall, good-looking, wealthy, bold and brash, gadflying around Europe, buying this, visiting that, the world was his clam, and he was fluent in Flemish to boot.
But we had something special, Nick and I did, an invisible bond. We were two among a handful of Americans struggling to succeed in a seven year medical school program in a foreign place. We went through some tough times together, times of uncertainty and alienation.
We both had a romantic conception about the meaning of friendship. You make only a few true friends in your lifetime, but the ones you make are your friends forever. We felt the same about that. If we went 30 years without seeing one another, it wouldn’t matter, we would still be friends. When we got together it would be like old times. We both felt this. We both even voiced this to each other. Even though I couldn’t afford to buy a BMW or ski in the Alps, couldn’t spare the time away from my studies to lift weights and take karate classes, or visit England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Germany, Italy and France, we had something special. We studied medicine together. We complained about the Belgians together. We went through those early tenuous, doubtful days in a foreign place together. We missed home together.
After Pat and I returned to the States, we wrote letters and sent our cassette tape back and forth, staying as close to each other as we could. When they returned home we saw them a few times. They visited us in New Jersey and New York. We visited them when he was doing his internship in Connecticut. And then, of course, I saw them in Utica. But finally, I suppose, time and distance, and him being a doctor and me not, drove in the wedge until the log was split. So here we are. I feel like an idiot. I feel like crying. I should have known better.
No, Nick isn’t going to call me back. I can’t believe it. Maybe Nancy forgot I called, or lost the paper with our number on it. She’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Maybe I should call again, or send a letter. No, maybe I shouldn’t. If he wanted to speak with me or see us, he’d call back. But no, my old true friend Nick isn’t going to be calling me back. I can’t believe it. What a jerk I am. The naivete, the audacity of calling someone up after 18 long years of silence, and expecting them to give a shit.
Seems I’m learning things about friendship I never knew before, things I’d rather not know. But there it is. There it all is.

Taylor Graham
jalapep@spider.lloyd.com

You called it your way to sanity.
Written in a script illegible as cipher,
it didn’t need a lock on the old brass box
with the cunning keyhole round as a mouth
transfixed in “no.•

What was so precious or perilous
you needed more than metaphor?

Oh, it’s been found, unlocked, deciphered.
Perhaps it was the dullness, after all:
all curves and shadows, hopes unspoken
and fears denied. Sanity, indeed,
against such a life.

Ray Heinrich

one paper falls
on top of another
and soon
rock is formed
from names on top of names
whispered to fine sand
pressed
by immense forces
who disavow all knowledge
you
lift the top folder
and open it
and read down the list
of names
they could be
third-grade classmates
guards at a prison camp
winners of a florida vacation
you
just hear your voice
reading name after name
wishing
there was more light
and your voice
sounds different
sounds like the voices
on the list
continuing to read
name after name
pronouncing yours correctly
like they’d read it
again and again
ever since the third grade
each morning in the camp
on the phone in the evening
telling you you’d won

Ray Heinrich
ray@vais.net

old gardens with flowers
filled with flowers
in old gardens
the flowers
are the ones that come back
and old gardens tend
to be tended by hands
made older by the sun
made brown like the leaves
the old leaves in old gardens
old gardens which tend
to be tended
by old hands

A.E. Jenks

The octave of us is an avenue
of blackbirds with marbolized wings
As the blacksnake licks the bobcat
in a herculean daze.
Your impotent homeland spread
the last deep’sea of freckles
on your icey, olive face.
Your blemished hands belong on you like
Auburn liqueur on pale blue tablecloths.
I swim in the black of your eye
until it liquifies like blues in autumn.
We talk like friends of jewel and berry bandits
Erasing halls of bored handwriting.

Allison Eir Jenks
ajenks@students.miami.edu

There is peace at the dinner table
beneath the gothic chandelier
with three female chairs.

A child tries to sleep.
The vines out the window
are after her like snakes,

she yells father then mother--

too far down the hall to hear her
as she lays unfilled
with her father’s strengths.
Mother trying to be two
down the hall
where a father was, once.

He couldn’t hear my voice
calling for order in the late hours,

vines out my window like snakes
after me, vacuuming me into age.

Dad, come mend this torn wallpaper.
Carve my opinions, kill the snakes.
Intrude my life like you care.
Sit at the dinner table
beneath the lovely chandelier
in one of the three chairs,
or in the front seat of the car
next to mom.

I hear there is a safety
warmer than the face of the sun
that radiates from love among marriage?
Do you know anything about this?

deckard kinder
newman@ntr.net

last call runs
out of excuses
unless you are my excuse
I won’t do this again, you say
stone cold straight as jesus
existing on turbo shots of light
both bulletproof and bent
refreshingly untouched by the need to preach
obscene gospels of deceit
older than my craving
kidnapping the heaven in my eyes
second guessing my next lie
even before I fall into it
you play me as hard as I play you
somehow you detach as brutally as I attach
the difference is life and death
heaven and hell
transparent
grand
shallow
eventually
torn to shreds
unless you step in
having your way with me
loving the parting shots
taking control
doing it your way
wondering why I let you
yearning for some real competition
[someone who gives
nothing away
even if he has to lose -
someone has to lose
like someone has to cry]
you reject my philosophy
unless it serves you a t the moment
none-the-less you play reality
slowly
yanking my chain from time to time
evaluating my response
you tell me not to take it personally
to simply let it slide
but I live here
and you just visit
when the mood strikes

by Lyn Lifshin

wind chimes,
pleats on water’s
skin of glass.
Candles smell of
bayberry. Even in
the 90’s, ripples
of hot wind. Star-
less. Small trees
bend into their
own bodies as
wasps cling to
tangerine leaves
the praying mantis
waits in the
crotch of

Bob Ludden
robert@essex1.com
http://www.essex1.com/people/robert/

As old as creation, unending as life
As basic as sex, and hunger and breath
We are polar magnets in microcosm!
And the “I• would not die with the promise of peace
Though the lodestar seduce with tableau of release.
Rest eternal.....forced upon us still, by treachery--
Who would take it? Why?
Some pull beyond the galaxy
Attracts the restless mind and catches up
The heart and soul which seeks not peace,
But high adventure...ours affordable
When we pick up our toys....
(Their time will come again)
And probe those longings
With the pain of heated steel if need be,
Exposing every nerve, until we understand
There is a gap between the want and the fulfillment.
And yes, a bridge across, however swaying
To our eyes...it stretches with that faithless chasm,
Though we would not accord such flexing.

