She

As we drift into sleep,
she whispers my name once more.
Wide awake, I lay quiet,
dreaming.

The Seven Deadly Colors: Puce

Bob Johnston

My weekly column runs in fifty papers
and my book Your Roving Gourmet
has sold two million copies.

My palate is a finely tuned instrument
that never makes a mistake on a vintage
or fails to identify the source of caviar.

When I enter a restaurant, the maître d渹
snaps to attention, and the staff is alerted
to cater to my every whim.

I partake sparingly of every course,
cleansing my palate with sorbet
between courses. I sip each wine.

It is a good life, and I have no complaints.
But of late I find myself going forth, incognito,
to seek out dingy all-you-can-eat buffets.

Tonight it was a Mexican buffet.
I went through the line three times
for double helpings of tamales and enchiladas.

On my way home, I was suddenly stricken
with nausea, and vomited on the sidewalk
of the restaurant I had reviewed yesterday.

Bob Johnston Bio

    Bob Johnston is a retired petroleum engineer and translator of Russian scientific literature. He waited until his sixtieth year to start writing fiction and poetry, and over the next thirty years he has been trying to catch up. He lives in the original Las Vegas, New Mexico with his wife, three cats, and some hope of completing his memoirs and the Great American Novel.

“The Fountainhead” Remembered

Dominique Francon took the vase
And dropped it down the shaft
And heard it crash
Where the elevator stopped.
I always thought she did it
So no one else could see
A thing so beautiful
She loved so much.
On another reading
Or maybe in the flick
I found I was mistaken.
Because she didn’t want to need a thing.
And this is a role
I should attempt to play,
An icon, a philosphy
To live?
What is life itself except a need
(You fucking Christians!)?
What is life itself except a need?

cc&d

One half prays to Jesus
To exterminate the faggots.
The other half says “nigga”,
Gets mad and “fucks you up”.
Who is in the middle?
Where is Bertrand Russell?
Cziffra plays for no one,
And Hamelin is dead.
The upper classes fiddle
On refurbished Stradivari
While the country goes to heaven,
The bureaucracy in flames.

Burns & Russell

How do you know animals
Don’t know they’re going to die? -
Just because they never wrote
A book to save their souls from hell
And guarantee them everlasting
Happiness in heaven!
(And all of that palaver!)
If flies could spell, I’m sure that god
Would favor flies more highly
And care about them very much
(According to the flies).

When A Republican Speaks

Whenever a republican
Opens up his mouth,
I like Obama better.
And today I read that one
Vilified Obama
For saying other nations are
As good as - what’s it called?
There are a dozen places I Would rather live than here.
One must believe in something, so -
America and god.
A dangerous stupidity -
“My country, right or wrong.”

I look into the pool
& see the killer carp

I look into the pool & see the killer carp,
devouring everything is his path.
He’s the next good capitalist,

consuming his brothers & shitting them out.
The feces is eaten by scavengers.
I look into the pool & see the killer carp,

the King & murderer of foul waters.
He’s joined by another fish in competition.
He’s the next good capitalist.

They fight, & the first fish is torn apart & eaten,
& the pool is befouled by blood.
I look into the pool & see the killer carp

in a pool of death & unhappiness,
where all is alien & meaningless.
He’s the next good capitalist

Davy Jones’ flesh is stripped off the bone.
He lies dead in a pile of corpses.
I look into the pool & see the killer carp.
He’s the next good capitalist ...

!

in a pool of death & unhappiness,
where all is alien & meaningless.
He’s the next good capitalist

Stricken with sorrow over the murder of her son

Stricken with sorrow over the murder of her son.
A bomb in Karachi has killed him with 37 others.
What’s a more fashionable way to assert control?

It’s happening like this everywhere,
a gift of advanced technology.
Stricken with sorrow over the murder of her son.

Sons forever have been murdered,
but today we can murder them better en masse.
What’s a more fashioable way to assert control?

It’s true, we’ve always been homicidal maniacs.
Love is offset by the joy of torturing & killing one another.
Stricken with sorrow over the murder of her son,

she’s delusional, it happens to everyone.
It’s a natural sadism we should accept.
What’s a more fashioable way to assert control?

Doesn’t she realize humans are horrible?
Does she think she should be an exception?
Stricken with sorrow over the murder of her son,

we should chain her to the dungeon wall & rape her repeatedly
until she understands human nature & learns to like it.
What’s a more fashionable way to assert control?

Maybe Karachi is too primitive for her to be aware.
She’d be better off in New Orleans or Detroit.
Stricken with sorrow over the murder of her son,

what’s a more fashionable way to assert control
in a world of horror,
in a world of hate ...

?

the Gardener

I won’t go
to work agency
I won’t pick
the best offer - cheap
Why
shall I scan
these offers
this wallowing heap

I don’t want
to patch the holes
of my soul
I’m not
a plasterer
I won’t bury
my thoughts
I’m not
a gravedigger’s
suit wearer

I won’t serve
those ashes
raked over
I’m not a waiter
I won’t revive
write prescriptions
I’m not
a healer either

I chose for myself
a profession
specialist
of arrangement
with exception
Royal gardener
grandmaster
with diploma
conductor
of slow vegetation

Poem from
The Hartford Epic (#7)

Above these coffin-shaped
but American flag flying
bungalows used to be
a milky way but now
the only pattern the stars
make is of a skeleton
dangling from a scaffold

Beats me why the cosmos
got distorted like that when
today we execute through
lethal injection or the gas
chamber

Maybe the night is just
a shadow of our frontier
past where justice was
swift but also no one
forget what that justice was

—not like today where folks
will kill no matter what way
you execute them and worst
of all is when even the skeleton
periodically breaks apart and
the stars become like
the bones we often find in places
as close as our backyards but
without ever being able
to identify who (let’s
presume) these victims are

Burqa

Within this cloth,
I find myself.
Here I relax in safety.
Here I do not deny myself,

but I deny myself
to others who say
they need this veil –
a dungeon wall to control me,
to keep me from tempting them.

They know they cannot fight or work
with blindfolds and manacles.

They mistake their lack of will
and strength of desire
for my allure –
a beauty they must ravish,
that makes them beasts.
They paint me with their eyes,
making gaudy the gift that God gives,
that I did not seek and cannot refuse.

And they are dangerous.
They make rules to keep me modest,
and when their weakness is exposed,
they reek a vengeance as terrible
as their wills are shriveled like raisins.

Where is the woman judging them,
condemning them to offer up a hand
to the sword of a female avenger?
What woman pulls a trigger
or holds a match to their pyre?

Here I am content
in my own tent on a desert dune,
making this space my palace.
I breathe at my own command,
my heart sets the beat,
my mind sings melodies
that make God weep
as He watches
the dervish dance of my pure soul,
and no one, not even another woman, knows
how freely I use myself
to make this beauty,
in His praise, the sign of my peace.

 
First published in exact change only: 2011 summer – Chicago: Exact Change Press.

This Stuff Breaks Out on My Mind Like Pimples on a Teen-age Chin

I once saw in the paper where a man was rejected from the police academy for being too smart
There must surely be other occupations that require the lack of mental process
Work that requires droid-like precision
Certainly things like assassination craft
And for most likely the same reasons
You wouldn’t want your assassins following their targets around
To determine if they really did need eliminating for crying out loud
Maybe even inventing ways to meet and befriend them take them bowling and such
Just to confirm that they are indeed incorrigible vermin in need of extermination
What if they turned out to be cool and good company except for one or two tiny misgivings
That you as an assassin found to be excusable, even endearing
In an “isn’t that cute, he has convictions” sort of way which just wouldn’t work I’m thinking though
It would be somewhat reassuring to know that the fellows who deploy the mechanics
Have relatively intense convolutions even if it is reassuring in a who are we kidding sense
Reminding us that if we are to be perfectly candid with ourselves
We would be hard pressed to name any government department with no history of error
Which only serves to feed the monster in my closet with questions beyond the border of maniacal
Such as should I be murdered, at the moment of my death will I have any way of knowing
If this is all a terrible mistake or have they found me out or
Has poor verse been added to crimes against the state and if so
What’s to keep them from slipping a few radioactive isotopes into my liver
The next time they are rotor-rooting out my colon making it possible to clean out my bank account
As well as their to-do list. (Case in point regarding governmental miscalculation)

The Hoping, Killing Coal

Decadence,
Three inches of it,
Smolders in my fingers.

Tobacco bliss,
The guilty pleasure,
Brown, smoke-stained blinds.

An upright arm,
A lazy hand,
The claw-like protuberances.

Sticks in the head,
The lighter’s snap,
The hoping, killing coal.

Brian Looney Bio

    Brian Looney was born 12/2/85 and is from Albuquerque, NM. He likes it when Lady Poetry kicks him in the head. The harder the better. Check out his website at Reclusewritings.com.

the Name of the Game

It’s a so-secret game people play,
that never stays a secret for long;
before you know it, they'll leak it,
and put local gossip in overdrive

It’s a so-nasty game people play,
that will always get much worse
before it even begins to get better
for just about anyone in the loop

It’s a so-sad game people play
that invariably ends in tears,
where its players hurt themselves
(though few if anyone notices)

It’s a so-lonely game people play
that always finds us on our own,
whose end never justifies means
and gossip machines chew us up

It’s the blame game people play,
by way of creating a diversion
from mistakes inadvertently made,
prefer to conceal than confess...

It’s a game we all love to deplore,
though most if not all of us play,
game to keep local gossip machines
in working order if not overdrive

Lechery

a long time ago I was told
love is longing,
lingering through lugubrious
lechery, but now I
understand myself better than
I could have imagined–
listen close:
the day you come to terms with
yourself is the day you will
be freed from the overwhelming and
infinite weight of expectation.
stop.

my mind is a wrecking yard of
deranged deprivations and
cold, dark glances
and the algae in my throat seems to have
developed a mind of its own
and it’s your doing.
stop your witchcraft, don’t you
see you’re only making it
worse?

if a bluebird lands deftly on
the thickest lily pad provided
you know very well he’ll sink
ergo, when you fall in love,
you’ll do just that: you’ll fall
and all the negative feelings associated with
the fall
will strike you as odd–

the stream of your consciousness
begs you to question just
why don’t you I mean he why could I not fly but to where
could he not what please just don’t let me fall
again.

Released

    I want to be released from this life. I did not choose to be born. I can't cope with the duties I was assigned. There is no job I want to perform bad enough to earn a salary. There is no class I am willing to take to earn a degree. Every pill I have ever taken, every drug I ever tried, has not changed my mind one bit. Perhaps I was not meant to be born. I was born broken. Perhaps there is a lifetime warranty. Send me back for repairs or send me to the salvage yard. Sell my organs to someone that might have a use for them. I am not selfish. I want to give. But first I need to die.

When Christ Became our God of War

When America’s holy trinity was ordained
Mammon, Christ, and Mars,
pastor, politician blessed that union
christening Christ as CEO and God of War.

When Christ became our God of War,
America claimed crusader plate and sword
as our holy warriors monopolized a globe
pauperizing their nation and its’ mores.

All in the Family

Wintergreen
Camphor
Phenobarb sedative
For chronic Bronchitis
And hypomania
To sleep every night
For three high school years

Then my young son
We didn’t have to lock you up
In your bedroom
For mania
but for three urban weeks
Giving you pheno
For only three nights
In the country
At the lake

Then youthful adult
Three years of extreme mania
8 hours cop,
8 hours firefighter
8 hours EMT
Round the clock
For twelve straight days
Then resting 2 -
Back at it again

Now calmed down adult
Pain clinic charge nurse

He Lies in the Tub

He lies in the tub
in the cold bathtub in his underwear
looking up at the shower head
that drips down
every sixth or seventh second
a drop smelling of chlorine
rolling down his ribs
the safety bar there above for the old
and the infirm
hopelessly out of reach
and the showerhead so impossibly remote
and so unbearably unrelenting
that a tear, smelling of chlorine,
leaks from his eye and falls
upward
a sight that makes him giggle
and squirm
and imagine himself sliding
down the drain
like someone’s humorously skinny
mother.

