Trust in Church Had Plummeted

    “Most people no longer trust [the Catholic] Church,” says a headline in the Irish Times. The report places the Catholic Church in the same category as other institutions in which a majority of the Irish have lost confidence–the government and the banks. In a country where loyalty to the church has been legendary, over half those interviewed in a recent poll said either that they did not trust the church “at all” (32%) or that they did “not really” trust the church (21%). Scandals that have recently rocked the church are blamed for the fact that public trust in it has “plummeted.”

My Conversations with Death:
an Object of Terror and Curiosity

I speak to You each night. Don’t know your face, but I sense
your presence. My body screams with pain. I’m that
horrific creature in Munch’s The Scream. Yes,
that dark ghost of a ghost screaming into
the whirling, swirling
Void.

Most of the time, I can tolerate this agony. When I can’t,
I take one painkiller late at night. Sometimes, I need
the pill only once a month. Yet there are times,
I need it every night. My doctor says I’ve
got episodes of intolerable pain.
I suppose so.

And my heart is weak too. Periodically, my high blood
pressure sails out of control, docking in a bay
of human debris, a wet wasteland of
death and decay.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I desperately crave life,
the rhythmic breaths of hope and creation,
holy inhalations and exhalations,
the metaphysical mysteries
of Being and
Existence.

In my darkest moments, I still cling to Eros,
my life force. I’m not ready to say
goodbye. Don’t wish to leave
this strange universe,
not now, perhaps,
never.

Of course, I know I can’t stay here forever.
It’s just a wish, a fantasy, not reality.
But I’ve got books to write and
patients to save and heal.
I need more time to
complete my
life’s work.
Time!

I must confess that I’m terrified of death.
Occasionally, I’m curious too.
Sometimes, I believe in
G-d and an afterlife.
But I also fear
that death is
the end.
Finis!

This is my ultimate wish. At the end of my
life, whenever that is, and I don’t want
to know the exact date and time,
I want Death to visit and
soothe me; I wish to
leave the earth
courageously,
without fear,
without
regrets.
I wish
to say

goodbye with dignity and inner peace.
I ask Death to visit me several
times before the final moment.
I ask Death to soothe my
soul. I ask that She
come as a little
girl or boy,
frightened
and alone
and

abandoned. She will beg me to hold her.
Like a good father, I will rescue her
from her darkest fears. I will
hold and rock her and
soothe her troubled
soul.

When I have forgotten all my horrific
fears and my only concern is the
welfare of this poor child, I
will let go of life; slowly,
painlessly, I will let go.

She will kiss me on my forehead and
gently hold me too. At peace,
I will travel to another
place. Without fear,
I shall be very
curious and
free.

BIO

    Dr. Mel Waldman is a licensed New York State psychologist and a candidate in Psychoanalysis at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (CMPS). He is also a poet, writer, artist, and singer/songwriter. After 9/11, he wrote 4 songs, including “Our Song,” which addresses the tragedy. His stories have appeared in numerous literary reviews and commercial magazines including HAPPY, SWEET ANNIE PRESS, CHILDREN, CHURCHES AND DADDIES and DOWN IN THE DIRT (SCARS PUBLICATIONS), NEW THOUGHT JOURNAL, THE BROOKLYN LITERARY REVIEW, HARDBOILED, HARDBOILED DETECTIVE, DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, ESPIONAGE, and THE SAINT. He is a past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis and was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature. Periodically, he has given poetry and prose readings and has appeared on national T.V. and cable T.V. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers of America, American Mensa, Ltd., and the American Psychological Association. He is currently working on a mystery novel inspired by Freud’s case studies. Who Killed the Heartbreak Kid?, a mystery novel, was published by iUniverse in February 2006. It can be purchased at www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/, www.bn.com, at /www.amazon.com, and other online bookstores or through local bookstores. Recently, some of his poems have appeared online in THE JERUSALEM POST. Dark Soul of the Millennium, a collection of plays and poetry, was published by World Audience, Inc. in January 2007. It can be purchased at www.worldaudience.org, www.bn.com, at /www.amazon.com, and other online bookstores or through local bookstores. A 7-volume short story collection was published by World Audience, Inc. in June 2007 and can also be purchased online at the above-mentioned sites.

What Aesha said
about Lazarus:

Jesus knew
people had to be part of
the miracle

so he said to some,
you go roll away the stones,
and to others,
you, you be the unwinders,
you unwind the linens

and those you could hear later
talking in the village,

i was there
i unwound his hand
i, i, i, unrolled the stones

and i, i,
i took the cloth
away from his eyes

When I find Jesoo in the gutter,

When I find Jesoo in the gutter,
sucking on his bottle of cheap
Last Supper wine, I ask
the fallen wino what gives?/ he

slurs his words, “The congress wouldn’t
extend my unemployment & my
skirt Magdalene ran off with John Boehner, &
eventhough meth is cheaper, I

went back to my favorite addiction, which
isn’t women but rotgut Last Supper wine, &
now all my children are starving &
the best I can do is beg for wine!𔄤/ he

asks me for some bread for wine, but
I haven’t drunk that poison since it stopped
being 35 cents a pint/ John the Prompter
gurgles by with blood gushing from his

stump, & I think that’s the way to go, but
Jesoo says he can always get another publicist &
sucks down some more mama’s wine/ I
go seek some spiritual solace from

Muhammed, because Jesoo’s getting
too drunken crazy, & Muslims have
been off the juice for centuries ...

!

My nose is running, &

My nose is running, &
I can’t catch it/ I
slip in the mucous & break
my membrane on the

sidewalk/ my bones mix
with the cement, & I’m stuck
in it like a
lost soul/ I

pray to Jesoo to save my
soul & cement our
relationship/ Jesoo
lets me dry into the

street like a sheep who’s
lost his way with the curd &
I’m a plate of cottage
cheese that Jesoo eats

with my nose he catches like
a bad cold/ he blows my nose &
falls in love with the
the old rag, & I’m

homeless like everybody
else in America, but we have to
wait for the return of Reaganomics
before anything can be done

about it, which is to
bury me with the rest of the
nation, & if we don’t
go to war with Iran, my

nose that ran will be
futile, & you’ll bury
my bones in the
snot ...

! (so
let’s burn the
Reichstag ...
!)

Sigh

An exhalation
                                of resignation.

End of the Year - Business Style.

There’s smoke on my plate
of the salmon kind. There’s
wine and whiskey to satisfy
our needs, and make high class
fools of ourselves. There’s

important men with expensive
suits, blowing hot air into a
microphone to inflate our egos.
The year ended to high profits,
it’s our right to act like animals.

Virgins

I know where the dead go, I mean, when they
die. I raise my hand in Miss Hooker’s class
here at Sunday School and she calls on me
to share what I know. If they’re good, I say,
I mean if they’ve been good, they get Heaven,
I mean they get to go there and live with
God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost and
all the people in the Bible, the good
people, I mean, and the disciples, well,
probably not Judas but who am I
to judge, and Mary. And Paul. And others.
That’s a good answer, Miss Hooker says. And
suppose they’ve been bad and sinned and never
asked for forgiveness? I still have my hand

up, I don’t know why, I couldn’t feel my
arm and maybe that’s how an angel feels
so there’s hope for me, too. They go to Hell,
I say, the Bad Place, where they get punished
and I guess it’s too late for them to see
the light, or only the light of flames. There,

I’m a poet and not just a preacher
and I feel proud but pride’s a sin so I
try to be modest and Miss Hooker can
tell that I don’t mean to put on airs and
I hope God can, too, I’m not trying to
fool Him because you can’t, you can only
fool yourself. That’s why it’s called religion,
I guess. Miss Hooker says we never know
when God might call us to Eternity
and what that means is that God will get us

at any time, even when our time’s not
up, if that makes any sense. Hell, I’m just
ten years old and she’s 25, maybe,
and been to college or at least vo-tech,
they’re kind of the same thing, so she should know
her stuff, God trusts her to teach it to us
or at least the deacons do, whoever
they are. Maybe they’re like disciples and

if so then they’re not perfect so how can God
say—I mean Jesus, or maybe They’re both
the same, I still don’t quite get that—Be ye
therefore perfect to a ten-year-old kid,
not that I was around in the old
time but I can read and listen even
better and I’m pretty sure He said that
though not in English of course but then if
God is God He can say whatever He
wants and in any old language at all
though sometimes I wonder which one He speaks
or likes best or if He only uses
telepathy because it saves time or
I guess it would save time, I can always ask

Miss Hooker after class. Last Sunday I
stayed behind to help her stack the hymnals
and was working up the courage to ask
her what a virgin is, I heard the word
from a buddy in regular school and
I know about the Virgin Mary but
she had a baby so how could she be
a virgin, too? It’s got something to do
with girls before they’re women, I guess, and
I’m a boy so maybe it’s none of my
business and I prayed for an answer from
God that night and the next thing I knew it

was Sunday morning and time for our class.
But when I walked Miss Hooker to her car
and said, I’ve got a puzzler for you, she
said, Okay, Gale, how can I help you, my
mouth wouldn’t ask the question though my mind
did but then she couldn’t hear that, if it
was my mind and not my heart or soul if
they’re not all the same, like the Trinity.
Finally I said, Never mind, but I
must’ve looked troubled or my heart was and
showed it through my face and my eyes looking

down at Miss Hooker’s open-toe shoes and
her painted toenails, purple they were or
is it violet or even lavender
so she reached out for me, put a finger
underneath my chin and brought it up and
said, What’s the matter, Gale, tell Miss Hooker,
and all I could say was I sure love you
a lot and I wish you’d marry me, which
isn’t what I wanted to say, or was,
who really knows? If I do I wish I’d
tell me. Then she leaned toward me and I

could see the tops of her chests and that place
where they start to separate and I thought
If men can be virgins, too, I’m not one
now, a virgin I mean, not a man, not
that I’m a man, of course, but I’m on track
to being one unless God snuffs me out,
say on the way home from Sunday School and
maybe pushes me into traffic, I
walk to church and back again, of course, for
seeing something I’m not supposed to see,
like the Ark of the Covenant but in

Miss Hooker. Then she said, I love you, too,
and when you’re a man, if I’m still single
maybe we can go out on a date. Oh,
I said, with my eyes shut, Yes ma’am, thank you.
Then she got in her car and drove away
and I just stood and watched ‘til she was gone
completely. So you’re a virgin if you’re
single, so I’m still one and so is she
but does God have a wife? He’s a virgin,
too, I guess. And what about people who
get divorced, do they get their virgin back?
I’d ask Mother or Father but they’re not
much help—they don’t even know where babies
come from and they had me so no wonder
they tell me to wait until I’m older.
I guess that when I’m dead I’ll know it all,

which seems a lot to ask of me to learn
everything, but then I didn’t make
the world, I just live in it and most of
the time happily, I think. If I go
to Hell I’ll know what’s what and the same for
Heaven and the difference seems to be
you’re forgiven for what you know, I mean
in Heaven, and as for Hell you can’t know
too much. So I’d better be damn careful
from now on, I don’t want to die and die

again, I want to die and get life right
even if I’m an angel and besides,
Miss Hooker will make it to the Good Place
for sure. And then I’ll ask her my question.

Newspapers

I wish newspapers were interesting

the business section
is about the economy
and who understands that?
why should I care about
rich snobby business men
or dirty poor people?

talking about the environment
is dumb.
trees just take up space

world news is stupid.
war breaking out in tora bora
is torally boring!

newspapers should talk more about celebrities
and clothes

you know,
things that matter.

Poem From
The Hartford Epic (Kids)

Still not drunk enough
at 3 a.m. and with
nowhere to play
but a tenement
backyard
where somebody
forgot to pull in
and bed down
sheets
that were now
like shrouds
and became
a game
for you
and your friend
to touch-find
the other
behind
a ghostly wall
with both of you
pretending
to be Death

First to Fight, Die or Buy

A beach mounted machine gun
A flag flat as a floral rag rug
A Marine bending into history
picking it up as an artillery
shell shares flying metal bits
A John Basilone type Marine
will fire on the enemy until
the island swallows his blood
like a home country consumer

The Avant-Garde Swan Song

You take a giant step to avoid the mahogany framed full-length mirror
as the mere thought of viewing your mangled reflection first thing in the morning is far too much to handle
I lay still amongst the tousled sheets
secretly hoping you’ll come back to bed and hold me like you did all through the night
as if I was the only buoy in the middle of the ocean and you were clinging to your life
Familiar sounds murmur in the distance:
the train passing through the elevated station, a Spanish folk song blaring from the neighbors’ clock radio, the sizzle of your scalding hot shower water
But it’s only your voice I hear as I replay the words that you whispered hours ago, preceded by a gentle kiss in the center of my forehead
“Before I can hand you my heart, I have to love myself”
My chest is heavy but it is not due to the familiar poking of the unknown that I know all too well
the feeling that creeps in at sunrise and taunts me obsessively throughout the day
Perhaps I am somewhat relieved
that you had the foresight to close the amusement park before I had an opportunity to experience the remaining roller coasters
or maybe, I find comfort in the thought that we mirror the oil painting that hangs on the wall closest to where I’ve grown accustomed to resting my head
A clear, promising image of two very different hands that extend far enough for the tips their middle fingers to touch
As you reenter the doorway of the bedroom, car keys in hand, neck craned
I control my breath and resume a stagnant position, enabling you to retract with some degree of dignity
Because I already handed you my heart, lifetimes ago

from The De-Greening of America,
Part IV: Fire

Peshtigo.

“It is as though
you attempted to resist the approach
of an avalanche of fire hurled against you”

October 8, 1871
Slash
burned to clear land for farming
Small fires set to clear away brush
Sawdust and waste at the lumber mills
Debris resting along railroad right-of-ways
ignited by sparks from those passing trains
Every structure made of wood
And a summer-long drought . . .

Al
ready on this day to be whipped by high winds,
estimated at 15-40 MPH
with gusts up to twice that,
whipped
into a raging conflagration,
a roar
that sounded like thunder as it moved,
with
small fires whirling ahead of the main blaze
faster than a human could walk,
dropping fine embers from the sky
like a snowstorm as hose fires
whirled back in on themselves,
and
drew even more fuel and heated gases in . . .

This was possibly the first known instance of a firestorm,
the phenomenon that seemed to create its own weather,
a phenomenon remarked upon at the time,
then forgotten,
then ‘re-discovered’
seventy-some years later during the bombings of World War II:

“great balls of fire from the sky . . .
like a mighty sky rocket explosion
with a brilliant display of flashing light”

which
may have killed as many as 2,200 people
in Peshtigo and the surrounding area
(an exact count impossible because
of immigration since the previous year’s census,
the number of transients in the area
for work purposes at the time,
and other factors),
and
definitely destroyed a billion trees
over an area of 2,400 square miles . . .