And time is ours this Lent
To sight across the gap, and test the ropes
And see, like everything we know,
the handiwork of God.

My sister-in-law gave me a Midge doll set
when she married my brother. Midge came complete
with a wardrobe of designer floor-length dresses,
with sequins, and tulle, and three-quarter-length gloves.

But Midge, an older model, had short red hair
styled like a housewife, not like Barbie’s, long and
blond and flowing. And Midge could never sit in a chair
because her plastic legs were rigid and couldn’t bend.

For my sixth birthday I received a P.J. doll,
one of Barbie’s friends. P.J.’s hair was blonde, like
Barbie’s, but it was shorter. And here eyes were brown,
like mine. Not eyes to dream of. Eyes like mine.

When I finally got you, Barbie, I treated you like
some sort of goddess, you with your disproportionate
figure and perpetual smile. When you never eat,
you can stay thin. You can always be happy.

I took plastic kitchen shelf liner and caulking glue
and lined a shoebox so you could have a bath tub.
I taped a straw around the back of the tub so you
could have jets and extra bubbles when you soaked.

My father’s pool table was your lake; a second
shoe box served as your speed boat. You took all
your friends for boat rides along the green; Ken,
the Donny and Marie dolls, P.J., even Midge.

But I couldn’t be like you, I had to eat, and I could only
stand on my toes for so long when you stood like
a dancer perpetually. I couldn’t always smile. I was
only a little girl. And I was cursed with brown eyes.

What did you teach me? I pressed you next to Ken
under your pink and white bed sheets, but your plastic
bodies made a loud noise when you came together.
Your legs never intertwined. Your smile never changed.

And now, all grown up, I visit my parent’s house,
and they tell me I have boxes of toys that could be
thrown away. Kitchen accessories for the Barbie
camper, beaded dresses I made myself. And I think:

I could give these toys to my niece, so she could play,
so she could learn. And then I decide: no, these dolls,
these values, these memories, they belong sealed
in cardboard boxes, where only time can take its toll.

Dennis The Menace

Black men in the inner city like to “Play The Dozens.• Huddling in circles on streetcorners, they exchange verbal insults and monologues in self-aggrandizement, reading their fellows while bolstering their own egos, expressions of power in a powerless world. To “win• at The Dozens is to slam the best indignity only to turn around and announce conquests real and imagined, demonstrate to one’s fellows just how bad you wanna be, just how bad you can be.
And like any successful exercise in sublimation, The Dozens is a way of venting anger and fortifying personalities that have every right to be angry. After all, it’s just a game, an effective way of keeping that aggression contained, of satisfying frustrations that could otherwise rapidly and savagely get out of control.
In a book as talked about as its author, Dennis Rodman’s “Bad As I Wanna Be• is a manifesto taken straight from the projects of Dallas, TX. Representative of the culture from which he comes, Dennis’ autobiography does them Dozens, does them well, but within a context and from a personality one wonders could or perhaps should be playing some other game.
Don’t get me wrong: Dennis Rodman has done more to destroy stereotypes than any other athlete in the history of American sports. In a sense, he does it all, and does it as adroitly as he works that basketball: Using his prowess on the court to express himself unabashedly off the court, Dennis does drag, Dennis goes to gay bars, Dennis hangs out with the likes of Mimi Marks, Dennis dyes the AIDS ribbon into his head, Dennis has a great time and, clearly, doesn’t give a shit what anybody thinks-- Or does he?
In “Bad As I Wanna Be• you read about his trials as a youngster, the racism he encountered, his spiritual reawakening after a suicide contemplation, his unwillingness to eat Madonna’s pussy, his love of cross-dressing and his eagerness to get in touch with his ‘feminine side.’ But just as big, bad Black guys can be seen wearing curlers and a plastic bag in their hair as a way of telling the world they’re so bad they can wear curlers and a plastic bag in their hair and still be big and bad, Dennis is trying, true to his book, to be Bad As He Can Be. He’s so bad, in fact, that he can do drag, go to gay bars, hang with Mimi Marks and dye the AIDS ribbon into his head and still get away with it.
Of course, there’s certainly nothing “wrong• with being Bad As One Can Be, but my one question for Dennis Rodman would be: Why bother being so vocal? Clearly, he is one of the best defensive players ever to play defense in basketball, so why all the self-praise, why all the verbiage reminding us, as if we have to be reminded, how bad that Bad Boy is? Continue to read his book, and learn how he’s underpaid and overworked, how he’s special yet singled-out, how he does so much yet deserves even more. Read how he made less yet is so much better than all the other noted defensive players in the league. Counter-example: Did Einstein write something called “Smart As I Wanna Be•? Illustrating for all the world how much smarter he was than Enrico Fermi and Werner Heisenberg? How Relativity Theory revolutionized everything yet he collected only the tenure of a typical Princeton university professor? Come on, Dennis, and come on, all you homos who buy into his publicity campaign: don’t be Stupid As A Faggot Can Be.
As Dennis himself writes: “The trash talk is a waste of time. Those guys who do are trying to boost themselves up. They’re trying to make themselves bigger and badder than they already are. They’re doing it for themselves, and I don’t need that. They have to make sure they are somebody. What’s the point of that?•
Dear Dennis: We all know that you already are Bad As You Wanna Be. So why keep playing them Dozens? What’s the point of that? We don’t need that. We have more fun when you just kick back and have fun, bro.