Jeffrey Park Bio

    Baltimore native Jeffrey Park currently lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school and teaches business English to adults. His latest poems appear or are forthcoming in Subliminal Interiors, Mobius, Punk Soul Poet, Darkling Magazine, The Camel Saloon and elsewhere.

So The Water

He’s sitting naked on the edge, watching
the bathtub fill up, hoping he’s got it as hot
as he can handle. He shuts off the faucet,
eases in one foot in at a time, stands perfectly
still while all he feels is his own breathing.
It’s tough, the surgeon told him with a little shake
of his head. The tumors are too big, too close
to your pulmonary artery. It’s very tough.
He balances with the dirty soap dish and begins
to inch himself into the water, feeling the heat
on the bottom of his thighs and begin to soak
his sagging balls. Finally, he’s sitting, leaning
back against the tub; his eyes closed shut.
They used to call this stuff the red devil,
the nurse said as she hooked up the IV drip.
You’re lucky. In the old days nobody made
the car ride all the way home without throwing up.
He slides his knees up, moves down so the water covers
his chest and shoulders, laps up against his chin.
He stares upward, can’t help but wonder how close
this warm numbness is to death, and how bad, after all,
it can really be.

Aero Motor Windmill

sitting below
staring
up

watching vapor trails
being made

I wonder
what

it would
feel

like
to climb

those slim
silver

prongs

to the top
of this
tower

suspended between

to watch
the whole

world
go

by

Genesis 27: Twenty-First Century Edition

Jacob came to his aged father,
this time not in his brother‘s clothes
but in a business suit,
and had him sign a new will
leaving Jacob everything

Start the Revolution

Three black haired sisters
or lovers
it is sometimes impossible to tell the difference
befriend me the moment I take my seat on the train
‘She’s smiling’ leader black hair explains
everyone else is so depressed

They’re coming from New York
the journey I once made
They ask me where I’m going
Buffalo
Then why? to see whom?

I stare at the sun in his
apartment while he sleeps
wondering the mysteries of that vitamin
the one that makes you happy
I trust him, I told him,
what more does he want?
I say I am sad
and he says no, you are angry

No, anger is an action
and I do nothing
If I had a boy I would name him
Ezra, or Grant, or Christian
But I do nothing.

On the way back, I search for my black haired coven
I am ready to join.
But they are gone to some grey upstate city and I can’t
remember which one
they are all the goddamn same

While I am away
I miss the toothless white cat, miss kitty
who loves to sleep on my fluffy white towels
fading into the color until she is gone
When I am there though
it hurts to stay and I miss
strangers telling me I have a radiant smile.

A smile that says I am happy
or maybe it’s radiant because it knows I am not
and maybe I am hopeful and maybe
I am not
but I refuse to botch and bloody you, stranger

my throat aches
that means it’s time to move
Proverbial inner harp that moves you to motion
picking lazily at the fine strings
that is a clear disrupt to its smooth rhythm

Months ago I strolled through the graveyard
behind my house
collapsing in the damp grass beneath “Christian Stone”
and “his wife Celestia”
Mine is that space over there
see it?
never catches the sun, next to that lump
that is actually a shoebox
cheap stone, small you don’t see it?
Ah, I see now, no “his wife” just...

Atlas Shrugged in 6 Haiku

Hank Rearden:
                The world doesn’t want
                    to avoid self-destruction.
                        Still, I’ve got to try.

Francisco d’Anconia:
                They want me enslaved?
                    Why stop at that? I shall give
                        them a spectacle.

Richard Halley:
                My greatest work, and
                    I heard no words of thanks or
                        appreciation.

James Taggart:
                I wish to die but
                    am too scared to; so I’ll kill
                        the rest of the world.

Dagny Taggart:
                I run a railroad
                    and live as I please. All I
                        need is a real man;

John Galt:
                We make the world run.
                    Without us you would destroy
                        everything you touch.

The Last Moon of Winter

We watch the orange egg of moon,
mottled, shimmering in the thick press of atmosphere,
rising to rest atop the trees near the distant airport;
the blinking lights of jets are mute exceptions
to a moon already solo in our eyes.

We stand on our front porch, dark and still;
she togaed in a pink blanket, hooded,
I in socks, cold but pleased to show her
the same moon I counted with her sisters,
the same moon that lit our faces again and again.
She notes the same man aloft, her foggy breath
full of small and curious words: ‘He looks sad’.

Here, the last of my daughters to lift in my arms,
I turn to her cheek for a small kiss.
I whisper: ‘He’ll brighten up when he sees you’.

In me wells a quick sadness,
but nowhere will she find it this night
since a pleasure simmers in my eyes
from echoes in the heart’s cluttered halls.

Hemingway Had It Right

What people forget
Is that a journey to nowhere
Starts with a single step too.
Closure is just an excuse
To be lazy.
All stories end in death.
All stories end in decay.
All stories end in tragedy.
Sometimes the curtain just closes
Too soon.
Don’t fight it,
Just keep moving
Until your feet give out.
Don’t try to fix the world.
Soak it in,
And shoot from the ashes
Like a phoenix.
What you run from
Only stays with you longer.
If you fight it,
You’ll only make it stronger:
It will feed from your blood.
Losing all hope
Is freedom.
Nobody really wants their lives fixed.
Nobody wants the road cleared.
Nobody wants their problems solved.
Their four act dilemmas.
Their blockbuster distractions.
Their stories resolved.
Their heads cleared.
Their messes cleaned up.
Because what would they have left?
A lifeless corpse
Facing the throbbing void
Of the immense bloodcurdling
Unknown.

Change of Life

It’s a proper cookie sheet
although my life is not.
Twenty-five years working
nights and evenings
four years of hospital stays
nursing home residence
and the rhythm of home health nurses
mark me indelibly.

At 1 AM I am awake
not even a pain cocktail
will sing me slumber.
Daylight hours are for sleeping
nights are for keeping vigil.

Babies to be birthed
kept me busy once
Elder before my time
I keep watch for pain
insure the sun will rise
take out the cookies
before they burn.

Eden’s Myth

if God created Eve
from beneath Adam’s rib
That God was a male white supremist
and who did Cain & Abel marry
if Eve only had sons
if she’d had daughters
that would have been incest
started in Genesis
in the bible

Unconscious

I was unconscious
thirteen years ago

thirteen years ago
I had been unconscious
for almost 130 minutes
and then was unconscious
for almost thirteen days

I internally laugh
when I count in my head
the thirteen steps I take
in the dark
for my cat to hear
as I make my way
to the next storey
to my bedroom

thirteen...
they say it’s an unlucky number
but
it wasn’t on the thirteenth
when I almost died
I think I’m just
trying to connect
some imaginary dots here

right now
I have no power

at my home
and I sit here

thinking of how
I had no power

to breathe on my own
thirteen years ago

and it was almost thirteen days
before I started breathing again

and I’m still
gasping for air

Conflicting Convictions

I’ve seen the life you’ve led
I’ve seen the man you loved
       who had a girlfriend back at home
I’ve heard you talk about how men suck
I’ve seen you on that roller-coaster
        over the years

I’ve seen you espouse one set of beliefs
then you’ve told me
while engaged to one man
that you’ve fallen for a coworker
and how you love him
but

but you need the security
of what you’ve been espousing

(whether or not you believe it)

and no
I wouldn’t be a part of your union
in a church, no less
to a nice guy
who didn’t match
both sets
of your beliefs

call me what you will
but I’ve seen the life you’ve led
and I knew
there would be a breakdown
with your conflicting convictions
and your life

keep looking for death

after knocking on death’s door
i waited to recover
clawed my way free
did everything i could
to gain any of my freedoms back

and now that i’m here
i am waiting again
because now i know
death is just around the corner
waiting for me

so i keep looking for it

i walk down a sidewalk
and imagine a car
careening off the road
behind me
so i can’t escape
my impending doom

i go to a store
and imagine that stranger over there
the one that doesn’t look quite right
and see him pull out a gun
for whatever’s in the register
don’t make any sudden moves
or death may really find you this time

i keep looking for it
and i keep managing to just scrape by
but still,
i keep lookng

you’ve left me on Siesta Beach

got a hotel
overlooking Siesta Beach
to see you

it was all
about sand and sun and fun
when we were together

but after
spending all night on the beach with you
last night

we argued
and I screamed at you to leave me alone
so you stormed away

I couldn’t tell
if you were defiant or dejected
when you left me at four a m

but when I got back
to my hotel overlooking the beach
I couldn’t sleep

I called your cell
at five a m
it jumped to your voice mail

at six I heard sirens
so I looked out my hotel window
overlooking the beach

and saw the lights
and two ambulances, and a crowd
circled at the shoreline

my God, I thought
it was just an argument, we’d be okay
it can’t be you

so I grabbed
my phone and my keys and ran
to the elevator

I stepped inside
and heard two people talking about
the unfolding news

I heard
“they found a man washed up on the beach,
he wasn’t in swim clothes

and he had no life vest,
so they think he committed suicide”
so... I ran

out of the elevator
as soon as those doors would open
sprinted to the beach

at the edge of the crowd
I dialed your number again, and again
no response

I glanced to my right
and saw EMTs and a gurney, with a
zipped body bag

I ran toward that body bag
a policeman stopped me, i begged
I said I may know the victim

so he brought me over to the EMTs
they said the man had no identification
I gulped

and said, I may know him

they looked at each other
and told me to be prepared
when they open the bag

I braced myself
then they slowly unzipped the bag
and I looked at his face

he was bloated
from being in the water so long
he was pale

from no blood curculating
and his eyes were wide open:
I mean, it’s not like the movies

where an actor
can press their fingers over the dead’s eyes
and the eyes then stay closed

they even used to put coins
over the eyes of the dead in the old days
so

his eyes were wide open
I stared back at his vacuous stare
then turned away

“I don’t know this man,”
I told the EMTs, and they asked me
if I was sure

“people look different
when they die out in the water like this,”
they told me

and I said,
“that’s not his eye color,”
and I walked away

now I wonder
what really died that day
since I never heard from you again

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
    Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the weekly Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, and the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook . Three collection books were also published of her work in 2004, Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art).