And
this great blaze has been largely unknown
(outside of Wisconsin),
because
it occurred the same day as the Great Chicago Fire
two hundred and sixty-two miles to the south,
a tragedy
that killed three hundred people
And,
where noted at all,
it’s said that this fire caused less property damage
than the Chicago fire,
under
the perverse economic logic that considers
a tree that has been murdered,
cut up,
and
then re-assembled into other structures
to be much more valuable than one that
continues to function as the lungs of the planet,
logic
that prevails to this day
(see: the notion of ‘development’,
and
the continued reverence for ‘developers’)------

The Big Burn.

Or The Big Blowup
Or The Great Idaho Fire
(even though Washington and Montana were also affected)
Or The Fire of 1910
The largest fire in American history,
more than 5,000 square miles over those three states

Man’s part in it:

ampfires
backfires
(the origin of the phrase fighting fire with fire?)
sparks from passing trains,
even arson

Nature’s part in it:

several months with almost no rain
dry lightning strikes causing some fires,
and,
most of all,
the Palouser,
a wind
that cascaded down the mountains and up the valleys
like an amusement park ride,
except
that it was real, not faux, danger,
especially
in certain conditions

And
August 20,1910
those conditions prevailed:
said Palouser blew,
and
condensed a few thousands small fires
into one epic conflagration
“I was frightening,
as what seemed to be great flakes of white snow
were swirling to the ground in e heat and darkness of high noon”
“It would have been the most beautiful sight
had one not realized that in the next moment
you might be caught in its fiery folds”

and
between one hundred and two hundred people,
most of them firefighters,
lost their lives in the blaze

But
that would not be the fire’s greatest impact;
that would be a mindset change that would stay in place
for most of the next century:

“Forest fires are preventable”
except
where they weren’t,
and,
especially,
where they were necessary for a healthy ecosystem;
wildfire firefighting would become the embodiment
of William James’ moral equivalent of war,
with
a military command structure for the firefighters
and even aerial bombardment of the fire
with water and chemicals for suppression,
all of this leading,
paradoxically,
to more and bigger fires because
the small fires were snuffed out quickly
and thus left more fuel for the bigger fires,
and
because the knowledge that fire,
any fire,
would be attacked aggressively,
led people to build in ever more marginal areas,
which
led to ever more fires,
and so on,
in a vicious circle

(And the destructive fires in your backyard,
no matter where you live)-------

June 22, 1969.

More than forty years ago today
my town brought clean water into play
by having floes of fire float on filthy water

(Interactive part of the poem:
Insert
your favorite adage about turning points
HERE)

In this instance
the truism was indeed true:
hundreds of blazes on bodies of water
of all shapes and sizes in lots of places
had occurred during the decades of dumping
industrial effluent into those waters,
and
had not inspired action,
had not inspired mockery,
had not inspired anything except
more of the industrialism that caused them,
which
was taken as a sign of prosperity and progress

No notice had been taken by the nation’s media
until,
on this date
on the Cuyahoga River
in Cleveland, Ohio
a fire seared the collective conscience
(though,
ironically,
in those days before everyone and everything
was at the mercy of the photographer hordes,
no pictures were taken of the small fire,
and
the media resorted to one of its standbys,
using
file footage and photos from the much more damaging fire
of 1952)
This led to laws being passed,
however selectively enforced,
and
thus to whatever halting progress toward
less pollution,
clean water,
peaceful co-existence
has been made as of today,
though
some want to take even that away
(see
the free-market fundamentalists who believe
that since the free market created the problem
only the free market can solve the problem,
and
advance the once and future ‘idea’
of buying and selling the ‘right’ to pollute),
though
in the interim they don’t refuse the benefits
of what they profess to despise:
drinking the now-clean water,
boating in the now-clean water,
catching fish that have returned to the now-clean water,
fire
indirectly leading to these desired results------

    The Internet versions of this poem
do not have the proper indentations
in lines, the way the author originally
released this poem. For the proper
indentations, see the print version
of the November 2011 issue (v226)
of cc&d magazine.

Government

Giving into others’ plans to deceive their country
Overwhelming the people with the media
Veiling the eyes of their people to believe
Everything they see
Reported on the news to be true
Never revealing whole truths
Making promises that aren’t kept
Expecting the people to agree
Not allowing them to think
Thoroughly in their decision-making.

Seal Watching

After the pub,
with the world still under
our feet,
you suggested a bit of seal watching
from a bridge not too far away.

Dublin air keeps our sway & swagger
in line –
“Let the spire point the way!”

Rolling our cigarettes,
we joke & yell
cat calls down to the water.

You whistled like a canary,
I smoked like a coal mine.
The stream lit by florescent indigo light
reflected off the passing night.

Before it Occurred to Me

as the extra kitchen cleanser
mixed with the laundry detergent
i spilled on the floor before

the fumes rose

i opened a window
turned on a fan

coughed

before it occurred to me
that i could mix these cleaning fluids
at just the right time
and leave him
trapped here
to this fate
as he has trapped me here
for countless years

no, i’m no Nazi
no, i’m not evil
i’m a woman

and sometimes
after you’ve spent years
breathing these fumes
you finally decide
when enough
is enough

On a Downtown Chicago Light Pole

Saw a sticker
on a downtown Chicago light pole
that said,
“Most Capitalism is nothing more
than human & animal slavery”

someone wrote
this response on it:
“You’re a broke douche.”

one by one, the beech trees fell

i have lived at this grove all my life
the beautiful trees have always lined the roads
the beech trees even lined the drive to our home

everything was blooming by the end of May
when you came in from the coast to our home
and the war didn’t touch here

could hear noise in the distance one morning
he told me some trees have been already been felled
on the General Field Marshall’s urgent orders

Rommel was sure an attack was immanent
they couldn’t leave trees for enemy hideouts
and so they fell our trees, one by one

looked out the front door, saw our stripped land
these trees had souls, and no one mourns
the loss of a species with roots in this land longer than we

they didn’t do this everywhere:
i hear they left some trees up in fields
so glider planes would be destroyed while landing

what lives are worth saving, i thought
as the soldiers continued doing their job
after the beech trees fell

No Return

There comes a point where I realize that train’s not coming back,
nor that car, nor that airplane.
Everything is gone.
If I’m toehold onto anything at all, it has to be the memory
of it’s rear view growing smaller by the moment.
Either that or nothing.

When I was younger, I was more attuned to the side
of the house or rocks or even patches of earth
where I played the same games over and over.
These things always stayed put.
The separation, if it ever was to happen,
would always be on my part.
And what interest had I in breaking the connection?

But eventually, I threw in my lot with moving vehicles
and see how that’s left me.
One person took the train, another drove away
in the same automobile in which they drove in,
and I don’t know how many said, “Damn it all!”
and bought themselves a ticket on the next flight out.

So I live in the side of a house. I inhabit a rock.
I’m the one you see protecting his patch of earth.
The older the desertions, the younger I need to be.

August Regatta Afternoon

Not like shark fins but napkins
folded on a banquet table,
their sails fleck the horizon
where the sea mists into the sky.
You want to know who’s winning,
but from our canvas lawn chairs

the boats look like punctuation
without a text to support them.
Gin and tonic simpers in glasses
frosted with a fine sweaty fuzz.
The yacht-club waiter nods at us
as we acknowledge his little smile.

This is how the gentry live—
the polished hulls of their sailboats
glossy as a glimpse of the future.
They never race for money
but for tiny plastic trophies
a child would scorn. When they dock

we’ll learn who won, if we care.
The salt breeze gusts to maybe
fifteen knots. Little danger out there,
gulls corkscrewing overhead,
red buoys and black-painted groaners
bobbing in the wake. The gin

sparkling in our frosty glasses
suggests how bottomless the sea
might seem to one recently drowned,
but over your right shoulder the crest
of a wave looks so plastic blue
anyone might walk on it.

Mandy on the South Side

I saw Mandy crossing South Park St. from West to East
Across Buick Street
While driving home from work
About two months ago, on a warm June day,
When the temperature was less oppressive than it is today

Actually, I don’t know her real name—
I’m just calling her Mandy,
And I never met her before in my life—
Unless I know her from a dream
Or another life
Or from a Barry Manilow song

She was extraordinarily beautiful,
As only twentysomethings can be
She was pushing a stroller,
With another little one by her right side
She had a tattoo on her left arm and another one on the small of her back

Mandy is a white woman in a “colored” neighbor—
Actually, “colored” is no longer a good term for any neighborhood in America
Any more
“Rainbow” is much better—
Because South Madison has Hmong, Koreans, Chinese, Latinos, African-Americans,
And people from every country on the globe

But European-Americans (like Mandy) are definitely in the minority

Mandy had a lot of energy—
By the time the light had changed,
She had crossed South Park and was heading northwards
I was sure she was on a multi-mile trek

I was glad to watch Mandy through my car window
Even though Robert Pirsig called car windows “so much television” so many years ago
I know a winner when I see one
When I look at myself in the mirror
I see less of a winner than Mandy
And I want that down for the record

Birds: The Bluebird

the bluebird picks through the snow
digging up skulls and dead berries

red, hardened with age,
juice sitting solid in the middles

the bluebird’s eyes no longer shine
jewels dulled by time

‘neath layers of tainted snow
snow and too-smooth bone

Birds: The Blackbird

the blackbird digs through the sky
picking apart blues and grays

the blackbird releases his spirit in a wisp

breathing out senses
breathing out shadows and dark

Fragments

We are all Lot’s wife, Orpheus,
we will always turn around
to check, to defy, and if I choose
to see those random stars
not as Orion’s belt but as a line
demanding halt and thus do not
board the train, do not sit
beside the knitting woman
who talks about her son at war
and do not send him the metal charm
that can deflect the shot, he will not be home
to deflect his daughter’s smile that shines
with recognition of her power to defy
so she can insist the voices in her head
are real and lights flickering on the door
a hex that she must destroy and as she
flees her fire that will consume the town
she stops too soon and turns around

advice

just play with your kids
reanimate ancient happy meal toys
join them as they scrutinize spongebob
episodes for every nuance

you love to wade in misery
the girlfriends say
discover its finer points
so you can write them down

forget the man
blues poetry is out
they say
just play with your kids

Letter to Suicide (an old friend)

We go way back.
And if I remember correctly, it was you who followed me home that night in cold April.
The frost covered the half-sprung tulips; I laughed at their crowning corpse heads.
The kitchen window, still mostly shattered from when dad decided Goulash was no good on a Sunday.
Goulash, is that The Lord’s food? Where were the Salmon Fillets, the Mango Salad?
Mom never cried. Scout barked; was electrocuted by a hair dryer two days later.

Passing the mostly gone window, I heard the sound of crackling egg fat when yoke hits the butter laden pan.
One crackle,
no pop.
No smell.
“Fried eggs in April? Won’t The Lord be mad? What’ll we hide for those snot nosed kiddies, pops?”

I saw him then,
through the almost totally shattered window.
I untied the erect rope from around the ceiling fan.
Goulash would be safe on Sundays. The eggs? Untouched.

We met first then
                            and
Later when Maribeth decided to go the Woolf way (giant pebbles and all).
She had, after all, graduated with an English degree.

So I’m writing you now like an Irishman signaling the banshee.
I am tired old friend. Tired and sick.

Cancer has me most of the time.
When it isn’t that, it’s my obstructed arteries.
Could also be the Cirrhosis, AIDS, or my ever intensifying personality disorder.
So be a dear, would you? Please?
Thanks.

Emma Eden Ramos Bio (2010)

    Emma Eden Ramos is a writer and student at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. Her fiction has appeared in BlazeVOX, The Legendary, and The StoryTeller Tymes. She also has a piece forthcoming in Yellow Mama.

Proper Tools

    It’s simple. Travel light. Do the work using the proper tools.
    Barrett’s hands were his best tool, he also carried backup. Though proficient with firearms, he preferred blades: silent, dignified.
    The Doors, album one, final track, cranked within the flint gray Mercedes. He was approaching the five-star hotel, Route 1A North along the Atlantic.
    Route 1A reminded him of thin black lanes, green hills, grimy cabins with flyspecked windows. Simple people, minds like the beasts, guileless.
    He was little. The rooster in the crooked barn gave daily chase, feeding off the boy’s panic. It had clawed orange feet, snow white feathers, and evil eyes.
    One day the boy stumbled. A rock, smooth, hand-sized, like the stone axe in a schoolbook. He and the stone combined. White feathers turned bright streaming red, clawed feet ceased. The air smelled of brown pennies and framing nails.
    The Mercedes pulled into underground parking. He killed the high-end audio, one must be considerate. Barrett breathed the aroma of leather and oil, and imagined the tools which created that splendid machine.
    Jimmy Barrett used the stairs. One must stay in shape, even if he was unnaturally strong and virtually immortal. Death was his trade. A nameless artist seeking no acclaim.
    The steps made him think of a third floor tenement in a dingy town, except at the hotel they didn’t bounce like a trampoline. Back at the gray town, Jimmy had just started high school. He stayed with a man called father.
    Father kept an unattractive woman named momma. She was kind. Momma cooked, cleaned, and prayed a lot.
    Father often reeked of tobacco and alcohol. He told people that he worked at the Navy Yard. Young Barrett asked Mr. Greenwood next door what was a Navy Yard? Mr. Greenwood told him it was where they made things for the government, but it had shut down.
    Father got worse with the smoking and drinking. Frequently he ranted at length about government, but never mentioned the Navy Yard.
    Once father came home early and was acting strangely. He hollered about sick of it and enough and had to move again. He waved a gun around like on TV.
    He started screaming “lies” and “protection”... At last, he went into the tiny bedroom and shut the door.
    Momma sat perfectly still, like the statues in the dark church, but there the statues did not cry big fat tears.
    The following day young Barrett walked to the library, two miles. The librarian was a nice old lady. She resembled a little bird, but smelled nicer. She was not a rooster. There were books on fixing automobiles. Barrett studied steering and brakes and proper tools.
    On the way back he purchased a file and a hacksaw at the Jenkins Hardware Store. Later that night he worked on father’s pea-green Ford coupe, because he did not like momma getting scared and crying.
    Next morning father drove off in the green Ford and never came back. “Uncle” moved in. Uncle owned a sunset blue Cadillac. Uncle didn’t smoke, drink, or make momma cry. Uncle bought them a real house.
    Back at the hotel Barrett was almost at the top, not even breathing hard. The dark thoughts had elevated his mood. Jimmy jimmied the thick door that isolated the penthouse from the common guest suites. The proper tools made it easy.
    Barrett was an engineer until the politicians sent the jobs away.
    So, Barrett signed up for security, rent-a-cop. The firm checked him out carefully and gave him a piss test.
    After a week the company talked to him about chromosomes and recessive genes. They administered eye tests, smell tests, strength tests, and coordination tests. They told Jimmy he was not entirely human, he was more.
    A “werewolf,” they said, but not like in the movies. They advised him to shave every morning and night.
    Jimmy looked quite ordinary but he was really strong and talented with his hands. They gave him a referral, told him he was like a machine. That sounded a lot like tools.
    He wound up with a better job than rent-a-cop working for an organization with no name. It paid more, enough for a big Mercedes.
    His new job was fixing problems created by people who “didn’t follow the program.” They had to be stopped, just like that white rooster and the man with the green car.
    Jimmy James Barrett let himself into the penthouse silently.
    His “client” must have expected him, because he did not look surprised. The client smelled familiar, bad. His mind was not like the beasts in the country or momma. His soul writhed like red dirty worms.
    Client reminded Jimmy of himself when he shaved in the mirror, except older, and looked weak. Probably not even immortal.
    “Son.”
    “Father...
    I killed you. You made momma cry.”
    “You tried, you dumb little turd. You were bad with tools, you asshole.
    I had to disappear anyhow... Like father like son, at least.
    Glad you finally got a real job, moron.”
    Barrett had taken it all in stride, until “bad with tools,” which flipped him out. The tendons in his wrists and hands stood out like cables. The veins were lashing. His face itched.
    It made for an off day. The upside was Jimmy was in no rush. The penthouse was quiet and isolated.
    Out came the duct tape and nylon cord, white like the rooster feathers.
    A sapphire knife has no metal. Scary sharp. It can only be re-sharpened with diamond.
    Jimmy’s hands were clenched so hard they ached.
    Good thing he had brought the proper tools.

