the elements

the elements
isbn# 1-891470-40-X
$19.45 American
($13.23 for the book, $6.22 for the compact disc)
scars publications
2002
down in the dirt magazine
children, churches and daddies magazine
the unreligious, nonfamily-oriented literary and art magazine
ISSN 1068-5154
ccandd96@scars.tv
http://scars.tv

first edition, private printing
printed in the United States of America

Freedom & Strength Press
You can’t be free or strong until you can speak up

copyright © 2002, Scars Publications and Design
individual pieces © individual creaters
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any storage or retrieval system, without the permission from the publisher.
Insert usual copyright babble here, something about all rights being reserved by whoever created this junk, and stuff like that... Yeah, all we ask is that you respect what was put together here.

table of contents (author sorted)
(author sorted. oh, and hey - the toc is continued on the next page, too.)

cc&d
letter from the publisher - page 5
Cheryl Townsend art - page 6
Paul Cordeiro - page 7
Michael Ceralo - page 8
Doug Saretsky - page 8
Carolyn Garwes - page 10
Ryan Miller - page 12
Swan - page 25
Shannon Maraghy - page 26
Wynn Yarbrough - page 37
Michael J. Menges - page 38
Wynn Yarbrough - page 40
Wayne Ray - page 40
Michael J. Menges - page 41
Tom Racine - page 44
Duane Locke - page 44
Cheryl Townsend art - page 45
Darren Anderson - page 45
J. Dyson - page 46
Jason L. Sanders - page 47
Thomas Trull - page 48
Joseph Hart - page 49
Mary B. Chow - page 50
Tara Marie Gilbert-Brever - page 50
Kevin Calaguiro - page 52
Padma Jared Thornlyre - page 54
Matt Turner - page 56
Bridget Cowles - page 58
Dan Provost - page 69
Gerald Zipper - page 69
Alysson B. Parker - page 70
Patrick J. Cole - page 72
Jamie Cavanagh - page 72
Michael Ceraolo - page 73
Vincent Augustine Cancasci - page 74
Paul Teodori - page 76

down in the dirt
Rochelle Hope Mehr - page 77
Simon Perchik - page 78

cc&d
Bruce Adkins - page 80
Kevin P. Roddy - page 87
Kelli Clise-Riffle - page 88
Matthew Lee Bain - page 90
Tom Racine - page 91
Jennette Selig - page 92
Stephen Mead art - page 93
R. N. Taber - page 116
Jonathan Sismesmal - page 98
Cheryl Townsend - page 99
Mike O’Reilly - page 99
Carla E. Anderton - page 99
Lina ramona Vitkauskas - page 101
Rochelle Mass - page 102
Ronnie Lamkin - page 105
William Chapin - page 106
Cindy Sostchen - page 108
Erik Wilson - page 111
Betty Ann Damms - page 117
R. N. Taber - page 121
Shawn Briar McLean - page 122

Editor’s Choice Award Winner:
Rudy Lopez - page 123
Angeline Hawkes-Craig - page 124

down in the dirt
David Spielberg - page 130

cc&d
Justin Maher - page 130
Bruce Adkins - page 131
Todd Matson - page 132
Rose E. Grier - page 133
Roberta McQueen - page 133
Phyllis Berman - page 134
Gary D. Jackson - page 136
Lorrain Tolliver - page 137
Ikshe - page 137
Karenina Lucille - page 138
Jeremiah Gilbert - page 140
Dr Prasenjit Maiti - page 141
David Napollin - page 142
Brian Burch - page 143
Cheryl Townsend art - page 144
Michelle Joy Gallagher - page 145
Alan Semerdjian - page 146
PUJA GOYAL - page 146
Chris Duncan - page 147
John Sweet - page 155
JD Schneider - page 156
Melinda Varner - page 156
Myrina D. McCullough - page 157

publications from scars - page 160

(a letter from the publisher)

In always deciding to test our limits, we searched for ways to change the convention of the “book”. I mean really, think about it, how many books that are 200 pages, with one poem after another, can a person really take? How many places have poetry and prose books out now? What can we do to make things different?
Well, we searches our little brains and came up with a few things:
1. Make the book really huge. Wait, we did that with Torture and Triumph.
2. Add an audio CD. Wait, we did that with Torture and Triumph. Well, that’s not a bad idea, though, so maybe we can try that on another book.
3. Add a computer CD. Wait, we did that with Oh.
4. Turn the book sideways, so it’s a wide book. Wait, we did that with Oh.
5. Mafe the book Square. Hey, that’s not a bad idea...
6. Run a different cover. Hmmm... what about a matchbook?
This is how we set up The Elements, with fire as the prominent element on the pages and on the cover. We took pictures of wood, fire, water, earth, and we even opted to use a sparkler as a bookmark and enclose a real matchbook to match the book (please just don’t set this book on fire!).
We’re always looking for new ideas to make our books better, and we’re always looking for audio to add to future CDs of writings and authors, so look for ideas and let us know how we can change thefuture work from Scars and CC&D to make it better for you!

Janet L. Kuypers
Doctor of Philosophy, University of Wexford, 1996, Reverend through the Universal Life Church, 1999

Triangle
Going South

Paul Cordeiro

I’m locked into work 16 hours
and the drive home takes another
45 minutes through Providence
which should be renamed
the potholed bend around hell.
My house whispers of lovesoaked
sheets and secrets while I’m away.
She takes a slower lover who feels conflicted
that I toil all day as he plucks off the wings
of my Asian butterfly.
Tom, whines to me like I don’t know
he’s the innocent party and still my buddy
and most injured by the flames which cause
his gas blower’s misshapen
creations to have to get tossed.
His fingers are burnt to their ends
like a pot smoker’s from too much pleasure.

Bedroom Vanity

Paul Cordeiro

I captured her small breasts
and shy gaze
long before he did.
But he says he created her innocence
and discovered her fresher body
like a new country
I passed over for years
without rollicking laughs.
He’s started to sing to her in the shower
and she says he can go on longer
than an opera singer
hitting the high notes.
He loves her more than Russian
novelists and what gives pleasure
more than vodka and warm friends.
His world is grey and icy
and she is brighter
than a summer sky
and softer than the frozen ground melting.

A Great Costume
Michael Ceraolo

On Halloween he came to work
dressed as a hard worker
and no one recognized him

Etymology
Michael Ceraolo

The heart
of patriotism
is riot

Blasphemy’s Child

Doug Saretsky

Here she comes
and I don’t even know if I can face this girl
Here she is
and I know she could be the one
if things were just a little different
But here I am
sitting with my feet up
on a table here in some dingy-ass bar in the gaslight district
I’m in on her guest list and I’m watching her play
It’s almost enough to make me believe in God again
I close my eyes and let the music take me somewhere I’ve never been
Every now and then she looks my way and winks
and I’m not thinking about love or eternal happiness
Instead I’m aching for a button I can push
that will systematically exterminate all her friends
Because they’re the ones that destroyed our relationship
before it even had a chance to begin
I see the way they look at me
and I want to march right over there
Spit in their faces
Kick over their drinks
Cut their table in half with an axe
Anything to upset their safe little college night out
Fuck trying to change their minds
I want to live up to every negative
and shitty stereotype they have of me
I want them to shudder whenever my name is spoken
I want to move into their safe little hippie commune
get fired up on Old Style and watch them run for cover
I want to look at myself
in the reflection of an empty bottle of booze
and see what they see, see what they made me into
A walking, talking venom-spewing
personification of their friend Kirsten’s
lick of better judgement
Just another casualty
of a punk rock guy getting all strung out on a normal girl
Falling through the cracks
and getting swept under the rug like a dirty little secret
Like a time in your life you wish you could just leave behind
But I don’t cry or feel sorry for myself
Hell no
Instead I absorb the rejection and it becomes a part of me
I take it back with me over to the wrong side of the tracks
I now walk tall whenever I pass the bar where she works
The collar on my vest is up
The wraparound shades are shielding my eyes from the sun
I worked out today and feel tougher than shit

I’m an American nightmare, the leader of the freaks
Blasphemy’s child
just a-walkin’ the streets.

China Syndrome

Carolyn Garwes

I sent my mad grandmother
six white china horses.
I didn’t know her address so I wrote
very carefully on the brown paper
in my biggest letters ‘TO GRANDMA,
CARE OF THE LUNATIC ASYLUM,
OXFORD, THE WORLD, THE UNIVERSE’.
Of course, the parcel was returned
to my boarding school.
All the white horses were broken into pieces
like (I poetically imagined) my grandma’s brain.
Hauled up before Matron, no sympathy offered,
just what a silly little girl I’d been,
I cried twice — once for my lost grandma
and once for my lovely horses.

I loved my mad grandmother.
I was born in her big bed.
My first clear childhood memory
is her safe lap and bosom
under a brown linen dress.
The dress had little china buttons
shaped like harebells all the way down
from its collar to its hem.
I learned to count on these buttons
and to recite my colours —
fawn, pink, blue, mauve, yellow, fawn, pink, blue.
And later we went for walks down leafy lanes
and she taught me poems about baby donkeys
and songs about bees in cowslips bells
and we’d dance along singing merrily, merrily.

I kept my mad grandmother
company in her big bed
when I came home from school
the first holiday after my granddad died.
Of course, we didn’t know
she was my mad grandmother then.
My doll China Mary was tucked up between us.
China Mary had painted eyelashes
and a china head and curly brown hair.
She’d been to the Dolls’ Hospital to be mended
after she’d fallen on her head and broken it.
My grandma squeezed me too hard in the night
in funny places and called me Harry,
over and over, weeping.
I was scared and shouted for my mother.

We visited my mad grandmother
in her new house the next time I came home from school.
I waited with my mother outside locked doors
and there were long corridors of lino
and all the mad people who thought
they were Napoleon (my brother said)
and finally, my grandma sitting on a bed
in a brown dressing gown, not knowing who I was.
My mother said she’d had some special medicine
called easy tea which made her forget things.
Then she threw her teacup at the nurse and smashed it
and called my mother lots of rude names.

I thought my mad grandmother’s head
could be fixed like China Mary’s.
But, like Humpty Dumpty and my china horses,

it couldn’t.