The Little Black Dress

    “Please, please, before I go, please let me have my little black dress.” said Josephine Wyatt as she lay dying in bed, three days before she would be gone forever.
    “What is she talking about,” said her home aide, “she doesn’t have a little black dress. I have helped her get dressed for years. I know everything she has in her closets, and believe me; she has no little black dress.” Sonia was really perplexed.
    “A little black dress? That’s weird. They have been out of style for years. Could it be tucked away somewhere? In some little nook or something?” asked Josephine’s next-door neighbor, Blanche.
    “Look, I know that house inside out and backwards, ever since she first became incapacitated with her heart. If there were something hidden, believe me, I would know it. Anyway, why would anyone who is dying want a little black dress?” Where could she go with it? The only thing she is going to wear from now on is a hospital gown.
    “Well, she certainly seems to want that little black dress. She has been talking about it for a couple of days now. Are you sure she doesn’t have one somewhere?” It would be nice to grant her this one last request. She doesn’t have anything else—no family, no real friends, even though to me she has always seemed one of the happiest people I know.”
    “You know, you’re right. She has always been so upbeat; that’s why I enjoyed working for her. I mean, for a woman who never left the house, never had friends or family—she just was such a happy person.” Sonia smiled, “I wish I knew her secret. I will surely miss her. She mused a bit sadly. “Come to think of it, you know, there is one box she would never let me touch.”
    “Really? That may be the answer.”
    “Not likely. It is just an old wooden box, about two feet square, all warped and stained with age. She called it her “jewelry box.”
    “Well, then, obviously, that’s where she kept her jewels.”
    “No, it couldn’t have been. She had a regular jewelry box where she kept her jewels, the few that she had. And she kept all her personal papers there—you know, birth certificate, insurance, that kind of thing.”
    “That may be the answer, then,” said Blanche.
    “Well, I feel kind of funny going into her private box. She has never let me look in it before. Do you think it would be all right now?”
    “I give you permission,” Blanche smiled. “I’ll take responsibility for any consequences. I tell you what, if you don’t feel right opening it, I will do so myself.”
    “I would feel much better. After all, I am an employee, and you have been her next-door neighbor and closest thing to a friend that she has ever had.”
    That afternoon, Blanche and Sonia went to Josephine’s apartment and carefully opened the wooden “jewelry” box. True enough, there was no jewelry in it. But there was, carefully folded in one corner, a little black dress.
    Along with the dress, out came a Pandora’s Box of pictures, letters, articles—all about the little black dress. Near the dress was a note which said “Thank you for your lovely letter about the little black dress I wore in the picture. Your comments lifted my spirits for the whole day. Sincerely, Marilyn.”
    “Wow,” said Sonia, “that could have been from Marilyn Monroe.”
    Pictures of celebrities from years past fell in a cascade of motion out of the box—Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Maria Callas—often with warm letters of thanks to Josephine for her appreciation of “my little black dress’.
    Articles that were a history of the fashion world tumbled out of the box. Blanche was amazed. Josephine had saved an article, yellowed now with age but still readable, about Coco Chanel who, in 1926, had brought the little black dress into the fashion world —had brought it chic and elegant into high fashion from the nether world where it had been sad and dreary as the color for mourning at funerals. Jackie Kennedy had a three-hole black dress that had apparently warranted pages of appreciation from Josephine. In l954, Christian Dior had written, “You can wear black at any hour of day or night, at any age and for any occasion. A little black dress is the most essential thing in any woman’s wardrobe. I could write a book about black.”
    Josephine had written to all these famous people and they had all written back to her in glowing letters of appreciation for her interest in their photos. Chanel, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent—letters apparently in response to Josephine’s communications spilled out in a mountain of “thank-you notes.”
    “She had a life, didn’t she?” said Blanche. “It wasn’t the kind of life we usually think of, but apparently for her, it was a rich, fulfilling life, and she seems to have loved every minute of it.”
    Sonia didn’t see it. “A big waste of time—and stamps.. She didn’t know any of these people. It was all in her head.”
    True, Blanche thought, it was all in her head, but apparently it was a life that was so rich and fulfilling for her that it made her a happy person.
    When they came back to the hospital, they were still discussing the mystery of the little black dress. Josephine lay there listening to them, smiling quietly as the visions of her own little black dress cavorted about in her memory. Her mind went back to the day she had gotten married.
    Ray had insisted that she wear the little black dress for the ceremony. It was a small civil ceremony with just a few friends attending. He was going into the air force in a week and he wanted her as his wife before he went. The minister had been a little—not disturbed exactly but certainly nonplussed- to see her outfit. No bride in his experience had ever worn a black dress to a wedding ceremony. He shook his head. Josephine felt she knew what he was thinking—that this black dress could be a bad sign, an unlucky omen for the future. Josephine had never given much credence to the irrational, but she began to wonder as the years went by. Perhaps the minister may have had a point. Six months after the wedding, Ray’s plane had been shot down over Vietnam. She really did not consider herself superstitious, but she couldn’t help it—she would always wonder if he would have lived if she had worn a white dress. Silly thought—how could it have made a difference? Still, to make herself feel better, her mind went back to their first date.
    She had worn her little black dress. It had been a blind date and she had felt the little black could survive whatever tastes in dress the new person would have. As it happened, Ray had loved it. Later in their relationship, he told her he liked it because it was so quiet but so sexy and sophisticated that he couldn’t resist it. She smiled as she remembered one of his first questions, “Why do they call it a “little” black dress? She laughed, she didn’t know why, she had never thought about it. She only knew that they didn’t use that adjective with any other color. In that little moment they had begun to like each other. Anyway, after that, Ray asked her to wear the little black dress every time they dated, but sometimes she refused. She had told him, “I can’t wear a black dress to a football game or to a swimming pool party. Besides I have other nice things I would like to wear for you.” He accepted that, but she knew he didn’t really understand.
    In her memory now, the little black dress and all the famous women who had worn it, and loved it for its adaptability, were part of her way of continuing her love for a person who had died years ago in reality but not in her heart.
    Blanche glanced down at the little black dress she had brought from Josephine’s “jewelry” box. The two women watched as Josephine put the little black dress under the covers and clutched it to her heart.
    “Well, look at that,” said Sonia, “she really does love that dress. Isn’t it a little nutty to put it under the covers like that?” A memory rising from Sonia’s past experience came to her mind as a way of justifying this unusual behavior, and gave her a reason, which she seemed to need, for accepting it, “That must be the sickness. I guess they all get a little loco when they get that near the end.”
    “But she had a life, didn’t she?” said Blanche. It wasn’t the kind of life we usually think of, but apparently for her, it was a rich fulfilling life, and she seems to have loved every minute of it.”
    Though not aware of Josephine’s early romance, Blanche started to compare her own life—children grown up now, with all the ups and downs of raising them, husband loved but now long gone, housework, money cares, illnesses in the family. Josephine had had none of these. Was Josephine’s “fantasy” life any less valid than her own?
    Blanche decided it would be better for her sanity not to try to compare them. Besides, to top it all off, she had just read an article that, after years of being ignored, the “little black dress” was now coming back into style. But, fantasy life or not, Blanche felt she would make sure that Josephine had a little black dress with her to the very last moment of her days on earth.
    When Josephine passed on, Blanche took care of all the arrangements for her funeral and burial, making sure that the little black dress was carefully placed close to Josephine’s chest. her arms gently folded across it.
    Ten years went by, but each time the anniversary of Josephine’s death arrived, Blanche would find herself remembering not only Josephine and the years she herself had spent knowing her even if, she had to admit, superficially. But what nagged at Blanche’s mind was the same question. Josephine had really seemed to be a happy person—but how could she have been? She had had no close ties to anyone else—family, friends, even solace in religion—all the things that were reputed to make life be worthwhile, providing, one hoped, a path to happiness. Why hadn’t she sought comfort in these areas? Areas that Blanche herself and others she knew could not live without.
    But, Blanche had to admit, all of these had been fraught with the hills and valleys of human encounters. Josephine had had none of these. She had created a world, a world of fantasy figures, not even based on real relationships, a world where nothing could go wrong. Was this really enough for her? Or was it all a façade she had put on? Each year on the anniversary of Josephine’s death, she wondered, what did she have in her own life equivalent to that little black dress, that thing that had kept hope and happiness alive for Josephine. Blanche thought and thought about it but had no answer and still she was forced to admit she had never seen Josephine unhappy.
    Today, lost in her thoughts about this unanswerable question, Blanche stepped off the curb, heedless of traffic and anguished by her doubts, and right into the path of a moving van.
    She survived and spent months of rehabilitation—months where she was told she might never be able to walk again. She had to face the fact that she might have to spend her whole future dependent on others for the simplest needs of daily living—a difficult thought for someone who had been so independent all her life. In a way, she felt, she could now allow herself to envy Josephine.
    So she spent her months in quiet self-pity. And then one day in physical therapy, her legs quietly began to move themselves. Not far, not for more than a minute, but in that moment she had her answer—all the little black dresses in the world, or whatever it was that represented them in her life, was not for one second the equivalent of just living her life as a fully recovered human being. She would walk again, she would be happy again, she would suffer again, but most important she would live life in the real world again. She called the physical therapist and begged her to come see her as soon as she could. She wanted to be really alive again.