Coffee Grinds in Paradise

Instant coffee was liquid gold in that ward; I carried it with me, clutched to my side at all times.     I would add a quarter cup of water to a clump of the crystals and glop it down, trying to wake up what was left in me. At times, I would trade some away for candy.     That girl who stole it from me was twice my size, but she fell back against my fury and handed it over.

    I had to go. I was court committed to Western State Hospital for Mental Illness during that podunk hearing, brought together to decide my fate. The judge said that there was an alcohol and drug treatment center there, and he had noticed that, along with my psychotic episode, I also had a slight problem with alcohol. Perceptive little man.
    That first psychiatric hospital had an open door policy, insane as that may seem. We could go outside, walk around the grounds, and get some sun. On occasion, I would open door it over to the local 7/11 and buy me a bottle of wine. I had co-conspirators, of course, since I didn’t have the wherewithal to find the convenience store on my own. We would all stagger on back and throw up in adjacent bathroom stalls, while aides ran back and forth, solicitously tending to our “flu bugs”.
    They caught on, eventually, and the parties stopped, but my drunkapades were not what got me into that hearing. One day, stoned silly on some medication that made me want to crawl out of my skin, I asked for the safety razor to shave my legs. Instead, I tried to shave my wrists, trying desperately to find some way out of that creepy crawly haze. A safety razor won’t do much when it comes to slitting wrists, but it will produce a spewing, bloody mess. To fix the situation, and me, I was locked in the seclusion room and left, bandaged and thoroughly defeated, until it was time to meet the judge.
    Yeah, he said that Western State was the place I ought to be. Not only would it ensure protection and safety from the “danger to myself and/ or others”, clearly a pre-requisite, I would also receive some basic treats about alcoholism; surely that would help me.

Western State—the insane asylum—such a politically incorrect yet clear, definitive term. It was 1979, long past the days of the ‘snake pits’ and lobotomies; nevertheless, the words harbored fear, misunderstanding, some disgust, but, mostly, dismissal.

    There was a sputtering gasp around the room. My father began to speak, “She doesn’t really need that...” but I interrupted him, saying, “Yes, I want to go there. I’m an alcoholic, and I need treatment”. Little did I know about state hospitals.
    My only concern at the time was to find a way out of the seclusion room. It was deadly in there, I still had the creepy crawlies, and time seemed endless. If they sent me to Western State, I thought, I would at least get a nice ride, and how bad could it be? It was just another hospital, as far as I was concerned. Maybe this geographical cure was exactly what I needed, a new beginning, hopefully new meds, and a whole slew of new doctors. Further, my manipulative expertise would have fodder for growth at this new institution.

They fit me, all 99 lbs, securely in handcuffs and put me in the Sheriff’s car for the ride down to the state hospital. The nurse gave me a kiss with a big, warm hug and told me to take care of myself. I should have caught on. That unusual display of concern, along with the cuffs and the steel barrier between the back seat and the driver, was clearly indicative that they took the whole thing mighty serious. In addition to the preventive measures that would assure my compliance, stunning doses of drugs were added. So, I didn’t much care about, well, much of anything.

    The transfer ended at a hulking mass of red brick buildings with locked doors and barred windows. The sprawled out campus was tightly girdled by escape proof cyclone fencing. Once inside the hospital grounds, I was unceremoniously dumped in the waiting room of the admissions office, still doped, but un-cuffed, while the staff papered and processed me into the system. I dozed, skittered in and out of reality, dozed a bit more, then ate the food they brought me. Very kind of them, I thought, serving me like that. More of that pesky state of delusion. Once I was housed in the ward, I would be brought my food for quite a while, since I was not allowed past the locked door, not even to go to the cafeteria.

The Alcohol and Drug Treatment ward—I came to in a room full of men, which would have been one of my fondest dreams. But they were old men, used up, dirty men, who had wasted every other avenue of assistance from friends or family, men who had been court committed in a last ditch effort to detox and sober them up, at least for a bit. I fit right in.

    I was in hog heaven. Not only was I the only woman, I was still very pretty in the bleary, besotted eyes of my fellow inmates. They courted me, did my chores; one relatively cute guy brought me a cookie. I thought I might be in love until I noticed that he had no teeth, a definite deal breaker. Still, the attention was nice, and I was manic enough to not notice the truth of my surroundings. We played cards for diversion from that truth. There was a pool table, and mock AA meetings edged us toward recovery of some sort or other. We also played volleyball, but I irritated the piss out of the program director for ducking each time the ball came my way, In fact, I irritated him all the time. I did not mean to be the way I was—manic, happy as a fool, having a good, old time.

One day, though, my mania caught me off guard and crashed me into a wall. I cut my head, which sent me to the medical unit, and guaranteed that I was not alcohol and drug treatment material. I was bumped down to the ward for psychotic women, mostly harmless, who were lost in their own fantasy land. They had a name for this ward, something not so exclusive, but it escapes my mind. Much of that time did.

    At first it wasn’t so bad. Still on heavy duty psychiatric drugs, I shuffled and drooled, explored the ward, and engaged in meaningless conversations with my new room-mates. I still dozed a lot, a welcomed diversion. Time passed pleasantly enough.
    But then it happened. My mind began to clear, just enough for me to begin to see the stark reality of state hospital life—the degradation, the despair, the degeneration of human decency. I watched the cleaning lady wipe feces off the water fountain where someone had left her mark. I saw two women take the little retarded girl into one of the bathroom stalls, and I listened to the giggles that ensued. And there was the day the woman ran naked through the ward yelling “I can’t get well, I just can’t get well”, with the aides in hot pursuit, unable to match her frenzied path. (OK, that one was kind of funny, I must admit.) The sidewalk became a Johnny on the Spot for some, the cafeteria was often a free-for-all, and fights broke out over uneaten food deposited in the waste.

I met my husband in a psych ward, years later. It was one of those high dollar hospitals reserved for crazy people lucky enough to have good insurance. During his earlier stint at Western State, however, he ran into events similar to those that I had experienced, yet, the behavior in the men’s ward was far more vile. For example, he was given a box of cracker jacks, only to discover maggots as the prize. Another time, he awoke to a guy urinating on him. He pounded the pisser mercilessly before being taken down by the guards. But, I bet they didn’t blame his fiery outburst in the least.     [As a side note, to the naysayer who pooh-poohs the legitimacy of hospital romance, the one who is quick to say that it can’t ever last, my husband and I, both bipolar, have been married for 22 years. It has not always been smooth or easy, but always one hell of a ride. Some say that I married him just for his quality health insurance, but that is not entirely true.]

     In the women’s ward, the events were far less violent and often more amusing. One woman put lipstick on her cheeks to entice men to “take her to the bushes”, while Shirley simply had no teeth as a calling card for her suitors. Gnarled old women, waiting for their passage to the ward for the demented, snatched cigarettes from those who were not so quick or alert. I sat and ate bags of hard candies and drank my coffee sludge, watching and waiting for some sport that might perk up the hours.

Some of the goings-on were far more disturbing. A window to a locked room drew us like flies to see that obese woman, shackled to the bed with only a diaper to clothe her girth. It was a horrific site, so cruel and inhumane that, like viewing a bloody train wreck, we could not take our eyes off her. Some time later, they released her from her leather bonds. She sat on the floor, still diapered and bared to the world, banged on the tiles until they broke free, and gnawed on the corners of the linoleum, smiling to herself. I don’t know what they did with her after that.     In sweet juxtaposition, an adorable older couple took their daily walk to the cafeteria, hand in hand, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around them. I wondered if they, too, ever took to the bushes.

    That was it. Mostly we just sat and smoked, bartered for food, and hoped that a visitor might come, or even just mail.

One time, a boy, who I had met up with at that first psych hospital, came down and brought me a newspaper. The boy was clearly misguided, thinking I might be willing or even able to read through the clouds in my mind. Another time, they let me out on a day pass with him so that he could take me on a canoe ride. It was hot, sticky, and boring, nature’s beauty lost on me much as the newspaper had been.

    I think that my parents came once during my 5 month hospitalization, but I don’t recall anything memorable about it other than my father peeking around corners, trying to get a good look at the residing madness. He was as misguided as the boy. All he had to do was look at me.

The strong armed black woman tackled me as I sauntered down the hallway singing “Momma said there’d be days like this”. I suppose the reality of that tune was too much for her to bear. Or else, my singing really sucked. Maybe both.

    Some of the aides were very kind and attentive. I got my hair done up by one who had been a hair dresser. (Like the word retarded, we still used those demeaning names.) I got so that I could leave the ward by myself for meals and other outside activities. I wandered throughout the grounds, I tested the musings in the library, and I found the art therapy room, a place where I could play without reservation. We were carefully monitored as we cut, pasted, and/or painted our treasures—creations that were basic enough for our simple minds and safe enough for our craftiness. I still have the little box that I stained. I pasted on a smiley picture of the sun, adding lacquer to guarantee its trip to my future. Good times.
    Then, out of the blue, they said it was time to leave; I had to go. To what?

Life goes on, return to your normal, old life, get over it. Just don’t think about it anymore—it is done. In fact, my old life was done; there would be no return to a life not dominated by the loss.     It took various turns. Taunting itself up into unrecognizable cause, it required nerve bound dancing to the dictates of denial. I practiced, I thought perfected, avenues to escape, living in unending madness to cloud over the reality of where I had been, what had happened, and, my God, what will I do next?