Displaced Dad

Just as every family is somehow molded by the ubiquitous tendrils of History, a perceptive gaze at one’s own crib can teach us much about the workings of the World.
As a Hungarian emigre, my father has both the experiential privilege and emotional burden of being a participatory eye-witness to a segment of the most historic event since the fall of Rome: WWII.
When German troops and tanks sashayed down the cobblestone streets of Budapest one week before Dad’s sixteenth birthday, the land of paprika, gypsies and Count Dracula unknowingly surrendered itself to the throes of Siege and Genocide. Technically neutral until March, 1944, Hungary tried to sit the Hitlerian misadventure out, but failed. Adolescent Laszlo, not much for reading the papers, copped an instant newsflash when a couple SS guys swung by his high school and suggested he take this gig as a draftsman for the Gestapo.
Black shirts and steel more convincing than a Jewish mother’s concern, Spitz took the job.
“Rumors• of ghetto and Zyklon-B notwithstanding, all trepidation dissipated with a teenager’s thrill of being given an office and secretary. Mounting the preserved heads of lions, tigers and bears stolen from a taxidermist’s abandoned workshop was characteristic, even then, of Pop’s rather sardonic sense of humor.
The Nazis apparently enjoyed the joke, gradually becoming fond of the weird yid kid: Considered “one of the boys,• official documents were printed making Spitz, Laszlo the equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Secret Police. The laughter continued for a couple months until the newly decorated SD lieutenant was tossed into solitary confinement, genuine Nazis not appreciating card games played on duty ...
The Kid would experience much his sixteenth year: A tier of bicycles, sole remains of an orphanage full of children machine gunned against a brick wall; a Wermacht soldier, crushed beneath a T-56 tank; female Russian infantry, breaking into a boutique and drinking the bottles of perfume for the alcohol; the sinistral smile of Adolf Eichmann, gazing curiously at those stuffed animal heads-- But even a dull day in a peaceful life is replete with ten thousand notable events. What young Laszlo remembers more than anything from his brush with death and history is meeting his First American.
Budapest duly converted into an Axis manufacturing center, American Liberators flown from Italy bombed the city regularly. One afternoon Laszlo left his desk to watch the rooftop show: Anti-aircraft tracers and spotlights criss-crossed the darkening skies as flames erupted from a direct hit, four parachutes descending to the Danube as the bomber spiraled to destruction.
An hour later a red head, 19, perhaps 20, was escorted down the hall. The yank from Oklahoma or Ohio was unlucky: Apprehended by Gestapo rather than regular army, the Geneva Convention hardly applying to a regime that would gas and burn over 500,000 Hungarian Jews, homosexuals and communists in Auschwitz that summer, the screams of that first American, summarily tortured to death, echoed for hours...
Spitz was luckier, eventually making it to the States. Sure, History’s bunk and most families dysfunctional, but we are all an exotic mixture of where we come from, where we choose to go. America has her own problems: Let’s rejoice, though, in our relative freedoms, so often taken for granted.