An Englishman’s House is his Castle

    He wasn’t a particularly good looking man nor ugly but basically ordinary in every respect. He didn’t get admiring glances and people didn’t discuss him except to remark how inoffensive he was. He was therefore surprised to find on holiday in Thailand, which he has heard was a friendly country, when girls appeared to notice him and even smile at him. His workmates made fun of him because he appeared to have little personality, no friends as such and certainly had not been known to have any girlfriends. They had told him that a Christmas holiday would put this right because the Thai girls fell for Western boys and called them Farangs – the polite Thai word for foreigner.
    After a day or so being on the receiving end of the Thai girl’s apparent friendliness he did something he had never dared do with a English girl – he started a conversation – tentatively and nervously but definitely a conversation. He told her that he worked for a big company building houses and drove a big earth-moving machine. He earned good money and had saved a great deal of it because had no passions for anything except perhaps a day by the river fishing. He went out every Friday night for a beer at the local Pub but nobody really talked to him and he not to them because he had nothing really he wanted to say and nothing he was interested in – except fishing! So to be sitting in a bar talking to a pretty Thai girl was an unusual and exciting experience for hm.
    Before the night was out he had learned from her with her very small English vocabulary that her name was Noi, that she lived in an unpronounceable country village in an area in the North East of Thailand and that she worked at the bar entertaining customers as a dancer. She demonstrated this later when at the orders from the rather formidable Mama San she went behind the bar and climbed up on a concrete podium in the centre of which was a metal pole. She used the pole for support as she, to the accompaniment of pounding Thai music danced around the pole provocatively swaying her hips and gyrating sensually. All the time smiling at him as though this total performance was for him alone.
    He didn’t notice the time go by until the last few drunken men left the bar with girls hanging on their arms. Noi joined him. “Time go” she smiled at him again as she followed the other girl’s example and locked arms with him.
    He didn’t know how or why they ended up back at his small hotel room where without any embarrassment she stripped and entered the ice-cold shower. The rest of the night was ecstasy after ecstasy and even though unusually drunk he swore he would remember it forever. “You virgin.” she giggled. “Not any more.” he giggled in return!
    They spent the next week together hardly out of each other’s sight and when the time came for him to go to the Airport to catch his airplane for the long flight home to England he was almost in tears. He gave her a substantial amount of money and swore that at the next opportunity he would be back.
    Back in the dirty grayness of London he was a changed man. His workmates commented on his “new man” attitude and quite rightly assumed it was because he had fallen in love. Each week he telephoned Noi and each week he sent her Western Union payments and implored her to stay faithful and count the days to Easter when he would visit again.
    Easter wouldn’t come soon enough and he even took an extra week off and left early. Noi met him at the airport and amidst passionate scenes persuaded him to take her to her village, “Mama she want meet you.”
    The old woman he met was gray and bent almost double her teeth were stained from the Beetle-Nut which she chewed constantly. He was dragged around the village and paraded like a trophy by Noi and she finally took him to a plot of land on the edge of the village.
    “My land,” she said proudly. “We live here? You build house?”
    He had no choice but to agree and met the local builder. With his brain in a whirl he agreed with Noi’s plans for the building of the house which was remarkably cheap and he managed to persuade his bank in London to send him enough for the construction and within a week he was back in London. He had agreed to travel back in three months time and to marry. He had understood that it was the custom that he would have to put up a dowry and pay for the entire ceremony which would have to involve over three hundred people. Noi reported every week on the progress of building their love nest and preparations for their wedding and to demurely ask for more cash for the house. She was obviously very happy and very proud.
    On his return she met him at the airport in Bangkok and immediately whisked him off to the nearest big town to her tiny village and the Chinese jewelers where she chose her wedding Gold. Next she dragged him off to a photographers where she had him fitted out with hired traditional Thai clothes for the wedding and several different dresses for her and within the hour, after she had been suitably made-up and her hair dressed and slung up in a high bun they were photographed in innumerable poses and different changes of clothes.
    The three hundred guests duly arrived were fed and watered and he was once again paraded around like a recently acquired prize. Everyone was happy – loads of food, booze and many were so happy that they passed out of the floor. Thais are not known to be able to hold their liquor and the bottle of Whiskey on each guests table soon disappeared and many a head bobbed below the table emitting sonorous noise.
    The next week passed by and he was shown the house and taken to various furniture shops in preparation for their occupancy. Noi was in command and loving every minute of it but money was passing through his wallet like there was a hole in it and finally he had to call a halt.
    This didn’t go down at all well. “You don’t love me no more.” She whined and sulked. This petty and childish mood went on remorselessly and he was glad when the last few days of his holiday came to an end and he headed back to London having promised to send her money every month.
    Work was almost a welcome relief and he enjoyed the familiar thumping of the diesel engine of his massive Earth Moving machine. He should be happy, he thought, married now to the lovely Noi, owner of a brand new house in exotic Thailand and a new life awaiting him. But how, he wondered can I continue the ‘good life’ if I have to leave the UK? Would it be possible to get employment in Thailand? He was fifty years old and not far off retirement for which he had been saving to supplement his Old Age Pension but now that he had spent a great deal of his savings on the marriage and the new house there wasn’t much left!
    The answer came when he returned again to Thailand. Noi didn’t waste any time demanding more money to buy this and that but he objected informing her that all of her demands had left him unable to supply her constant needs. Her familiar sulking mood ensued and she took to leaving the house every day for long periods at a time – sometimes all night.
    Finally, fed up with being left alone, cooking his own evening meal taking his usual wander down to the local shop cum bar to chat with the owner he followed her one early evening into the village. He wasn’t particularly surprised when she disappeared into a Thai karaoke Bar and, waiting a few discreet minutes he made his way into the gloomy interior. Noi was sitting, glass of whiskey in hand next to a young Thai man whom she obviously knew quite intimately.
    It took her some moments before she realized that he was there but his presence annoyed her. “You follow? You spy?” she raved her objections, the fury at being caught out fueling her anger until finally holding it by the neck she smashed the almost empty bottle on the metal table and raised the jagged remains towards his face.
    Her Thai boyfriend caught her arm just in time as she attempted to thrust the Whiskey bottle into his face.
    It took him just a few minutes to cram his few belongings into his suitcase, hail the local tuk-tuk and give instructions to head for the nearby big town and a hotel he was familiar with. There he checked in, ordered a bottle of whiskey and retired for the night to ponder the awful events that had just passed.
    The next morning, sitting on the terrace of the hotel eating his comforting English breakfast he was surprised to see Noi’s big Sister arrive. She was obviously upset that he had left – he was after all the breadwinner for the family and she tried to persuade him to return. However, this had been the final straw for him and she could not persuade him to stay. He told her that he would find somebody to buy the house and he would, as he understood Thai law 50-50 split of property following divorce, would give her half although in his opinion she deserved nothing.
    “But she gets all” Noi’s Sister announced “land in her name. You can not sell – she own.”
    Despite his protestations that he had paid for the land, the building of the house and everything inside it Noi’s Sister said that he owned nothing except the bricks and mortar which he had paid for.
    This was confirmed when he visited a Thai lawyer. In Thai law Noi owned the land
    So he had spent a good deal of his savings, acquired a wife who apparently had simply wanted him for his money and anyway preferred younger Thai men, built a house and furnished it in which he had supposed he would spend the rest of his life in an idyllic marriage – all a lie he thought! And now to be told that the love nest and everything else was owned by his wife’s was the last straw! What on earth was he to do? Go back to London and the gray life there and face the ridicule of his fellow workers and everyone else who knew him? There was no alternative... or perhaps there was!
    The crowds of children in the village where he thought he was destined to spend the rest of his life rushed around excitedly clapping their hands joyously over the sound of the mighty diesel engine as it roared angrily above the ever-present Thai music pumping out from his love nest of a house.
    The mighty machine, a Rough terrain telescopic forklift CATERPILLAR type with a lifting height of 12 meters and a Shovel protruding out in front was exactly the type of powerful tool that he was used to handling back in London on the building sites where he worked. The diesel engine roared in defiance overpowering the thumping Thai music as he throttled it aggressively.
    Noi flung open the front door of the house and stood angrily hands on her hips and glared at her crazy Falang of a husband.
    “What you do? Why you drive that stupid machine here?”
    He operated the control and the shovel rose up above head height.
    “Come to get what’s mine,” he said a small amused smile on his lips. “The house is mine – I paid for it and I want it.”
    “House mine – belong me!” She yelled defiantly back. “Land mine! Thai law say mine. House mine! Go away!”
    “The land is yours, yes,” he yelled back at her above the growling of the engine. “But I paid for every brick, every piece of timber, everything to build that house and everything in it! Now I want it back!”
    He didn’t wait for her to argue further but operated the mighty beast’s controls, aiming the shovel at the front of the house as he drove the massive wheels forward. Noi had no option but to leap aside as the shovel buried its jaws into the single-skinned concrete brick façade and ripped a great chunk out of the structure and spat it aside. It took just three bites before the flimsy roof structure collapsed inwards.
    He manipulated the shovel and shoved the internal walls aside to reveal the bedroom and the sturdy double-bed in the main bedroom. The shovel picked the bed up and hurled into the front area of the house.
    “There you go – I’ll give you that. You’ll need it for the next sucker! Learn a lesson girl – An Englishman’s Home is His Castle!”

A Visit to the Grotto

    Max came in the back door, unannounced as usual, helped himself to a beer from the laundry room fridge and plunked down on my office couch. Max is a rather unusual friend in that he follows no religious or political convictions that customarily are found in the drawing rooms of more polite society. Max is a libertarian atheist. Introducing him to friends is sometimes embarrassing and inevitably awkward since I never know what route his conversation will take. Often he adapts to the conversational lead of someone else. Allow me to give you an example.
    He said, “I had dinner at the (name withheld) country club last night, had a good time capped off with a conversation with a lady of the Roman Catholic persuasion.”
    “Oh my gracious!” I exclaimed. “Was the poor thing in tears before they ejected you from the club?”
    “Oh not at all,” he hastily replied. “It was a civilized coming together of divergent faiths in intellectual discussion.”
    “And you thought I would find it useful when holding forth in print at some future time.”
    “Naturally,” he replied.
    I sighed, got out my pencil and note pad and prepared myself. As far as I know, the following is a faithful reconstruction of that conversation.

    Lady: (In response to a question) I’ve been abroad for the past four weeks. We stayed with friends in Paris, saw the city, then drove down to the southwest of France and visited Lourdes, I wanted to see Bernadette’s grotto.
    Max: I see you are unscathed, no visible injuries; you must have got along famously with the fro-, I mean with our Gallic cousins.
    Lady: (Smiling) I do take the precaution of traveling to France with a Canadian passport.
    Max: I see. Not heroic but discreet.
    Lady: Ahem. Anyway I finally had a chance to see the Lourdes Grotto and it was a tremendously moving experience.
    Max: No doubt. Tell us about it. (A whispered aside to a fellow diner, “As if we could stop her.”)
    Lady: Did you know they have built an underground church there that will seat 20,000?
    Max: Yes. I knew something of the sort had been done after we got Adolph and his cronies out of the way. The grotto must be wonderfully profitable.
    Lady: (Ignoring the capitalist observation) Three million pilgrims visit the shrine annually. About 50,000 of those are crippled or very ill.
    Max: My gosh, just think of the post cards, bumper stickers and bobble heads you could sell!
    Lady: What was that?
    Max: Oh, nothing, just mumbling about faith moving mountains. Please go on.
    Lady: You are familiar with the story of Saint Bernadette, aren’t you?
    Max: Of course, of course. My generation saw the movie Song of Bernadette which was based on the book by Fritz Werfel, who by the way, was a German Jew. The rather homely little Marie-Bernarde Soubrious was played by that scrumptious Jennifer Jones.
    Lady: What was that?
    Max: I said that Marie-Bernarde was her original name. Happily, she changed it to Bernadette after she took holy orders; looks a lot better on a marquee. They got four Oscars for that movie, by the way.
    Lady: Sir, are you troubled by Attention-Deficit Disorder? You seem to have trouble staying on a subject.
    Max: Heaven forefend! No, not I. Your story is absorbing. Please go on.
    Lady: (visibly irritated) Anyway, it was an emotional experience. The water works wondrous cures. There are literally thousands of crutches hanging from the wall of the grotto, even wheel chairs left by the disabled who were miraculously cured and walked away on their own two feet. And there are dark glasses and canes worn by the blind before their sight was restored.
    Max: Marvelous! Tell me, how many prosthetics were hanging on the wall?
    Lady: I beg your pardon!
    Max: Prosthetics, prosthetic devices; cork legs, flesh-colored plastic hands, metal hooks.
    Lady: (visibly shocked) What do you mean? There are none of those things there. That would mean the pilgrims had to grow new arms and legs!
    Max: Precisely!
    Lady: You can’t be serious!
    Max: I’m serious as a busted crutch, my dear. Hasn’t your deity gotten off his training wheels? I am appalled to learn that God still hasn’t learned to replace arms and legs.
    Lady: He doesn’t do that!
    Max: That’s my point, doll-face. That God of yours has some serious limitations. After all, curing a case of hysterical blindness is no big deal, any number of televangelists can do that. What I want to know is why some frolicsome lad that gets his legs chopped off by a trolley car can’t go down to Massabielle Grotto, Inc. and get a new pair of legs? Or how about the kid whose mother was on a bad acid trip and poked out his little blue eyes with a needle? What about him getting a new set of eyes? Or maybe the father of six who got his arm torn off in the farm machinery; what does the grotto do for him?
    Lady: The waters can’t restore limbs that are lost. That’s impossible!
    Max: You are saying your omnipotent God can’t replace an arm that he caused to grow in the first place?
    Lady: Of course he can. God can do anything. He created the universe.
    Max: But you’re saying that despite loving all of us, he picks and chooses. Otherwise, he’d have as much pity for the kid that got run over by the trolley as the kid who can’t walk because of the psycho-trauma induced paralysis left over from being molested by his strange uncle. If he can create a universe that’s millions of light years wide, surely he can let that little kid born with a spinal curvature so bad he has to crawl on all fours go get some of that water and straighten up, maybe play a little ball with the neighborhood kids.
    Lady: I’ll not listen to this.
    Max: (to her back), Lady, I’m just asking why. You should explain it to me. Some kid gets born that looks like a monster and can’t even feed himself and God says, “Oops, luck of the draw, kid. Sorry!” Why is that? It looks to me that more than anything, that grotto is a monument to the limitations of your Christian God.
    Lady: (Receding in the distance toward the hors d’oeuvre table) Harumph!
    Max: Gosh! She got away before I could ask her if it’s just that God has a rather dark sense of humor. That would explain a lot.

    Max added a footnote to this parable. He notes that the 14-year old Bernadette saw her visions of the Blessed Virgin a dozen and a half times in 1858. But when she told her story, her parents and local priests were skeptical. However, when the Vatican got wind of it, things happened fast. By 1862, the Massabielle grotto cult was approved, fully chartered and in business.
    Max says that if you put “Lourdes” into your search engine, you get the Grotto’s web site and you can order vials of the water to be shipped to you to use as you see fit, all major credit cards accepted.

Dad

    He called his wife from work to tell her he was cutting out early so he could be there for the boy’s party and he put his coat on, started the truck and came home.

    But when he got there they had already sung “Happy Birthday,” opened the presents and were up in the boy’s room playing a war game on the boy’s new PlayStation.

    “They were getting restless, I just thought the best thing to do would be to go ahead and start,” his wife said, “I hope you don’t mind.”

    “Of course not.”

    He poured a scotch and sat at the table. He stared at the one piece of cake left, an end piece. He wasn’t much for birthday cake.

    “I made them save you a piece,” she said.

    “That was thoughtful.”

    She looked at him. Then she said, “Well, you seem kind of down in the dumps.”