CONVERGENCE

Ryan Miller

Things happen that you don’t understand. And unless they touch you in some individual way, have an impact on your existence, they remain little more than casual, momentary disturbances, isolated fragments without connection, without meaning within the context of the world in which you live.
More often than not you read about them in the newspaper, see them on the evening news. These incidents become something to mention to your wife at the dinner table.
Two silvery jetliners collide and fall out of the sky into the shimmering blue sea; hundreds die.
You think, “How could this happen with today’s technology?” then you change channels until you come upon the intelligent new sitcom on Fox.
News of terrorists hijacking a busload of German tourists in a dusty white city on the coast of North Africa comes to you via the internet. You read with incomprehension the demands that the terrorists make. Religion and politics intertwine. Governments around the world stand fast in a multilateral refusal to give in to extortion. You watch a small, jumpy video image in poor resolution, a live feed; you see the bus set ablaze with the Germans still inside. Anyone attempting to escape is greeted with an angry fusillade from an automatic weapon.
You say out loud, “My God, what are they doing?” But these events do not concern you, hold no real importance for you. Then you double-click on a brightly colored link to a web page that someone you do not know has e-mailed to you. You are led to the home page of a pornographic site that specializes in images that have been taken into Photoshop and manipulated. The participants appear to be well-known actors, celebrities, elected officials. Rubrics guide you to other pages with names like Political Acts, Animal Farm, and Children of the Rich and Famous.
On the way to work one morning, ensnared in motionless traffic, you hear on the public radio station a report about an explosion at a sprawling garbage dump near Mexico City. Half a dozen are killed, a score badly burned.
You ask yourself, “Why were those people living there?” You change stations and listen as a pair of morning DJ’s belittle a young woman who has called in hoping to win a pair of tickets to a rock concert that will be held in a sports arena named after a biotechnology firm.
These events are remote, occurring outside the visible spectrum of your narrow existence and often taking place at a great distance from where you live. You learn about them one way or another, then attempt to reforge a link to the things with which you are familiar, to get back to what you know and understand. You glimpse only snippets of this other, alien world and a small voice inside you says, “This will never happen to me.” You are comforted by this voice, but not convinced.
There are times, however, when something occurs on a personal level, an event, though small, which is equally incomprehensible, apparently random, and often not without tragic consequences. Something incoherent converges with your life and you try to bring it into focus, to make it part of the world you recognize.
My wife, my beautiful wife, frequently had to work late.
Beth was the love of my life. I knew the instant I first saw her.
Translucent blue-gray eyes, fair-haired. A rounded face with high cheekbones and a smooth, summery complexion. Small-breasted and long-limbed. She was quiet with a radiant smile. A joyous laugh made her appear far more outgoing than her initial, almost somber, reserve led people to believe. I fell in love with her on a bright, blue day in May with massive cottony thunderheads swelling in the southern sky.
Following graduate school, we married and I believed then, as now, that I had married for life. I have always been old-fashioned.
Her late nights at the office were something to which I had grown accustomed.
“What are you doing?” she asked one evening after I had picked up the phone.
“Not much,” I said. “Just fooling around on the internet.” I had been reading a news article about a ship with 200 children on it. The children had been sold into slavery. The ship was seeking to find a port that would allow it to dock.
As we talked, I continued to navigate from one site to another. I knew this was a bad habit, an annoying habit. I made an effort to shove the mouse aside, to concentrate on our conversation, to give her my undivided attention.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “How late?”
“Who knows?”
I offered to make her dinner. “You can heat it up when you get home.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “We’ve already ordered something.”
Right before she hung up she said, “No need to wait up.”
Into the dull hum of the handset I said, “Goodbye.”
She was busy, distracted — a hundred things to do — I understood.
I placed the phone back on its cradle, then checked the e-mails one last time before preparing my solitary dinner and that’s when I discovered it.
There was an e-mail from someone whose name I did not recognize. The space under “Subject” had been left blank. I opened it and saw that it was addressed to my wife.
I read it.
It was signed by someone named James Hudson, a name that meant nothing to me. He had sent it, I assumed, from where he was employed; his return address was in care of Unibanc.com. It was addressed to my wife at work, but, as were all e-mails that were sent to her there, it had also been forwarded here, to our home computer.
I read it again. It wasn’t very long.
It was a love letter, carefully written, not too effusive. I guessed that James was a bit wary to expose too much of himself as he sat at his glowing monitor at the bank, sat behind his cluttered desk in his darkened cubby after everyone had left at the end of a long day. I imagined him alone but still a little fearful that someone might come up from behind and catch him.
I read it a third time, making sure I understood what was being said. I could make sense of the words as individual units of meaning, but I was unable to grasp their significance within a larger scheme.
My breathing was altered. My heart thudding violently, my viscera hollow, my limbs weak. I lost my appetite.
I said, aloud, to no one, “My wife is having an affair,” and still I could not believe it.
*
At breakfast the next morning I said to her, “Did you see this about the ferry capsizing in a storm in the Philippines?” I showed her the newspaper. “Look, there’s a picture.”
She glanced with interest at the grainy photograph and asked me to pass her the raspberry jam.
“Defective life jackets,” she said.
“Seventy-two people still missing...”
“Safety inspectors taking bribes...”
I wanted to ask, “What time did you get in last night?” but I didn’t. I already knew the answer and I was afraid that she might lie.
“Would you like some more coffee?” I asked. She nodded and she did not look at me. She continued reading an article in the business section on hoof and mouth disease that had attracted her attention.
I wanted to ask, “Are you having an affair?” but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know the answer.
*
A word from James next arrived several days later.
If my wife found the e-mails first on her computer at work, and moved them out of the inbox into a different folder, they wouldn’t show up on the machine at home. I had left my office early one day and had opened this one before she had been able to get to it.
James was proposing that they meet for a cozy dinner that night at a quiet restaurant in the Quarter, a spot where she and I had sometimes gone.
“Let me guess,” I said to her when she phoned. We often communicated with an abbreviated grammar, our conversations stripped down to a code which contained meanings beyond the simple words spoken. Our gestures, intonations, and facial expressions were rife with signification.
She sighed. “I’ll be so glad when we’re through with this presentation.”
My wife attempted to manufacture demand; advertising.
She said, “I shouldn’t be too late.”
“Who’s the client?”
“It’s this new account we’re trying to get,” she said. “Unibanc.”
“Of course,” I said. “I think I’ve heard of them. Seen something on the internet.”
“Really?” A puzzled note to her voice.
“They’re only now beginning their penetration into the New Orleans market.”
She recovered herself and said, “It’s a major bank. Global. They’re very big.”
“But small enough to listen,” I said.
Beth said nothing.
“Branches all over town.” I spoke in an different voice, one deep in the sonorous tones of sincerity. It was a voice that said I cared. “Branches all over the world.” I paused for emphasis, then said portentously, “Unibanc.”
Silence.
“Beth?”
“I was just thinking about what you said.” She hesitated. “That’s not bad.”
“Feel free.”
*
I toiled as an engineer. I performed manifold and complex structural calculations to establish the depth of beams, the size and spacing of columns, the thickness of walls. The determinations that I made decide whether a building stands up or falls down. It was important work, significant work with an impact on public safety. It was unceasingly repetitive and unendurably dull.
*
Over the next several days, I tracked the one-sided electronic correspondence. Because of the increasingly hectic pace that Beth was forced to follow, e-mails were ending up on the machine at home. Conferences in and out of the office kept her away from her desk. More and more she was compelled to stay late.
Their relationship burgeoned. Dinners were scheduled; assignations arranged. James gave the names of restaurants and motor hotels, addresses. He spoke wistfully about the two of them moving to Los Angeles.
My wife’s agency, Barnard & Cicero, was a small, aggressive firm that took pride in their novel creative efforts, their edginess, their willingness to think outside the box. They won the Unibanc account with a campaign proposal that was relentlessly conservative.
*
There was no surcease. Immediately Beth began to prepare for the first commercial. Her late nights at the agency continued.
“I might have to go to L.A. for a few days,” she said. “With the clients.”
“Really,” I said. “Unibanc?”
She explained to me that they were considering the possibility of doing an animated spot. The animation studio was in Los Angeles.
“You know when?”
“Couple of weeks.”
I began to plot.
I have read somewhere that all plots lead toward murder.
*
In the evenings while Beth labored, I went to libraries to do my research — never the same branch twice — using their computers to go online. “Fake I.D.” got the ball rolling. From one site I found a place to order template software to create a Mississippi driver’s license. I chose the name of Homer Horace Weed, having come across this name in the Pascagoula telephone directory at the library. From a different site I was able to obtain a Social Security card in that name.
I always paid in cash with worn one-dollar bills. I bought my postage stamps from a vending machine near the front door of an old hardware store on tree-lined Magazine where I often went to purchase twine and tape and nails. Letters were posted in dark blue mail boxes on the street, never the ones at the post office.
I did not use the telephone, nor did I use my own computer for these searches. Everything was mailed in Weed’s name to a vacant apartment in a building that I knew about.
I went to a used clothing store on Dryades. I browsed, walking happily through the poorly lit store, breathing in the rich aroma, an overpowering blend of sweat and mildew and tobacco smoke. I selected carefully. I bought H. H. a pair of dark slacks in a sensible medium weight fabric, a flannel shirt in subdued hues, shoes, a short khaki jacket with an elastic waistband and a well-used wallet. This last item had old business cards and photos still in it, as well as tiny scraps of folded paper with illegible writing on them. A trench coat caught my eye. Near the register a rotating display stand with hats on it. A soiled red mesh cap that had the words “Wayne Feeds” embroidered on a rectangular patch sewn to the front of it stood out.
I would dispose of all of these things later.
*
The software arrived and after an evening of work I had produced a genuine looking license. I located a machine that could do plastic laminating at a shopping mall on the West Bank. I aged the forgery by using sandpaper in a variety of grits, then applying to the plastic a spray adhesive. I worked the gummy surface with a rubber cement eraser, applied dirt and rubbed some more, arriving finally at a impressive, believable patina. The Social Security card was dampened and placed inside the wallet that I had bought, then put in the oven at low heat. The card was remoistened as necessary. In only a few days it looked terrible, just like my own.
*
I took advantage of the time that Beth was in Los Angeles. I suggested that, even though her meetings would be finished on Friday, she should stay over the weekend.
“Relax,” I said. “Enjoy yourself.”
She agreed eagerly.
I arranged to take a day off on the Wednesday while she was gone. After sleeping late that morning, I dressed leisurely as H. H. Weed and took the coast road to Pascagoula. It was a pleasant, sunny trip.
In Biloxi I stopped for lunch in a glass-walled seafood restaurant that faced the glistening waters of the Gulf of Mexico. A great many pickup trucks filled the parking lot and a fishing boat was aground in the front yard. On the walls of the restaurant were framed black and white photographs depicting the ravages of Hurricane Camille.
After lunch I continued my drive past the resort hotels and casinos and the large, tall old houses built behind deep lawns lined with towering oaks. In gritty, industrial Pascagoula I pulled into a sparkling white service station for gas and directions. Across the street at a conveniently located supermarket, I purchased a pair of plastic framed reading glasses with a weak diopter.
Minutes later, I parked in the vast, freshly repaved parking lot at Hyper-Mart. Several recreational vehicles were camped on the perimeter of the lot. People sat in plastic chairs underneath roll-up awnings near their motor-homes. Some played cards, others read, a few napped. Televisions on plastic milk crates were tuned to informative broadcasts — talk shows. Nearby, small children played with a beach ball. I parked a short distance from them, only about a quarter mile from the front door.
I ambled across the smooth, black surface, toward the low glass doors at the entry. Bright white lines, recently repainted, logically delineated the parking spaces. The warm, humid air was redolent with the tangy aroma of young asphalt. Upon my arrival the door swung open automatically and I entered the tall-ceilinged store. The gleaming aisles beckoned and my shopping spree began.
My cart filled with wonderful things, two polyester fiberfill pillows and snowy white pillowcases, a pair of paperback novels from the literature section, household cleansers, toilet paper, many other useful items.
The hunting department loomed. Locked away in a long glass case illuminated with slender flickering fluorescent tubes, I beheld what I had come for.
Handguns.
They were arrayed in neat, carefully aligned rows with the model loftily exhibited in an open box on the top of its stack. I inspected the merchandise, my eye drawn to the colorful boxes, the shining steel, and I caught the attention of a salesman. He wore a black vest with a name badge — “Hi, my name is Vern” — several smaller badges and cloisonnŽ pins.
While we talked, I cleaned my reading glasses with my handkerchief, breathing vapor onto the lenses for added authenticity. I fitted the glasses back onto my nose and adjusted them purposefully and again bent down to admire the display of armaments.
I chose a Colt M1991A1. I held the no-nonsense .45 in my hand, assessed its not unsubstantial weight, discovering how well it fit the hand, noting with approval its craftsmanship. I pulled the slide back and felt the clean, solid snap as the firing mechanism locked into position. I clicked the safety off and on, off and on. I squeezed the trigger and I was thrilled to hear the quick, reassuring sound the action made as the hammer slammed home. It was well-made, an object of substance.
I showed my driver’s license; Vern gave it not a second glance. I completed a simple form. For employer I neatly printed “unemployable” and under home telephone I wrote “disconnect.” I proffered my Social Security card.
“Oh, I don’t need that,” he said. “Only the number.”
I paid cash, nothing larger than a twenty.
The pistol was irresistible in its stunning stainless steel finish. This, I knew, was a waste of money, for I would be using it only once and then tossing it into the brackish waters of Lake Pontchartrain. It came in an attractive box with a picture of the firearm printed on it and with a small star spangled elliptical sticker in one corner which read “Proudly Made in the USA.” The salesman placed the box and the low velocity ammunition that he recommended into a large white reusable plastic shopping bag.
As if as an afterthought, just as I was about to leave, I asked Vern about a silencer.
“Well, now,” he said, hesitated. “You know, a silencer is illegal in the state of Mississippi.” He paused, then went on to say that, of course, he did not carry them. “But you could pick one up over at Mobile this weekend. At the gun show.”
He treated my question as if it were usual, ordinary, something that occurred regularly within the scope of his daily routine. It was as if I had asked him where the men’s room was.
“You’ll need a threaded barrel, though.”
I looked at him. I knew I appeared confused.
“A threaded barrel,” he pointed toward the shopping bag. He made a motion mimicking screwing something together. “To accept the silencer.”
“Of course,” I said.
He went on to explain that he was sure I could get one of those in Mobile as well.
I smiled, nodded and thanked him. I appreciated this friendly complicity, an unexpressed but palpable understanding that existed between those who sold guns and those that bought them.
On Saturday in Mobile, I bought an AWC Nexus sound and signature suppressor and a threaded barrel for the Colt from a soft-spoken older gentleman with very good manners who showed me snapshots of his grandchildren. He demonstrated for me how everything fit together.
*
It was a wet Monday in October, a bank holiday. Beth had been back from Los Angeles for a few weeks. Her late nights away from home had become less frequent, but had not altogether disappeared.
At lunchtime I called my wife at her office and was told what I already knew, that she had gone out around eleven, would be gone a few hours. She had an appointment, the receptionist said.
“Oh? Okay,” I said.
The rain came down very hard that day and I drove slowly, cautiously, out Highway 61, careful to obey all traffic laws. I crossed the parish line and drove farther, leaving the old city behind me. On one side, Airline Highway was a tawdry assortment of topless bars, adult video outlets, and older motels and diners; on the other side, railroad tracks. A great number of tire stores and shops dedicated to the repair of automobiles served as infill between the establishments focusing on entertainment and hospitality.
I cruised past the motel several times. It was the same one where the popular and good-looking televangelist with a pompadour had been arrested with the teenage prostitute a few years ago, out near the airport. I recognized my wife’s car, the new black Mustang convertible she had recently purchased.
I parked my own on an adjacent side street and waited. The rain came down harder still. I reached into the right pocket of my trench coat. I ran my fingers along the cool steel of the Colt, felt the long barrel of the silencer. I pulled it out, once more hefting its weight. It was significantly heavier with the silencer, but still surprisingly well balanced. I fiddled with the safety, off and on, off and on. Off. I pulled the slide back and let it spring forward and laid the pistol down on the passenger seat, covering it with a section of the Times-Picayune.
I picked up the front page and began to read a story about an atrocity committed by ethnic Albanian rebels against Macedonian security forces near the border with Kosovo. The action was a reprisal by the Albanians for an atrocity committed earlier in the week by Macedonian security forces.
I did not get to read much of the article.
The long slow moving freight approached from the west, about three hundred yards away when I first spotted it. When it was a little closer, I put the pistol back in my pocket, donned a pair of natty leather gloves, got out of my car and took the two pillows from the trunk, then walked around the corner into the parking lot of the motel. I held the fluffy pillows in front of my chest, positioning them to hide both the Colt with its long silencer and my hands. I bent forward a little at the waist, trying to keep the pillows from getting too wet.
I went down the covered walkway until I came to the door across from where the Mustang was parked. When the train was nearer, louder, I knocked.
A man’s voice said, “Who is it?”
“I’m from the office. I’ve got the extra pillows you asked for.”
The voice said something I could not understand, then I heard a woman laughing. The door ground on its hinges as it opened just a bit. Through the crack the man studied me, then moved away. With my shoulder I nudged the door open and entered the room. He was already reseated on the edge of the bed, angled slightly away from me, his head turned toward the television. He held the remote and was preoccupied with his hunt for something interesting. With my foot I gently kicked the door shut behind me and entered the room. The hiss of white noise between channels.
“Just leave them there,” he said, waving toward a spot on the still made bed. He didn’t turn to look at me. He would watch one channel for a short second, then change to another, his attention captivated by the flickering images on the screen.
Outside, as the train approached a crossing, its shrill, wauling horn recalled the verbs of stridency.
I took a step toward him — everything moved slowly. I saw things with extreme clarity. Objects, as if faintly haloed with vivid, vibrant light, stood out sharply from the background. I put the pillows down on the bed near where he was sitting and without hesitation I brought the end of the silencer’s barrel to his temple in a deft movement and I whispered, “James.” He turned his head reluctantly away from the screen, just a bit toward me, and I calmly squeezed the trigger back. A sound, pffft, somewhat like a sneeze that someone was trying to suppress. He slumped and fell back onto the bed. I glanced at the television, a daytime serialized drama in Spanish.
“What are you watching now?” said a woman’s voice, viscous and slurred. Then she laughed.
She came out of the bathroom, rolling down her sleeve, and stopped in the dressing alcove. She looked at the inert figure on the bed, then at me; her face betrayed no surprise.
These events took only a fraction of a moment, but they seemed stretched out in time, appearing to extend over a far longer period. We looked at each other, her full, pretty lips parted, her mouth on the verge of speaking as I pulled the trigger with a compact motion.
On her clean white shirt, between her breasts, I watched grow larger the small red spot. It was then that I noticed her hair and I thought how odd that the same word should describe two colors so utterly different.
Slowly she began to fall, as if her body was forgetting how to stand.
*
That evening I was preparing dinner — a succulent Atlantic salmon with asparagus and an endive salad with a balsamic vinaigrette and red wine dressing, and this bread I prepare that Beth loved with olive oil and sea salt and herbes de Provence — listening to NPR, when my wife came home. I came up from behind her and I gave her a kiss on the neck and a gentle hug as she glanced through her mail that I had laid out on the dining room table. Without really paying attention, she sorted through the usual bills and requests for charitable contributions and the colorful flyers from the department stores and the wonderful offers of low interest rate credit cards. She seemed distracted, outside of herself.
“How was your day?” I asked.
She made some small inarticulate sound that I did not ask her to clarify. She laid the mail down.
“Were you listening to the radio when you drove home?”
She nodded. She stared down at the mail on the table, idly arranging the envelopes into a tidy stack.
“The story about the shooting at the motel on Airline Highway.”
She turned to face me.
“Jimmy DeVoto,” I said. “The mobster.”
“Drug related,” my wife said dully, echoing what she had heard from the radio report. “That’s what the police say.”
“No sign of a struggle.” I watched her, hoping to determine something and she looked back at me. We had entered into a process. She was attempting to communicate something to me in an unspoken, yet unequivocal, fashion.
“Execution style,” she said. A nuanced eye movement, an arrested gesture made with her mouth. The very way she spoke. Her look said she knew.
A short beat.
“Also in the room was the body of an exotic dancer that Jimmy had been seeing.” She said this in a distant tone, as if repeating something she had memorized but did not understand, like words in an unknown foreign language.
“She performed at a nearby club.”
“Coco Wilde,” I said. “Evidence of drug use...”
“Heroin found in the room...”
“Jimmie was supplying her...”
“In exchange...”
“Those who knew her described her...”
“Natural redhead, always laughing. A good dancer.” She looked away from me. She was staring off, glancing over my left shoulder, her brow somewhat wrinkled. After a short while she turned back to look once more at me. “She had only met Jimmy recently.”
“The police have no leads.”
“No witnesses have come forward,” she said. We stared deep into each other’s eyes for a long time without saying anything.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” I said finally. “Are you hungry?”
She looked at me once again, smiled ever so slightly, and I saw that she understood something new, something new about me, and about us. Beth laced her arms around me, behind my back, and gave me a very big hug. We kissed, greedily, fervently. She took my hand and led me upstairs.
*
At dinner we talked about events of the day. I told her about an error our firm had made in some calculations concerning floor-to-floor heights in an office building and the consequent problems for ceiling clearances for mechanical systems. This was an expensive error that would cost someone his job.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” she said to me.
She then began to tell me excitedly about a new account that she would now be working on; Barnard & Cicero had won it from a much larger firm. An airline account, Avione.
I interrupted her. “Oh,” I said, also excited, “I heard something else on the radio.”
She looked at me with an inquisitive gaze.
“Branches all over town...” I said this in an altered voice, deep and sincere. We looked at each other and smiled.
“Branches all over the world...” she filled in ably.
Together we said in happy unison, “Unibanc.”
She reached across the table and gave my forearm a firm squeeze, just below the elbow, a familiar and encouraging gesture.