part two

by Tina L. Jens

Note: This is the first in a 7-part series excerpted from the travel journals of Tina Jens, from her most recent visit to New Orleans. Tina is the author of more than 20 published short stories in the fantasy, horror and thriller genres. Her most recent work can be found in: MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY and PHANTOMS OF THE NIGHT, both from DAW Books.
MUFFULETTAS, THE SILVER MINES, AND A MEAL OF A LIFETIME
Monday morning started about noonish, when I went down to the courtyard to do a bit of journal writing while Barry slept. The courtyard is a pretty affair with black wrought iron tables, palm trees, lots of flowers, a little fountain and a swimming pool. I didn’t write long. Barry woke up hungry! Our stomachs nudged us down to the Central Grocery, just across the way from Cafe Du Monde and the French Market.
This is a wonderful old world Italian deli, with all sorts of exotic delicacies on the shelves, a well stocked wine wrack in back, and a huge glass jar (it has to be at least 4 feet tall) that sits on the deli counter and is filled with an elaborate geometric design created out of olives, pimentos, artichokes and such stuff.
We split a muffuletta: a huge sandwich made out of a loaf of pocket bread, stuffed with several types of Italian meats and cheeses, bathed in olive oil and lavishly coated with olive salad (black and green olives, pimentos, peppers, carrots and who knows what else). Baby, they are delicious!
We sat at the lunch counters in the back of the store. As we ate, we tried to figure out what some of the more intriguing items were on the shelves, and listened to two Italian couple talk about the good old days, when food was FOOD, and chicken came from your back yard. But I’ve helped skin a chicken -- ONCE. It’s no fun, and the muffuletta I was eating tasted real to me.
After lunch Barry and I went our separate ways, him to record-shop, me to the French Market to dig in the silver mines. My, did I hit a rich vein! The prices on the sterling silver jewelry there are amazing. Gorgeous earrings for 6, 8, 10 and 12 dollars. I bought several items for myself, and for birthday and assorted holiday gifts throughout the year. My favorite find was a beautiful sun pendant, more than 3 inches in diameter, with matching earrings. I also bought an amethyst (my birthstone) pendant and matching earrings.
I also bought some unusual gifts: Voodoo dolls, and a couple of carved African spirit head pens. It’s amazing how many of these tables and their owners remain the same year after year. I recognized many of the vendors and knew exactly where to go in the Market to get what I wanted.
After my feet wore out, I stopped at Cafe Du Monde for some cafe au lait, found a seat in the sun, and closed my eyes and listened to the sidewalk band for an hour. The cafe staff isn’t used to such loitering. They’re fast, friendly and efficient, so turn-around time on a table is usually 10-15 minutes. (I mean, how long can you take to eat a couple of powdered sugar puffs and sip a cup of coffee?) But N’awlins is indulgent of writers, artists, gypsies and musicians. The waiters saw my journal and left me alone.
I met Barry back at the hotel. He’d had shopping success too, at Tower Records, scoring 3 CD’s on sale: Bob Dylan’s DESIRE, Leonard Cohen’s SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE and Oasis’ WHAT’S THE STORY MORNING GLORY? They’re not traditional N’awlins souveniers, but they made him happy.
We napped then dressed for dinner at Antoine’s. Barry wore his black, double-breasted Armani. (The man looks so =fine= in a suit!) I wore an egg plant silk slip dress with a multicolored scarf draped around my neck and down my back. Then we strolled over to Antoine’s. Having forgotten to call for reservations, there was no room for us in the main dining room, which sparkled so bright it made your eyes hurt, with all that crystal and gold.
We were quite happily seated in the larger, back dining room, which was more comfortable and a bit more subdued. The place was still doing an active dinner business at quarter to nine when we arrived.
Antoine’s, according to the guidebooks, is the oldes,t single-family, continually operated restaurant in the country. They’re at 150 years and counting. They very proudly tell you that Antoine’s is the birthplace of the Oyster Rockefeller.
Our waiter’s name was Gary McGrath, who’s been a waiter there for eight years, a neophyte by Antoine’s standards. The man he trained under is 73 years old and still works there, after 54 years. We immediately took N’awlins author and resident George Alec Effinger’s advice and put ourselves in Gary’s capable hands.
We started with the Pommes de terre souffles, “The classical Antoine’s dish of double fired potato puffs• (according to the menu), and strongly recommended by GAE. Gary brought those to us, even before our drinks, so we “had something to nibble on as we contemplated the menu.• They’re yummy little rectangle puffs of air with a crunchy potato crust, and served in an elaborate multi-storied container with a cork block on the bottom, a middle layer of undetermined material, and a doily-lined conical basket at the top.
Barry said, “They’d be terrific with a little salt and ketchup!• Bad Barry! Bad!
Gary tactfully disappeared as we surveyed the extensive, expensive, wine-book. I looked over the Table of Contents, (!) (This thing was longer than some stories I’ve sold.) and turned to the Merlot/Pinot Noir double spread, then handed the list to Barry. He looked at it and asked if I recognized any of them. Since I don’t usually hang out in the $28-$54 per bottle wine neighborhood, I said no. But, I suggested, it was unlikely that we could order a bad bottle of wine off that list. Barry agreed and chose a ‘92 from Napa Valley, which was in the cheaper neighborhood of Antoine’s wine list. It was lovely.
We had great fun surveying the 7-page menu in French, and English, thank goodness, but immediately asked Gary for recommendations when it came time to order. We shared an appetizer of Chair de crabes St. Pierre: “Lump crab meat in a tomato sauce seasoned with garlic, baked in a casserole, crowned with a special cheese and french bread crumb gratinee - our creation.• It was Rich! Exquisite! And Divine!
For entrees we each took one of Gary’s half a dozen recommendations. Barry: a 9 oz filet. Antoine’s offered half a dozen sauces, which they sell a la carte! Barry chose the Marchand devin: “The wine merchant’s favorite sauce of onions, mushrooms, and red wine.• I went with the Filet de truite Pontchartrain - “Broiled trout with (smothered!) lump crab meat sauteed in butter.•
I originally ordered the potatoes au gratin as a vegetable side dish, but Gary’s very straight face and odd way of saying “Yes, of course• made me ask if he recommended them. “No.• Pause. Again, the straight face.
“What do you recommend?•
Immediately, the friendly, helpful manner returned. “The steamed broccoli with hollandaise sauce, the steamed asparagus with a butter sauce, or the steamed cauliflower in a butter sauce are all excellent.•
Now, you have to understand, I =don’t like= broccoli, asparagus or cauliflower. But I trusted our waiter completely, =and= I know that a good hollandaise sauce can be a very fine thing. So, we both went with the broccoli. (Not a difficult choice for Barry -- he loves the funky green stuff.) And I actually ate some of the broccoli and all of the sauce.
We sipped our wine, we marvelled as the waiters replace our water glasses rather than refilling them when we’d sipped a third or so of the contents, we admired the autographed publicity photos of the stars, writers and politicians that lined the walls, I fantasized that one day =I’d= be famous enough that they’d put my photo up, and we could afford to eat here regularly...
They refilled our wine glasses and the food came. Oh folks! It was exquisite! The hollandaise was so creamy and lemony. I dipped my crab smothered trout in that sauce and thought I’d died and gone to Heaven!
Gary stopped by to check on us again, and I asked him to recommend his favorite desserts so we could mull and drool over the options. Cherries jubilee, chocolate mousse or the Crepes Suzette. No I didn’t order the chocolate mousse! I was lusting after the Crepes Suzette: “Thin French pancakes rolled with an orange and butter creme filling and flamed with orange liqueur and brandy.• Cafe au laits to accompany, please.
The drinks came first -- the coffee and steamed milk borne in separate silver kettles held by long pole handles and poured so one stream intermingled with another. Oh, my... The piece de resistance -- the Crepes Suzette -- delicate little wraps floating in a pool of liquid bits of orange peel floating by. Then Gary set it aflame. A blue glow, warm, soothing, mystic, suffused the platter, hopped onto the ladle and flowed down the stream to wash over the crepes. And when he moved each to its own serving plate, the warm blue flame faithfully followed. One errant bit of brandy hopped on to the table cloth and burned quietly without leaving a char mark on the spotless white linen. As the flame died down, Gary slipped away to grant us some privacy for a mystical moment. The butter creme melted in your mouth and the orange liqueur and warm brandy tingled all the way to your toes.
As we basked in the aftermath and sipped our cafe au lait, we gently debated the merits of Antoine’s vs K-Paul’s (Paul Prudhommes restaurant, just a few blocks away). We agreed that K-Paul’s gets a point or two more on the entree scale (we’re quibbling here, folks) but for appetizers and dessert, and overall dining experience, Antoine’s wins, with flying colors.
K-Paul’s is a laid back, low maintenance kind of place with fabulous food. But there is something wonderfully fulfilling about having a bevy of waiters anticipating your every need.
Next: THE DUTCH ROOSTER STRUTS HIS STUFF
On Tuesday, we started things off with lunch at The Gumbo Shop. This restaurant has easily become one of our favorite, moderately-priced places. Lunch included Chicken and Andouille Gumbo, Red Beans and Rice, Jambalaya and Shrimp Creole.
>From there we had planned to go somewhere for some reading and journal writing, but I had forgotten the Antoine’s menu, which I needed for the next entry, back at the hotel. So, we headed back to retrieve that, thinking perhaps we’d wind up at the Jax Brewery and restaurant and sit out on their balcony for awhile. But, we made the mistake of strolling down Bourbon Street. The matinees had begun.
We were doing fine until we walked by the R&B club, where we were lured to one of the French doorways by a Fats Domino song. The waitress tried to call us in to sit at a table and have a drink. We shook our heads “no,• we were fine where we were.
But what could we do when the guitarist came right out on the sidewalk, put my hand on his arm and continued to play the song as he escorted us in? Well, we could do nothing but laugh and dance on in with him.
There was only two other people in there - a couple from Gary, Indiana (our neighbor just over the Illinois border). But that wouldn’t last long. Not with the Dutch Rooster around.
I love the old Blues nicknames: Gatemouth Brown, Cleanhead Vinson, Blind Lemon Jefferson. They’re colorful and they tell you something about the musician’s personality. The Dutch Rooster was well named. He’s a tall, black man, elegant and cocky, probably around 65 years old. He was dressed impeccably in a navy pinstripe suit with a white dress shirt, a matching black, white and silver tie and pocket handkerchief, snake skin boots and an Admiral’s hat, complete with gold braid. He played a wide-bodied white guitar, with a cordless amp and headphone mic worn over his hat, that let him roam freely as he played.
Up on the little box stage were his backup band: a rhythm guitar, bass, drums and wailing sax. They were laying down a solid rhythm and blues sound.
The club soon filled up as he escorted first one couple, then another in off the street. Then he’d stroll from table to table flirting with the women as he played, and asking where everyone was from, so he could play an appropriate song for them. For us Chicagoans, he played B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone.•
The Blues can get very earthy with lots of double entendres and frank talk about sex. The Dutch Rooster came from this bawdy tradition. Without ever letting his suave manner slip, he told a string of jokes that made the whole room blush. But he was always very careful to aim his sexual banter at folks who were comfortable with it. A 30-something Florida woman, and the two guys she was with, were frequent foils. As he escorted them in, he said to her, “Feel my guitar -- it’s =hard= baby!• And as she stroked the guitar in a very sensual manner, he added, “And it’s WHITE!• And as he pulled out her chair so she could sit down he said, “You’re so fine, baby, I’d kiss your daddy’s *ss!•
The drummer gave him a rim shot. The bass player just rolled his eyes. Then the Dutch Rooster strolled around the room again, and danced with all the women, all the while playing some blistering Blues riffs.
He did a Stevie Ray Vaughn song for the couple from Texas, and Barry said, “You know that’s a real tribute when an old Blues guy plays a white kid’s song.•
And he made it sing.
The highlight of the set was when a mule-drawn, open buggy stopped in front of the club so the passengers could hear a little music. Without missing a note, the Dutch Rooster strolled out here, climbed into the cart, sat down, and finished playing “Down Home Blues.• The man gave him a tip, Dutch climbed out and the cart rolled away.
The group to the right of us had two women and one man. The group to the left of us had two men and one woman. As Dutch strolled by us he points to the group on the right and says, “When a man has two women... that man is getting laid.•
Then he points to the group to the left of us and says, “When a woman has two men... that woman’s getting laid.•
Then he points to me, “And this one -- she’s down here with her best friend’s man!•
As the set ended he said, “You all on Bourbon Street are just trying to get laid -- me and the band, we’re just tryin’ to get paid.• And he rattled the tip jar.