    He thought to say something but didn’t.
    “Can I get you some ice cream to go with your drink?”
    He poured another and took the bottle and his drink into the living room.
    “I’ll join you in a minute,” she said, “I just want to straighten up a few things.”
    The boy’s room was directly above and he could hear explosions and shooting noises from the game and the chatter of the boys and finally he went to the stairs and yelled, “Hey! Could you guys hold it down a little please?”
    The talking and shouting stopped. He could live with the explosions and the shooting.
    But soon the chatter started up again.
    “I told you boys to keep it down! If I have to tell you again everybody goes home! Do you hear me?”
    He poured another scotch and sat back down on the couch. He heard the boy come down the stairs and the muffled sound of the boy and his mom in the kitchen. Then he heard her say, “I’ll speak to him.”
    She stood at the entrance to the living room holding the empty cake plate and a dish towel.
    “For goodness sake it’s supposed to be a party! What are you getting so upset about?” she said.
    “You’re right,” he said, “Sorry. Tell him ‘Happy Birthday’ from Dad.”
    And he put his coat on, took his bottle and his drink and left.

My Aunt Yola

    Aunt Yola let her white neglige slip to the floor.
    Steve and I had never seen a woman nude before. She was a big lady, a huge, fat cow of a woman, and Uncle Bob had been asleep for hours at that point. And she motioned for us to follow her, but I didn’t know what to do. Steve moved forward. Aunt Yola placed a stale donut in a napkin and left it on the TV tray. She said that it was for me, and it was okay to be scared because the brave were ignorant.
    She took Steve into the dimly lit bedroom and shut the door behind them. I sat in the living room for some time. Uncle Bob was still asleep on the couch, the funny papers bunched up under his bare legs and his big slab of an arm draped over his eyes. He breathed deep and loudly. I didn’t eat the donut.
    The light switched off in the bedroom.
    My father had sent us across the street that night with two eggs, one for myself and the other for Steve. But we never got to eat them. I wandered into the kitchen and drank out of a coffee pot. The milk in the fridge had gone bad, and I remember having diarrhea earlier that day. I wanted to know what Steve was doing, but I wouldn’t go near the door. Instead, I went back into the family room and alternated looking at Uncle Bob’s heaving gut and blankly staring into the television screen, long gone into static.
    Shortly after, I heard the metal knob on the door jiggle and Steve walked out, gingerly. Aunt Yola was on her stomach, lying naked on the bed. Steve and I lied down on the den floor together.
    He was sad, and would be turning twelve the next day.

The Interview

    Benton Wellborn checked his watch, took one last look at his case notes, and sighed. Almost time for my one-thirty. He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, then rose from behind his desk and walked to the window. The view was unexceptional—paved parking lot, fissured here and there by tree roots that had tunneled their way over from a narrow grassy area dotted with old live oaks and a few pecan trees. Beyond that a high, black wrought iron fence encircled the facility’s grounds and protected the good citizens of Savannah from a veritable hodgepodge of criminally deranged individuals. Nevertheless, and despite its undeniably institutional appearance, the view always had a calming effect on Wellborn.
    A knock interrupted his reverie, and Wellborn turned just as his office door swung open. Gordon Michaels, one of the orderlies, loomed large in the entranceway, and, behind him, Drew Danner, the patient Benton had been seeing for almost three months. “Please,” Wellborn said, “y’all come on in.”
    Gordon stepped to one side and Danner entered, a pleasant expression on his not-quite handsome face. Once again, Wellborn was struck by the man’s appearance and gentle demeanor, thinking, He looks more like a college professor than a serial killer. Danner took a seat in front of the desk.
    The orderly glanced first at Wellborn, then at the back of Danner’s head. “I’ll be outside if you need me, Doctor.”
    “Now Gordon, I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Wellborn said, returning to his chair. As Gordon pulled the door shut, Wellborn leaned forward and interlocked his fingers on the smooth surface of his desk. “Well, Mister Danner, how’re you doing today?”
    Danner crossed one leg over the other and leaned back. “I’m fine, Wellborn. What about yourself?”
    Wellborn smiled. He allowed the informality as a way of getting Danner to feel more comfortable. “I’ll do, I reckon. Thank you.” He took a moment to study his patient. Danner, once a successful shrimp boat operator, was suspected of having murdered three young women. A pre-trial examination had landed Danner at Graves Psychiatric Facility, with Wellborn as his doctor. While the evidence was compelling, it was primarily circumstantial, and Danner had thus far refused to acknowledge his crimes.
    The case was proving to be one of the most challenging of Wellborn’s career, but he remained determined to see it through to a satisfying conclusion. For a while, the two men exchanged opinions on the weather, the hospital food, and other trivialities. Then Wellborn asked, “What should we talk about today, Mister Danner? Got anything on your mind?”
    “Just what everyone’s always asking about,” Danner said. “The murders, I guess.”
    “Well, then, go ahead.”
    Danner shook his head. “You go first.”
    Wellborn closed his eyes. This was the way it had been for months, this little dance that Danner did to begin each session. Wellborn indulged him, trying every trick he knew to draw the man out, to study the multiple signals—word usage, voice pitch, gestures—that, in other patients, often revealed their emotions and motivations. But to Wellborn’s continuing dismay, Danner remained a blank page.
    “All right, then, let’s talk about Kelly Rhodes.”
    Kelly Rhodes had been found behind a night club near the marina, beaten, raped and strangled—the only girl whose body had been recovered to date. She was twenty-two at the time of her death, twice divorced, and the mother a five-year-old girl.
    Wellborn plucked a pencil from the coffee cup on his desk and tapped the eraser end on his stack of case notes. “We know you went to The Outcast on the night Kelly was killed, and we know you were seen having a beer with her. Maybe you just wanted some company. She might even have seemed to come on to you. You know what I mean—the way these young girls dress, belly button rings, too much cleavage, that sort of thing. Could be she was messing with you. There she is, you’ve seen her at the bar before, probably flirting with other guys—young girl, pretty, long hair, and maybe you resisted for a while, maybe a long while.”
    Wellborn paused briefly. Danner stared at him impassively, barely blinking, scrutinizing Wellborn—it appeared—as one might an insect under a microscope.
    “But a man can only resist for so long, right, once his fire kindles? And so maybe you talk her into going out back with you. Just to talk, for all I know, just needing a little companionship. A man gets lonely sometimes. But then, you know, the way girls can get, all hysterical, and maybe you got scared. Maybe she smacked you or threatened you, said she had a boyfriend she’d sic on you. Maybe she tried to run, and you didn’t mean for things to happen the way they did. Maybe it was all an accident, her winding up dead.”
    Wellborn kept talking in his calm voice, as if rape and murder seemed somehow logical, just the natural order of things. “I knew a guy once who started drinking with his best friend, and when the guy woke up, there was his friend with a bullet hole right between his eyes.” Talking about how reasonable it would have been for Danner to have raped and strangled that girl, how sometimes women wanted to get raped, and how maybe Danner was just doing what Kelly wanted all along.
    “Sometimes,” Wellborn said, “we just do bad things without knowing the reasons. Things can kind of get out of hand, and everything moves too fast. Is that what happened with Kelly, Mister Danner? Did things just get out of hand?”
    Danner had not moved—one leg crossed over the other, leaning back in his chair, hands folded in his lap. Wellborn ran his tongue over his lips, thinking, He is the stillest man I’ve ever seen.
    Eventually, Danner turned and looked out toward the window where the afternoon sun was lodged in the upper branches of the live oaks. Then he turned back, a wistful smile playing on his face. “I don’t know, Wellborn. Did they?” Danner tilted his head to one side and the smile widened then disappeared altogether. For several minutes, neither man said another word.
    Finally, Wellborn dropped the pencil he’d been playing with and massaged his temples. Would this game never end? He fought to remain in control of his temper, to remain professional in spite of his apparent inability to make some inroad, some modicum of progress with this most perplexing man.
    When he looked up again, he saw Gordon Michael’s face peering in through the small window of his office door. Thank goodness, he thought. Enough’s enough. “That’ll be all for today, Mister Danner. I have a consult coming up. The orderly will see you out now, but we’ll get together again next week.”
    Danner nodded and rose from his chair. “Yes, Wellborn, we surely will.”

    Gordon opened the door, moved back allowing Danner to pass through, then closed it and thumbed the outside lock. Through the window he saw a frowning Wellborn bent over the rolling tray table he called his desk, scribbling furiously on the pages of blank note paper the facility supplied. Then he turned to Danner and raised his eyebrows. “How’d it go, Doctor? Y’all make any new breakthroughs today?”
    The doctor backed away, red-faced, shaking his head in apparent frustration. “Give me a break, Gordon. It’s Friday afternoon. I’m off in a couple of hours, and all I want to do is go home, drink some bourbon, make love to my wife, and forget about this goddamn hellhole for the next forty-eight hours. The absolute last thing I need right now is to be quizzed on my progress by the help.”
    Gordon shrugged and watched Danner stomp down the hallway. Well, fuck me for asking. He walked back to his station and flipped open the economics text book he used for his night classes. Eight more months and he was out of here. And not a day too soon, either. More and more, he thought, it’s getting harder to tell the staff from the inmates.

All About Ronny(ie)

    Live and let live, sure. Even all those years ago when we used different words to say what was what. I was in a live-and-let-live mode, thinking I was ever so broadminded. That was before I was faced with a real live test. And my reality streak showed itself.
    The worst thing about this particular night was what I was doing to Ruby. She’s really a good sort, one of the most solid, sincere people I know. Doesn’t look bad, either. In fact we had thought of maybe...well, not getting married, but moving in together. But it turned out that things were fantastic in bed, but not so good everywhere else.
    So I had tickets to a play I knew she wanted to see and I rooked her into this deal - which meant I was taking her along so I could hide behind her skirts! (And I had plans for getting her into a hot tub later.)
    I simply told her we had to stop on the way to meet an old friend for a minute or two, some kind of social obligation. This sounded harmless enough. And when I parked just down the block from the Jungle Bar, I breathed a sigh of relief - she obviously didn’t know about the place.
    But inside the Jungle Bar, so many poorly kept secrets quickly piled up.
    * The tall, pudgy waiter took our order for two beers. He wore earrings and his nails were painted pink.
    * Two young men who may have been ballet dancers or junior weight-lifters were sitting at the bar, lightly holding hands, each looking into the eyes of the other with a gaze that mixed lust and beatitude.
    * A large muscular woman in a security guard’s uniform was sitting ultra-close to a diminutive blond girl in a manner that could be called protective.
    *An individual was wearing a cocktail dress that didn’t match the moustache and cigar.
    *And on.