Thick Pulse (Drenched)
Swan

Those deep drums beat
beat
beat
on that dark dank
summer night

right through the sea breeze
and city streets
hovering heavily
in the uneasy stuck-still air
of her apartment

boom
boom
boom

She awoke with a sudden
jerk
a flood of sticky sweat
drip
drip
dripping
down
her
face

her bed shirt
a damp stifling thing
clinging tight to her smooth
young skin

her tongue dry paste

throb
throb
throb
the beat was in her pulse
thick passion
pushing
pumping
through her heart
and arms
and head

beat
boom
drip
throb
push
pump

What had it been?
Was some desire
or fear
or part of her
from the past
resurfacing,
beckoning for her
to come
out?

It was gone now
leaving her in its
aftermath
with a wet cold chill
and a racing mind

After pulling off
her smothering tangle
she lay naked with her window open
as the cool summer air
breathed over her

Fading into sleep,
the experience already reduced to a memory,
she wondered,
not for the first time,
if she had made too much
of a forgotten dream
or if she had just brushed
up against
a part
of her soul
that was

missing.

Ink.

Shannon Maraghy

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirrored storefront of Subway as I hurried inside. Man, did I look that bad? Folds collecting under the eyes, and my skin looked actually gray. To match the hair, I told myself—well, what hair I had left. As if they heard me thinking about them, some of my hairs rose up in the breeze and waved at me in the glass as I walked quickly into the store. If Allen wants to me get lunch for everybody, he could have at least let me go on break early so I wouldn’t spend my lunch waiting around Subway. I opened the notebook he had given me to the first page, where everyone had written their order. The early-twenties looking kid behind the counter was bent over an open sub roll, arranging cheese triangles on it, separating meat from its wax paper. He sprinkled shredded lettuce slowly, like fairy dust, over top the meat, and took a half-step back to admire his work. When he handed the sandwich to the lady in front of me, I saw he wore a button on his apron that declared him a “sandwich artist”. Looked like he took that title pretty seriously. He glanced up.
“Help you?” he asked, and I saw his hooded eyes—he was pretty stoned. “Can I get these to go please?” I handed the notebook over to him. The sandwich artist squinted at the paper. He didn’t have anybody helping him either. Great. I’d be here a while then. Last time I had smoked up was probably ten years ago—with Cathy and her sister and her sister Cammie’s girlfriend Star. Cathy and I had just started dating at the time. Now Cammie and Star were married. But not to each other. Somehow, they had both ended up with husbands and children. And the most illicit substance Cathy would touch these days was an occasional ice cream sandwich.
There were five other people waiting to be helped when he finally said, “Here go.” He handed over the four sandwiches.
“Thanks,” I said, and my molars came together on a fold of mouth membrane. The pain jolted my mind awake. The blood bloomed metallic on the back of my tongue and salty on the tip.
I walked slowly back toward the office, lightly probing my cut cheek with my tongue. Beeping horns—cars communicating with each other in their separate voices. Birds too, talking to each other up on the telephone wires. I usually didn’t notice them, though I supposed that they had always been there.
An old man with red eyes shuffled toward me, said, “Change.”
“Sorry,” I replied, kept walking. The tape of the rest of my day spooled out before me. When I returned to the office, I would distribute the sandwiches, give the receipt to Allen, eat my lunch, and then? Finish out the work day. Stimulate the keyboard with my fingers, feed paper to the fax, breathe into the telephone until five o’clock. Then go home to Cathy. As I fell asleep tonight, I wouldn’t be able to remember what exactly I had done during the day, worked with numbers, yes—It’s all about the numbas baby! I said in a gravelly voice and followed it up with a Cha-cha-cha! but what exactly I had done I wouldn’t be able to remember. But that wasn’t... something that was—important. I was distracted.
What was important? I asked myself the question, but myself wasn’t really paying attention. Absently, myself responded with, Something must be. My main attention was on something else. Something was sparkling in my peripheral vision, to my left. I turned and looked.
I had been passing the entrance to an alley. This alley opened on both ends of the block, but it extended so far that the light entering from the other end was just a ray that sparkled white. That was what had caught my attention. Some sunlight filtered down from above, so it was dim but not dark. I turned into the alley; I was headed that way anyhow.
I walked for a few minutes, past spray-painted tags I couldn’t read, past small noises that might have been made by roaches or beetles or rats, or maybe just by the settling into warm weather of the old brick buildings on both sides. Past decomposing cardboard boxes and erect hunks of metal, candy wrappers, malt liquor bottles, cigarette butts, some scattered Styrofoam “s”s, a condom, a pile of feces on newspaper with flies around it. The feces looked too large to have been made by any city animal other than a person. I was perhaps halfway through the alley. There was a mound of garbage against the brick on my left, but just beyond that—a rather clean looking spot. It suggested to me that I was tired, that I wouldn’t mind resting for a while. Even more than that, I liked that there wasn’t anybody else around. It hit me that this never happened. At home, there was always Cathy. At work, there were many people—in person, as well as disembodiedly—coming at me through the computer screen and the telephone receiver, excreted by the fax machine. And I was never alone in the city. But here I was, alone in an alley, and I was enjoying it.
Everyone else’s break was at noon, so I had until then before people would start expressing concern for the well-being of their sandwiches. I sat down there with my back against the building and put down the bag of sandwiches. I reached into it and took out the one marked “turk/chez”. I unwrapped it and took a bite. Then I set it down on its paper on my lap and opened the notebook. It was brand new and unmarked in, except for the list of sandwiches on the first page. I ripped the list out, balled it up and threw it into a nearby trash can. I looked at the next page, the new first page of the notebook. Tabula rasa.
Looking at it, I wanted to try to write again. I wasn’t sure what, just whatever would come into my mind. I thought that if I started, I would cover the page with words, turn it over, and keep on writing. I wanted to, but I didn’t have a pen. I sighed. Just as well. The last time I had tried hadn’t gone very well. I’d meant it to be a poem, but the harder I’d tried to put pictures into words, the stiffer it became. The next day I’d read over it, and it had bored and disgusted me by turns. A showcase for cliches, as usual. I was looking at the page, and I noticed something. Strange I hadn’t noticed earlier.
Unlike any other notebook paper I could remember seeing, it was ruled with black lines instead of blue. The lines cut the while paper up into twenty-six bars. Horizontal lines are supposed to create a feeling of calmness and security, whereas vertical and diagonal lines create a feeling of excitement and action. I’d read that somewhere, but it didn’t seem true. These horizontal lines did not make me feel calm. They seemed to unsettle the paper. They unsettled me, too. It must be because I am used to the soft blue lines of most notebooks. But that didn’t seem true either.
My teeth kept chewing. My stomach was getting full, and I started to feel drowsy. I focused on a single black line, trying to pull it toward me, letting the white space above and below it recede. Then I focused on a bar of white space, trying to bring it forward and letting the black lines above and below it go backward and get fuzzy. Positive space becoming negative. And vice-versa. Wherever my eyes rested on the paper, they seemed to pull it forward a little. So that I could almost imagine the paper breathing with my aid of my eyes, exhaling wherever I looked. I bring the page to life. I breathed in and out in rhythm with the paper for a while. Nice. My lunch break was probably just about over. I closed my eyes for a moment.
***
I opened them. It was dark, but I knew where I was, still in a sitting position. I seized my wrist with my hand and pressed the button on my watch to light it up. 5:45! The office was closed. Work would have wondered why I never came back, with or without the sandwiches. I stood up. My ass was sore and cold. My back was stiff. I swivelled my head, shaking off sleep, trying to see. I could tell which way I should go to get out of the alley because a little light from a streetlamp picked out the corner edges of the building at the alley opening. My eyes adjusted and I could see just a little. I took a few steps in that direction, but my foot hit something, and I shouted, grabbing the brick to keep from going down.
Hold up. Calm down. Inhale. I noticed how cool and damp the air was—not like evening air... More like morning air. I looked toward the direction I figured was east, and there was a glowing sore on the sky. Fuck. I stood still and let it sink in, just how stupid I was. I had slept like a happy idiot through the afternoon and night, sitting on cold concrete in an alley. I could have, and really should have, been mugged, beaten up, raped even. At least bitten by a rabid rat. But I had my watch. Did I still have wallet? I patted myself down. Yeah, there it was in my pants pocket. My clothes were zipped up, buttoned up, tucked in. My asshole felt untampered with. I felt, in all ways, intact. But something else was wrong, I began to realize as light started taking over the sky.
I had fallen asleep with my back propped against the brick wall next to the trash heap. The concrete of the alley had all been all one level the day before. I knew this. I was certain. But now? I was standing in a concrete square that was maybe five feet by five feet, and that square was sunken about a foot below the level of the rest of the alley. The hard thing my foot had struck against was the side of this depression in which I was standing.
I searched for an explanation. I was still asleep, and I was dreaming. I pinched myself. Nothing. Maybe I had sleepwalked to another place in the alley, maybe to another alley altogether. I had never sleepwalked before, though—not that I knew of. Someone had moved me? I’d been drugged—something in the sandwich which lay only half-eaten next to me on its paper? Would that boy from Subway want to do that to me? No, why would he? Paranoid—crazy. Could I be? How would I know? Or maybe that was the point—I wouldn’t.
I let a few more minutes pass as I thought, and I began to calm down. I was pretty sure that none of my rationalizations was the case. Nothing was wrong with me—physically or mentally. Aside from being sore and stiff and confused, I felt great, actually. Better than I had in a long time. I filled my lungs with air. Yes, the air was wet-fresh, despite being city air; and it was warming noticeably, quickly. Weak pinks and oranges were bleeding into some heavy clouds where the light was. It was quite nice to look at. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d watched a sunrise. Damn. It had probably been years. It wasn’t the sort of thing that would occur to me to do. But now I was wondering, /I>why not? Most days, I went to work. That’s all. Sleep as late as possible—I was always tired—then go to work. Fact, that’s probably why I had slept here so long. I’d been real tired, and there wasn’t any alarm clock here to wake me up.
I knew I wouldn’t be fired if I went to work when they opened in a little while and offered an apology and some explanation. But I didn’t want to. Why should I then, I asked myself. I looked down at my feet, boxed in shadow beneath the level of the alley. I couldn’t think of a really good reason. Why not just not go back then? Quit.
Okay, I thought. Okay, I wouldn’t go back. I had decided it, and I started to feel really happy.
***
I began to think that, feeling the way I did, I shouldn’t worry about this pit that had formed around me. It was an occurrence that could not be explained (not by me anyway), but just because nothing else like it had ever happened to me didn’t mean that it was impossible, or that there was any reason why it shouldn’t happen to me.
It made me think of high school chemistry class, Mr. Jenkins, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle—how all we know of the motion of atoms and molecules could be wrong. When we observe matter, we look at it in the light. But maybe the light causes the matter to behave differently than it would without light’s interference. A person was visible for a few seconds as they passed by the opening of the alley in the distance. Maybe light is an extra variable, screwing up every experiment. If we could only watch matter in light’s absence, we might be able to know the truth.
Heisenberg’s Principle. Maybe it applied to life in general. Maybe sometimes you needed to examine life in the absence of the light of the “rational” in order to find the truth. It seemed valid. I owed it to science and, more importantly, to myself not to dismiss this pit as “impossible” or myself as “crazy”, but to study the circumstances with an open mind and see what, if anything, would happen next. Besides, I felt too good. I sat down again.
The sky was light now, and I could see that the sides of this pit appeared to be made of marble—white marble with veins of black running through it. Curiouser and curiouser. I picked up where I had left off on the sandwich the night before, opening it up and checking it first for bugs or tiny gnaw marks. I didn’t see any. I fixed my eyes to the walls of the pit. There was a gob of mustard coming out the side of the sandwich. I caught it on the tip of my finger and smeared it on the wall in a line that stretched from the bottom of the pit up the wall to the top, where the pit met with the level of the alley. I figured that now I would be able to tell if the square I was sitting in sank any deeper.
I thought about Cathy, and my stomach felt tight. I realized that I didn’t feel like going home to my wife in the same way that I hadn’t felt like returning to work the previous day. She was, no doubt, very upset that I had not come home last night. I pictured the scene that would ensue when I returned home. I had a feeling that she wouldn’t understand my need to examine my situation out of the light of rationality. She would ask me question after question about where I’d been all night and with whom. Why was my suit wrinkled and didn’t I have the decency to call? Sorry wouldn’t be good enough. Did I realize that she had stayed awake all night worrying, wondering if she should call the police and the hospitals? There was someone else, wasn’t there? Why didn’t I love her anymore—
No, I didn’t feel like going home to that right now. I didn’t want to think about it either. It made me feel nauseous. All that would be waiting for me when I went home. Right now, I felt good. Alive. And I wanted to stay here long enough to see what would happen. This was the first thing that I had really wanted to do for some time. And I was doing it. I was staying until I felt like leaving. Until I had discovered the nature of this pit.
But I wondered how long that would take. I watched a beetle walk slowly and lopsidedly toward me from a pile of trash. What if the pit had stabilized itself at one foot deep and there would be nothing else to see? Maybe I would sit here all day without result. But whoever had relieved themself on the newspaper might come back—a homeless who might know something. I could ask. I had some money, if he or she wasn’t too crazy. Well, I thought, I would see. The beetle paused a few inches from my thigh, antennae twitching, like she was looking at me. No, we would see, she seemed to say.