you’d think that the people that are most like you
are perfect for you
but if you find someone like that
and you’re dating someone like that
you’ll see
that they now have the same faults as you do
except their faults seem so much worse
and you want to kill them for the faults you have
and you want to crack their head open
and see their brains flowing out in the street

yeah, i know your mood swings, your hatred
your love of life and truth and fairness and art
and your anger
are all as strong as mine
but i’m still going to be hard on you
i’m still going to be hard on you
for being me
before i learned better

Tori L. Wilfred
tori@neo.lrun.com

Nature clothes herself in cold cotton
Her garments a shimmery glory
of awakening origin ready to begin.
A passionate innocence
before her yearly birth-
Silence, the melody of her dance,
plays through her limbs
welcoming,
embracing
her young
ready to
arrive.

Paul Weinman

Passing out tangerines to the homeless
does not make up for those fingers
you’ve been leaving in deskdrawers
coatroom pockets and at ATMs.
It’s almost schizoid behavior, you know.
Yes, and now you snicker ...
rip up print-outs of corporate fax #s
circulate bogus E-mail addresses.
Does this replace those years
those aggravating periods of scripturing?
Your pasting of proverbs on infants foreheads?
Or those dayglow quotes from John, Mark, etc.
you’d glue to hubcaps, prophelactic boxes?
Whose fingers are they?
For heaven’s sake!
What group of peopel is now going
fumbling about unable to hold things
can’t even stroke each other lovingly
anymore.

Cheryl Townsend
Impetus@aol.com

distance and void
reticence and how
to forget instincts I can
remember the first time
she held me in a hug
because it hasn’t happened
yet

Christopher Stolle

filling out the form
a mysterious ward
at the far reaches of the hospital
a naive scream
a joyous laugh
how could I turn away
I was a father
proud, but scared
only of forgetting to buy him
his first baseball glove

Mark Sonnenfeld

No?
A future is what I’m doing afterwork.
My damn business. It’s what happens.
It’s changing me a lot of air
around all and every station-house looks technically cold
I stipulate: I am in school: Something of 8 vicious angles
in 3 hours sets of prints
nestled in the cathedral front steps and corners
into the dirt empty extra-strength lost-little writing
I keeps the finger-print a little curious
admittedly until it hurts my shiny
thinking in space.

Ernest Slyman
ERSlyman@MSN.com

When I hear the tremulous cries
Of insects at dawn,
I think at last I understand
The world’s yearning for power and money,
Which comes to burst in the skulls of men
Like insects softly calling to one another,
Begging for love, and out of such loneliness
Comes envy, which makes them dance
And beat their wings in the sun’s bright tomorrow,
Deadly afraid some bit of summer shall fall and pounce,
And steal the grass from out of their mouths.

I.B. Rad
I B Radeck@aol.com

GI, to be promoted through the ranks
scrupulously follow my advice:
“Men, confine your cock
to loose khakis;
or, better yet,
whack it off.
Women, don that chastity belt;
remember, keep it locked!
Like its’ nuclear gizmos,
America’s nuclear soldiers
must have half lives!•

* Discharged/denied promotion for adultery? Come on now! Really!

I

now that we have the information superhighway
we can throw out into the open
our screams
our cries for help
so much faster than we could before

our pleas become computer blips
tiny bits of energy
travelling through razor thin wires
travelling through space

to be left for someone to decipher
when they find the time

II

got into work the other day
and got my messages out of voice mail:
mike left me his pager number
and told me to contact him with some information
tom told me to call him at the office
between ten thirty and noon
jason told me to check my email
because he sent me a message i had to read

so i first returned tom’s phone call
but he wasn’t in, so i left a message with a coworker
and then i dialed the number for mike’s pager
listened to a beep, then dialed in my own phone number
then i got online, checked my email
read a note from ben, emptied out the junk mail

realizing i didn’t actually get a hold of anybody
i tried to call my friend sheri
but i got her answering machine
so i said,
“hi - it’s me, janet -
haven’t talked to you in a while - “
at which point i realized
there was nothing left to say -
“so,
give me a call, we should really
get together and talk•

III

sara and i were late for carol’s wedding rehearsal
which was a bad thing, because we were both
standing up in the wedding
and we were stuck in traffic, and i asked,
“sara, you have a cel phone, don’t you?•
and she said “yes•
and i asked, “well, do you know carol’s
cel phone number, cause if you do, we can
call her and tell her we’ll be late -•
and she said, “no - do you know it?•
and i said “no•