The Birthday Party

    I was standing in front of Woolworth’s on Main Street on the fifth of October, 1943 when I began to realize how things worked in our town. James, my seventh grade classmate, and I were watching an olive skinned yo-yo master, in a bright yellow silk shirt and crimson trousers, rock a spinning red disk back and forth on a string extended between his fingers. He allowed it to fall, and just as its momentum seemed spent, retrieved it with a flick of his middle finger into the palm of his right hand. The crowd applauded as the master, who was not much taller than I, removed his white cowboy hat, bowed, and extended one sequined arm toward the store entrance.
    “Let’s go in and look at the yo-yos,” I said.
    “OK,” said James, who had gotten us a place in front of the other onlookers, “but I already have one and Cranston has one with shiny stones. He can probably do all the tricks that little guy can do and then some.”
    I’m sure he can, I thought as I looked at the display. It seemed all James could talk about since his move in January was his next door neighbor Cranston Collins. “I have one too,” I said, “but I thought I would get one for Eugene, for his birthday party tomorrow.”
    “Yeah,” said James, “he gave me one of his invitations yesterday. He gave one to Cranston, and even to the girls. I don’t think anybody is going, though. My mother says it’s bad enough we have to go to school with those people who live down by the river, much less go to a party there.”
    “Well I’m going,” I said, “and I wish you would, too.”
    “Huh,” said James, “that figures. My mother says since you aren’t from around here you’ll probably never understand how things work.”
    “Probably not,” I said, as I picked out a bright red Duncan yo-yo like the one the master had used. “I’m not that much friends with Eugene, but I just think some of us should go to his party.”
    As we left the store the master was carving designs on the yo-yos people had purchased and when I asked him, he carved a sun on Eugene’s.
    “That guy is really good,” I said.
    “Mother says he comes from the Philippines,” said James. “Those people aren’t much better than the Japs.”
    “They are on our side,” I said, “and so are some of the Japanese.”
    “Like my mother says, you people will never understand anything,” said James as he stalked away down the street.
    The next afternoon, the sun coming over the lowlands by the river on my left, felt good as I walked down the dirt road toward the shack where Eugene lived. My shadow, tall and fast, moved with giant steps across the meadow on my right. I could hear the bees buzzing in the clover alongside the roadway and the frogs calling to each other down by the water. I scuffed up swirls of dirt from the road but didn’t kick any rocks because I had on my good school clothes. Eugene’s present was wrapped in white paper decorated with a blue ribbon. He was in his front yard dressed for the first time in the nine months I had known him in freshly laundered trousers and a clean short-sleeved white shirt. He was tending a fire in a pit beside a lone chinaberry tree. As I came up I smelled the smoke from the wood and the charring embers.
    “Happy birthday, Eugene,” I said, thinking how lucky he was to have a fire pit and red clay with no grass to cut in his front yard. “Am I the first one here?”
    “So far,” he answered, “but I invited everyone in the class, so some more people should be here soon.”
    “You never know about them,” I said. “My friend James said he wasn’t coming so I don’t know how many will show up.”
    “Mom let me get some weenies and buns at the store, and marshmallows,” said Eugene. “You get some sticks and sharpen them while I bring out the food,” he said, handing me a rusty kitchen knife.
    I picked out the straightest of the chinaberry sticks Eugene had piled near the fire and began to work on them. I hoped more of our fellow students would come, although I knew many, like James, would not make the trip to the little cottage near the mud flats. I couldn’t understand what had happened to James. We had been neighbors and friends since my father had come to town from New Jersey when I was three years old. We had grown up together exploring the backwaters of the Chattahoochee River. Now James’s mother, who had come from Atlanta, had told him she did not want him wasting his time with people from up North. James’s father was from Maryland which didn’t seem to me to be that much more Southern than New Jersey. I guessed people from Atlanta had a different way of looking at things. Anyway, James now hung out most of the time with Cranston, who was almost a year older than the rest of us and was better at sports, an important attribute in a town that prided itself on having the best Class C football team in the state of Georgia.
    Eugene’s mother, dressed in a faded print dress with a matching bandana partially covering a bruise on the right side of her forehead came out of the front door. “You boys have fun,” she said, “but keep it quiet in the yard because Big Eugene is asleep.”
    Eugene Jr. emerged from behind her with the packages of frankfurters, buns, and marshmallows in a Spur Quick Mart bag. “Pop came in late again last night,” he said. I wondered if the reddish purple bruise on his left forearm had come from his father’s late night drinking and roughing up the family. I had heard that the men on this side of the river did that sometimes.
    “Open your present,” I said, handing it to Eugene. “I hope you don’t already have one,” I said, even though I knew he didn’t, because of the price, and the hand carving, and all.
    Eugene opened the box and took out his yo-yo. “You can do rock the baby, walk the dog, and everything with it,” I said.
    “Gosh it’s nice,” he said. Then, he smiled for the first time I could remember, straightened his boney frame and tried a few throw downs and retrievals.
    I heard a car door slam and looked down the dirt road to where it met the asphalt. A car had stopped there about fifty yards from the house, and a redheaded boy had gotten out and started up the road toward us. Danged if it isn’t Cranston Collins, I thought.
    “Happy birthday Eugene — hello Robbie,” said Cranston as he joined us by the fire. “Nice yo-yo.”
    Cranston did tricks with the yo-yo while I fingered the knife and Eugene opened the box of Whitman’s Samplers Cranston had brought as his present.
    “Thanks Cranston,” said Eugene. “We can eat these with our marshmallows after we have the hot dogs.”
    “Yeah, lets get started cooking them,” I said, glad in a way more of the fifteen people in our class hadn’t come since Eugene only had one package of frankfurters. I knew I was too fat and overly concerned with food. Size had been an advantage when I was younger. As a midget football lineman, I had been able to block out the smaller boys, but now that they were taller and quicker and I was having trouble keeping up with Cranston, James, and the others. Our school was on a hill overlooking the town and it housed all twelve grades. A plateau just outside the old building was our playground where we ran around at recess. Lately the other kids had been turning on me, calling me names and chasing me. I was feeling more like an outsider than ever.
    Eugene seemed to have even more problems. His mother had probably spent much of the family’s grocery money on the food. Eugene had only been with us since the family moved from Arkansas in the middle of last year. His father had hoped to find work at the cotton mills which were at full production supplying the military with uniforms for the war effort. He had not been able to hold a steady job, however, and worked at odd jobs around town. I wondered how long it would take the town to accept Eugene’s family. Although my family had been in town for eight years, we still felt like foreigners. Eugene had moved from another Southern state, however, so his family should have had an easier time. Ashamed of my selfish craving for food, I started wishing more of the class would show up. I was surprised to see Cranston. I had thought that of them all he would have been the least likely to make the trip to this part of town.
    We cooked the hot dogs on the sticks till they were black and ate them without the buns. They were crisp and crunchy with that smoky taste you can only get from roasting them over an open fire on a stick. Eugene’s buns looked moldy and the ketchup was drying up. I was glad we didn’t try using any. We ate most of the candy and left the marshmallows for later. Running around the front yard for awhile, we used the cooking sticks for sword fighting and pelted each other with chinaberries. They stung when they hit you more than you would think. In the back yard was a quince tree with hard yellow fruit perfect for throwing across the fence at the signposts along the railroad tracks. I never had much of an arm and could barely hit the edge of the tracks, much less the posts. Eugene who was in practice and the naturally talented Cranston, however, hit the signs several times. We heard the 4 P.M. train rumble down the track and watched it slow as it approached the trestle which would take it across the river. We took turns throwing the quinces at the engine and then at the cars pretending we were partisans attacking Nazi tanks and locomotives with grenades. We exhausted our supply as the Nazis retreated into the distance.
    Eugene led us to a passageway he had made through the kudzu covered fence. It was cool in Eugene’s tunnel and we watched our shadows moving on the ground across the patches of light and the darker images of the leaves. Above us we could hear insects scurrying about in the kudzu canopy. I had some trouble getting through the hole in the fence. As I squeezed through, I felt the wire catch on my pants, but nothing tore; and I pushed harder and moved out into the sunlight again. It felt good to be back in the open as we climbed the embankment and went out onto the tracks to pick up our missiles.
    “Let’s go to the river where we can throw them like depth charges into the water,” said Eugene.
    “I don’t know,” I said, looking down the tracks which ran to the river on a raised bed and crossed it perhaps a hundred feet above the water. “It’s been a great party but I need to start for home.” I didn’t tell him that I was afraid of heights and didn’t like the idea of going down the raised roadbed, much less out over the water.
    “Yeah,” said Cranston, looking at his steel Westclox wrist watch. “Mother is picking me up in 30 minutes.” I had admired that watch since Cranston had gotten it for his twelfth birthday last year. I had asked my parents for one for my birthday which was coming up next month, in November, but I doubted they could afford it. Even if I did get it, they probably wouldn’t let me wear it to school every day the way Cranston did, showing it off to our classmates and deftly avoiding getting it damaged during the scuffles on the playground. Now that I was thinking about it, Cranston usually stayed away from these activities anyway, preferring to use his time talking to the girls or running laps around the edge of the play area.
    “I’m glad you brought your watch,” said Eugene. “Can I try it on?” Cranston handed it over, and I again felt sorry for Eugene because the big face and strap hanging loosely on his wrist accentuated his gaunt appearance. He shook his straw colored hair out of his eyes in that way he had and said, as he handed the watch back to Cranston, “You guys aren’t worried about another train, are you? The next one won’t come along for two or three hours. This has been the best party ever. It’s really fun down there and it won’t take long.”
    We walked along the tracks balancing on the rails and throwing rocks from the roadbed at objects on the mud flats. Eugene carried the shopping bag filled with the quinces we had collected. We ventured out over the water, staying near the eastern end of the trestle, but far enough out so we could watch our missiles splash into the river, pretending they were depth charges dropping on Japanese submarines. “Have you ever crossed the river on the trestle?” Cranston asked Eugene. “I’d be afraid to do it.”
    “Only once or twice,” said Eugene. “Paw said he’d skin me alive if he ever caught me walkin on it.”
    “He wouldn’t have to tell me anything to keep me from doing it,” I said, looking down through the cross ties and the girders at the muddy water rushing past the bridge pilings.
    “It would be a fastest way for you to get home,” said Eugene.
    I thought, yeah, and I wouldn’t have to squeeze through the fence again or walk all the way back to the regular bridge. It would be pretty cool, unless I fell in the river.
    “I would do it,” said Cranston, “but I told my mother I would meet her on this side next to Eugene’s road. You are probably too fat to make it across, anyway.”
    “Show us you can do it Robbie,” said Eugene. “It’s not that hard.”
    I knew if I didn’t do it, Cranston would tell the other kids I had been afraid. On the other hand, if I made it, I might be the class hero, at least for the next several days.
    “Look he’s really going to try it!” said Cranston, as I started walking on the crossties, keeping to the middle of the tracks as they stretched out across the river.
    “It was a great party, Eugene. I’ll see you all in school tomorrow,” I called back to them as I moved toward the middle of the trestle. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the crossties, but I could still see the water beneath them and hear it gurgling against the pilings. I thought I heard a rumbling behind me and I could feel the tracks vibrating and hear them start humming like they do when a train is coming. I wondered if I could make it to the other side if an unscheduled train were coming down the hill toward the river. I was afraid to run because I might fall on the tracks. I could jump, if I had to, because I could probably swim to the river bank. But I didn’t want my parents to find out what I was doing, and I thought I was getting too close to the shallows and the mud flats at the western edge of the trestle to survive, unscathed, the impact from the descent. As the rumbling and the humming became louder behind me I began to run, but it seemed like I was just running in place like they make you do at football practice.
    I finally made it across, however, just in front of the engine. I could feel the wind from it lift me off the tracks as I reached the end of the trestle and ran down the embankment just as the train reached the west side of the river. I was sweating and shaking as I stood on the river bank and looked across to see if Eugene and Cranston had gotten off the tracks before the train had reached them. They were jumping up and down and waving at me so I took off my shirt, which wasn’t even too messed up from my sweating, and waved it back and forth to show them I was OK.
    The next day Cranston told everybody in the class about his escape from the train and even mentioned favorably my part in the story. James tried to talk to me about it, but I no longer had much interest in him or his opinions. I was the envy of my classmates for the next three days, and then they began to chase me around the playground again. Now, however, I knew how to get away, and I used the down the embankment maneuver on them whenever the game got out of hand. I never became good friends with Cranston, but I did always respect him for going to Eugene’s party and reporting, relatively accurately, what had happened. The next year Eugene didn’t return to school. His father had been killed in a fight at a beer joint across the county line, and Eugene and his mother had moved to Kansas. The city bulldozed the shack where Eugene had lived and built a new practice field for the football team.

Robert Turner Brief Bio

    Robert Turner, M.D., was born in New Jersey and grew up on the Chattahoochee River in West Georgia and East Alabama. His work has appeared in a variety of medical publications and his short fiction has been published and is forthcoming in several literary magazines. He lives with his wife in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he is at work on his first novel.

“Interrogate My Heart Instead

    He has forgotten that he used to exist and that he used to love him. He doesn’t even think about him while taking a shower. They have told him that if he stabs people in the chest or hits them in the streets of his own hometown, he would make God happy.
    He has forgotten that he once wanted to become a lawyer so that he could fight for the right to marry him. He has forgotten that blonde guys used to turn him on and he was the only brunette he ever wanted to be with. He was an exception but now he’s just like anyone who’s been captured because of protesting for “Human Value”.
    He’s looking for something that he’d never find: “The Meaning of His Life”. He can’t recall his past. He can’t even recall yesterday’s interrogations, innocent faces, shattered minds of young boys and girls in the room. What has he done! How many boys and girls he must have had screwed, physically and mentally.

    She’s strong, beautiful even with the blindfold on, held together and ready. He doesn’t like the last part, READY. Readiness makes it hard to get over a genius mind. She won’t suffer, she won’t scream, she wouldn’t beg. He doesn’t like it. He has seen hundreds of young girls in the torture room. They all expect to be saved; saved by a call, a miracle, saved by God. But this one, this girl, she’s ready for everything to happen. The blindfold has made her even scarier.
    Her indifferent smile, her crossed hands that have hugged her breasts intimidates him. He wears his invisible mask and walks towards her. She won’t get out of here. That smile shouldn’t be seen outside these walls.

    He wakes up from a dreamless sleep. It is weekend but he has bones to crush, smiles to make disappear, lives to get. It’s a new day, it’s a new dawn and he’s goanna be a step closer to heaven and God.
    He has forgotten that he couldn’t even think about fucking girls. He could like them, hate them, love them but he couldn’t fall in love with any. He couldn’t even manage to TRY to sleep with any. Ali was his first and he was meant to be the last one. But now his job wouldn’t be done if raping wasn’t included in the daily torture routine. God wouldn’t accept his prayers if he didn’t punish the protesters. Freedom isn’t something they are allowed to have. He has forgotten what Freedom meant to him. He can’t remember his night stands at Ali’s, tears of happiness and then their devastating future image.
    He has tamed her, she’s writing a long fake confession. He wouldn’t remember this tomorrow, so what? God is watching. Heaven is waiting.

    Ali is in the other room; they call it “The Second Unit” of the city’s prison. They say if you get in there, there would be no way back. You’ll be gone forever. And that’s exactly where he is right now: Nowhere.
    He walks in. Ali’s tied to the chair. The room is watching, God is watching. Freedom? He’s goanna give it to him right away: “You’ve got two options; die here or go live on television and take back your words.” Ali can’t tell if he is serious or it is all a big fucking joke. He smiles, just a faint smile and his spinal cord twitches. It takes a couple of seconds to realize the pain. The pain of forbidden love used to be more than this. The memory of the past draws a smile on his face. And it’s then that the second one falls on his fingers. He faints.
    Darius or better say Ahmed, his new religious name, keeps showing up every seven hours and each time he asks the same questions: Why do you work for western countries? Why do you lead the protests each Tuesday? What do you have on your Facebook page? It is like he can’t remember the last time he has been in this room. Ali can’t believe the man who was literally torturing him used to be his best friend and his then boyfriend. He has been brain washed. Ali feels helpless, he has to save him himself. So he asks for a pen and paper; he writes anything they want to hear. Confessions that are never true but they are the way out. He crushes his ego, cries of picturing himself as someone he never was. He gets released right away. He flies to the US as soon as he gets himself together. He is free but his heart is still full of questions and murdered smiles.

    Dear Darius,
    It’s been three months and eleven days that I have not gotten to see you. In the cell, I would wake up every day with bleeding fingers in my pockets, cold and bruised body but a heart full of love and helplessness. I would wish to hear your steps walking in every -I don’t know how many- hours and hear you talking to me like you had never known me. It was so sexy. A tough game. The adrenalin rushing through my body, getting deep down to my core would save me. Now here in Boston I don’t want to get out of this warm bed knowing I wouldn’t hear your voice again. My body alarms every seven hours and makes me lay still and stare at the pillow that used to be yours. I smile at it and wait but there’s no hitting after each smile. There’s no slapping, no breaking body parts, there’s no pain.
    I have saved all our photos together in Dena’s laptop. I drink my espresso and review each story behind every picture. The last picture of the album is the one I took when you were walking out of the door heading to join the army. I was proud of you, I can memorialize that strong feeling: “My boyfriend was going to save lives” But did you ever save any?

Elaheh Steinke Bio

    Elaheh Steinke is a 23-year-old story writer. She studies Genetics at Tehran University and teaches English. Some of her previously published works are “IWIHKY Disorder”, “No Exception”, “Falling for the Second Time”, “When the Day Is Blue, I’m Sitting Here Wondering about You”, and “January Went Lost”. She has published her works at Best New Writing 2009 and 2010 and has been the Hoffer award finalist of 2009/2010.

Mud

    She rifled through the leaves of the Dream Book. She had dreamt last night that she had had a baby, and bit her lip as she searched for what it could mean. Her friends had always told her these books were a load of crock, and that dreams didn’t mean anything. She usually agreed.