I finished my sandwich and glanced at the mustard strip. It still extended the full height of the wall. Of course, I told myself. I hadn’t felt any movement. I leaned back against the wall in the corner and rested my right arm outside the pit, on the concrete of the alley. My friend hurried into a crack between the bricks of the building. White and black marble grayed together in front of me.
***
My arm hurt. When I opened my eyes, I saw why. The pit had deepened as I slept. Now, my arm, which had been resting on the ledge of the pit, was wrenched high up from my side. I pulled it down and rubbed my shoulder. How could I have slept through that? Each of the two times I had fallen asleep here, I slept like someone exhausted or drugged. I turned to look at the mustard line. Sure enough-it extended from the top of the wall down, but it stopped short several feet from the base of the wall. I made it to my feet. It was more difficult this time; my body had been in a sitting position for so long. The walls came up almost to my waist. I felt somewhat light-headed. Was I standing on a platform in a shaft of marble, my weight causing the platform to descend into the shaft? Or was I standing on the roof of a strange elevator that was going down? Either way, I had to empty my bowels. Now. I grabbed some napkins that had come with my sandwich and climbed out of the pit with the thought that if I stayed much longer or fell asleep again, the option to climb out might no longer be available to me. I had to leave now, if I was leaving. Silently commanding my colon to hold on, I took a last look at the veins of the marble, the contrast of the black and the white. The white was calm and creamy, and the veins moved freely through it. They twisted through like rivulets from a toppled pot of old-fashioned ink on thick paper. I squatted next to the garbage pile and breathed with physical relief as my abdomen lightened. I knew for sure now that the pit was deepening, but I still didn’t know why or what the significance of it was.
Cathy would think I was crazy for sleeping in an alley, or she would think I was lying. She would cry and call me insensitive for worrying her. I didn’t want to think about what she would say when I told I wasn’t going back to work.
I walked away from the pit, but I realized I didn’t have the notebook. Not that I needed it for anything really. It didn’t have any important information in it. I didn’t think it had any information in it. But I wanted it. I approached the pit again and looked down. It was leaning up against the wall, next to the bags of sandwiches, its white cover blending in somewhat with the marble. Now that I had decided to quit my job, I could try to write again. I wanted to try in that notebook. I might never see a notebook like that again, ruled with black lines. It was attractive to me. I thought maybe I could write on those black lines. This could be the start of a new kind of life for me, and I wanted to get started on it today. I would go to a cafŽ or diner, order some coffee or maybe scotch, and see what I could do. I would call Cathy when I was done.
I blinked. Had the pit gotten deeper, I wondered? I couldn’t tell.
I crouched down and put a hand on the edge of the pit. I hopped in. As my feet connected with its bottom, I heard a groaning noise, and I knew. A part of me had known that it could happen. Momentum traveled down through my bent knees, my feet, the soles of my leather shoes, and caused something to give way. The platform was in motion. I was going down. There was a scraping of stone against stone as it heaved. One side of the platform was tilted down as it fell, but then it must have caught on something—jarring the platform, and throwing me against the wall of the shaft. It started to slow down, but then the other side of the platform dropped, and it continued to fall. I fell down against the shifting platform and stayed there, waiting for it to overturn. I pictured it dropping me into a shaft below it. I would fall for a while. And then, I would hit bottom, and the stone platform would come down on top of me.
I shut my eyes and saw vertical lines etching themselves on the backs of my eyelids. I entertained a thought of the feeling vertical lines are supposed to create. I noticed that I wasn’t screaming. I thought that I probably should.
I couldn’t tell if I was still falling, and I opened my eyes. I was, but the platform remained more or less horizontal beneath me, scraping against the four walls that were growing quickly up around me toward the shrinking square of light above. The platform was slowing down. And after a long time, it finally stopped altogether. I waited almost a minute, barely breathing, to be sure that it was not just momentarily stuck on something.
I looked up. A long tunnel of marble stretched above my head, ending in a small patch of light. I took a look around my five by five area. I still had the sandwiches, smooshed and banged up though they were, and the notebook. That notebook—the reason why I was now trapped down here. It was darker down here, but not too dark for me to see that the marble walls down here looked different. They were far more riddled with veins than the marble at the top of the pit had been. My shoulder hurt from where I’d been thrown against the side of the pit. I looked up again and tried to hear anything. I cupped my mouth and yelled up for help. There would have to be footsteps or voices in the alley eventually. The person who’d shat. Someone who’d heard the loud scraping noise and my yelling. I waited. I watched the square of light get dimmer and then disappear finally as it became nighttime. I didn’t hear anybody come through the alley. I thought, I’m down here by myself in the dark. I whispered the words to myself. “Down here. By myself. In the dark.” I ran the it all together, making it sound like a limerick, “Downherebymyselfinthedark.” Anything to keep myself from thinking about what the words actually meant. Dow Near Bymys Elfin Thed Ark. Keep the panic from growing and taking over my head. I’m gonna be all right, I told myself in a firm, deep voice. No good panicking. I had sandwiches enough to last me five days at least. Nothing to drink, though, the panicky part of me whispered. And it’s dehydration that people die from—not hunger. Someone would come by eventually. I listened all through the night, in vain. Nobody came. I ate another of the sandwiches. I pissed carefully in what I judged to be the lowest corner of the platform, so that the pool wouldn’t run back to where I was sitting. I was tired, but I didn’t want to sleep, afraid that I wouldn’t hear it if someone came into the alley.
Dawn. This time, my view of the sky was limited to the small square above me. But it was the second sunrise I had seen in two days now. “I’m an old hand with this sunrise business now!” I said and laughed out loud. I wondered how many more sunrises I would watch from down here. My eyes were tired of being open. My shoulder was sore. My jaw hurt from fusing my teeth together for so long. The ache where tooth forced against tooth into bone, against muscle and nerve, into the brain. My brain ached from the pressure. The smell of my own ammonia was strong. And I was beginning to get really thirsty.
With the morning light, I could see the marble again. It was mostly black. There were more veins than whiteness on the walls down here. A web of vines choking out the wall. A mass of tangled electrical cords, tingling with electric impulse. A pile of vipers, slithering over each other in the sand. Veins, vines, vipers—vain, I thought, and pressed my forehead against the marble. Oh! My eyelids snapped open wide.
Oh. The stone was cool, and it felt nice on my forehead and eyelids. Its hardness was good too, the way it didn’t yield as I rested on it. I breathed out slowly. Then in. This stone was strong. Probably because of all those fat blood vessels. Blood brings oxygen and nourishment. Good circulation is essential for strength.
But with all that blood just beneath the surface, why was the marble so cool? I considered, rolling my face and neck slowly against it. Because the blood was black. Of course—I was used to red blood, which was hot. But apparently, black blood was cold. Maybe if my blood were black like that, maybe I would be strong and cool too. My brain was humming.
I wondered if there were food coloring companies that made black food coloring. I couldn’t remember ever having seen it. And if so, how much would one have to inject in order to bleed black? Maybe one could use enough blue and yellow food coloring that it would mix with the red of the blood to make black. Experimentation would be necessary.
I pressed my lips to the marble. That was good too. My mouth was touching one of the thick veins, and I decided to cool my tongue on it. I opened my mouth a little, and pressed my tongue slowly against the marble. It did feel nice. Refreshing, like iced tea on a sweaty hot day. I licked a little. Mmm. A little more. There was a lot of saliva in my mouth. Whoa, a whole lot-some almost spilled out. I put my mouth securely on the stone and sucked very gently. I stroked myself as I worked at the wall. At first lightly—it might have been an accidental brushing of myself with my hand. I thought of black blood rushing forth from the wall into my mouth, smelling like ink, me swallowing it. My brain was hot and tingly, and I was sweating. I could smell my body’s smell, and there was another smell too. My hand was working very deliberately now. I kept my mouth and tongue moving against the wall. The smell of ink in my nose and the taste of ink in my mouth. I had always liked the smell of ink, but I wouldn’t have thought I would enjoy the taste. Not like this. My mouth was still full. I relaxed the muscles and my chin was wet, and the front of my shirt. It was too much for me; I came hard, eyes closed, and it was ten minutes before the reality of my situation came back to me. Where I was. I kept my eyes closed against it.
My chest felt wet. It was strange that I had worked up that much wetness-saliva and sweat. I mean, I knew I had been more excited than usual. Fear has that effect on me. It builds tension; tension builds arousal. And when that tension is finally and physically released... But my chest was really wet. I put my hand on my front. The texture of the wetness wasn’t like saliva or sweat. It felt velvety. Then I realized that I was still smelling ink. It hadn’t been just a weird sex fantasy thing. It smelled like ink down here. Now I finally opened my eyes. Yeah, the front of my shirt was black. My mouth tasted of ink too. I gathered some saliva in my mouth and let it stream into the palm of my clean hand. A black pool with shiny black spit bubbles. I looked at the marble, expecting it to have a hole in it, leaking ink—but it looked as it had before. Smooth and hard, unmarred. I touched it, and it felt like it looked, but when I pulled my hand back, I saw that I had smeared ink on it. I looked at my inky hands. Watching as I shifted my palm, shifting the reflections of the light off the ink—I found I was still excited. I put my hands there. The ink had a pleasing degree of viscosity.
When I finished, I was exhausted. I stretched myself out diagonally on the platform and fell asleep.
***
I awoke to find myself deeper down, and cold. What had been the small square of light above was just a pinpoint now. I pulled my pants up and ate a tuna sandwich, though it smelled questionable. There was just one sandwich left. I would make it last. The ink on my shirt had dried, fastening my shirt to my chest. It was too dim down here for me to see the marble, so I couldn’t tell if it differed in appearance from the marble that I had been intimate with. I thought again of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Even if it were the same in the light, would it still be the same now in the dark?
I touched the marble, though I was a bit embarrassed. I had pleasured myself before it twice. It was firm as always, resolute. The strength of it reassured me. I relaxed my body against the wall. It was colder, though—this could be because we were deeper under ground. Or, it could mean that the marble down here was all veins with no white to it. There was no way of knowing.
I still tried to listen for human noises from above, but I couldn’t hear anything at all. It was completely quiet. I realized I was left with three senses—smell, touch, and taste. Smelling was unsavory. I had used the bathroom a few times in the corner now, using Subway napkins for toilet paper. But, if yesterday were any indication, touching and tasting were very pleasurable.
I ran my fingers lightly along the surface of the wall and thought I felt something in one area. I tried again, and found I was not mistaken. I detected a faint pulse, which struck me as female, probably because it was turning me on incredibly. I began to kiss and probe with my tongue. I tried sucking and licking in a variety of ways in order to please her. I varied the pressure and the movements, as I slid my hands over her smooth body. When she gave up her blood to my mouth, I could feel her quivering. So I knew she liked it as much as I did. Her blood in my mouth tasted inky, as before. We both relaxed. I lay against her, thinking.
She and I were lovers. A man and the walls that surrounded him—it sounded strange, I had to admit. But I had been determined to discover the nature of the pit, and now I knew. I realized I felt unlonely with her, which was surprising, because I hadn’t realized I’d been lonely before, despite all the people that were always around me.
Cathy’s face flashed in my mind, but disconnectedly, making me feel nothing. Her face was part of everything else up there, everything that existed above this pit and beyond the alley. It’s funny how quickly things can change.
***
I opened my eyes, and the pinpoint of light above was gone. I didn’t know if that meant that it was night-time, or if I had descended too deeply into the pit to be able to see any sky at all. Not that I really cared. I spent my hours just being with her, and I was content. The only times I took my attention off her were when I used the bathroom and ate the last sandwich. I washed it down with inky blood, which took care of my thirst. Time passed, and I never saw the any light above, so I guessed I had been pretty much swallowed by the walls of the pit. When I got hungry later, I relied completely on her fluid for nourishment. The marble fed me like a baby, until I was full.
***
As my diet began to consist entirely of marble blood, I found I didn’t need to excrete any longer. That made me really happy. The smell in the corner wouldn’t be getting any worse. But also, I reasoned that my body must have been absorbing it. I hoped the blackness had made its way through my digestive tract into my circulatory system. I wanted to know, though. So I unwound the wire from the top of my spiral notebook and bent it back and forth until it broke off. I ran the end along my arm until the skin gave way. In the dark, I sucked at my own arm. The taste I got was not metallic and salty like when I bit my cheek inside the Subway. How many days ago was that? I couldn’t remember, but the number was not important. What was important? Yes, the taste of my blood now was inky like hers. I pressed my cut arm against her and felt the liquid flow back and forth between us. And I felt really sure for the first time in my life. I didn’t feel like the human being I had been before-uncertain and unsatisfied, red-blooded.
I felt really ready to write now. I had everything I needed. Paper—the special notebook that was responsible for me being here. Pen, too-the straightened end of the wire that had bound the notebook together. Together, the walls and I had plenty of ink and time for writing. The first thing we wrote would have to be about us. After that, we would see what we came up with. Dipping my pen alternately into my own blood and into hers, I began to write, trying to print the letters somewhat legibly, but not worrying about it too much. Who was going to read it anyway?