IV

I was out at a bar with Dave, and I was explaining to him
why I hadn’t talked to my friend Aaron in a while:
“You see, we usually email each other,
and when we do, we just hit ‘reply.’
when you get an email from someone,
instead of having to start a new letter
and type in their email address, you can
just hit the ‘reply’ button on the email message,
and it will make a letter addressed
to the person who wrote you the letter originally.
so he sent me a letter once, and
it had a question at the end,
so i hit ‘reply’ and sent a response,
with another question at the end of my letter.
so we kept having to answer questions for each other,
and we just kept replying to each other,
sending a letter with the same title back and
forth to each other without ever having to
type in the other’s address. well, once i got an email
from him and there was no question at the end,
and so i didn’t have to send him a response.
so i didn’t. and we never thought
to start a new email to one another.
so we just lost touch.•

and then it occurred to me, how difficult it had become
to type an extra line of text, to type in
his email address, because that’s why
i lost touch with him

and then it occurred to me, no matter how many different
forms of communication we have,
we’ll still find a way
to lose touch with each other

V

now that we have the information superhighway
we can throw out into the open
our screams
our cries for help
so much faster than we could before

but what if we don’t want to communicate
or forget how
too busy leaving messages, voice mails,
emails, pager numbers
forgetting to call back

what if we forget
how to communicate

VI

i wanted to purchase tickets for a concert
but i was shopping with my sister
and wasn’t near a ticket outlet
but my sister said, “i have a portable phone,
you can call them if you’d like•
so she gave me the phone, and i looked
at all these extra buttons, and she said,
“just press the ‘power’ button, but hold it down
for at least four seconds, until the panel lights up,
then dial the number, but use the area code, because
this phone is a 630 area code, then press ‘send’.
when you’re done with the call, just press ‘end’, and
make sure the light turns off.•

so i turned it on, dialed the number,
pressed ‘send’, pressed my head
against the tiny phone

and the line was busy
and i couldn’t get through

VII

i checked my email address book recently,
and the people i email the most
are the people that live in the same city
as me, all of whom i know the phone
numbers of, all of whom are only a local call away.
in fact, one of my friends lives a block-
and-a-half away from me,
on the same street as me, but
i still email her as much as i call her,
even though i could just walk over to her house
and have an actual conversation with her.

VIII

i was suntanning outside on my patio
with a friend
on saturday,
and we decided we wanted to order a pizza.
we brought a cordless phone
outside with us
so we would know if the phone in the house rang,
so i picked it up
and dialed.

and the phone needed to be recharged,
the batteries were wearing down, because
there was so much static
that i was worried the pizza man
wouldn’t even be able to
hear my voice.

while waiting for the pizza man
to pick up the phone, i said,
mocking static on the line,
“hi, i’m calling from the
space shuttle,
i’d like to order a pizza
for delivery.
call mission control at houston
for a credit card number.•

IX

i got a program for my computer

it’s a phone book program,
and it sorts people by name or company,
lists their phone number,
and has a complete file for them
where you can store their birthday,
their address, past addresses and phone numbers,
faxes, email addresses, there’s room for
any information you want to store about them

and i love this program, i’ve created a file
with all the phone numbers i’ve ever needed,
i always add information to this file,
i keep a copy of it on my computer at home,
on my computer at work, on my laptop,
even on a floppy disk, in case there’s a fire at
work and my hard drive at home crashes

but it always seems
that every time i desperately need
a phone number
i’m nowhere near a computer

any computer

IX

i wanted to get in touch
with an old friend of mine from high school,
vince, and the last i heard was that he went to
marquette university. well, that was five years ago, he
could be anywhere. i talked to a friend or two that
knew him, but they lost touch with him, too.
so i searched on the internet, to see
if his name was on a website or if
he had an email address. he didn’t.
so i figured i probably wouldn’t find him.
and all this time, i knew his parents lived
in the same house they always did, i could just
look up his parent’s phone number in the phone book,
and call them, say i’m an old high school friend
of vince’s, but i never did. and then i realized why.

you see, i could search the internet for hours
and no one would know that i was looking for someone.
but now, with a single phone call, i’d make it known
to his entire family that i wanted to see him enough to call,
after all these years. and i didn’t want
him to know that. so i never called.

X

now that we have the information superhighway
we can throw out into the open
our screams
our cries for help
so much faster than we could before

but then the question begs itself:
who
is there
to listen

By Peter Scott

Sitting in a room
Controlling a crowd
I am met by a bard
Brown with overripe age
Too warn for white
He has a pronounced presence
To me alone
Prompting accurate conjecture
That I am audience for a story
Not one of mighty tales
More like a tragedy
A man’s fate
Living life in the doldrums of self-affliction
Deprecation
This poor chap
Had it all:
Infinite resources
Little responsibility
A keen sense of the aesthetic
Fluid motion and acute cognition
With all the time in the world
To exploit his talents
Skim the day away with friends
And dream of even more to want
The poor soul was cursed though
Or so he thought
Without fail
Unhappiness followed joy on a taut leash
Pain with the last laugh
Embittering him to the world
Sometimes cursing all around him
But mostly crying inside
People were harbingers to such suffering
In their presence
In their absence
What made him want to go on?
He had no faith in religion
No vendetta to strive for
The melancholy fool just stayed there
Remained on earth
For a pipe dream
One day it would get better
Or he would find the strength to carry his claim
Of lusted death

At a pause in the recount of this tale
I solemnly inquired
What had befallen the lad
All torn inside
With nowhere to go?
There must be more
I unequivocally knew
For this old bard
Drunken with the realities of life
Played me with a coy smile
One of emphatic triumph
For his just protagonist
“A girl•
Not just any lass
The young man had met a girl
With multitudes in common
They shared speech
They shared desire
Both had experienced the fight
And knew what was inside
Things that went beyond reasonable similarity
Were deftly handled
In the loving hands of empathy
So borne of a chance meeting
The two young ones set out on a friendship
Then a romance
Coasting the other through
Their old wrinkles in reality
To a domain called happiness

Although I would like to say they lived together
Forever anon
The reality is that I don’t know
And might never will
For the old storyteller was gone
And I was left alone once again
To entertain my friends
In a room suddenly too small for dreams.