    Her work was not tedious, and she performed well enough at it. She made sure to nod to Maggie when she showed off the photos of her children, agree when Thomas told her stories about his boss, console Becky about her break up. She ate her lunch at her desk, watching everyone else leave in groups, talking to one another.
    Once alone, she pulled out her dream book. She had dreamed last night that years ago she had had a baby, and given it away. Somehow or other she had found out her child had been mistreated, and took it back. The family had named him “Javier” or something like it, though she was not Hispanic, and hated the name. He hadn’t been able to speak, because no one had taught him to. He didn’t blink his dark eyes when she explained to him that she was his mommy and that she had abandoned him. All he did was stare, and she had woken with tears brimming in her eyes.
    The book told her that dreams of babies generally symbolized the birth of new ideas, or perhaps indicated new possibilities. She scoffed. New ideas? Possibilities? At her age? She closed the book. She had been worried it had something to do with her hormones. Everyone, especially her mother, had told her that women all hit an age where they suddenly want children. She refused to accept the idea that she—and indeed all women—were governed solely by their biology. That they were nothing more than animals governed by the instinct to procreate and spread their genes.
    People began to slowly trickle back from wherever they had all run off to. As she typed, she noticed how thin and bony her knuckles had become. She had always possessed long, elegant fingers, but it seemed to her now that her skin lacked the glow of youth that had made them so. Now her skin was dry and cracking, and her veins obvious.
    Growing up, various people had always told her that as she aged she would get aches and pains, especially in her back. She had never paid them much mind, but now her wrists ached and cracked, and the sciatic nerve in her back was flashing pain through her hip if she sat just the wrong way. Had she grown that old already? Did it happen that soon? One minute you’re a young thing with your whole future before you, and the next minute you’re sipping your decaffeinated coffee complaining about the kids these days? How could time rush by without anyone noticing?
    It reminded her of an article she had read back in college about Easter Island. Something about why didn’t the Islanders stop the deforestation sooner? The article had pointed out it was a gradual process. The forest shrank over time, each generation seeing only the small fraction of that seen by the previous one. And no one would cry over cutting down the last sorry tree on a lonesome little island. They had all gone quietly, unnoticed. Maybe time was like that?
    Her dream bothered her. Maybe it wasn’t just the dream, though. When she had woken, she suddenly realized how all her days had blended together. Monday wasn’t so very different from Tuesday. Tuesday wasn’t so very different from Wednesday, and so on. Had she filled out the report this Tuesday, or last? When had Maggie last shown off pictures of her kids? Was it last week or last month? How much time had she lost? When had her hands gotten so bony and dry?
    Her child. It was so strange that a dream about somebody who had never existed should make her feel so awful. But it did. She had abandoned that boy, dream or not. Because of her, he had never learned to speak, never learned to love. He lived in a world of grey.
    Even stranger, she had known who the child’s father was. She hadn’t thought of him in years. He had been beautiful. Not that he could have claimed to be so physically. She was well familiar with his average face, his slight frame. But he was beautiful all the same. Her friends had told her he was no good. She hadn’t listened, but when she told him about it, he said he was no good too. When he left, he had said that circumstances would never permit them to be together. She had agreed, and they had gone their separate ways.
    Somehow, she had always pictured things going differently in her life. As a little girl, it had seemed reasonable to expect that when you meet that man for whom you would give up anything willingly, you were married. Children followed, and all your dreams came true. Somewhere, things had gone quite differently for her. She had often wondered if everyone else felt the same way. Was Maggie really so happy with her children? Had she planned something different growing up? Being an actress, maybe? Had Thomas meant to marry that woman from marketing he met at the Christmas party two years ago?
    What had her dreams been? She closed her eyes and tried to remember. Not working in an office, certainly, but she admitted this job wasn’t as bad as she had pictured. But as for what she had meant to do? She couldn’t recall.
    He had always told her the future was dark. “No,” she told him, “It’s a mud puddle.” It still seemed true to her. You couldn’t say the future was “dark” unless you knew a bit about what was coming. Really, you know nothing about the future. It’s murky, unknown, isn’t it? Could she have predicted ten years ago that she would be working here, still taking the bus, still living in an apartment? Twenty years ago? Could she have predicted he and she would have gone their separate ways?
    It was dark when she left. Even during the summer, she never seemed able to leave before the sun starting dipping past the horizon. The city lights flashed by, shadows of people blinking past her. She wondered if they had achieved their dreams. A young couple stood outside a store, window shopping together. Was their future dark or muddy? Recently all her days had been muddy.
    Her apartment still smelled like flowers. She had bought herself a bouquet for her birthday, and set it proudly on the little wooden table she had bought a few years back from a garage sale. She seated herself at it, rested her chin in her hands, and looked at the flowers. Daffodils and Pansies. Yellow and Purple.
    Daffodils always made her happy. She had always preferred them to roses, and the pansies had come from the little pot garden she kept on the balcony. One of her professors at college had told her they complimented—yellow and purple—and she had always liked purple anyway. She had learned that yellow and purple mixed together turn into mud.

The Price of Honor

    My name is unimportant. My time is inconsequential. Where I live makes no difference. The only thing that matters is the events that take place. Resemblances may remain, but each person who reads these words is free to interpret it the way they wish. Stripped away of setting, the meaning still remains. Technology may improve and tactics change, but what war is will and always has been the same. War brings out the most basic of human instinct: To kill or to die. One’s mind enters insanity and whoever can control that insanity will come out the victor. There has rarely been a time in human history where society was at complete peace. There have been armed conflicts littered across our history books, making us ask the question: What is human nature? Is it to fight or is it to make peace? Peace continues to lead to more fighting, so perhaps it is in our nature to kill. Inside every person there is the ability to defend oneself, but what happens at war is an animal all its own. This is the story of the human’s mind at war.

Impending Gloom

    Musket balls are flying all around. With each one that doesn’t hit me I can’t help but almost feel disappointed. Anticipation is the worst part of the battle; it’s nerve-racking not knowing whether you’re going to live or die. For every ball I send racing out of my barrel I know two more are flying back at me. Those are usually the numbers we face; I don’t think I’ve been on a battlefield when we weren’t outnumbered. I fire shot after shot, slowly forgetting the reasons behind each one. Standing next to me is my childhood friend. We enlisted together back when the revolution was something to believe in. I was young and naîve then; that was six months ago. Wars have a way of changing people, and I don’t mean that in a tough, macho, right of passage kind of way. They wear down your spirit, test the edge of your sanity, and most of all measure just how far your faith can take you. They don’t tell you that when you enlist. There were promises of glory and honor; so far I’ve only witnessed the silent promisedeath.
    It’s ironic thinking about how we got here. My friend and I were so headstrong in the beginning. “If they won’t let us have our freedom,” started my friend, “then we’re just gonna have to take it ourselves.” It was hard not to succumb to the propaganda. It was everywhere to brainwash us. Back then my friend and I were real gung-ho for the war. The revolutionaries told us we were aggravated by their imperial suppression and, like a dog with a treat in front of our face, we got mad. Everything everyone told us before we signed up sounded so inspirational and glorified. They made it sound so right and drove the cause deep into our hearts. It sucked us all in, my brothers, my friends, me. It was hard for us to resist. The propaganda did its job. My friend and I both signed up as soon as we were of age and then the cold, hard truth set in.
    It wasn’t as glamorous as we thought it would be as “they” painted the picture to be. It was tough from the moment we got out here. I was lucky enough to not get separated from my childhood friend. At least there would be one friendly face in the camp. By the time we joined up, the revolution was seven months in and as we looked around the campfire, all we saw was broken spirits displayed on grim faces. “How long have you been in for?” my friend asks an elderly man eating his rations. The man looks over at him for a second and, without saying a word, gets back to his meal. The easiest way to tell how long a man had been fighting for was to look at his feet. If the cold still got to him you could tell. Their feet would shake trying to stay warm that told you he hadn’t endured too much. My legs shook so much I thought they were going to fall off. “Morale seems low,” my friend turns and whispers to me. That was an understatement. There wasn’t a chipper spirit in the whole camp. There was somberness about the camp that would spook the dead. It never took long for tyros like me to be overwhelmed by the dismal reality and grow just as glum just a matter of time.

Then There was One

    “What’s it say in the letter?” my friend asks following my long silence. “My brother,” I respond without even looking up from the letter “he’s dead.” This has been an all too common theme recently. Before I enlisted, we got word that my eldest brother died on the battlefield. It broke my mother’s heart. Every day from then on she would look out the window, scared to see another messenger coming. Every time my other brothers would send a letter home she would almost collapse when the courier dropped the mail off. It was heart wrenching to take the letters not knowing what news they contained inside. A letter came home a month before I enlisted, telling us that one of my other brothers had been killed. He was the one closest to me. He was older than me by two years and he always stood up for me. We did everything together when we were little. He was like my guardian angel, I guess his wings have been clipped. His death was hard for me to bear.
    Two of my brothers were dead, two of us remained. Strange thing though, was that it didn’t make me not want to fight. Knowing two of my brothers were dead only aggrandized my yearning to be out there. I felt that if I was able to fight, I could have prevented their deaths. For some reason, I believed that my mere presence could have made a difference, could have saved them. Now I realize that one man means nothing. When you are undersupplied, underfunded, and outnumbered, one man means nothing, just one more letter to send home. My mother tried to stop me from joining the revolution. She couldn’t bear the thought of her little baby being out there in the heat of the battle. She only had two boys left and it would tear her heart to pieces worrying about losing all four of her children to this dastardly war.
    My mother couldn’t stop me though. Nor could the most beautiful girl I ever laid eyes on, my fiancé. We were to get married when the war was over. It pained me to leave her, but I had a duty to fulfill. She balled her eyes out when I told her I enlisted and did everything she could to make me stay. I hated having to leave her behind, but I had no choice. I knew what had to be done and I was going to do it. I told her I would come back to her. I promisedbut doesn’t every man promise that to his lady? A lot of men have broken their promises.
    My father was the only one who really wanted me to go. He would always be reminding me how much longer until I could enlist. He wasn’t a military man, but he was a man of pride, immense pride. For as long as I can remember him he was a tough, hard working man. He never showed emotion, only anger. Whenever I would achieve anything he would just ask me, “That make you feel special or something?” He never gave me a word of encouragement or support, but maybe that’s because he never got any from his father. I can remember one time when he was yelling at me he said, “When I was a boy I came home one night with a skinned knee and I was cryin’. My father took one look at me and was disgusted. He tied me to the fence that night and told me that men don’t cry and he’d come out in the morning. If I had any tears frozen to my face, that would show him if I was a man or not. Coldest night of the winter that night was and I didn’t shed a tear, haven’t since.”
    He tried to instill that kind of toughness in all of us, but I was the meekest of the bunch. My two oldest brothers would always hassle and pick on me. My other brother would be the one to defend me and help me out. When my father saw that, he put me over his knee and spanked me. “You learn to fight for yourself ya hear?” he’d say as he was hitting me. “You can’t go expecting others to fight your fights.” I guess when I enlisted I was finally going to fight my own fight.

From the Heart

To My Love,

    This will be the first letter I write and I’m beginning to fear it will be my last. It has been hard to get a hold of paper and some ink, but I was determined to get this out to you. With every day I spend freezing out here is one more day I lose with you. I long to see your gorgeous face and stare deep into your eyes. It’s been one-hundred and twenty nine days since the last time I saw you, since that bleak day I left for training. I picked the worst time to join up. We were already losing the revolution when I joined and the days were just starting to get turn cold. It’s been a dreadfully long winter. The nights can get so bitterly cold, the only thing that keeps me alive is to think of the warmth of your heart. In the beginning, I was optimistic and feeling patriotic. Now I feel downtrodden and my actions, futile. Each day I have more reason to grieve than the last. I have heard that all three of my brothers have been slain and my dear friend since youth fell in the last battle. I am the last of my line without a friend in this dreadful place. I never knew hell could be so frigid. I ache for this war to be over, but I’m not sure I care which side wins anymore. I just want to be back at home with you in my arms. I don’t regret joining the cause; I just see through the lies that the propagandists have told me. As long as my countrymen fight, I shall be right there beside them. I remain here because it is my duty as a citizen, but I do not believe anymore, quite frankly I don’t think many men do. The problem is, giving up and quitting just isn’t something our pride will allow. We would wait until we all perished before we accepted defeat. Some days it seems like that is the course fate has decided for us. I can’t remember the last time we won a battle, or even gained a little ground, but we fight on with what dignity we have left. I feel I will be returning to you soon, we can’t keep this up for much longer. My heart mourns every moment I am without you, but I hope that is something I can remedy. I will never stop loving you and I promise I will return to you soon. I love you with all my heart and soul.

Sincerely,
Your Soulmate

A Hopeless Battle

    I can hear the muskets firing all around me, but it doesn’t affect me anymore. There was once a time when I would get startled as a musket ball flew by my head, but I’m too cold now to even flinch. This war has dragged on for too long. No one knows the cause anymore; they just fight and die. The next round of muskets fire around me, but it never really matters how much we shoot. The enemy advances, overwhelms us, moves on to the next battalion, and does it again. This is not how to win independence; this is how you kill an entire generation of good men. They have more men, more guns, and more supplies. We have no chance, but our “revolutionary leaders” think it’s better to send our men to die for the cause. “It’s better to die trying to obtain freedom than to die under the tyranny and oppression of another country,” all the officers say. I think they have just been brainwashed to say that. Every officer will give you the same iteration. I’m not even sure they know what they’re saying. The generals like to make speeches to raise the morale, but they talk bout “fighting for the cause” and how “dieing for our freedom is honorable” when I don’t see them doing anything of the sort. They sit comfortably in the warmth of their mansions as we freeze on a battlefield, barely able to grasp our muskets. The only warmth we get is grasping the warm barrel of our muskets while we reload or the feeling of a searing, hot musket ball burning through our flesh.
    The enemy creeps closer and our numbers dwindle. “RETREAT,” I can hear over the noise of the battlefield. Retreat? The battle has barely just begun. Off to my left I can see that it’s a regular foot soldier screaming for the retreat. Why is everyone following him? Has it come to the point that we follow orders from anyone who screams them? Have we lost so much dignity that we will flee and throw away all honor instead of standing on the battlefield and accepting our fate? I can’t believe everyone is acting so cowardly. I don’t agree with this, but if I don’t retreat with the rest, my life is all but over. Maybe we all must live to fight another day. I guess this is what it has come to. My feet are moving me, but I cannot feel them doing so. I trudge on as best I as I can, with musket balls flying all around me. How far could we get before the enemy consumes us all? They are not looking to win a battle or gain some ground, they seek the destruction of all men able to resist against them. They will not stop their pursuit. Retreat is just as hopeless as trying to stand our ground, it just changes whether the shot that kills you lands in your chest or your back. Each step I take brings me closer to my doom and then it comes. My body lays face-down in the snow. The white snow dims before my eyes. Was I shot? Am I dying? The world fades, darkness is creeping upon me. I do not wish to die.

A Field of Red

    Light, so much light. It blinds my eyes. Am I dead? Is this heaven? I feel cold. The feeling returns to my hand and my arm and my legs. A sharp pain rushes through my head, like I’ve been hit in the head with a shovel. I’m not dead. A little shaken up, I manage to stagger to my feet. Quickly scanning my body, I seem to be fine. No blood or bullet holes, just a cut on my forehead. I try to move, but nearly fall again. I stand upon a sheet of ice, which caused my fall. I look down at my feet and notice rocks protruding through the ice. I must have hit one of them on the way down and was knocked unconscious. But how was I not taken prisoner? Where has everyone gone? The field has been abandoned.
    I start my march towards the direction of my army’s retreat. A body of a fallen soldier lies strewn on the ground every couple of steps on my path. Men with musket balls in their backs lie shamefully in the ground. As I reach the top of the hill, my heart drops all the way back to the bottom. A field of death lay before me. My entire battalion lay dead before my eyes. They were gunned down on the run, sprawled across the snow. A field of snow covered in blood strewn with the bodies of my comrades, my friends. Just beyond the field of red, there is the enemy, regrouping after their easy victory. I collapse to my knees, not knowing what else to do. My army has been obliterated. I am the only one left. Every single one of my comrades lay dead before me, their freezing corpses spread out in the cold, lonely snow. This was not the way they were supposed to die. Why was I the one to survive? How would I explain that I am alive, yet every other man is dead? How could I go on living every day, knowing I should be mourned for like every other soldier? My ungainliness is the only reason I have survived; because I could not stay on my own two feet. How do I explain that all the others died in full retreat? It would devastate my village.
    I begin my trek home, but to what kind of welcome, I wonder. Will my parents be happy to see me alive or ashamed that I’m the only one returning? What will I tell them? I can’t break everyone’s hearts. What kind of home will I return to? My life can never be the same again. Why am I not moving onto the next world with everyone else? Why have I been cursed to bring shame to my family? My village is a one day journey from this desolate field. It will not be an easy day; no day will be. For how bad today has been, I dread tomorrow.