Perimeter
Wynn Yarbrough

”The suburbs have no chance to soothe the restless dreams of youth.”
Geddy Lee

At the hemlines of the city, kids plow through the six thousand bottles and bake themselves to royalty under the toying gaze of moonshine.
Those hurt most are in protest. They light the fences on fire and lean away from the flames. The orbit of the dispossessed is the very limits of the distressed young. On that gravely path are the possibilities of a second coming, the loveliest roses of our nature, the courageous lonely walks silenced until a thousand voices clamor to have witnessed a miracle.

1979 A.D.

from Michael J. Menges

by my psychiatrist

Like mules (no, not asses) of clay-house desert times
Stamping grapes into wine, I wearily and free-will-lessly move paper
And stamp my dreams and dignity deep underfoot while a
Crimson-purple face barks out obscenities as if I were an
Ass and he the wagonmaster. The load (workload, that is) is too heavy and
Feed and barn too little for my collapsing strength.
Restaurant grease and a hotel closet hurt and oppress my elbow-room need and
Hurtle me trudging to the Club to act and feel my muscles’ power for me alone, not for that shithead.

Girls fast as cheetahs dashing for deer fattened up by the Pharaoh,
Shying away from hide-worn (like my wallet) mules like me,
Richly dress in royal gaudy trappings and talking in gaudy rich voices,
Clothes strolling couples communicate in Tower-of-Bable words and in
Comic-strip balloons that pop at my understanding attempts,
I, in my faded holey shreds am watching plays and performances
In dialects I cannot grasp, so on to the club for that which I can grasp.
Trudging back I transmute to invisible lizard from an eons-aged star,
Seeing creatures from another orb prepare for mating with
Left hooks and right jabs, sabred thrusts and counterthrusts
From language and posture and gesture, and I imagine my fellow and feline
Lizards, without all distraction, hostile and relating-destructive or vain and strutting, and wriggling and swaggering,
Look speechless with tongues only jumping as signal and then mate,
All words that suck emotion and joyous anticipating heartbeat all disappeared.

Poor boss! So much blood-torment overflowing under his skin;
The dikes of his nerves must have swept away Poor boss!!
At overtime tonight I will give him a tranquilizer pellet
To help him bring in the weekend and he can ring out the old,
And I will bring in the new.

Those nags and insults and disgust-contempt-tones in his voice,
Aimed seemingly at me but springing, I know, from his sympatheable rage,
(and I should feel with compassion so the earthlings tell me),
Will be silenced. The gun club sells excellent silencers,
And his problem of excess blood will be solved by a drainage canal the pellet will make.

Between two pueblos lies the slave auction, Nevada meeting Athens,
Across the barking iron-housed-chariot path stands a
Burned out 3-level-caved mountain-like me but I am not insured.
The top caveroom will be a perfect observation for me to watch the
Earthlings from the YMCA and Girls’ Club bid for bodies at the neighborhood bar
While the auctioneers serve the liquid advertisements. The sight from my telescope is adequate, but
Closer inspection from my lizard superiors is demanded to gauge the life form’s habits,
So I launch my own miniature satellites to penetrate the smoggy atmosphere,
Small round cylindrical satellites
From the National Rifle Club’s collection of miniature Cape Canaveral sets.

To mix cake batter is so strenuous,
To spin the guts and head to
suicide is also taxing,
We pay taxes for the police so
let them serve me—do an
electric mixer job with more efficiency.

When I fly, last-laughingly,
to report, not to superiors (my shrink says they are delusional and hallucinatory but what does he know? That’s why I fired him. I haven’t taken his pills in weeks)
But to God, or void, I’ll say,
“Cart to auto, cave to mansion,
Progress has changed but roots of
Discontent, rebellion, power, pain, and
suffering have not been altered.”

High School Beating
Wynn Yarbrou

There is nothing
solid in the wall
if the ringing of the bell
lasts longer
than her body
sailing in mid-air
and her landing
by the sink.
When she spit
in his face,
flashed her teeth
through a tirade
of venom,
he baptized her
so hard
she forgot her name.

His first shot
wasn’t to the face.
He didn’t smear
her white plaster face
or split her lip or
install a new set of rings
around her
sleepless eyes.

He pulled underneath
his body, dug deep
into a barren well,
planted his feet firmly
and, with an undercut,
pushed her untethered belly
against the spines
of her ribs.

So tough, she
laughed until
he kneed her skull
against the wall,
cracking her head.
The last bit
of fantastic, red
love spilling
down her perfect
cleavage. Then he went
to his corner, shaking
his head, with a sigh,
undeniably cleansed:
waiting for the
next round.

ELEVEN MILLION
HUMAN BEINGS

Wayne Ray

When you opened the restaurant door
and entered the almost empty room,
I could feel the winds of war,
a death draft, doom.
Your life has been the pits,
leading us all to believe it was
only the Jews who died at Auschwitz.
Do your history books not include:
those passing into senility or
those of mental tranquility or
ordinary Poles or Negroes or Commies too,
Ukrainians or Slavs or political dissidents or
non Aryan aliens and gays or
does your book only list Jews?
Six million went up in smoke!
You think the other five million were a joke?
It was my father’s army that liberated Auschwitz
but do I flaunt his medals
upon my chest in front of you?
Don’t dump your holocaust on my plate,
there really is no one left alive
for you to hate.

Self-Helpless

Michael J. Menges

Helmet lockjawed tight, glued armor rattling,
He struggled and staggered and tripped battling
His stifled weight. I said, “I know
Gloom and sadness
Is your metal suit. Heed!
Madness
Will drag you flat!” I whipped my Christian sword
And my Buddhist blade, and moved toward
My liberating goal, Pushing him down,
My Buddhist blade moving skilled like a clown,
In the armor’s cracks slit, and off the steel
And arms’ flesh split. “Soon now you will feel real!”
I cried and folded his hands
And hacksawed
“Tween gloves and mail. The Christian sword so awed
Him that he dropped a prickly scream. My Peale
Yes-Thinking cutlass with my normal zeal
Slashed through his helmet and scraped out his eyes.
My tropic syringe slipped, despite his gasps,
Through tiny slits forced his mouth just to rasp.
My psycho-therapier to his chest,
Darting under his breastplate, snagged his pest.
A furry, small rodent, branded Ego
Was speared bloody dead. I said, “I must go!?”

Side Effects

Michael J. Menges

Watching Mannix blast down the heavy,

And I, feeling down and heavy and
waiting to be blasted

(But I am a Man and won’t be nixed—

Nix on Nixon my spinning crazy
Memory recalls grafitti nonsense),

Wonder if bullet holes burn with
the same temperature as mine will.

Body-healing (I think, but am not sure)
Smokescreen-words (jargon, shit) calls it
side Effects, but
All over my interior, cavernous and
hollow, not just my side (or sides),

Fire (effects? agony! another smokescreen
outer, not inner I mean) blazes

Along yellow lines I bitter laughingly
call my nerve-remnants (like dead
cockroach bodies)

Muscles tense, like knotted ropes
ripped as two war ships play anchor-
line tug-of-war,

And my groin hollers as if a
huge crab is pinching my legs,

Sweat Showers me, non-comforting,
neither sweltering sleepy sweat nor
air-condition office to sun-shower sweat,

But ice-cuby interior-tremble-forcing
expire-fearing perspiration drips
and horrifies.

Miserable paradox! Outside cold
from inside heat. And my flesh
the wretched filter.

I sock the TV knob and kill
The announcer, as he intones,
“Richard Himble, convicted of a crime
he did not commitÉ”, and
I burn inside so naturally I
smoke, legs crossed and gripped
like pliers, two puffs and half-gone,

Enduring like a flaming but seemingly
not consumed auto engine, I
mutter, “unconsciousness-difference-
death or sleep, little death or much
sleep”?

Purple alert - on my stomach, in the
bed-trench but fire dying down,
grabbing pillow like drowning
swimmer clutching life-buoy from
sunk battleship.

Smog, no battlesmoke of sleep clouds
my brain with dim relief, like
light from above for trapped
miners underground.

What can you say about a 90-day
agony that died? Thank God but

Desperately struggle to break last
night’s, and the night’s before, and
the night’s before that, etc.

Speed record for bedtime God-
despaired non-religious rituals,

Teeth-gritting, tooth brushing; cold
sweating, undressing, interior-undercoating
burning, wrenching swim-suit on,

I gag on my medication, (shirk I wish
I could these torture pills) so I
will be a relaxed blah, a flesh-and-
entrail fog tomorrow morning.