    “You said you were meeting an old friend here? You said his name was Ronny? What the hell is going on, Ken?”
    “I had hoped he’d be here waiting, and we could say hello, and be on our way...Well, let’s start with this...”
    I handed her a business card: Interiors by Ronnie.
    Her eyebrows lifted. “Then I gather we aren’t expecting a macho...What about this Ronnie?”
    “Knew him as a kid...knew his family...His sister called me and asked me to speak to him...I stopped by his store and he was out...got him on the phone and he said he’d meet me here...”
    “Knew him as a kid?”
    “In our neighborhood...he was, well, different...all kinds of dancing classes, raised flowers and did arrangements...even won prizes for his needlepoint.”
    “How well did you know him?”
    “Can’t say I knew him...the sister who called me is my age...Ronny was four or five years younger...I was never involved in anything, any kind of activity he was in. However, once I did stop some kids from beating up on him...I guess he was about ten and these guys were working him over pretty good...then through the years I’d see him around the neighborhood. He looked normal enough, small, but at least healthy looking...if you didn’t know about his hobbies, you wouldn’t have guessed...But I haven’t seen him in, Oh, I suppose it’s been at least ten years...I go back to visit my folks ever so often, but I never ran into Ronny, and I hadn’t thought of him till I got that call from his sister last week...”
    “Then you don’t know much about what he’s been up to since he was a kid?”
    “Very little. He went off to college...and there was some kind of trouble - you can guess what that might be...And what I heard was that he disowned his family and went to Europe. Apparently his sister learned he was here and begged me to get in touch with him...”
    “What are you going to say to him?”
    “Damned if I know! His sister wants him to get back on good terms with his family...”
    “What did you bring me along for? Protection?”
    “Well, I didn’t want to come here alone!”
    “When you get right down to it, Ken, you’re a son of a bitch...But I’ll have to admit...I’m curious about this Ronny...”
    We didn’t have to wait long. Two dressed in skirts wandered up to our table.
    The taller of the two was in a cocktail dress. She had chestnut hair in a short poodle-cut. At first glance she seemed to be about twenty-five, slender, and quite well formed.
    The shorter of the two had dark brown hair, also in a poodle-cut, and she was wearing a white pullover sweater over a navy blue skirt. She was thin, almost frail.
    “Ken?” the smaller one asked me.
    “Yes.”
    “I’m Ronnie...”
    “Oh? I didn’t recognize you...”
    “How could you? You knew me before I was a girl...”
    Ruby flushed, then paled, then headed for the ladies room.
    Ronnie spoke to his/her companion, “Go see if she’s all right, Chris.”
    “Right,” said the chestnut-haired one, whether boy or girl.
    Ronnie took a seat and looked at me. “You haven’t changed much, Ken. What are you doing in Philadelphia?”
    “I’m an accountant with a brokerage firm.”
    “And Sis got in touch with you...told you to look me up? What did she want?”
    “Ah, I don’t know. Worried about her little brother, I guess. Wants you to be reunited with the family...”
    “Well, after a little bit of that famous Denmark surgery, I’m not really her little brother anymore! Imagine how this would go over around home! She’s really a good sort, but I don’t think she - or the whole scene at home - is ready for the likes of me...”
    “You mean...you’re a...I mean...”
    “Had the operation. My driver’s license lists me as female...”
    I felt myself getting weak.
    “Shocks you, doesn’t it? So, how would it go over if I were to go to a family reunion? No, I wouldn’t do that to them...nor would I do that to me...”
    Ruby returned, with Chris right behind her.
    Ronnie said, “If you’re going to get to the play on time, you’d better run along...Chris and I are staying a while...we’ll take care of your check...Thanks for coming, Ken...and nice to meet you Ruby....”
    We left and approached my car. I wasn’t sure we would even take in the play, and I surely wouldn’t have given odds on the hot tub.
    But Ruby had gained most of her composure.
    “Ken, that Ronnie is something from outer space...”
    “You mean because she had that operation?”
    “Well, that’s weird enough...but I had always assumed that a male would get such an operation because he wanted to be a she, because he wanted to go to bed with men. But there was Chris...Chris is a woman...and make no mistake about it...and she’s in love with Ronnie!”
    “You’re getting me mixed up...”
    “Well, I’m mixed up, too! But here’s the way I figure it: Ronnie was a boy...but he wanted to be a girl...so now he’s a girl...but he doesn’t like the idea of cuddling up to a boy...Ergo! He is now a she, and he doesn’t want a he, so he-now-a-she gets another she...Chris, that is...And they live happily ever as long as it lasts...”
    “That’s sick. But I guess you’re right...”
    “Yes, it’s sick...but live and let live...Do you really want to see the play?”
    “Well, no, not really. But I thought you did...”
    “I did, but now I’d rather have some more beer and a hot bath...”

about Roy Haymond

    Born in Natchez, Mississippi, he moved to South Carolina as a teen. Lived with a sharecropper family before attending high school in the Charleston area, where he played clarinet in the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. After a hitch in USMC, he attended the University of South Carolina. After graduation, he taught in several disciplines in public schools in the Carolinas. Always supplementing the family income by playing tenor sax in commercial combos, he also did graveyard shifts in convenience stores, sold cemetery lots and cut grass.
    Now retired from teaching and a short stint editing a weekly newspaper, he lives in a rural community (no traffic lights or sidewalks) with his (second) wife (Jessie is a published poet) where he writes (published in thirteen states and Canada)and continues to play clarinet and saxophone (in his dreams he is Lester Young and he is a big hit in retirement homes).

    (“Mourning Castaway” published in Down in the Dirt", 2010; “Backup Man, Pueblo” in CC&#amp;D, 2011)

Luck

        Alison Murray opened a new Word document and put the date, “May 14, 2011,” at the top before she dialed Mrs. Chamberlain‘s number, set the phone beside her computer, and pushed the speaker phone button. Her elderly patron picked up, exchanged pleasantries, and began her dictation while Alison typed the memoir she would later edit, have bound, and deliver to Mrs. Chamberlain to distribute as gifts to her family.

    Alison typed only slightly slower than Mrs. Chamberlain spoke. “Yes,” she said, “Go on.”
    “Evelyn spent a lot of time rubbing elbows with people,” Mrs. Chamberlain continued. Urged on by Alison‘s reminder of their timetable, her voice resonated with a new clarity. “For the longest time I didn‘t understand all this schmoozing she was doing. Evelyn was a humble sort. She liked company and attended parties, but she was never the kind of girl who made herself the center of attention. She was the sort of girl who made her friends look better than herself, who would even draw a boy‘s attention to a friend when she herself was infatuated with him. So what was she up to? Had she changed so much from the sister I‘d know when I was growing up? She lived in a poor neighborhood in a simple apartment, straining to pay her way through school, but it was clear she sought out the well-to-do, the up-and-coming, the hoity-toity crowd. Mother had inherited Father‘s money, of course, but in those days people believed in pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. Parents felt they were doing right by their children to let them make their own way in life, financially and in every other respect. It wasn‘t the way it is today, when parents are expected to pay for their children‘s education. Back then, children paid for their own education or they went to work, no two ways about it.”
    Alison looked at the clutter on her desk beside her computer. The print out of her college loan payments was tacked to a cork board on the wall. She‘d folded the paper in half and tacked it so that she couldn‘t see the numbers – a reminder that wouldn‘t depress her. Not everyone‘s life had changed so much from the old days, she thought. If pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps was one of the keys to being lucky, she ought to have been a lot luckier than she was. But on the other hand, perhaps she had at least one thing going for her.
    “The mystery was solved only recently,” her patron continued, “twenty years after Evelyn passed on, when I read the biography of another medical doctor. In those days, he said, breakthroughs in science occurred with enormous velocity, and only wealthy families could afford to buy updated text books. Most of the new medical and musical text books at the time were published in Germany. As a hobby, wealthy people gathered the most recent information and invited medical students and sometimes music majors to their homes for informal discussions. Someone would translate the texts, and they would all discuss the new material together. This way, the medical students could get the most up to date information, and the wealthy people enjoyed their hobby. So apparently Evelyn was not trying to gain influence at these people‘s homes; she was studying.
    “The year before she graduated, Evelyn felt especially pressed for money and anxious about her studies.
    “One hundred and thirty five students hope to graduate from my class, she wrote to Mother, but we‘ve been told that at least thirty-five of us will be plucked. So you see, more than one in five of us will be plucked, and I am the only woman and the most likely to be singled out for plucking.
    Magic Flute. By this time, the soprano was an elderly woman, but she took an interest in Evelyn.
    “Can you hang on a minute?” Alison asked. A chill had come over her, and she crossed the room, found a sweater in the closet, and shrugged it on.
    “Okay,” she said, indicating she was ready to continue.
    “I‘m not sure what transpired between the two women, one a former opera star who was approaching her death and one a young woman on the verge of a medical career who had used the gift of her voice to acquire her education, but Evelyn was never the same. Her life took on a rosy glow. You could see the change in her eyes. They were brighter, bigger, and they seemed to emanate light, as though in her mind she saw a world no one else saw, a beautiful world. And indeed, suddenly, her own world changed, and everything came up roses for her. She seemed to have a Midas touch, but not one that changed life into metal, but somehow the opposite, as though even inanimate objects responded happily to her spell.
    “She was not, as she had feared, ‘plucked.‘ In fact, she graduated at the top of her class. She landed an internship that paid $400 a year right out of medical school, a great sum of money at the time, especially when most internships right out of medical school paid nothing. She became engaged to another doctor, a kind, soft spoken man who went on to become a successful surgeon. Together, they had five children, and they raised them on a beautiful farm in North Virginia. Evelyn was one of the first working mothers, and when she advertised for a nanny she interviewed a woman who carried herself like a princess and treated Evelyn‘s children as though they were her own. The family, like Evelyn, loved to bestow nicknames on people, and they took to calling her Princess out of affection, and she became more of an aunt to the children than I ever was, since it was her job to raise them. Only after Princess died of Tuberculosis did they find out the truth – that she had indeed been a Princess, forced to escape Europe during the Great War and to leave everything behind her and start anew in a new land.