Home Sweet Home

    There’s my village, calm and serene. They all know nothing of yesterdaym that our army has failed and has been massacred. How could they know? With no one alive, no messenger could bring the news. I will have to reveal this gruesome event to everyone. I’m not sure I have come to terms with it enough to utter such a horror. Maybe this is all a bad dream and I will wake up any second. This nightmare is far from over. The lone soldier who is ‘privileged’ enough to return to his people, the one who will linger long after all the ones he fought with have perished. My journey is at last over for my body, but the journey of my soul is about to begin.
    Everyone looks at me as if I were a ghost. Each person’s gaze follows me until I’m well past them. No one says anything to me, they just silently think to themselves, “Why is he here?” Mothers cry as they realize I am the sole survivor. But how did I survive when no one else did? The look on all the fathers’ faces tells me exactly what they think. They hate me for surviving, while their sons perished. Everyone’s looks make it clear to me that they have gotten wind of the battle but not the shameful truth. I don’t know which is worse, the mothers’ inability to look at me or the fathers’ disgusted stares. The walk through town seems like hours, but in reality it only lasts a few fleeting moments. My house towers before me, looking like something alien to me. I stand before the door afraid to move.
    My mother spots me through the window and drops the pie she was baking. My father comes running to see what’s wrong and sees me. The look on his face ripped through my heart like a thousand bullets. One glance and I knew all the shame I brought to him. I know it sounds extreme, but I know in my heart he wishes I was dead like everyone else. Mother runs to the door and flings it wide open. “Oh my boy,” she exclaims, with her hands covering her face in disbelief. “When I heard the army was wiped out, I figured I’d never see you again. Oh, my boy my boy.” She begins to weep and runs up to me, embracing me tightly. I see my father walk past the door and into the other room to stoke the fire. He doesn’t even give me a glance. “Come inside dear,” my mother says with such kindness in her voice. “You must be freezing. Your room is just how you left it and I’m sure you’re famished.” I wish I could see even an ounce of kindness from my father.
    I walk through the door and feel the warmth of being home again. My father doesn’t even turn to look at me for a second; he just continues prodding the fire. Mother runs around trying to get everything set for me. “Have you said hello to your son yet,” she asks Father, walking back into the room with a fresh set of clothes. My father gets up and turns toward me. I’m a valiant soldier of the army, one who has fought through many battles and faced death on numerous occasions, yet I stand looking at my father more terrified than I had ever been on the battlefield. I’m not sure what words would come out of his mouth, but my heart ached to hear his voice. My soul told me he his first words to me would not be bitter, but then he spoke. “Why did you come back?” he asks with such coldness in his heart, and goes back to the fire.

Inner Toil

    I wake up in my own bed for the first time since I can even remember. I’m the only man in my army that has that luxury. My comrades woke up at the golden gates of heaven, while my soul awoke burning in one of the deepest circles of hell. My thoughts once again drift back to me being the only one. I am the only one living from my unit and, no matter what I do, that’s where my mind winds up. I wish I could eradicate these thoughts from my mind that have plagued my dreams and wake me in the night. This is the life I have returned to; nothing but pain and torture. The ghosts of the fallen poison my mind, haunt my dreams, and drain my soul. I have become an empty shell of a man. Will the brouhaha ever cease? Will my mind ever be able to cope with the death of my comrades? I wish it would all just stop.
    Breakfast tastes like ash in my mouth. My stomach clenches every time I try to eat. Sleep feels like just a way to pass the time. I get no rest from it. Every time I wake up I feel as if I just fallen asleep. Rest is a stranger to me. Sleep is just a means of creating darkness in my head, enough darkness for the nightmares to come out. I try to work, but tools feel useless in my hands. I spent too long in the army with a musket grasped in my hand, that now everything else seems so alien to me. I forgot my simple ways and transformed into a mindless killing drone. The way of the army is all that I know and a musket is the only tool I know how to use. My time in the army has destroyed my spirit and corroded my soul. Every part of me has been wounded. No part of me can return to normal. Each aspect of my life has been tainted by this long war. Will I ever get a respite from this turmoil? Can my mind ever be at peace?
    The cabinet slams. I flinch and grab for my gun. My heart beats like it did on the battlefield, racing with the rush of battle. Household sounds evoke memories of all my battles. My mind still lingers in that horrid time, upon those fields of death. To further my torment, I now must come to terms with the fact that I have taken lives. I have noticed new men haunting my dreams. My dreams are inhabited not only by my comrades, but also the enemy. The men I’ve killed lurk in my nightmares, along with my allies, each person latching onto my living state and damning me for my vitality. A door swings shut and, all of a sudden, my mind is back on the battlefield. I remember sitting in the bitter cold, struggling to get my finger around the trigger, as the enemy advanced upon us. It was so cold then, I didn’t know whether my legs were still attached by the end of a battle. I return from my flashback and I’m in the town, amidst the villagers. I spot a man in enemy colors and I drop what I’m holding. Instinctively, I attempt to find cover, but I regain my composure, before making too much of a scene. Quickly gathering my things, I rush back to my house and close the door tightly. These moments when my mind wanders back to the war must stop. I can’t live like this. I must retake my own mind. Between the angst from losing my comrades and the shame of returning home, my mind is left broken. I must fix the warp of my mind before I can’t differentiate night from day or meat from metal. When will my suffering end?

Broken Silence

    It’s the middle of the night. Everyone is sleeping soundly in their beds. I lay awake staring into the darkness of my ceiling; I find no peace under the shade of night. Even in total darkness I can see the images of all those dead soldiers. They’re burned into my head. They’re all I can see, never letting me sleep. I close my eyes, but that’s no escape. Closing my eyes just enhances their image. They stare at mecall out to me to join them. It’s so inviting and yet I am stuck among the living. What kind of man wishes death upon himself? Most people would be glad they survived, but I am just tormented. It’s been nearly a week I think. I haven’t truly slept a single night. Insomnia, awake when I want to sleep, yet when I’m awake I feel like I’m sleeping. Nearly one week and I haven’t said a word to my father nor has he said anything past his first, scathing remark.
    Another morning comes. My weariness grows, but I trudge on. My walks through town are awkward at best. Dirty looks and disgusted leers are upon the faces of all my neighbors. I feel as if I’m walking through a foreign country. There are no friendly faces, not even the face of my Love. I have tried to see her, but my shame has kept me from her. No father would have his daughter fraternizing with a shameful fiend such as me. I have truly lost everything: my honor, my friends, my mind and my Love. I promised her I would return and I have, but what good was returning to her without my soul. There is no end to my strife. With each passing day, there is only more added to my already overbearing state of agony. I can’t even talk to my Love to see if her passion still lives for me. Perhaps she is just as appalled at my actions, as everyone else. Maybe she wants nothing more to do with me and the shame I would bring to her. Possibly love won’t conquer all.
    The walk through the crowd feels like walking down death row. Everyone just gets out of my way, like I have some disease they don’t want to contract. The faces stare at me in antipathy. Finally I make it to my father’s blacksmith shop. The bell rings as I walk in. He stops to see who entered, but just goes back to work once he sees it’s me. The banging on the iron rips through my skull, driving the images of the dead further into my consciousness. My father, a proud, hard-working man, can’t even look at me in the eyes. I wish I knew what he was thinking.
    I place my rifle on the counter, trying to insinuate that it’s in need of repairs. He doesn’t stop working, but I get the feeling he understands. I stand there uncomfortably, trying to figure out what to say to end our long silence. Nothing seems good enough to be said. If only he knew how much it pained me that I haven’t spoken to him. His respect is what I have always coveted above all else. I just wish I knew why he was so angry with me. Was he upset that we are losing the war? That the revolution is failing? Did it disgrace him that I was the only survivor? Do I bring him shame by being here, so he can’t grieve for me like every other father? I wish I knew. “What do you need that fixed for?” my father asks, finally breaking the long silence just as I’m walking out the door. “Even when it worked you didn’t want to use it, too yellow.”

Paternal Confession

    I stand in the doorway, silent and confused. It seems fitting, that the only two things my father have said to me have been bitter and mean. He always was hard on me, pushed me as far as I could go. No matter what I did it seemed he expected better of me, but I grew to accept that. “What have I done father?” I ask turning and staring him in the face. “You disgraced the army!” he screams, slamming the hammer down on the anvil.
    “You disgraced this village and most of all you disgraced ME!”
    “So because I’ve survived, I’m a disgrace?!”
    “The other soldiers at least had the decency to die honorably and so did your brothers. You threw away your honor.” It finally dawned on me why my father is so appalled with me. He thinks I retreated and ran away while the rest of my army stood their ground and fought. How can I tell him the whole army was in full retreat, that I was last to retreat? Can I save my own honor by desecrating the dead soldiers’ good names? All I can do is stand there dumbfounded there’s nothing else I can do.
    Everyone in town looks at me with disgust because they think I fled and deserted the battlefield. They see me as a coward but the whole army retreated first. I didn’t even want to retreat. The only way to clear my name would mean exposing every single one of my comrades as cowards and tarnish their name. I can’t do it. How could I do it? “I’m sorry father,” I manage to say, stumbling over my words. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted.”
    “You may think that time will heal this wound, but don’t count on it. I don’t know if this village can ever forgive you I won’t.”
    “What do you want from me father?”
    “I WANT YOU DEAD!” my father screams at me, his face turning red with anger. “And I’m not ashamed to say it.”
    “All your other sons have perished,” I plead with my father just to show an ounce of compassion. “Can you truly feel no shred of joy to still have one among the living?”
    “I raised three sons to be honest, honorable and strong men I used to have a fourth son, but I don’t know what happened to him.”
    “I guess returning was not my best choice of action,” I stammer, knowing no amount of words will sway his bitter heart. “I thought maybe at least some part of you might be happy to see one of your sons again, but I guess I was wrong.”
    “Perhaps you should’ve found a place where cowards are welcome ‘cuz it ain’t here,” my father’s words continue to rip deeper into me.
    I think I liked it better when we didn’t speak.

Final Goodbye

    So the village thinks I’m a coward; they think that I fled in the face of adversity and danger? Could I tell them the truth that everyone fled? What is my honor worth? Can I seriously reveal the truth just to clear my name? Do I even deserve that? No no one must know. I can’t ruin the reputation of all those men, all my comrades, all my friends. They died as heroes to their country, who am I to take that away? It’s a secret only the gravediggers know, and that is the way it shall remain. But how can I live with the entire village hating me and thinking me a deserter? How can I expect the village to forgive me, when my own father will not? I believe he will never forgive me and I could tell in his voice that no part of him wishes me to be here. There is no worse feeling in the world. “I’m sorry,” are the only words that I can find to say as I walk out the door, a bastard child.
    For some reason, there is meaning now in all the dirty looks. They aren’t just disdainful stares. All the villagers hate me because I left their sons to die out on the battlefield. They see me and hate me for this. My face reminds them that there son is gone, yet I remain. My presence makes it so they can’t forget their sons; so they can not mourn them the way they should be able to. They get no break from their pain and sorrow because they always have to see my living face. They see me and they see the only person in the army who survived. Not because of luck, but because I fled and that brings my name eternal shame. If I wasn’t here they could move on, they could cope with their son’s death. Maybe I should never have come back, maybe I should just leave. There’s nothing left for me here. My father can’t stand the sight of me, the villagers shun me, I can’t see the one person I love, and my post-war trauma grows with every passing moment with every moment I don’t truly live. My insomnia grows every night and the vision of my dead comrades burns brighter with every day. Life is not meant to be lived this way.
    Where will I go? What will I do? There’s no place for me anymore. My life is in shambles and everything I once loved is gone. There’s nothing for me anymore. I must go. I know what I must do, and yet doing it will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Tonight I say goodbye to my home, my village, and the life that I once knew. It all ends here now.

The End of the Line

    An enemy fort is not too far from my village. I might as well go out just like my comrades did in my uniform with my musket in hand. The outpost is a two day’s journey and it will not be an easy one on my soul. When you stand on a battlefield, you know there is a good chance you won’t walk off alive, but there is still the chance that you can. I now go to the enemy fort knowing that I have no choice but death and that’s a sobering thought. This is such a final decision, yet I know it is right. There is no question in my mind this is what I must do. I will finally be at peace, once I face my demons.
    I trudge through the snow, not even bothered by the bitter cold. My thoughts drift back to my village. Will they be upset that they drove me to this? Or will they find it justice? Will anyone even care that I’m gone? Will my Love grieve for me? I try not to dwell on it too much, but what else is there really to think about. Knowing that I have no future means my mind can only dwell on the past. My past will haunt me no longer. At long last the enemy fort lies before me. Watchmen in towers sit on both sides of the fort and men stand by the front gate. There’s no chance to do anything meaningful.
    My legs start running and I don’t even realize it. I can hear myself screaming as I dash forward, not knowing why. I know the watchmen will shoot me once they get a glance at me. I’ve seen the enemy pick off our troops from further than I am now. Their riflemen are trained at hitting targets from a distance. It won’t be long now. I see the open gate and I realize I just want to get inside then I could be at peace. My feet are moving quickly the base is getting nearer. I hear the blast of a rifle. It rips through my left sleeve. Another shot. I hear is whiz past my ear. I can’t believe it. I may make it. I’m so close now. I can make it just a few more steps... BAM. Before my mind can register what’s happened, I’m lying in the cold snow. A pool of blood stains the snow, but I can see I was almost there two more steps. Just two more steps and I would have been through. I’ve met my end just as I wanted, but I couldn’t get those last two steps to put my soul at ease. I go now not with my soul at peace, but at long last my mind can be at rest.