Yellow alert-fists clenched, back
on sheet, sheet over legs in 90-degree
night, land mines exploding over entrails,

Red alert - on right side, facing
doorway and escape, never facing prison
wall, eyes pushed closed,
bitter memories bomb me;
a true hate and fear story.

Nude Beach #3

Tom Racine

We stand naked on the beach
like northern seals.
I watch three young women
try the new experience,
and undress from their swimming suits.
Full cream breasts, firm skin, muscles taunt
and all the stuff that makes them
right. Long blond flowing hair (at least two of them)
and, you know, the things that make men stare
and yearn
and have hard-ons late at night.

The waves rush in and Kathy
frolics in front of me
distracting my view
asking,
“Honey, what do you want for dinner?”

SANIBEL NOTES (1)

Duane Locke

White dust leaps up
From bleached shell,
White sand road,
Swoops through the air
Like a Snowy Owl,
Perches on edges
Of mangrove leaves,
The mangrove rattles.
Concealed in mangrove leaves,
A kingfisher.
I hold out my hand
To be touched
By the sound
As it walks by me.
And so I kissed her
On the steps of the wooden city
Before I left port
The hard ground on which I had left
Was but a memory of little warmth

In this hellish cold rain
The bloody waves relentless
Struck her sides like a hammer
We were but a paper boat
In a bathtub of infants
Yet the grey depths slammed us more
Other than the memories there was only
The rationed cups of cocoa
Did I mention the memories

Shouts call me to the deck once again
Smoke beckons us in the distance
A Chinese merchant vessel this time
Confusion run down their bloodied faces
As they look to us for saving
But my kit does not supply
Me with an interpreter
I can only try to heal
And move to the next empty face

But the kiss and the thoughts
Of pre-war life
Carries me through the pummeling
From the unforgiving side of nature
Forty days to go and countless waves.

Slap Bracelets, Pet Rocks and Nuclear Weapons

j. dyson

a steady coo
a steady collapse
searching for a steady cable to walk on

taking the mind off monday
throwing glasses
breaking down technical barriers
learning from the ancient text of lepers
remote and dreaming of a hug
dreaming of a haymaker

catching on
the newest fad
a slap bracelet and a pet rock all rolled into an atomic weapon
every kid has one these days

maybe it’s all out of the question now
maybe it’s the American way to wake up every morning
it’s our turn to have a nightmare
the sweetest angel’s touch is too simple

i need a bit more by now
i need a therapist
i need whiteout a blackout a water shortage
i need floods and fires and a tidal wave on the New York Shore

robots taking over
covering every variable
a rolodex of death
at the bottom of the Atlantic the nuclear devices are rotting
I’m afraid to drink the water

The Plastic People

Jason L. Sanders

In a warm, softly lit Virginia cabin,
I was surrounded
By glowing amethyst crystals
And flickering candles.
I watched their light
Gently lick the grains
Of the exposed wooden beams.
I swallowed a purple pill.

Several minutes passed and I opened my eye—
Not knowing what I would confront.
Through a dissolving luminous mist
I recognized that I was on a train—
A crowded Tokyo commuter train.
It sliced through the rain and
Weaved through thousands of drab buildings and
Thundered by thousands of grey houses.
(Their awnings and windows rattled.)

An old man,
Wearing black robes and an evil smirk
Appeared by my side.
He whispered:

“Can you see the sagging, unsmiling faces
Etched and burned by unkind places?”

“Can you smell the sweat and quiet despair
As we hurtle through the humid Tokyo air?”

“Can you hear the strained and artificial voices
Of those unhappy with most of their choices?”

I turned away from the old man,
Who was unable to conceal his joy.
He cackled and danced a little jig
And declared with a twisted grin:

“Welcome, my son, my intrepid traveler.
Welcome to the Machine.”

THE ENORMOUS FETUS

Thomas Trull

It milked a titan thumb in utero
clear as a Rorschach ink blot
on the closely monitored sonogram
The thousandth trimester passed
with no celebration from the lab coat grad
student assigned to watch the night
it passed

Half a woman lay preserved in sodium smoke
Mother
disintegrated
missed her window
mourned numb and then dead
both her womb and orphan inside a hospital on a bay

Her birth sac bobbed in a soup
thickly glazed with protein
wide and deep enough to comfort a whale
while tiny diving needles
probed and collected and beamed to a motherboard

Great lamps wheeled around a motorized track
Brilliant white penetrated the karo glistening ghoul
banked bent beams against the sac’s outer wall
grown black as a medicine ball

Some midnight behind the block white building
a barge sauntered alone across the bay
answered the greeting waves with the creak
of rusty iron
The barge moved
the cargo to a misty landfill across the bay
bins with garbage in cornrows stretching
from one side to another
under no moon the men heaving
a bubble of skin into the dark lick of saltwater
worked unmonitored by feminine eyes

America in extremis

Joe Hart

And I am as sick
Of heterosexual love songs
As blacks must have been
Of seeing whites on television
And nothing else
And nothing else.
And now in crisis
They fly their flags
And have prayer meetings,
These homophobes
and racists and prigs.
And I want to scream.
But I say nothing.
And I wait
And I watch
For the one bomb to drop
That will silence their prayers
And extinguish their patriotism
And kill their gods
And end my hatred
Forever.

An image

Joe Hart

The subtle consternation of the sea,
The constant sea that sleepily engulfs
The sodden, deep-sunk posts of wooden piers
Is heaving its involvements to the sand.
The sky is low. Already I can feel
The nearness in an image
Of the deepness of the sea.
I see the sea in human conjuration.
Up from my depth I think the depth
Of oceans.
About the sea - I wonder what there is
About the sea; a magic I can touch
About the sea.

A picture

Joe Hart

The gnarled wind-wetted wooden posts
Point blindly to the sea,
Stuck in sand around the rocks
In rugged, old complaisance.
The sea-gulls crown the inner air
With swoops of flight and noises.
Their double-crescents, grey and white
Swim just above the swells.
The reef of rocks in silhouette
Rears ragged from the sea.
The taste of salt is in the sand,
The old posts slant and lean.
And all is blue and all is grey.
The ocean’s deadly rustle
Washes up against the rocks
And then goes back to sea.
In the sky the subtle clouds
Are like the puffs of breath
Against a hand when someone speaks.
The air is cool and warm.

Orange Soda

Mary B. Chow

Always thought of Terror
Having to go with my dad
Silent screams of “NO!”
A deep stomach-pit dread
Aching to drag my feet,
Dig in my heels
Postpone the seemingly inevitable

Always different place
In the woods, at the lake
Along a lonely road, in the attic
Mid afternoon, late evening
Always the smells
Body odor, rancid alcohol

Always the unbreable piercing
Twiga scraping my skin
Insects biting tender flesh
Rocks beneath me
Grinding into me above
The burning afterward as I peed

Always afterward
At some bar
Sitting alone
Invisible in a booth with
Orange soda:
As if it could repair the damage

Don’t all the crazy girls

Tara Marie Gilbert-Brever

have black eyes,
big feet,
braided pigtails,
Bibles with ripped pages,
bogeymen with real bodies;

have thin fingers,
terrible spelling,
torn hems,
trees named after them,
trouble sleeping in quiet houses;

have muddy knees,
milk breath,
mercury rising,
mothers who pretend not to see,
my face in their mirror?

Passover

Tara Marie Gilbert-Brever

Why don’t you have one?
She’d have your almond
eyes...

This spring my friends grew
batches of babies
in time for the tulips.
The atmosphere
is heated by the hatched
spirits; the summer
is hurried
by the sum
of new fingers.

What was so certain
about months ago,
why did touch fall heavier
and last all the way
into fresh lives?
How was so much lady-
skin bitten quick, hitting
it close to bone, hiding
the scab out of reach?

Last summer I was passed
over-no souls in wait
to chew through to me.
My friends pass their children
into my lap;
my body fists around such small
flesh, but monthly pushes
out the juices
that would harden to this.

Why don’t you have one?
she’d have your almond
eyesÉ
but I will not follow
my friends, loose the strings
around my instinct,
cup the kisses, pool
them in the home
between my legs.

Why does air have its way
with blood, scaring
it red? What is it about blue,
that it wastes so fast,
why can’t it take root;
why does sky
steal the eyes
out of babies?

This morning, like every
other 28, I held the pill
on my tongue for a second,
tasting the “selfish”
sweet shield. I bow
out of the power to create,
to pour my tangled
contents into clean
bodies, vessels that might founder.

The Concrete City

Kevin Calaguiro

Coffee
Cigarette
Breakfast of champions

I wish the sun would warm
This desolate concrete city
Where trees are a luxury
And taxicabs flourish
With the wind on my neck

We play our roles in the city
The student
The doctor
The homeless man
The mother
The whore
No room

I am sitting in a pool of academics
Waiting to let it out
Holding it in
Like a child who has to pee

Foolish Quaalude
Swimming in this sea
The concrete city

Feel the fingertips that mollify
Adagio music over skin
Falling soft the to taste

Releasing the dead fish
And watching them flop on the streetscape
In the concrete city

Fingers
Hands
Holding it out
Hoping

I can hear the voices again
I can see the signs again
Please sir
Won’t you see me
Play our song to the city
Two acoustic guitars
Like harmony to a voice

Play it out
In the concrete city
While taxicabs bring home
The doctors
The lawyers
The whores to hotels

And watch it turn my blue to black

By Way of the Drug

Kevin Calaguiro

Acoustic rock to my ear
Binding me to the moment
Feeding me

Magnificent lifeless roses
Looming over a makeshift vase
Honey dew and sickle cell
Watching the day haze away

Between cigarettes
And nights passing
Living life by way of the drug

Piloting this plane
Drawing death in
And waiting for the wake

In the mass of culture
Of struggle
Masked by lust
Holding it to me

Watching the ash of night
Mix with the breath
Rolling with life
Silently letting Go
Taking it in
While it slowly decides its end

But Most of All
Padma Jared Thornlyre

My daughter’s transition between
Her Madeline puzzle and zonked
Unusually swift. Her mama’s right
About warmed milk with honey.

Alone with the war, now, I read
Erotica, sniff cardamom, drink
Scotch, and sink my fingernails
Into my scalp, but not quite deeply

Enough to draw blood. Just close.
These sensations the sticky stuff
Of living. Driving home on 40
Up Genesee Mountain after work

Today, the road gave way to the beast
Of Bethlehem, a suicide bomber,
An American soldier scraping a talib
Off his boots, the tanks of Israel rolling

Into Ramallah. The road gives way
To rubble, to a dancer who lost his
Teeth, fleeing Manhattan’s wall of ash.
Bodies thunk into the bed of my pickup.

How distinguish the faces of hate,
Whose single difference is their name
For God? Arafat becomes Sharon
Becomes Bush becomes bin Laden.

I search for Gandhi among the gullies
Of Lookout Mountain and in the trees
Of Paradise Hills and—yon—Buddha
In the eyes of Genesee’s bison. I recite,

Without the usual comfort, the First
Amendment, to hedge against the burning
Crosses and lynchings that rise from the road
In front of me with the guns of Chivington

And Black Kettle’s blood that just won’t stop
Spilling. I wipe my mother’s spit from my
Eyes. And the spit of her bronze star husband.
American sons died soldiers in his arms,

But I cannot help myself, I can’t help but see
The undecorated baby boy, the little girl,
Torched for the original sin of being born
Vietnamese, can’t help my doubting

That their mothers’ grief was somehow
Less human than his. Americans died,
And die, in the art of killing. I pass the flag
On Genesee bridge, where it’s whipped

Since last September, but I blow my daily
Kiss to the Continental Divide, my elder-
Earthen lodge of the Great Spirit (the father
I wish I knew) and White Buffalo Woman.

I wipe the spit from my eyes.
It keeps on comin’ but all I want to do
Is shield my girl from those who hate,
Stem the rise of gore that bars her peace.

Quick Notes on the Writing Versus
the Performance of Poetry

Padma Jared Thornlyre

It’s the voice in my head, not
the voice on my tongue (a mere
approximation, that) I care for
most. Performing means asking

How do I look? Am I too cavalier
in denims, too elitist in this hat,
or that, too nonchalant, too
stiff? And How do I sound?
And Can I hold it in, this gas
percolating in the cauldron of my
bowels, lentil-fed and nervous?

On the page, I have no importance,
and that is most comfortable; let
thesis candidates debate Homer,
I’ll read the Odyssey; give me
The Tempest, Shakespeare’s bio
means nothing. I am not
them, of course. On stage, I’d
rather not matter, but I must.

On stage, it’s a matter of volume,
apparently, the number of obscenities
well-shouted in the shortest timespan;
on stage, there’s no time for the subtle
witcheries of cadence, those reverberations,
to sink in, for double-or-more-entendres,
for mulling or chewing or the slow
sucking of marrow for all it’s worth.

from Impressions on His First Father’s Day

Padma Jared Thornlyre

1.

Half-dead coyote
reduced to mange and the will to live
finds his legs, some meat
to hide his bones—a stag
bleeding into the creek—
road-kill to stave off starvation
for another day, perhaps
a week. Deer-blood

and mining produce
two distinct reds
this creek must
carry downstream.

Floods

Matt Turner

a flood of people, uniform and diverse,
in their lives, their aims and now,
aimlessly succumbing to a lake of agnosticism,
for they fear what they do not understand.

They journey, pretending that they’ve moved on,
that he isn’t there, dismissively fooling themselves:
“He doesn’t exist”
before truculently declaring
“he is no longer necessary”,
ask them what happens now?

no-one knew, except one, the prophet who
lived in a box in winchester street.
they ignored him, fearing him, spitting on him,
How they would regret it later, when there lives were enveloped.