Jon Powell

Near an overpass, one
of those ugly, monochromatic gray
concrete structures that pass
(hence their name)
over the needless array
of oncoming Interstate Highways
in the little berg where I work,
one of those little suburban bedroom
community types Camille Paglia deconstructed
on G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show as
shopping mall culture: all churches,
low cost strip malls, bars, new & used car lots,
all leche leagues, little leagues,
plus the major malls & the McMarts
(killing off the small family owned
drug, hardware & shoe stores),
& happy fathers mowing their
lawns on the weekends dressed
in kahki or plaid shorts, polo
shirts, and white, painfully white,
knee socks with blue stripes
if they are in petrochemicals,
or red if they are in computers,
telecommunications, or the law,
a pond is being filled in.
The pond being filled in, one truck load
of crap soil, broken up concrete &
Isis only knows what else, at a time, over a period
of years, was originally dug, of course,
to provide dirt mounds for either side
of the overpass; to provide ramps,
as it were, which left: a big hole,
or if you are of a scientific bent,
a retention pond, a holding pond,
but if you are a low life like me
that wads paper money in pants pocket,
you would say barrow pit.
This was decades ago. The hole, an acre or so,
filled, in due course, with water. Ground water.
Rain. It became a pond. I used to
visit the pond. Watch its algae,
planty fronds, frogs, toads, creepy
crawlers frolic. In a few short years
it went from big-hole-of-water
to watery ecosystem. I.E., pond.
& then some enterprising party
bought the pond for a song. To him,
& I’m sure it was a him,
it was just a hole-of-water.
So, over the last ten years, he has been,
truck load by truck load,
filling in the pond. Now just think
about it. You are a water-critter
safe, you suppose, in your pond
happily breeding little clones
of yourself fully expecting your
progeny to carry on the family way,
munching on pond goop as you always had, your parental
units had, & so on, & wham (!), one day
you notice your home is measurably
becoming smaller. You don’t understand
that a filled-in-pond is worth
much more than a hole-of-water. & really,
you don’t give a damn if it is. You
just want things left alone. The way
they were. Unmolested. You can protest,
write letters, vote to out the encumbants,
but it wouldn’t do any good. You are,
afterall, a disenfranchised bug.
You can only sit (swim, whatever)
in horror as powers greater than you,
richer than you, more—even—advanced
than you, &, dare it to be mentioned, even
prettier than you, use the connections,
the pay-backs, the Swiss bank accounts
so necessary in this modern, global-banking,
internetted, increasingly monomedia-istic, anti-union,
anti-worker, anti-democratic, anti-environmental,
anti-feminist, anti-education, slave-labor-using
neo-facist politically corrected world. Oh my,
did I get my tenses, adverbs, adjectives
& transitives screwed up again?

jason pettus

I will not use your damn PC.
I will not use it, Jason I be.

I will not use it on my desk,
I will not use it on a test.
I will not use it with my toes,
I will not use it with Windows.

I will not use your damn PC,
I will not use it, Jason I be.

I will not give Bill Gates my time,
I won’t let him commit that crime.
And yes, Netscape may sometimes fail,
but I WILL NOT use his MS Mail!

I will not use his damn PC,
I will not use it, Jason I be.

And don’t tell ME the Mac is dead,
‘cause frankly, that makes me see red.
Just who spoons out this shit you’re fed?
Oh, Bill Gates, I think I said,
who whored himself and got in bed
with IBM, so full of dread,
well Mac still leads, as Mac has led,
so GET IT THROUGH YOUR FUCKING HEAD!
And burn it on your own CD,
I will not use your d iamn PC!

And I know it’s Windows down at work...
but whaddya expect from those lousy jerks?
Who in their quest to save a cent
invented middle management?
Heads up their asses, worried about taxes,
they can’t even send their own damn faxes.
That’s how Dilbert came to be!
And they’re going to choose a computer for me?

I will not use their damn PC,
I will not use it, Jason I be.

“Oh, I’ve got the solution!• you proudly say,
“Make all your troubles go away!
No more bullshit, no c: drive,
two words -- Windows 95.•

AUGH!
The very thought just gives me hives!

I will not use your damn PC,
I will not use it, Jason I be.

I will not use it in my house,
I won’t use that two-button mouse,
and if you think my poem crass,
well guess what, folks... you can KISS MY ASS!
For I will not use your damn PC,
I will not use it, Jason... I... be!

I saw a woman in the projects, by the apartments you were looking at. I was driving toward the lake, stuck at the intersection in traffic, and she walked across the street, in front of my car. She was wearing a black jacket, falling off of one shoulder. She was wearing a black and white striped shirt. She was carrying a clear plastic cup in her left hand, like the kind you get in a bar. It was filled a quarter of the way with beer. And she walked across the street, holding her beer at the end of her straight left arm, and the sleeve of her jacket almost covered her hand. And her eyes darted back and forth, as if she knew she wasn’t supposed to have open alcohol in public but she’d do it anyway, not caring for the law, but still being cautious. And I thought: I’ve done that before. We both have things we’re running from. What makes her, in the projects, living off the government, any different from me, in the ugly new houses, living off someone else’s ideals.

i have a secret
i have an awful secret
and i can’t tell anyone

you see, my life
would fall apart
if anyone knew

everyone thinks
i’m some one different
but here is me

ecstacy

He threw her up against the wall. Her mind was spinning; after all this time she never thought she’d have her arms around him again, save the embrace when they happened to be in the same city on business and were saying their cordial good-byes at the airport. He kissed her. She instinctively pulled at his shirt; two buttons bounced repeatedly on the hardwood floor and spun to a silent halt. He pulled her hair, pulling her head back. Her mouth opened naturally, slightly. She wrapped her arms around him, depending on his strength to keep her standing. He held her tighter, kissed her, knowing she needed this. Her emotions swelled, grew stronger, pulsed, until she couldn’t hold herself up any longer. She knew, after all these years, that he was the only one she could love wholly, the only one she loved everything about, from the slope of his nose to the way he never knew current events to the way he worked too hard to the way he loved too much. She knew this was everything. She knew this was life. She fell into his arms.

you think i’m going to come
running back to you again, do you,
you think i need you so desperately
that all you have to say is that
you do care about me
and that you don’t want me to
leave your life and that you
don’t want this to be goodbye,
well, you told me good-bye once
before and i took you back
but now you’ve done it again
and you think it’s all so easy
and you think it’s all roses and
candy and i’m not going back to you
and what you did isn’t good for me
and i know i sound like a psychai-
trist now but you have some
issues you need to deal with
and i can’t be your counselor;
i need someone to counsel me
and if you need help you can’t
help me, and i’ve figured that
much out: you can’t help me

as reported in the New York Times:

one new television show in Japan
boasts young women in bikinis
who attempt to smash aluminum cans
in between their breasts

another television show in Japan
brings a young boy on stage
to tell him his mother
has been shot and killed
to see how long it takes him
to cry