Jack-O Sock

    I’ll usually start with my best ‘80s moon-walk across the kitchen floor, the tile cold and smooth against my thin dress-socks, the lack of traction makes the illusion more believable. I am a large, Caucasian male and not the least bit elegant. I coax my 6 and 4 year-olds to come to me in my best mezzo-soprano, “Hey, kids, come see Neverland Ranch.”
    “No way? Not Neverland,” they cry out in stereo.
    I have a black top hat, collapsed on one corner with a bald spot in the felt that I bought at thrift, strictly for this purpose. A single hand, adorned with a white athletic sock, lures my children closer to me, “There’s lots of goodies at my ranch, kiddies.” My children could care less that my impersonation sounds nothing like Michael Jackson; they have no idea who he is. Instead my voice sounds more like Mrs. Doubtfire, yet nasally, because of the white Kleenex I have shoved up both nostrils, the tail of the tissue rolled back up over my nose and tucked under my eyeglasses.
    “Are you going to make s’mores out of us when you get us to your lair, Jack-o?” my son asks. They continue to follow me into my bedroom.
    “I would never do anything to hurt little children,” I reply. Once they are safely in my bedroom I slam the door behind them. The lights go out and I whisper, “Jack-o, Jack-o, Jack-o, Jack-o,” each whisper quieter and quieter as it dies out, reminiscent of an old horror flick. “Jack-o, Jack-o, Jack-o, Jack-o.”
    “Jack-o!” both kids scream in unison.
    “He tricked us again,” my daughter laughs, trying her best to pretend she’s actually scared.
    My voice drops to a deep-finky tone, “Now welcome to my lair, where nobody gets out alive.” I turn the light back on and chase my son, trapping him in the corner of the room.
    “Don’t baby dangle me, Jack-o!” I wrap my arms around him and lift his small body perpendicular to my bed until his hands and feet are pressed against the roof. He is laughing again and trying his best to play the role of terrified child, “Don’t baby dangle me, Jack-o, please don’t...” I release him from the ceiling and his body drops the six feet to meet the mattress, where I have a bevy of pillows to ease his fall.
    The kids take turns allowing me to chase them through the house in my makeshift costume as they deliver horrific screams, but allow me to catch them over and over to drag them back to my lair and baby-dangle them again.
    After fifteen or twenty minutes, out of exhaustion, one of them will usually retrieve a drink from the kitchen, bait me into catching them and spew water upon me. “Ahhhh,” I scream bloody murder as I cover my face and flail uncontrollably. “I’m melting, I’m melting... Oh, God, call aunt Liz and tell her to alert the cryogenics lab!”
    I can hear my wife laughing from the kitchen as my children giggle uncontrollably with a deep sense of satisfaction for defeating Jack-o again.
    I would choose a dirty white sock, old musty hat, and a Kleenex over a Nintendo “Wii” or cable television any day. Nothing gets the imagination flowing like cheap entertainment, Jackson-style.

the Slaughterhouse of Lambs
(excerpt from a work-in-progress)

    Roxy’s eyes brightened when she saw Chandler walk into her bar. She smiled, indifferent to her image as the “tough broad” proprietor. Chandler’s eyes met her’s and he smiled widely. Slipping off the bar stool, Roxy pulled her skirt down, smoothed it. She resisted the temptation to run to him. She approached slowly, her heart racing more with each step nearer.
    “So, Dark and Handsome, what brings you to this part of town?” she smiled, stepping into him. He slipped his arm around her waist, patted her derriere and hugged her closer. Her arm around his waist, Roxy steered them toward a corner table past the far end of the bar. Chandler pulled a chair out for her; she positioned it so she could easily see the bar. Chandler looked at Jake who was already heading toward them when Chandler called, “Make one a black coffee, Jake. Rox’ll take her usual. Put it on my tab.” Roxy looked up when he said, “put it on my tab.” Chandler read her expression, “Just keeping up appearances.”
    “You pat my ass where everyone can see and you’re worried about appearances,” she laughed.
    “Oh yeah, and you weren’t so close that we all but went into body meld.”
    Rox looked at him with a sharp but bemused grin. Chandler shrugged and leaned toward her, kissing her cheek. “Does that make up for it?”
    “That weak willy cheek kiss?” she smiled. “Yeah, now they all think you’re my brother and that we’re incest perves.”
    “Don’t worry, Kiddo. By tomorrow all recollection will disappear with their hangovers.” Jake returned and set the coffee down before Chandler and a Virgin Mary before Roxy. He looked quizzically at first Rox then Chandler, waited a moment then walked away.
    “So darlin’, where you been?”
    “New Haven,” Chandler said, “I took a course at Yale from Dagger Man.”
    Roxy’s expression shifted, concern focusing her sight. “You OK?”
    “Let’s just say it was quite a trip,” Chandler replied. The way Chandler spoke, “trip” caught Rox’s attention, but she let it pass. “Dagger may well have a line or two into this place, you know. He knows all about you, even mentioned you by name.”
    “I’ve guessed that, you’ve been coming here for nearly a year.” Roxy shrugged, “Besides, who cares? It’s you he’s after, not me.”
    “Gee, thanks loads, Darlin’ but you’re not safe even so,” Chandler replied.
    “Dammit, Chandler. I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t you think I know that? Why do you think Jake has a few friends spotted here all the time. Two bouncers walk me to and from my car. Dagger may run half the underworld but he would have a mighty big fight on his hands if he ever tried to pull anything on me.”
    “Rumor has it the Ruskies are giving him some trouble. His stock just might be down,” Chandler quipped.
    “You didn’t come straight here, did you?” Roxy asked.
    “Naw, I did a jigsaw and I think I slipped the arrival committee.”
    “Let’s grease, just to be on the safe side,” Roxy suggested.
    Chandler nodded. They stood up. Roxy looked toward Jake who was keeping an eye from the end of the bar. “I’ll meet you at your place,” she said. Roxy slapped Chandler’s face, then spun around as though indignant. Jake’s attention pitched then waned when he saw Roxy’s subtle nod. Chandler slunk out, feigning shame. Several regulars looked up then down as Chandler shot them the evil eye, rubbing his cheek and not just for effect.

    Roxy took her seat at the end of the bar creating impression of angry disgust as she “chatted” with Jake who leaned close. They shared a knowing glance and Jake shook his head, cast his head back for effect, and laughed. He leaned nearer Roxy; she whispered that she’d be leaving shortly. He looked at her and nodded his understanding. “Goin’ be in tomarrah?” Jake asked.
    Roxy grinned. “I hope not,” she whispered, patting his hand. Jake grinned gently and nodded. “Good luck, I got ever’theng covered OK, either way.”
    “I know Jake, I know.” She leaned back. “Did I ever tell you I don’t pay you enough?”
    “Yes, you say that all the time,” Jake smiled.
    “Well, this time I will do more than say it,” Roxy said.
    “You say that all the time, too,” Jake replied. He turned, approaching a customer who called toward him, setting his beer stein down on the heavily varnished, old bar. Roxy didn’t like his looks; he was new and something about him made her wary. She glanced around unobtrusively to see if there were others who gave her the willies. He was seemingly alone, hopefully that was a good sign but she knew it could be otherwise, too. She decided to wait longer than she’d intended before slipping out to go to Chandler. The man took a swig from the frothy stein Jake set down before him. He looked at Roxy over the rim of his upturned beer stein. She kept his sight for a moment before shifting her attention toward Jake. Seeing Jake’s recognition, she slipped off the bar stool and wandered toward the man.
    “You got eyes for me, stranger?” she asked. The man held the beer stein before him and looked at her. He turned, wordlessly and made his way toward a table at the back, near the pool table. Roxy watched him, assessing his wordless behavior. She motioned toward Jake. Approaching, she leaned over the bar and whispered, making a point of looking at the man who was watching them. She turned her attention back to Jake, pleased that he was noticing. “Email a Jpeg of his image to me, from the video,” she whispered to Jake. He nodded but did not look at the man. Roxy did before walking back to her perch at the far, wall end of the bar. When she glanced up again, the man was gone, the beer stein sitting empty on the table he’d left. A bushy bearded man, short and beer bellied wandered in from the outside. He took a place at the bar and Jake slowly made his way over to him. They chatted briefly, Jake nodding toward Roxy.
    Jake tapped him a Bud and set the glass before him. Jake served several others then made way toward the end of the bar where Roxy sat.
    “So?” Roxy asked.
    “Drove away in a maroon Bentley convertible. Pat got the license. I’ll run it through my contact tonight and send that with his photo,” Jake said. Roxy glanced toward Pat who unobtrusively tipped his glass of beer toward Roxy. She nodded just enough for him to see. She looked back at Jake, “Bentley, huh? Either he has a lot of confidence or he’s a fool parking a money bucket like that around here. Does he think his big buck wheels are boost proof?”
    “Or the boosters know he’s connected.” Jake added, “Or he was just desperate for a beer.” They looked at one another. “Or the boosters know he’s connected,” Roxy whispered to herself, weighing the likelihood. “We’ll see what Chandler can add up after you run him,” she said. Jake nodded and walked up to another customer awaiting a drink. Roxy stopped him, calling, “What kind of beer?” Jake surmised the value of her question. “Beck’s Dark,” he said, turning away and heading toward the customer again. “Pretty fancy brew for this ‘hood,” Roxy thought. “Most would have thought too fancy for this joint,” she mumbled. She made a mental note to make certain to let Chandler know.

    Chandler sat in the shadows of the loft he kept as a hideaway. He looked out the last of the windows spanning the width of only one of the walls at the playground across the street, several stories below. He heard the children laughing, running, playing. He watched them and felt lonely. He thought of Roxy. She would be here in a few moments; she was the only person he trusted with the knowledge of his hideaway. He would have liked to have been a parent. Well, sometimes he thought that. There was something so lifting about a child’s glee and abandon, playground joy but he also knew the reality of the neighborhood they were in and the likelihood that most of them would end up with broken lives, but still...in their playground mirth, there was the song of hope and possibility. Not all of them would fall through the cracks, not all but...many. Likely most. Chandler felt the full melancholy of life, the bitter and the sweet. In earlier days, he would have opened a fresh fifth of Bourbon and slowly immersed himself in his discouraged musings until the bottle as empty and he once again believed in better days. It wasn’t uncommon for him to find them empty in bed with him the next morning accompanied only by the ache and loneliness of his throbbing hangover. Roxy had been his salvation, she’d brought the priceless gift of hope.

    Quickly, Chandler swept from the chair and crouched, ready to spring as he heard a key in the door. There followed a tapping, three times, silence, then a count of five, and finally, another, single tap. He cautiously moved to the wall near the door and pushing aside the photo of a winding Parisian staircase by Atget, looked through the off-center fisheye. It was Roxy and she was, as expected, alone. He quietly, cat-like stepped, stocking footed to the door and released the deadbolt and latch spring lock of the steel door. He stepped past her as she walked in, a bag of groceries in her arms and looked up and down the hallway with its peeling, ancient wallpaper. The rubber mat that served as a roller rug of sorts, running the length of the hallway was cracked and broken at points along its edges atop the worn, wooden planking of the hallway floor. Bare bulbs lining the centerline of the ceiling were dirt crusted, dusty with several, long ago burned out. A lone, red bulb burned brightly at the end of the hallway marking the window leading to the fire escape, a yellow bulb at the other end marked the head of the stairs and it too, burned strongly. Chandler closed the door and turned the spring latch that set bars into the frame on the sides, at the top of the door, and into the floor.
    “I’d like to use energy saving bulbs and brighten the hallway but I don’t want to tip off anyone to my location,” he said, apologetically. “Too much out of character might draw the wrong kind of curiosity.” Every time Rox visited him, he explained his wishes for things to be better, cleaner, updated, obviously self-conscious about his hidden ownership of the building and regretting the necessity of keeping it visibly in-character with the neighborhood. He took the bag of groceries from her arms and walked into the kitchen, an area defined by the highly polished, brown swirl concrete counters with naturally stained, solid oak cabinets lining the two, intersecting, bare brick walls and the center counter with a large, inset cutting block, a double basin, stainless steel sink, and electric burners. An exhaust hood of glistening stainless steel hung directly above the burners. An oak carousel book stand at one end held an assortment of cookbooks; the pyramid shaped top held an assortment of cutting knives. Rox looked around.
    “I am always amazed at your exquisite sense of taste, your loft is prettier than mine. Did you really do most of this yourself?”
    “Most of it. You ask the same thing just about every time you visit.” He stood up from the bottom, section drawer of the brushed, stainless steel refrigerator. He closed it and approached, took her in his arms. “All of it,” he said. He loved her grey-blue eyes and the bright joyfulness that almost always graced them.
     Rox smiled. “I’ve been wondering where were you this time,” she asked. “I’ve been worried.”
    “Sorry, New Haven was not my destination but Digger made an offer I couldn’t refuse with an all expenses paid bonus, eighteen hours of psychedelic Riverview.”
    “Oh,” she sighed, understanding what it was she’d heard in the way he’d spoken the word, “trip” earlier, sharp irony.
    “Uh-huh, but I’m here. What can I say?”
    “One of these times your luck is going to run out,” she admonished, twisting from his arms. She leaned against the center counter, her hands behind her, gripping the edge of the glistening countertop.
    “And what about yours?” Chandler replied, a little more caustically than he’d intended.
    Roxy looked around helplessly. Tears flooded the corners of her eyes. He stepped closer. They folded their arms around one another. Chandler felt the welcome warmth of her breath on his neck. “I have faith,” Chandler whispered in her ear. She drew back, searching his sight.
    “I do too, but we never really know what that means,” she replied.
    “So why worry?” he asked.
    “You’re such a fatalist, we don’t have to walk the edge of the cliff like you do.”
    “I love the way you worry,” he said. She frowned, her sight narrowing. She looked poised to shake him or hit him. Chandler persisted, “What about you? I wouldn’t call you overly careful.”
    “More so than you but like I said, Dagger’s not after me. Not directly, or...whatever.”
    Chandler slipped his arm around her and guided her to the love seat. They sat down and he turned toward her. “I’m not certain he really is. He’s had more than his share of chances.”
    “He’s a psycho, Chandler. He lives in a different time, in a different world. Look at how he dresses, slicks his hair. Where does he get Brill Cream anyhow? I can’t even buy it online, for God’s sake. I’ve looked. Thought about carrying it at the bar, a novelty item. He and his boys have stepped out of The Untouchables. Their suits, their fedoras. Well, Indiana Jones has brought some of that back, I guess. But still...he’s a cold-blooded murderer who thinks he’s a genius. It worries me. So far, it’s been kind of cat and mouse, and dear, like it or not, you’ve been the mouse. When will he pounce for real? All cats get tired of their games.”
    The sincerity in her eyes unnerved him. Was she right? She reached out and pulled him to her, hugged him. He shifted, closer. She stroked his wind blown, dirty hair. “How long since you’ve showered?” She asked, amazed she had not noticed sooner. She sniffed. “Good Lord, Chandler. You smell like...gardenias?”
    “I only used a little,” he replied, sheepishly.
    Roxy stood up and motioned with her hands, palms up, fingers beckoning. Chandler stood and she raised his turtleneck jersey over his head. He twisted and freed his arms then pulled it over his head, freeing his face. She ran her fingers over his hairy chest. A little gray showed slightly, only a few strands between his pecks. She thumbed his nipples, knowing he was one of the few men who was responsive that way. She loved teasing him. He smiled. She unbuckled his pants, unzipped the front.
    “You’re in the shower,” she said. “Now!” She yanked down his jeans and his underpants. He stepped out of both with her help. He gathered his jeans in his arms, turned and started away from her. She gave his buttocks a sharp slap.
    “Hey!” he called, glancing around, skipped away from her. Once a bit distant, he hobble walked toward the bathroom, playfully exaggerating the sway of his rear. “You’re a sight,” she laughed, watching him make way, naked across the spaciousness of the open loft toward the bathroom.
    “Make fun, woman!” he called, looking back; he nearly lost his balance but a quick hop restored him.
    “Already did, Dear. Did you think I was waiting for your permission?”
    Chandler grunted and closed the bathroom door behind him, the automatic light brightening the polished, pink marble countertops and mirrors just before the door closed behind him. The tiling of the walls, with delicate, Japanese brush patterns on every few of them shown briefly. She was utterly amazed at the marvelous taste and refinement Chandler had built into his loft dwelling. She walked to the kitchen and gathered ingredients for a cappuccino. She heard the shower distantly as she began steaming the milk. She sighed her contentment; for a night, at least, they would enjoy themselves and she would pretend for a time that their life was constant and loving, dependably whole. They both had their crosses to bear and so far, at least, they had each other. So far. The uncertainty bled into her contentment and she fought an impulse to fling the steamed milk across the expanse of the loft. She started. The security shutters began their timed descent interior to the spaced windows that looked out on the neighborhood below. The sun burned a fading orange nearing the unseen horizon, its bright orange-yellow rays blazoning around the silhouette of several skyscrapers visible in the distance. The sky was already darkening and a quarter moon shown off center, luminous with crater shadows and hanging in the sky, suspended between the fading daylight and the dark night. She watched the shutters drop relentlessly, slowly upon the beauty of the scene. She looked around and felt an impulse to cry and felt oddly afraid. What had they done to earn such torment? She lowered her head in meditative prayer, struggling in that moment to believe, to trust, to find the solace she so often found in prayer.