He had a name.

He had arrived out of the blue, from no where,
society didn’t believe him, they couldn’t,
for it hurts to examine yourself.
He was an intruder into their consciousness,
and above all a stranger.

Eternity, it was argued, could not exist.
Nor could freedom, but they believe what they want.
Now they know,
how it tortured them,
asked them their questions.
Now it sits watching,
content and detached,
as if he weren’t inseperable.

he had told them what they feared,
and rather than embrace, they reject, and suffer.
Machiavelli re-born, he began his circadion castigation,
for forty full revolutions of the sun.
Eternity grew solicitous .

the world was washed away.
where was you sacred science now?
in his pocket.

So here is whats left, a place full
of nothing, a utopia of silence,
and a godless world, just as before.

the games we play

Matt Turner

the silly little games we play,
we annoy each other, and yet
kill each other with our love.

you shout and scream and I stare
at you, as though you were a ghost,
looking through you to your proud centre.

I do not reply, nor do you give me reason to,
everything is black and white,
with frilly lace around the sides.

I wonder, as I analyse other people,
as to what they think of us, whether
they understand us, or perhaps if they hate us.

i suppose we can be a deadly duo,
when you take into account,
the manipulative intelligence of us on our own

but then together, we do not seek to annoy,
but we let others grow green,
that is annoyance enough to most.

one day, one of us will die,
and they will signal the end for both,
because despite all the tears and decibels

we need each other,
we depend on each other,
we are each other.

A Toll Tale

Bridget Cowles

I guess I’m just basically pissed off. All around me I see pretty people with electronic devices in their laps, on their belts, attached to their wrists, stuck in their ears. They’re so focused on the things going on inside those high tech gadgets that they fail to see the pain of the person sitting squeezed in next to them on the bus. Sometimes that person is me, tired after a long day in a toll booth, taking money from assholes driving overpriced toys that take enough gasoline to support an entire OPEC nation. The little prematurely balding guy in the huge SUV with the custom extra-huge, extra-knobby tires doesn’t even deign to give me a nod. Just shoves money in my hand and roars off, leaving a choking trail of burned diesel fuel to mark his presence. Barbaric ass that he is, it’s like he thinks he’s somehow more advanced on the evolutionary scale because a family of five could live comfortably in the shadow of his off-road vehicle that’s never left the pavement.
Then there are the little bimbettes that travel in packs and think that I’ll let them through the toll gate for free if they flash me some perky flesh. Hell, I’ve seen enough pink-skinned college girls’ breasts to publish my own soft porn magazine if I could figure out a way to download the images from my memory to glossy photo paper. I’ve never let one of them through for free, though. I pride myself on acting like I don’t see a thing. One time about twenty-five, thirty years ago when me and my wife first moved to the Bay area so I could go to UCSF, but instead started this “career” of mine—early seventies I’d guess—this VW van full of little hippie chicks drives up. They were smokin’ a doob and carrying on like they’d never been outta Kansas. “Hey, mister,” they said. “We’re kinda short on cash. Any way you could let us through for free?” Well, I told ‘em they’d need to pay like everyone else, but they kept arguing and offered me a hit off their soggy roach. The little skinny blonde that was driving the van turned and said something to her lovebead-draped sisters that made them giggle like mad. Next thing I knew, there were six pair of sun kissed nipples up against the van’s windows. The boys in the Mustang behind them went nuts, but I just held out my hand and asked them one more time for the toll as if this happened every day. Tell the truth, I’d already been married four or five years and those were the first breasts I’d seen in that whole time. But that’s another story.
Worse than anything that’s ever happened to me in the booth, though, is the way people pretend you don’t even exist when you’re on the bus with them. After a long day of breathing everyone else’s tail pipe smoke, listening to the complaints about the toll being raised, having my heartbeat changed by the pounding bass of these punk-ass kids’ stereos, and getting my butt chewed by my boss for taking two minutes too long in the bathroom, the last thing I need is to be reminded that if I wasn’t alive, no one but my wife and her ugly freakin’ crazy mother who practically lives on our living room couch would even know I was missing. My boss would replace me in twenty minutes with someone younger, faster, cheaper—less experienced, of course—with a “more team oriented attitude,” who’d be happy to suck up to him and listen to his stupid ass stories about hiking in Yosemite. When some lady slides in next to me, smelling of cheap perfume and vodka, pushing her cushiony ass up against me so she can get her string shopping bag on the seat next to her—a carton of cigarettes, a box of Fruit Loops, and some cans of tuna falling out and rolling down the aisle—who’s she to pretend she doesn’t know I’m there? She’s practically crawled up on my lap. The least she could do is give me a smile. Not like I’m going to molest her because she’s treating me like a human being instead of like I’m a freakin’ street sign put there just to lean her ass up against.
But let me tell you, it burns me up even more when I see it happening to someone else. Other day, I’m half asleep on the bus three or four stops from home and this young man’s struggling to get up the stairs. He’s using one of those metal crutches and carrying a backpack and some books and foreign newspapers in a plastic bag from that news stand right over there. I see about seventeen pairs of eyes look away while he bangs his shin on the bottom stair, drops the bag in the street, and bends to pick it up. I go out to help him pick up his books and try to fish a paper out from under the bus. “Thanks,” he says to me in a guttural, kinda slurry voice, like maybe he’s had a head injury or something. I just tell him no sweat and wait for him to climb up in front of me. Something about him seems to embarrass everyone else on the bus. They’re all looking in every direction except at him. Well, except for the driver who’s sighing impatiently while he digs the money for his fare out of his pocket. When he sits down, I see that the hand that holds the crutch has a slight tremor and one foot turns in limply. I hand him his bag and he smiles gratefully. I wonder about how hard it must be to do this bus gig every day when you move slower than most people under the age of ninety and no one wants to admit you’re different or even alive. Then I realize, he’s the only one who seems to know I’m alive, too, and I think maybe he’s luckier in some ways than all the others.

Grit In My Teeth

Bridget Cowles

After living in Tahiti, I developed a taste for sand.
I was awarded a two year grant—almost unheard of—to live and write in paradise, then moved back to New York a year earlier than I intended. Unfortunately, I’d been so happy in Tahiti that I was forced to give back some of the money and come home where I continue to feel dismal enough to be productive.
How does a woman like me “develop a taste for sand?” Let me tell you.
I’d been on the island for six months, lounging around in a hammock, staring at the fish through the glass floor of my hut, actually taking long walks on the beach just for the hell of it. In New York, whenever possible, I don’t walk much farther than to a waiting taxi.
I hadn’t spoken to anyone except for the elderly Tahitian woman who brought me fresh food each day and swept out my hut. Couldn’t actually be called conversations, but she was pleasant. It freed me up from having to take on the mundane chores of caring for myself. Every single item that woman brought into my house had a few grains of stark white sand clinging to it. Even though she washed everything she put in the kitchen, there was always a light dust at the bottom of my refrigerator. I never saw it going in. Perhaps it was just so much a part of the place that it floated in the air, like the dust motes and soot back in the city.
My normal depressive nature was slowly giving way to a sense of peace and contentment the likes of which I’d never known. It was such a foreign feeling—I hadn’t yet determined whether I liked it or not. I’m not sure I was even aware of what I was feeling.
Even the solitude was new for me. A New Yorker is never really alone. For me, whether on the subway or in the midst of a conversation with my closest and not-very-dearest friend, Silvana, I feel as if I’m the only one who’s truly aware, truly in touch with the depth of the tragedy in which we live—but I never feel alone. Wish I did. It would be less painful than feeling crammed in with half the population of the world, but still being apart. It’s the isolated crowding that feeds my depression; it’s my depression that makes me write.
No one can really understand how intensely I feel things. Now, I’m sure some of you are saying, “Oh, no, you underestimate me. I feel things.” Go ahead and tell yourselves that, but I know differently. I’m a woman constantly in a state of despair, angst, worry, anxiety. It’s just that way for me. If I’m going to keep making a living song writing, that’s the way it better stay.
Sorry. I’m digressing again in that self-indulgent way which has chased away all my former lovers. To hell with them, anyway. And to hell with you if you’re in a rush for me sort this out.
Where was I? Yeah, solitude. Well, the most amazing thing happened to me in Tahiti. As I spent more and more time alone on the beach, I felt more and more connected to the rest of the world. It was a wonderfully pleasant feeling. I finally understood those annoyingly cheerful store clerks who chase you out of their store with a lilting curse of “Have A Nice Day!” Okay, there aren’t really many of them in New York, but I’ve been other places, too. And, yes, they do capitalize every word when they talk. Damned if I know why.
Happy and content, I decided to accept one of the innumerable social invitations that were always being delivered by the housekeeper: a dinner party at the vacation home of a well-known American actress and her much younger lover.
No, won’t tell you who she is or who else attended. This is my story.
The day of the party arrived, and I was oddly excited. In fact, I couldn’t ever remember being excited about any social event before. The closest I’d felt in the past was a sinking dread. Almost the same physical reaction: queasy stomach, light sweat, shortness of breath. Excitement, however, is much more energizing. Not wanting to over- or under-dress, I wore all black—you can never go wrong with black. Yeah, Tahiti is warm for all black, but I have an image to uphold. Remember, I was invited for my depressive New York demeanor and poet/songwriter status.
The party wasn’t until 9:00. Parties don’t start until after dark, even in Tahiti. I was feeling so damn perky I decided to walk the three miles. Almost dark when I started out, yet there was the most incomparable sunset spreading behind me. Along the way, I saw those exotic night-blooming flowers. What are they called? I don’t remember either. Anyway, I saw those beautiful flowers, I heard the calls of tropical birds, I smelled now-familiar, but unidentified sweet scents.
By the time I got to the party, I was singing aloud. I don’t do that. Ever.
Inside, the usual wild array of the famous and infamous. There were several people I didn’t know or recognize. Almost everyone seemed to know me. My hostess was surprised when I wrapped my arms around her, swinging her up off her feet as I planted a kiss on her perfectly rouged cheek. When I put her back down, she swayed for a moment before regaining the composure for which she’s so well known. Suspicious, she said, “Marina, you quit drinking?”
A hearty laugh escaped me. “Well, I hadn’t thought about it. But you know, I’ve hardly had any coffee, cigarettes, or alcohol since I came to the island.”
“Writing much?” her ever-present, swarthy Latin lover asked.
“Some. As a matter of fact, my writing’s found a new direction,” I replied. “I brought along a new poem, if you’d like me to read it.”
Those guests not already out on the deck crowded around. I read an enthusiastic two page ode to the salty scent of the sea shells decorating the small table next to my bed. The man who’d been standing attentively at my elbow since my arrival backed away and sat on a stool at the rattan bar. No appreciation for the beauty of simple things.
I followed the ode with a sonnet about the pleasure of lounging in a hammock for days at a time. More people drifted away, some muttering, looking over their shoulders at me as they retreated in search of booze.
As I started in on my third poem, which starts, My true love’s eyes are as green as the fronds of the palm tree which rustles in the balmy breeze, my hostess quickly took my hand and said, “Marina, honey, read that one later. We don’t want you to spoil my guests, now do we? Let’s make them wait.” She practically pushed me onto the tropical print couch next to a bottle blond who appeared to be passed out. A fine stream of saliva oozed out of the corner of the woman’s mouth, and her skirt was caught on the back of the couch cushion, exposing most of one hip.
The rest of the party was spent in brief conversations with a very skittish crowd of people. As soon as I began to talk about the wonders of the island and how I’d finally found true happiness, my partner in conversation found an excuse and dashed off. Finally, a gallery owner from New York, whom I’d known for a decade, left the group he’d been talking to. They watched him as he walked toward me. I felt like I was back at my first junior high school party, hoping one of the cool guys would ask me to dance, conscious that the other kids were watching and waiting to see who’d be picked last, praying it wouldn’t be me.
When he got to where I stood, the man—yes, he must remain nameless—bent toward me and said in a confidential tone, “Your cheerfulness is really putting a damper on this party. You know, Marina, you’re downright upbeat.” He lowered his voice further. “Stop it—it’s going to ruin your career.”
Well, that’s it about the party, but I must say the man was right. I stayed on the island for another six months. My social invitations all but dried up. Instead of hearing from my girls Alanis and Fiona, the only mail forwarded from New York was an offer from Pat Boone to collaborate on a children’s album. I actually considered it. The work I sent home to my agent was returned with a letter expressing great concern about my mental state. I laughed it off. I was so ecstatic with my new life, I kept writing my pleasant little songs.
Finally, one day my agent arrived on the island. He found me lying in my hammock, a joyous song on my lips. He walked up to me and pulled me to my feet. Holding me by the shoulders, he shouted, “Snap out of it, Marina!” At my startled look he let go of me and lowered his voice. “I’m worried about you. Your career is drying up as we speak, and the word in New York’s you’re writing verse for Hallmark.” He took my hand in his. “Come home now.”
Against my will, I packed my few belongings. I brought a coffee can full of the sand from the beach.
So, that’s how I came to be living back in the Village, alternating cups of espresso with whiskey. With my first experience of happiness, the only thing that keeps me depressed, besides the comforting dirt and crime and overcrowding of the city, of course, is a steady diet of caffeine, cigarettes, and booze. Every now and then, I’ll take a small fistful of the fine white sand and sprinkle it around my flat. I put some in my bathtub, a dusting in my bedsheets, and always leave some in the bottom of my refrigerator. Having the sand here helps me not to feel so deprived, but I have to be careful not to lose touch with all of that angst and rage which keeps my poetry and song lyrics sharp.
So, can I bum a cigarette? I just finished my last pack.