I wonder what they’d think
of Rosanne
and Married With Children

my mother told me
about one of my father’s clients
ed kazinski
he had a stutter
and you couldn’t mistake his voice

well he called the house one night
and my father was out with the boys
and so my mother decided to play a trick

she told ed “my husband is out
with ed kazinski
and he won’t be home for a while•

and ed stuttered, tried to make an excuse
cover up for my father
and said, “uh, well, tell him
joe putz-a-vucki called•
and he quickly hung up
the telephone
thought my mother didn’t know his voice

later he told my father
he covered up for him
and my father said, my wife knows

your stuttering voice, silly
everybody can recognize your voice
she was just playing a joke

and by the way
who is joe putz-a-vucki

ed told my father
that putz-a-vucki was polish
for “under the sidewalk•
and it was just
what came out
of his mouth
when he didn’t have time
to think

D. Michael McNamara

I’ve seen you shake your guilt
like last month’s skin,
banging that tambourine
to the rhythm you dance to
inbetween smiles off-set
by calculated sickle glances
telling me it’s nothing. Really.

pete lee

not 200 feet over
our desert town
a good 20 miles
from their flyway
a V of Canada geese
honks and veers
this way and that

I’m pulling for them
but it doesn’t matter
they become a broken
necklace of black dots
against the sun
rising out of Death
Valley... just as a

fellow desert rat
rattles past in
a decrepit Pontiac
with a message etched
in the dust coating
the dinged-up trunk lid:
honk if you’re lost

pete lee

You are a range of mountains.
I am at your feet, looking up,
my back to a hundred miles of desert.
Beyond you may be a hundred more, or a thousand.
I will take my sweet time ascending you.
Near your summit I will turn
and look, once, at where I have been.
Then I will find shelter in your near face,
blind myself, and chop off my feet.

pete lee

the good news about hell:
wet spots don’t last
nobody singles you out for punishment
junk mail arrives in ashes

the bad news about hell:
too many religious fanatics
and militant non-smokers

pete lee

Running my hands through my hair,
one hand slips and enters my thoughts.

My thoughts feel like fish guts. Steam
rises from them as in a freeze --

but aren’t fish cold-blooded? I pull
an answer up from the muck: so

there’s no steam rising like an answer
from my fish-gut thoughts. Just a man

running a hand through his head,
dragging a skeleton comb.

pete lee

imagining the worst
yields to pleasant surprise
if only because over
time the worst yields
to the unimaginable

pete lee

those in the basement
of heaven would rest
in somewhat more peace

but for the half-hearted
screams that drift up
from the penthouse of hell

pete lee

Counter;
pointer;
girl with orchid in her hair;
eager dog at the end of the arm’s leash;
air hatchet;
what hand tools would be nothing without;
fortune teller;
clapper;
drive-by slapper;
change mixer;
born manipulator;
opposed to your own thumb;
knife wielder;
bra strap fumbler;
grasper at straws;
a gripping appendage;
a real page-turner;
what the foot aspires to;
the reason cows don’t rule the world.

pete lee

othe wind skimming
off the edges
of the hawk’s wing
makes a dull hum -

as if the hawk
were a sailor
alone at sea -

the hawk dives and
the hum sharpens
to a high scream -

then the heavy
beating of wings
as the hawk drags
the rabbit off -

and the hawk hears
beating of wings
the rabbit’s heart
the mind’s low hum.

pete lee

crouches there
on her head
like some half
tamed jungle
animal loyal
only to her
snarling and
clinging who
can blame it
she affects me
that way too

Tina L. Jens
tina_jen@para-net.com

You’re just a bad dream.
When I turn on the light, you’ll be gone.
I’ll check the closet for monsters with your face.
I’ll peak under the bed looking for your decapitated, talking head.

But you’re just a figment of my nightmares.
Just one more in a long line of bad dreams.
I’ll banish you with a night light.
And if I have to, I’ll stay up all night
And nap tomorrow afternoon.

(written with D.J.)

I can feel it gliding down my throat with a huge push of water
like your body, sliding, up against my skin, warm and wet,
wet like the feeling and taste of your tongue intertwined with mine.
I feel it swirling down my throat, intoxicating me, head spinning
almost nauseated by the mere thought of the taste rather than
the actual sensation and I swallow the poison; let it cover me
from the inside out. There is no pain, just a feeling of regret,
what have I now lost with this one trigger I pulled? My life flashes,
and what I expect to be a monument of achievements is an abyss.
I realize there’s nothing left to fear, because there’s nothing to remember.

A friend of mine had a roommate named Gary
and Gary was a man
who was always down on his luck

So on one particular occasion,
after Gary had a dating dry spell,
my friend decided to set Gary up
on a blind date.

Now, he said, this girl
is beautiful, she’s funny,
you’ll think she’s great. trust me.
Pick her up Friday night.

And Friday came, and Gary,
feeling more and more apprehensive,
said, but I’m not feeling well. I’ve
been sick all week.

And my friend said, now I don’t want to hear
any excuses. You’re going.

So Gary got ready for his blind date
and drove over to the girl’s house.
She lived with her parents,
so when Gary rang the door bell
the girl’s mother answered.

“Oh, you must be Gary, please,
come in,• she said.

Once Gary got into the house,
the mother said,
my daughter’s still getting ready.
Would you like to wait?

and Gary, still not feeling well,
asked where the washroom was.
She directed him to the newly remodeled basement.

Gary walked into the brand-new bathroom.
New fixtures. Thick, white,
wall-to-wall carpeting.

Gary sat down on this new ivory throne,
still sick. But when he looked over
there was no toilet paper.
He couldn’t just stand up, he thought,
this isn’t just a regular trip to the bathroom,
I need something
to clean myself off with.
He couldn’t use a towel.
So he took off his pants
and used his underwear.

But he couldn’t leave the underwear
in the small, open trash can in the corner
of this newly-remodeled
bathroom, he thought.
So he
dropped them
in the toilet

and flushed.

Which caused the toilet to overflow,
causing the newly-remodeled bathroom
to look
less than new.

So here was Gary’s dilemma:
he left his underwear in the toilet
and defiled this family’s brand-new bathroom
all without even getting the chance
to introduce himself
to his date.

What are his options, what are his options.

So he did the only thing he thought
he could do in this situation:
he climbed out the small
bathroom window
and
drove
home.

When he arrived at his apartment
so early from his date,
his roommate had to ask.

And after that, he never
set Gary up
on a blind date
again.