    Her cappuccino made, she looked up as she heard the bathroom door open and went back to one of the stools on the other side of the counter. Chandler walked out, his mid-section covered with a large, white towel and his feet in bath slippers. Another towel hung across his head, draped on his shoulders. She watched the tight strength of his washboard abs, the muscled movement of his thighs as he stepped toward her. His arms were lean with pronounced veins and muscular biceps and forearms. His shoulders were heavily muscled too, although one was darkly bruised. His hands stood out in contrast to his rugged build, long-fingered and delicate, a pianist’s hands...or a surgeon’s.
    “You want to get pneumonia, don’t you?” Roxy chided. She got up and walking past him, went into the bathroom and returned with his white robe. She draped it across his rock hard shoulders. She eyed the fresh bruise more closely and the several wounds that left indentations; two from knife wounds and one from where a bullet had entered and been removed. She closed his robe around him and he dropped the towel. Chandler reached down and picked it up. He swirled it into a loose rope and threw it over her head, pulling her toward him. Roxy was shorter and when she looked up at him, he saw a gentle vulnerability and willing submission that flooded him with wonder and desire. The privilege of her filled him with an ache and joy, a sense of marveling amazement. He knew she never let anyone see her so open, so unprotected. He kissed her, felt her lips on his, tasted the warm wetness of her parted mouth, the swollen tautness of her responding tongue. They both weakened and stumbled toward the couch where they fell, still in one another’s arms. They succumbed and felt the wetness of their tears. They broke their embrace and shifted, cuddling. They opened his robe and he wrapped her in it.
    “I thought you would have undressed,” Chandler said.
    “I watched the sunset until the shutters dropped. Then, I made a cappuccino.” She motioned toward the handled glass on the countertop. “I just locked into the sweetness of the moment, I guess.”
    “It makes little difference,” Chandler said, regretting his words the moment he said them.
    “I know,” Roxy replied, her tone resigned with an edge of disgust. “I know,” she sighed. Her thoughts strayed, seeking the safety of brief distance. She looked at him and tears flooded her eyes, wet her cheeks. He lowered his eyelids, softly, near coyly and hugged her toward him. They both sighed.
    “I’m still glad we love one another,” she said.
    “I don’t think I could ever love anyone else as much or more,” Chandler said softly.
    Roxy broke from his arms, standing up. She straightened her sweater, tugging it down at her waist. She reached with both hands and pulled her hair back, looking at him. She went back to the counter where her cooling cappuccino waited. Taking a sip, she set the glass back down and went toward the cubicle that was their bedroom; entering, Chandler heard the closet doors open. He lay back and looked at the soundproofed ceiling with sunken sections using indirect lighting. Murals of celestial, mythological figures that had transited the Ancient Greek imagination were painted on the sunken sections. Luminous paint, selectively used added grandly to the scenes in the indirect lighting.

    In the bedroom, Roxy stretched out on the bed and looked up at a similar scene. She marveled at Chandler’s ability to have done it himself but he had once said that his father was a tradesman who did custom work on houses; some of his skill had apparently worn off. As curious as she was, she never encouraged Chandler to talk about his younger days, let alone his youth. From time to time, he dropped bits of information but generally, her impression was that he kept that part of himself guarded. Knowing pain often keeps its own time, she never persisted in knowing more than he shared spontaneously; besides, she was very much the same and he, too, never asked for more than she offered.

    She got up and, taking off her clothes, folded them and left them on a chair, then went into the bathroom and showered. When she came out, Chandler was sitting up in bed, reading. He set aside his reading glasses and turned aside the bedding, tapping the mattress. Roxy dropped the towel and stepped slowly to the bed. Chandler drew in his breath, reactively at her shapely beauty. The feminine swell of her hips, her flat belly, the slight undulation of her naturally suspended breasts as she stepped nearer all but took his breath away. He ran his sight languidly over her and found her beauty nearly unbearable, all but otherworldly. The oval round of her face and her peach skin complexion made him smile. He lingered on her rose colored lips, free of lipstick, soft and perfectly inviting. He moistened his lips with a quick swipe of his tongue, unconsciously. She returned his happy grin, slipped in and snuggled closely. Chandler set aside his book, The Childhoods of Arch Criminals, turned off the lamp and turned into her arms. The night enveloped them with the blessing of lapsed awareness. The city churned its tales near, far and below. For the moment, they hung suspended in the bliss that would invariably give way to the bittersweet of unspoken realities which, in memory and fact would renew their necessity for caring, reluctant distance.

the Real Messages in News Stories

    So I was watching one of the new channels (I think it was MSNBC), and a woman reporting stated that there was the 4 year-old boy who was trapped in Guatemala. She is from New York, but after visiting Guatemala with her grandfather, they were stopped at Dulles International Airport when they found out that her grandfather had an illegal U.S. entry charge from more than a decade ago. So they wouldn’t let her (Emily is her name) continue home, and she had to go with her grandfather back to Guatemala.

    And as I was hearing this story, I was thinking that her parents would get it settled so they could bring her home again... And that is when I heard the MSNBC new reporter state that her father, who is not a legal citizen of the United States, will hopefully find a way to get her back into the U.S. Again.
    And then the reporter went on to the next story, because even though they have 24 hours to report this stuff, they wouldn’t dare give enough details in a story to give both side to a story.

    I mean, she said Emily’s father was an illegal immigrant to the United States. Not that he was born south of the border and is living here on a work VISA, or that he married an American woman. So when I started to look up more information on this story, I saw that her grandfather was a non-citizen on a valid work visa that allowed him to travel. THEN I read that her parents (the ones illegally living in the United States, that are here in New York that they apparently are not deporting) either had to have Emily sent to Guatemala, or allow officials to put her in a juvenile facility in the United States, where she could be put in foster care (or otherwise kept away from her parents). I then read in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/federal-officials-4-year-old-us-citizen_n_839700.html) “If Emily’s parents had gone to pick up their daughter from authorities, they could have risked deportation along with her grandfather.”
    Well, of course they risked that. There should be few options for immigrants who entered the country illegally, like the Ruiz family, who only has a young child like Emily born in this country with legal U.S. Citizenship.

    From the Huffington Post I also read: “Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) intervened on behalf of the Ruiz family on Tuesday, sending a letter to DHS calling for them to return the girl to her mother and father. ... “This bureaucratic overreach and utter failure of commonsense has left a little girl -- a U.S. citizen no less -- stranded thousands of miles from her parents,” Israel said in a statement. “I’m working with the family and their attorney to reunite Emily and her parents and asking for DHS to do a formal review of how this could have happened.”

    Most Republicans would probably tell you exactly how this happened: an illegal immigrant couple decided to have baby of their born in the United States so they would have an anchor baby as an excuse to stay here. And I was surprised that the report I saw on television did not highlight that this infant girl had an entire family of people who did not have U.S. Citizenship.
    But who knows maybe it’s just me noting the liberal bias of the news program I happened to be watching that day.
    Then again, maybe I’m the odd one here in noting that there is something more wrong with an entire family living here illegally and trying to retain more rights as U.S. Citizens, even though they are not U.S. Citizens.

    I often write these editorial/essays by finishing with more questions. But I wonder with this story, if I am the only one who thinks more about the fact that people had a child here to try to legitimize their existence in this country when they are not U.S. Citizens, and more importantly, does anyone else think about the fact that people are not working on removing he illegal immigrants from this country instead of shipping the 4 year-old to a country that is not her own.

This editorial is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Janet Kuypers

Jim Maddocks, GLASGOW, via the Internet     I’ll be totally honest, of the material in Issue (either 83 or 86 of Children, Churches and Daddies) the only ones I really took to were Kuypers’. TRYING was so simple but most truths are, aren’t they?

what is veganism?

    A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don’t consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

    why veganism?

    This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

    so what is vegan action?

    We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
    We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

    A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

vegan action
po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353
510/704-4444

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies)     cc&d is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist.     I really like (“Writing Your Name”). It’s one of those kind of things where your eye isn’t exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked “knowledge” for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film.

    Children, Churches and Daddies no longer distributes free contributor’s copies of issues. In order to receive issues of Children, Churches and Daddies, contact Janet Kuypers at the cc&d e-mail addres. Free electronic subscriptions are available via email. All you need to do is email ccandd@scars.tv... and ask to be added to the free cc+d electronic subscription mailing list. And you can still see issues every month at the Children, Churches and Daddies website, located at http://scars.tv

Mark Blickley, writer     The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

    We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town (on the Children, Churches and Daddies Web Site)     I just checked out the site. It looks great.

    Dusty Dog Reviews: These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding.

John Sweet, writer (on chapbook designs)     Visuals were awesome. They’ve got a nice enigmatic quality to them. Front cover reminds me of the Roman sculptures of angels from way back when. Loved the staggered tire lettering, too. Way cool.     (on “Hope Chest in the Attic”)     Some excellent writing in “Hope Chest in the Attic.” I thought “Children, Churches and Daddies” and “The Room of the Rape” were particularly powerful pieces.

    Dusty Dog Reviews: She opens with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus (on Children, Churches and Daddies)     The new cc&d looks absolutely amazing. It’s a wonderful lay-out, looks really professional - all you need is the glossy pages. Truly impressive AND the calendar, too. Can’t wait to actually start reading all the stuff inside.. Wanted to just say, it looks good so far!!!

    Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA
    Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

    Mark Blickley, writer
    The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

    You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.

    Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book or chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers. We’re only an e-mail away. Write to us.

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

    The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
    The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST’s three principal projects are to provide:
    * on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
    * on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST’s SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
    * on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
    The CREST staff also does “on the road” presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

Brian B. Braddock, WrBrian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     Brian B. Braddock, WrI passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

    Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
    “Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family.
    “Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

    want a review like this? contact scars about getting your own book published.

Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!

    Okay, nilla wafer. Listen up and listen good. How to save your life. Submit, or I’ll have to kill you.
    Okay, it’s this simple: send me published or unpublished poetry, prose or art work (do not send originals), along with a bio, to us - then sit around and wait... Pretty soon you’ll hear from the happy people at cc&d that says (a) Your work sucks, or (b) This is fancy crap, and we’re gonna print it. It’s that simple!

    Okay, butt-munch. Tough guy. This is how to win the editors over.
    Hope Chest in the Attic is a 200 page, perfect-bound book of 13 years of poetry, prose and art by Janet Kuypers. It’s a really classy thing, if you know what I mean. We also have a few extra sopies of the 1999 book “Rinse and Repeat”, the 2001 book “Survive and Thrive”, the 2001 books “Torture and Triumph” and “(no so) Warm and Fuzzy”,which all have issues of cc&d crammed into one book. And you can have either one of these things at just five bucks a pop if you just contact us and tell us you saw this ad space. It’s an offer you can’t refuse...

    Carlton Press, New York, NY: HOPE CHEST IN THE ATTIC is a collection of well-fashioned, often elegant poems and short prose that deals in many instances, with the most mysterious and awesome of human experiences: love... Janet Kuypers draws from a vast range of experiences and transforms thoughts into lyrical and succinct verse... Recommended as poetic fare that will titillate the palate in its imagery and imaginative creations.

    Mark Blickley, writer: The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing the book.

    You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.
    Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book and chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers - you can write for yourself or you can write for an audience. It’s your call...

    Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA: “Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family. “Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

 

    Dusty Dog Reviews (on Without You): She open with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.
    Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

    Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada (on Children, Churches and Daddies): I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer’s styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.

    Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA: Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Children, Churches and Daddies the unreligious, non-family oriented literary and art magazine Scars Publications and Design ccandd96@scars.tv http://scars.tv Publishers/Designers Of Children, Churches and Daddies magazine cc+d Ezines The Burning mini poem books God Eyes mini poem books The Poetry Wall Calendar The Poetry Box The Poetry Sampler Mom’s Favorite Vase Newsletters Reverberate Music Magazine Down In The Dirt magazine Freedom and Strength Press forum plus assorted chapbooks and books music, poery compact discs live performances of songs and readings Sponsors Of past editions: Poetry Chapbook Contest, Poetry Book Contest Prose Chapbook Contest, Prose Book Contest Poetry Calendar Contest current editions: Editor’s Choice Award (writing and web sites) Collection Volumes Children, Churches and Daddies (founded 1993) has been written and researched by political groups and writers from the United States, Canada, England, India, Italy, Malta, Norway and Turkey. Regular features provide coverage of environmental, political and social issues (via news and philosophy) as well as fiction and poetry, and act as an information and education source. Children, Churches and Daddies is the leading magazine for this combination of information, education and entertainment. Children, Churches and Daddies (ISSN 1068-5154) is published monthly by Scars Publications and Design. Contact Janet Kuypers via e-mail (ccandd96@scars.tv) for snail-mail address or prices for annual collection books. To contributors: No racist, sexist or blatantly homophobic material. No originals; if mailed, include SASE & bio. Work sent on disks or through e-mail preferred. Previously published work accepted. Authors always retain rights to their own work. All magazine rights reserved. Reproduction of Children, Churches and Daddies without publisher permission is forbidden. Children, Churches and Daddies copyright Copyright © 1993 through 2011 Scars Publications and Design, Children, Churches and Daddies, Janet Kuypers. All rights remain with the authors of the individual pieces. No material may be reprinted without express permission.