    Alison felt that Mrs. Chamberlain was purposely portraying herself as similar to Alison in an effort to be reassuring. Nonetheless, it was effective, for Alison did indeed feel like the young woman whom Mrs. Chamberlain described herself as in her youth, and she was indeed encouraged by the comparison. The future might be brighter than the past after all, even if it turned out that there was no secret to luck to be gleaned from these stories, but only chaos, scientism, and an existentially random dispersal of luck and no luck.
    “But after the Queen of the Day entered Evelyn‘s life, I felt as though an invisible parachute lifted me up from the drudgery of life and took me sailing around the world to see every glorious sunrise. Suddenly, I had a beaux, and then a fiancé, and then a husband. Together, we started a small store, and before we knew it, it burgeoned into a successful retail chain. We hired a wonderful man to be our store manager, and we were able to spend plenty of time with our children and take them on long vacations camping in beautiful natural surroundings – the Finger Lakes, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, New Mexico.... We travelled all around the country together, enjoying each other and the beauty and variety of the landscape. As I tell my grandchildren, we had a lucky star shining over us.
    “Years later, just before she died, Evelyn said she had something she needed to tell me. She couldn‘t wait for me to fly out and visit, and she was too ill to make the trip herself. We scheduled a time to talk that night on the phone so she could tell me her story. In some ways, it was just like what you and I are doing now.”
    Goose bumps rose on Alison‘s skin.
    “On an impulse, I lit candles all around the house before the hour we‘d agreed to talk. When the phone rang, I picked it up, and I wondered if it was my own nostalgia or something about the process of dying that made Evelyn‘s voice sound so young, as though we were children again. She asked me if I remembered the Queen of the Day.
    Of course I do.
    I‘ve never told you this before, Evelyn said, but a long time ago, the Queen of the Day gave me a very valuable gift.
    “I could hardly contain my curiosity. My mind flew back to the long ago change in Evelyn and in myself, and I wondered if I was about to get to the bottom of things.
    What was it?
    A symbol.
    My heart sank. Surely there was no symbol in the world that could account for the changes I‘d felt all those years ago. But I knew I was on the verge of losing my sister, and I listened just as intently out of my love for my sister as I would have if she had been – as I had briefly hoped – about to reveal to me the secret of our mutual change in luck.
    You see, the Queen of the Day believed that singing is the key not only to the soul, but also to the body. She believed that we‘re really all made of vibrations, the way music is, and that if you strike the right note, all of your life comes into tune, and the lives of those around you also come into tune. She believed that we take our form from our vibration and not the other way around. To her, singing was a way of reshaping her whole life and the life of those around her.
    Colors, she reminded me, are an expression of vibrations. And according to her, gems are not precious because they are rare; gems are precious because they are of very high vibrations that attune all the life that comes in contact with them to be more beautiful. Angels, she believed, are not archaic mythical beings from the Bible. Angels are the people we love who have died before us, and death, she believed, was not an end to life but simply a change to a new octave of vibration. In the same way that some pitches are too high for us to hear, she believed that death shifts people to a vibration which we can no longer sense. The Queen of the Day believed that time is a vibration as well, and that in reality everything – past, present, and future – is a part of a whole in the same way that a symphony exists before the soprano sings her first note.
    She — the Queen of the Day — took all of these ideas, and she forged them into a symbol that would both remind her of them and would, itself, resonate with a very high vibration. While she was still a poor unknown singer living in a rat infested tenement on the lower East Side of Manhattan, she took out a large loan and commissioned a jeweler to create a pyramid of precious gems – rubies, amber nuggets, tourmalines, sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds.
    Once she collected her symbol from the jeweler, she didn‘t hide it away in a safety deposit box. She left the jeweler‘s and she walked. She walked and walked and walked, all over the island. Uptown, Downtown, safe neighborhoods, unsafe neighborhoods. She didn‘t know why. She just did. Finally, when she grew tired, she returned to her own apartment. As she mounted the last flight of stairs, she heard her phone ringing inside, and she hurried to unlock the door. It was her mother, asking if it would be possible for her to bring her a casserole because she wasn‘t feeling well. Without hesitation, the Queen of the Day made the casserole and brought it to her mother. While it was warming in the oven, her mother asked her to sing for her, and so she sat at an old upright piano and sang the piece which would soon make her world famous, never dreaming that in the apartment above her the director of the Met‘s new production of The Magic Flute was listening. That was her audition, and the next day she had the part without ever having known she‘d auditioned for it.
    Alison‘s fingers flew across the key pads, faster than Mrs. Chamberlain‘s voice. A great excitement fluttered through her body.
    “On the phone that night, Evelyn told me that when the Queen of the Day knew she was dying, she gave the symbol to her. And now that Evelyn was dying, she was giving it to me. She had already sent it by certified mail, she told me, and I received it the next day, on June 12^th.
    The old woman stopped talking for a moment.
    “The odd thing, though,” she said in a voice that was so soft Alison could barely make out the words, “was that on the very same day I received news from Evelyn‘s daughter that she had passed on. But she hadn‘t passed on the night after we spoke. She had passed on three days before we spoke in a hotel in New Jersey. She‘d been sightseeing even though she was ill, and it took the owners of the hotel where she was staying three days to track down her family. A doctor had confirmed the death the day she was found in her room.”
    Alison‘s fingers didn‘t type the last two sentences. She was too stunned. Was this all a hoax? It was incredible. She felt a sudden anger toward the old woman, who had either deliberately misled her or had simply lost her marbles.
    “Well then,” Mrs. Chamberlain said, the way she did when she was finished for the day. “What‘s the damage?” This was her way of asking Alison how much she owed her. Alison charged $15 an hour. She had worked twenty hours that week.
     “$300.”
    “I‘ll put the check in the mail this afternoon,” Mrs. Chamberlain said. “Same time tomorrow?”
    But the next day, the old woman didn‘t call. She didn‘t call the day after, or the day after that, and the check, which usually arrived in a day, didn‘t arrive either. Not knowing what to do, Alison googled the woman‘s name and hometown.
    “Cecile Chamberlain dies at age 105,” the first hit read. Alison clicked on it. Sure enough, there was Mrs. Chamberlain‘s picture beside her obituary.
    “Surrounded by her family and friends, Cecile Chamberlain died on May 11, 2011,” the article read.
    Alison stared at the words, but before she could think what to think, the doorbell rang. The UPS man held up a gadget for her to write her electronic signature, and she took the package he held out to her.
    Inside the box was another box, and inside the second box were two things: a check for three hundred dollars and a rainbow of jewels in the shape of a small pyramid.
    Alison held her hand out flat and placed the pyramid in the center of her palm. Then she closed her hand around the symbol.
    She didn‘t believe or not believe any of it – the Princess, the Queen of the Day, Evelyn, Mrs. Chamberlain. The impossibility of Mrs. Chamberlain‘s death, which her daughter would soon confirm to have taken place three days before her conversation with Alison, didn‘t matter. The beauty was that with or without believing, possible or impossible, Alison held the little pyramid in the palm of her hand, so breathtaking and iridescent that her heart swelled at the very sight of it.

World

    I try hard, so very hard in this existence. It is not that easy, fact of business is it’s a struggle sometimes. Society is just absolutely raping our well being and scrapping us down to piddley little dry bones. The hardness of this world will scratch the skin from our bones leaving us blowing in the wind like a brown tube of snakeskin. Killing in the streets, killing in the movies, politicians killing our sense of trust towards anything. Families treating each other like cancer does an organ leaving us without family, which should be the basic bond.
    Some may say, “Well that’s not my world.” My response is, “Well, then where the hell are you at.” Basically we are muddling through this life the only way that society has left for us to do it. Even the weather sucks in most places of the world leaving people desperate and depressed. People loosing their jobs and turning to crime, people getting murdered for senseless reasons, Priests molesting children, fathers molesting their daughters, gas prices and day care cost more than what a person would make if they went to work. It’s not worth it for them to work, that’s why they get on welfare; it’s not their fault. It is this system’s fault. I could go on and on. Then we wonder why people get on substances and anti depressants to deal with this shit. “If this isn’t your world?” Then where the hell are you?
    There is a problem when people are so tired and stressed at the end of a workday that they don’t speak. Who the fuck wants to, it’s too much trouble, takes to much energy and is way to time consuming. Have you watched the news lately? Don’t, it will only make you believe the way I do. We wouldn’t want that, would we?
    There were nine crime stories in a row on Monday’s nightly news. This being the first time I have watched the news in three months. No wonder I haven’t. What about the positive, you may ask? It is in the last ten seconds of the news while the credits are rolling. Fuck the news.
    The government, they are the biggest criminals of them all, and they are good at making one believe in the American dream. That is a sham if I ever saw one. American dream my ass. I can’t even afford my mortgage and don’t understand the paperwork I need to fill out to get the help I need and I’m College educated and not stupid. I also don’t understand the person from another country on the other end of the phone trying to explain to me how this American Document reads.
    Maybe organized religion can help, yeah right, keep on believing in that “Where was religion when the priest was raping the 3 year old? Where was the congregation of religious righteous individuals when a black man came into an all white church to worship?” I will tell you where the leaders of the congregation were. They were having a meeting trying to figure out how to persuade this black individual not to come back. Religion serves one purpose. It was created to manipulate people through the use of fear tactics. Tactics such as do this or you will go to hell; don’t do this or you will go to hell. Religion doesn’t scare me, I feel sorry for it and for the people involved in it.
    The simpletons of this world are the lucky ones if you think about it, morons working for the common good, funny huh? It’s sad but true. The morons have it good; they are too stupid to see things how they really are. I envy the morons of this world. If you’re a moron my hat is off to you in full salute.

Obvious But Ignored

    It is obvious that our system of government has been shattered. Greed employing money has been used to buy politicians, and it matters not which “side of the aisle” is considered; both sides are guilty.
    It is interesting to note that close to a majority of the congressmen and senators are among the 1%, or millionaires and billionaires. Therefore, it is not surprising that these elected legislators, elected by the 99% are reluctant to represent the 99%. They do as they are told by the 1% that supplies the huge amounts of bribes through what they call lobbyists. The representatives actually represent themselves in addition to the 1%. Therefore it is difficult at best to refer to our government as being “by the people, and for the people”. It would be more accurate to say that our government is “by the 1% of the people, for that 1% of the people.”
    Politics is like a wild card in a card game in that whenever any legislation is not to the advantage of the wealthy, it can lumber along or never be put on the floor of the Congress and never become law. Then, the Congress can tell the 99% that they tried and failed because of some sort of disagreement by some obscure member or condition, or even a rule.
    The situation seems to be ignored, especially by Republicans, the party that can be said to have evolved almost one hundred eighty degrees from what it once was in principle. Those 99% of Republicans fail to realize that when they vote for their party’s candidates they are voting for legislators who will adamantly represent the 1% and themselves. The Democrats are also guilty of ignoring that their representatives are also loyal to corporate lobbyists.
    Far too much skullduggery persists. A sad example is the method that one party has discovered that disenfranchises voters by passing state laws requiring special documents that many of the minorities either do not have or those documents are too expensive for their purse strings. The intent is obvious and another excellent reason for action against such unfairness and undemocratic maneuvering.
    As a result of what might be called a lackadaisical electorate, the system we now have in Washington is laced with bribery and inconsistent promises made to fool those that go to the polls to vote. And, to take this further to the summit of the problems the country now faces, we have seen the highest court of the land, The Supreme Court, neglect fairness of interpretation and allow corporations to become living organisms legally allowed to contribute to political campaigns without revealing the amount of the bribe. Is it any wonder why there are masses of people “occupying” cities throughout the country? It also seems that this money monopoly has created unrest among populations all over the world.
    The solution may be to throw money out of politics. However, this would be impossible unless enough patriots stepped forward from the masses and voted the current politicians from both parties out of office. They would also need to pass legislation to eliminate money from politics and pass laws to strongly define and restrict the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution without leaning toward any special segment of society.
    The United States of America is a land of mountains, valleys, prairies, deserts and rivers. We are fortunate for that diversity. However, it is time to return to a level playing field when it comes to politics, or the trouble that looms today will become more serious.

John Duncklee Bio

    John Duncklee has been a cowboy, rancher, quarter horse breeder, university professor and award winning author of 23 books and myriad articles, poetry and short stories. He is a Western Writers of America Spur award winner for poetry. He lives in Las Cruces, N.M. with his wife, Penny, an accomplished watercolorist.

O is for Oddball

    Velvet Goslee was named after her mother’s favorite movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor. Velvet had golden hair that twined into Southern belle curls, enormous blue-violet eyes, and more dimples than Shirley temple. After her mama died when the thoroughbred threw her and stepped on her, Velvet had two grandmothers and five aunts who competed to take care of her and make her dresses, bows, and silk flower barrettes. In the evening, her daddy set her on his lap and read to her, his finger moving under the lines so that she quickly associated the print with the sound. Velvet had dolls and teddy bears, a Scottie dog, a sunny room with dotted swiss curtains, a little radio and picture books, a tea set and a play stove. The one thing her daddy would never do for her was give her a pony. Velvet was a precious angel who was adored by everyone who saw her.
    Velvet knew that Daddy did something called The Law, which required him to make overnight trips from their small town in Arkansas to Hot Springs to try out cases in The Court. One or the other of the grandmothers took care of Velvet then. “You try out so many cases,” Velvet said one time when he got home, “I hope you find one that works. Then you won’t have to go away and try out anymore.” Daddy whooped and lifted Velvet up to his shoulders. The grandparents and the aunts broke into big smiles that beamed on Velvet like rays of love. Velvet did not know exactly what it was that she had said or done that was so adorable, but she always knew when she was adorable.
    One day, Daddy told Velvet he was going to bring a dear friend to visit from Hot Springs, so that she could meet Velvet. It seemed natural to Velvet that anyone would want to meet her. Both of the grandmothers were there to get her ready – curls, a head band with little white flowers, a new black velvet dress with a white lace collar, white socks, black patent leather shoes. Velvet and the Scottie hung over the sofa back and watched out the front window. When Daddy’s car pulled into the drive, she ran out with the Scottie at her heels.
    Daddy’s dear friend was a young lady, Miss Connie Perkins, with black hair trimmed like pixies in picture books, wearing a pretty blue dress. Velvet spread her skirt out, bent one knee, and pointed the other toe. She could tell that Miss Perkins loved her little curtsy.
    “I’m so pleased to meet you, Miss Perkins.”
    “Please call me ‘Aunt Connie.’”
    Velvet was delighted: another aunt to make a fuss over her.
    The grandmothers had fixed a platter of fried chicken and an apple pie and a coconut cake. The grandmothers asked Aunt Connie a lot of questions. When Daddy had to drive Aunt Connie back to Hot Springs, Velvet and the Scottie followed them out to the porch and watched till the car turned the corner.
    Velvet went back to the living room. The grandmothers sat on the sofa, heads together with tight-lipped looks. When they saw Velvet, they flapped their hands at her to get out. It was the first time Velvet had ever been shooed away. She heard a grandmother say, “Her d-i-v-o-r-c-e....”
    Not long after that, Daddy set Velvet on his lap; but instead of opening her picture book, he wanted to have an important talk.
    “Aunt Connie loves you already. Do you think you can love Aunt Connie?”
    Velvet nodded her head so positively that her curls bounced. Daddy looked pleased.
    “Aunt Connie is coming to live with us. Would you like that?”
    Velvet saw that he wanted her to like it, but she did not understand. She nodded, once.
    “Aunt Connie has a little girl of her own, just your age. She’ll be a sister for you. Would you – “
    “No!” Velvet’s eyes and mouth formed big, shocked circles. Her sunny room, her toys, her Scottie, her grandmothers and aunts, all the attention – hers, hers alone. “No! I don’t want another little girl here!”
    Daddy spoke in a reasoning tone to Velvet, the tone meant he intended for her to do something she did not want to do. Velvet drummed her heels on the sofa cushion. Pouts brought out her dimples as much as smiles.
    Daddy said, “We’ll be a family, Velvet. You’ll love it.”
    “I won’t!”
    Velvet threw herself off Daddy’s lap and down on the floor. She squalled and pitched herself from side to side, kicked her feet and beat her fists, howled till she turned red in the face. Her dress hiked up over her ruffled panties. Scared, the Scottie ran around in circles barking.
    “That’s enough, Velvet.”
    He picked her up, turned her over his knee, and spanked her. The shock shut her up. Daddy put Velvet down on the floor. She wiped her eyes and nose and pointed her finger at him.
    “You hurt me.”
    Daddy rubbed his eyes.

    Olivia Perkins was a little girl who learned to be quiet almost before she learned to talk. She had straight black hair and bangs down to her glasses, wide cheeks, and a small chin and mouth. The big, round glasses gave her a little owl face. She never remembered how she first learned to be watchful, so that she would know when to run and hide under her bed. Daddy might come in whistling, call out cheerfully for his girls, hug Mama, and feed Olivia jelly beans. Or Daddy might come in with his mouth and eyes narrowed to slits, clench and unclench his fists, and snap off his words like he was biting them; and everything Mama and Olivia did would be wrong. Olivia learned when it was time for Daddy to come in by watching Mama put the pots on the stove and look out the window. There was a pain in her stomach until Daddy opened the door and she could see on his face how it would be that night. There were nights when Daddy came in much later than usual, when Olivia was already in bed. Olivia heard Daddy beat his fists on the table or the wall; she might hear Mama cry out. She got so scared she hid under the bed. There was the night Mama locked Daddy out of the house. Olivia heard him roaring around the house knocking on windows. She heard shouts from neighbors. She heard a sound she later learned was a siren. Then it was quiet. Mama was crying when she came into Olivia’s room, pulled her out from under the bed, and got in bed with her. Olivia was too scared to ask what had happened.
    Olivia’s strongest memory, so strong she felt she lived it again, would always be a night Daddy came in late. In her bed, she heard him beat the wall and throw chairs around. Under the bed, she heard mama scream. She heard him yell, “Shut up! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill her!” She heard nothing more from Mama. She heard Daddy yelling and banging his fists. When the house got quiet, Mama came into her room and pulled her out from under the bed.
    “Shhhh. We’re going to Grandma’s.”
    When they went through the front room, Olivia saw Daddy asleep on the sofa, head thrown back, snoring harshly. She saw that Mama’s face was bruised and her nose bleeding. “Shhhh....” Mama carried Olivia on her hip and walked through the night to Grandma’s house.
    The next day, Daddy came to Grandma’s and talked to Mama in the front room. Olivia stayed in the back bedroom. Grandma came in. “Your daddy’s here. Don’t you want to come see him?” Olivia started shaking and crying. After wheedling a few minutes, Grandma left her alone.
    After Daddy drove away, Olivia heard Grandma say to Mama, “He makes good money. Can’t y’all work it out someway?”
    Mama went to work in a bookstore, and Grandma watched Olivia. She tried to be very quiet and still so that she would not bother Grandma. After a time, Grandma took to sleeping most of the day. Olivia looked through the picture books Mama brought her from the store.
    Mama took Olivia to the bookstore with her. Olivia’s big ears heard mama say to the other lady in the store, “Ma’s off the wagon again. I can’t leave her there. You know what they pay me, I can’t pay a babysitter. She can stay in the back room. She’s quiet.”
    “As long as she doesn’t get into stuff.”
    Olivia learned her letters from mama when the store was not busy. She quickly learned how the letters went together to make words; then her eye grasped groups of words and their meaning. Olivia picked out books and carried them to the back room. Sometimes when Mama rolled a cart full of books around the store, Olivia rode on the bottom shelf. Customers in the store made on over her. They seemed charmed by her shy smile and the book she always carried, that she already knew how to read, even though she did not chatter away for them.
    “Olivia, this is my friend, Bert Goslee. I’ve wanted you two to meet.”
    Mama’s friend was a man with a thin face and light hair, an easy smile, a nice voice. He went down on one knee so he could talk to Olivia at eye level. “I’ve wanted to meet you, Olivia. I’ve got a little girl just your age. She loves fried chicken. Do you like fried chicken?”
    Olivia nodded. He took them to a place where the waitress put a whole platter of fried chicken on the table. Mr. Goslee tried to draw Olivia out; but she was too shy, too guarded, to talk freely until he asked her about books. That won him a stream of enthusiastic talk about the Little Golden Books.
    “My little girl, Velvet, can read too. And she hasn’t even started to school yet either.”

    Velvet and Olivia stood beside Bert Goslee and Connie Perkins when they got married. The girls looked as sweet as could be in pink dresses and silk flower wreaths. The party with the cake, frosted with sugar roses, a bridal couple on top, was so happy that no one noticed the girls did not say anything to each other. Velvet’s grandmothers fussed over who got to take Velvet and Olivia home first, while the newlyweds went on their honeymoon. Velvet expected that she would be folded into her grandparents’ arms. Olivia hardly believed they included her too.
    The girls lived in the same house, separately. When another little girl’s bed was moved into her sunny room, Velvet burst into tears. Daddy reproached her; Olivia was a little girl who deserved a happy home too. Only the promise of another spanking made her quiet. Velvet felt amazement close to horror, and Olivia felt amazement close to worship, when the grandmothers and the aunts made clothes for Olivia and took Olivia shopping, so that Olivia could have as many dresses and toys as Velvet. Velvet watched Olivia as if lying in wait. Olivia watched Velvet as if on guard. Velvet never tried to charm Olivia. Olivia never tried to get Velvet to like her. The Scottie was overjoyed to have two little girls pet him.

    Velvet and Olivia started the first grade. All over town, children walked to school. Velvet and Olivia set out together, carrying their notebooks, pencil boxes, and lunch sacks. A little boy saw them, waited by his gate, and went on with them. Children waited or caught up with each other, until groups of different ages converged on the schoolhouse, a red brick building with white stone trim on the corners. After school, the children moved off in groups, with children peeling off the group the way they had attached.
    After six weeks, the first graders got their first ever report cards. The children walked home and compared their report cards. Velvet, of course, got an S for Satisfactory. A few got U’s for Unsatisfactory. These little boys were the ones who sat in the back and made noises, and they strutted as if a U was something to show off. Olivia, who was always very quiet, held her card close to her eyes as if that could help her understand it; her round glasses added even more puzzlement to her face. Her report card had an O. The children passed it around. What did an O mean?
    Velvet was inspired. She looked straight at Olivia and bared her teeth. “O is for Oddball.”
    Another little girl giggled. Olivia wailed. Her face broke open in a cloudburst of tears and wails. She sobbed and stumbled all the way home, while the other little girls teased, Velvet beamed, and the little U boys ran circles around the group hooting, “O is for Oddball!”
    Olivia ran sobbing to Mama Connie, her own Mama; and her Mama called the school. When Daddy Bert, Velvet’s own Daddy, got home, even before supper he took Velvet into the living room. He looked very stern.
    “Velvet, O is for Outstanding. You ought to be proud for Olivia. And it’s not nice to tease.”
    Daddy turned Velvet over his knee and spanked her. A few pats, but Velvet was so shocked she cried. Daddy stood her up and made her promise to apologize to Olivia. Over Daddy’s shoulder, where Daddy couldn’t see, Velvet saw Olivia’s head peeking around the door. Olivia bared her teeth at Velvet, then scooted before Daddy saw her.

    Children skated in the middle of quiet streets; they wore roller skates that fastened onto their shoes with keys. At one end of the block, Olivia skated out a story in her mind about an ice princess who skimmed over a frozen lake. She saw one of the big U boys walk into their family yard and pick the Scottie up by the skin on his back. The Scottie yelped. Everyone knew that big U boy was mean to animals. Terrified, but knowing she had to save the Scottie, Olivia skated onto the sidewalk and went after the big U boy. She beat her fists on his back. He swatted her away. She squatted down and threw handfuls of dirt and rocks at him.
    Velvet saw what was happening and skated at top speed to the crime scene, the other children behind her. The big U boy dropped the Scottie. He tried to back off as if nothing had happened. No one was fooled. They all threw dirt and rocks at him and skated after him yelling and throwing sticks, and the Scottie nipped at his heels, until the big U boy ran.
    Velvet, the Scottie safe in her arms, skated around to face Olivia. She wanted to let Olivia know that she had proved herself to Velvet and Velvet was now her friend. Olivia skated away from her. It came over Velvet like a bolt of lightning: the incredible fact that she, Velvet, would have to prove herself to Olivia.
    And that made all the difference.

    Olivia kept her second report card pressed to her chest. A chunky older girl, who picked on littler girls, reached for the card. Olivia held tight to her card. The chunky girl pulled at her hand. “Oddball! Oddball!” Some other children were ready to start hooting. Olivia’s mouth shook and her eyes watered. She knew she was about to bawl, and that would only make it worse.
    Velvet knew then that she had to make a decision. She put her face up to the chunky girl’s. “Let her alone!”
    The chunky girl laughed at Velvet. “Or you’ll do what?”
    “You big meanie!” Velvet filled her lungs and bellowed, “You stink!”
    Olivia saw that she was not alone and that trust was possible. It was like the sun coming out after a storm. The girls walked home with their arms around each other’s waists.

    Still giggling over a game of let’s pretend – to be teachers! – the girls and the Scottie got on the sofa between Daddy Bert and Mama Connie. This was to be a family talk, and they knew they were supposed to be serious. Daddy Bert and Mama Connie looked very grown up. The girls tried to put on long faces.
    “We’ve been a family for a year,” Daddy Bert said. “We all love each other and we’re happy – don’t you girls think so?”
    The girls nodded so enthusiastically that Velvet’s curls bounced and Olivia’s glasses slipped down her nose.
    Daddy Bert and Mama Connie looked at each other as if they did not quite know how to proceed.
    “How would you like to have a little baby brother or sister?” Mama Connie said. “A baby who would be kin to both of you, and that would make you real sisters.”
    Velvet squealed. Several of her friends had baby brothers or sisters. A baby of their own was exactly what she wanted.
    Daddy Bert said, “The stork just might bring a baby to our house for Christmas.”
    “Daddy Bert,” Olivia said very precisely, “the baby comes out of the mother’s uterus.”
    From the way Daddy Bert and Mama Connie hugged them and kissed them and carried on, Olivia guessed she had said something adorable, for the first time in her life.

    Little Bert took his first walk outdoors with a big sister on each side of him. He hung onto a finger of each sister’s hand. They helped Little Bert down the three front steps. They watched Little Bert carefully when he negotiated the cracks between the cement squares. He looked straight ahead, where he was going, not down; he completely trusted the fingers he clung to, never a thought he couldn’t. Little Bert was wrapped in love, safety, happiness.
    And that made all the difference.

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 quarterly by Scars Publications and Design, 829 Brian Court, Gurnee, IL 60031-3155 USA; attn: Janet Kuypers. Contact us via snail-mail or e-mail (ccandd96@scars.tv) for subscription rates 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 2012 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.