Who Will Save Your Soul?

Bridget Cowles

“Please help me,” Alma pleads to a peaceful plastic dash-board Mary praying on a shelf above the table where she’s sitting. Images of the Virgin litter her table, her walls, even her bathroom. She runs her hands through her hair, pushing her bangs off her forehead. “Why can’t I just do this?”
Again she puts the unlit cigarette between her lips, sighs. She hopes she won’t light it.
Looking up at the calendar, she stares at the date with the thick black square around it. Three more days. Yet not one thing worth submitting to her current boss, Beverly Taylor, “acclaimed children’s author.” Beverly writes much too cute for any real child.
Alma yawns, long and loud. “Staying up all night is definitely not as easy as it used to be,” she mumbles, dangling the cigarette. Instead of working on the contracted illustrations, she finds herself scribbling an image of Virgin Mary. Mary is at the seashore holding a colorfully striped beach ball, a 1940’s-style swimsuit covering her modestly, still unmistakably the woman who bore Jesus. At Mary’s feet sits a long haired baby boy, lovingly stroking the red shell of a crab, tears on his cheeks.
Alma shakes off the urge to indulge her artistic whims, admonishing herself. Got to draw these stupid bears.
She looks at the clock. “Thirty minutes since the last one,” she announces to the room, empty except for her oldest friend, Buddy, sleeping on the tattered corduroy couch. The aging retriever raises his head at the sound. He thumps his golden tail once and lies back down. Instantly, the dog is snoring softly. She puts down her pencil and slowly unwraps a Hershey’s Kiss. The silver square of foil joins numerous others in the ashtray which also holds the unlit cigarette, the filter wet from hours in and out of her mouth. The chocolate rests comfortingly on her tongue, slowly turning liquid. Her eyes close and a small moan is swallowed with the first drops of melted chocolate.
Looking up, her eyes rest on a primitive Virgin of Guadalupe made of Mexican clay, painted with Liza Minelli eyes and rosebud lips. She hangs on the wall next to a mermaid who could have been crafted by the same villager. One hand is on her green scaled hip, the other behind her head in a movie-star pose. The two clay women look like sisters. That would make an interesting story, she thinks, smiling. Maybe she should write the story of the Immaculate Virgin and the siren of the sea, sisters taking vastly different paths. She could do some great illustrations for a book like that, and maybe get out from under Beverly’s thumb.
Alma releases a long sigh and places the cigarette back between her lips. Break’s over. Get serious. She talks to herself sternly now.
For the twentieth time she pulls out her draft of the story. It’s about a family of amazingly cute bears. The tale centers around the mischief which Brother Bobby gets into by ignoring the advice of his wise parents. Sister Sally shines in her perfection. The more trouble Brother Bobby gets into, the more Sister Sally minces around being helpful. Alma hates that bear.
Her own sister, Gloria, gorgeous and thin just like their mother, always got the good grades, always dated the handsome rich sons of their parents’ friends: she is her mother’s dream. Now married to a successful cardiologist, she still has the perfect life. Nothing like me; I’m Brother Bobby, the family embarrassment. Unlike Sister Sally the bear, her sister Gloria doesn’t try to be perfect. She just seems to have been born that way.
No point in dwelling on her mother’s disappointment at having a daughter so different from her ideal. She will never really please her mother; the illustrations are their only link. Pulling out clean paper, she pastes a cheerful smile on her face. Done it before. I can do it again. Last time it was that adorable family of kittens. The smile quickly stiffens. How many times can this same insipid story be told? Who cares, anyway, about this perfect little family? Does Beverly really think anyone will buy this piece of fluff? Alma gets paid whether it sells or not. “God knows, I need the money,” she reminds herself.
Grimacing at her reflection in the hammered tin mirror hanging on the wall, she says sickly, “It’ll probably sell a million copies.”
The longer she lives alone, the more she talks to herself. Lack of sleep seems to be increasing the tendency threefold. She shrugs. Who’d care anyway?
Alma walks across the room barefoot to the dishwasher-sized refrigerator and pulls out another diet Dr. Pepper. Maybe caffeine’ll help, she thinks as she opens the fourth soda of the morning. Ten years ago they would’ve been beers.
“And ten years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about prostituting my talent,” she says to her retriever. He wags his tail, eyes still closed.
She opens the French doors, letting the breeze draw in the heavy scent of honeysuckle backed by the occasional whisper of wisteria. The season’s almost over for the sweet flowers; better appreciate these last few. Looking up at the clock, she sees it’s time for more chocolate. She’s made it another half hour. She pulls the paper tab on the tip and the foil peels down. “Thank you for giving me something to live for,” she says aloud to the chocolate gods and reaches for two more.
The damp cigarette drops from her fingers to the floor, unnoticed by Alma. The soft thump is heard by the old dog, however. His eyes open and his ears point forward. He hops off the couch and stiffly walks across the studio to investigate, his nails clicking on the wooden floor. Gently, he picks up the bent cigarette in his mouth and carries it to the side of the couch. He drops the prize and pushes it with his nose where it joins the other twisted, broken, or soggy unlit cigarettes that have been dropped in the last two weeks and now lie half-hidden beneath the couch. Alma watches him clean up after her and laughs softly, stifling another yawn.
“Okay, gonna do it now,” she assures herself and her beloved companion, now back on his couch, circling to get comfortable.
She knows what Beverly wants. She was very explicit about what she loosely referred to as the “characterization” of her bears. They should be done in a variety of pastel colors: “Pink for Mother Bear, blue for Father Bear, green for Brother Bobby, and lavender for Sister Sally,” Beverly instructed, sitting in her ever-present steel blue cloud of cigarette smoke. “You know, like the Care Bears, but not too much like the Care Bears,” the older woman had warned. “And I want Mother Bear wearing an apron.”
Beverly Taylor, the author of Bobby Bear’s Lesson, has written sixteen other successful, animal-populated, moral little children’s books promoting the ideal of so-called “family values.” She’s an even bigger hypocrite than I am, Alma thinks. Right now she’s probably getting it on with her pool-boy while her most recent husband’s upstairs drinking himself to death. She and her mother have always struggled with each other, but ever since Daddy died it’s been even harder.
Sighing again, she walks back to her drawing table, formerly the front door of an up-valley mansion. On the far side, the hole left by the removal of the old brass knob is the perfect size for the cobalt blue Bromo Seltzer jar which holds her pencils. She selects an easily erasable soft Koh-i-noor and sharpens it. The yellow lacquered wood is smooth between her fingers. Enough stalling—here goes.
“What I’d really like to do is draw them like a family of hard-core bikers,” Alma says now to her studio walls. She smiles as she envisions them all encased in black leather and denim, Mama Bear leaning back against the sissy bar of Daddy-o Bear’s Harley, the kids in the side car. That’d knock old Beverly on her ass. She gives herself a minute to enjoy the image of the author’s horror at the desecration of her perfect family.
The few moments of pleasure at her mother’s expense fade away. Back to the reality of her job, her life. Why does she work so hard to get her mother’s approval, even though she tells herself she doesn’t care what Beverly thinks? No matter what she does it will never be enough. Gloria and Beverly have lunch at the country club every week. They shop together and go to the same parties. Alma knows she has always been her mother’s great disappointment; she even heard her say so on the phone once. “Well, yes, I’d love to have both girls attend the dance at the club, but you know Alma just never fits there.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She really is her father’s daughter. Gloria, on the other hand, is my girl and I just know she’ll make a perfect match.” Alma was sixteen.
Even when she does exactly what Beverly asks, she gets nothing in return but more criticism. “The drawings are nice enough, Alma dear, but don’t you think they’d be better if you’d just—” She shakes off the image: counterproductive.
On the radio, a song catches her attention. Jewel’s singing, “And who will save your soul if you won’t save your own?” Good question. She thinks about how when she’s tired she seems to find more significance in familiar things. Like songs. Sometimes even TV commercials. God, Jewel’s got a beautiful voice. She’d give anything to be able to sing like her.
One more thing, she thinks as she rummages around for her small box of matches. Then she’ll really get to work. She lines up the tall glass cylinders containing her Virgin candles. The Lady of Fatima, the Virgin of Guadalupe, La Milagrosa, the Sacred Heart of Mary, the Lady of Lourdes, hopefully they will give inspiration and guidance. Her Holy Lady of Latte candle—a birthday gift—stands at the end of the line. The candles now lit, the smell of sulfur and hot wax mixes with the sweet scents from the flowers outside.
When she places the pencil against the expanse of white paper, she has every intention of drawing Mother Bear cheerfully cooking breakfast while Father Bear sits in his recliner, a newspaper clutched in his furry blue paws, a cup of coffee steaming on the TV tray next to the chair.
Once again, however, instead of drawing the overly familiar images of the frolicking family of pastel bears, she finds herself branching off in a more creative direction, her fatigue pushing her forward. As she starts to draw, her fingers seem to have their own plans. Working faster and faster, she draws Mother Bear in a long black nun’s habit, a large crucifix at her waist, a ruler and a huge ring of keys clutched in her paw. Father Bear wears a priest’s cassock, a pious expression on his face, a Bible held before him in both paws. Brother Bobby wears the coarse robe and open sandals of a monk who has taken the vow of poverty and hard work. He carries a basket of grapes, the vineyard visible through the open door of what appears to be a chapel where they are all gathered in their religious pursuits. Little Sister Sally is clothed in the simple dress of a novice and kneels in prayer before a life-sized statue of the Virgin, a bear.
Alma is exhausted from the spent rush of energy. She drops her pencil and looks down at the paper, simultaneously bursting into laughter and tears. “What’s this supposed to mean?” she asks the flickering candles lined up in front of her. No answer comes. She has been sitting here for thirty-two hours not drawing. What is the message I’m supposed to be getting?
She stomps to her closet, stands on the rickety wooden stool and retrieves the slightly mashed cellophane-encased pack from behind an old box of love letters. Angrily, she clamps a stale cigarette between her teeth. Back at the table, she opens the small box of wooden matches. She lights one, stares at it until it burns her fingers and drops it in her jar of watercolor water.
If she doesn’t get the drawings done by Friday, she stands to lose everything, little as that is. Beverly will never hire her again to illustrate another of her horrid little stories. She also knows she’ll lose this picturesque studio where she and her dog have lived since she moved back to town. Bitch. She’ll kick my ass right off her estate, even though I am her daughter.
Picking up her warm diet Dr. Pepper, she walks to the couch where her dog is sleeping and sits next to him, pulling her knees to her chin. She scratches her friend between the ears. He nuzzles his face into her leg and gives his tail a weak wag. “You know, Buddy, getting fired and evicted might be the best thing for us both.” She fondles the cigarette, stroking her fingers down the length of its whiteness. She runs it beneath her nose, smells it, and slowly places it between her lips.
She walks back to her drawing table, sits down, pulls out fresh paper, and picks up her pencil. “On the other hand, maybe I’ll do this one last book for her. Just one more.” She raises her soda can in a salute to the row of Virgin candles, takes a long drink and starts.

Agenda

Dan Provost

Frustrated with self-analysis #999, which forced
me to accept life’s lack of compassion-Today I
will be incensed with the slow traffic on Route 1
to fulfill my quota of anger.

Failing to conquer the world of dreams; Yesterday,
I became upset when I rolled around in my bed.
Losing the battle of sleep with tears from lack of love.

Sitting alone with the euphoric bottle, destroying my
substance as well as my equilibrium; Tomorrow, I
will find no comfort in the sanctity of drunkenness.

Yes, it is too simple to say yesterday was just a
dream while today is a war that must be fought.

But tomorrow will come-Bringing symbols of
everyday journeys.

The stoplight that fails to click from red to green.
The hungry that fail to eat.
The words that fail to be heard.
Life will die and love will die.
Today, Tomorrow, and Forever.

I Used To Be

Gerald Zipper

Back in those days
I would strut
proud as a bantam
fierce as a tiger
stared down hte gimlet eye of death
grappled the burning day
assailed the rounding wind
ran the murderous mile in a joyful sprint
I was a lucky lover
passionate as a forest fire
gentle as the preening dove
soft as teh down
romantic as a Russian symphony
melodious as a Puccini opera
back in those days
remember?

Rotting Offerings

Alysson B. Parker

1.
well, it never seemed to me that it was worth much

these efforts like women’s work
cooking cleaning children or not

but I look with my developed eye, jealous

of the bare bones of life

the I can’t afford milk for my baby
but the gods can have a feast.

you take the essence and leave me the substance
that is enough for a fish to eat and not get caught
and wrapped in banana leaves to roast
and melt and expire

in someone’s evolved mouth.

2.
swim first, run fast

climb cliffs, but come and show me

your beautiful one

then I would dance like driftwood
limbs locked in hatred
wanting to drown with the seaweed faces of all my memories

I will mislay you under the sea

and you will move back to the old neighbourhood
a place I never go
don’t dare me
although I did find your address and was tempted to post a letter

where I’d tell you what a bastard the religious bloke is
him with his rosary and his priest brother
him: he screwed a tree once,
its branches possessing a crevice he found delicious

stick it right in

he told me all about it
relished in the telling

but the pictures of the others (trees, girls, alive for awhile)

were cut out with a razor

so neatly precisely
like a plan to seduce

and it’d be just my luck to fall for it.

3.
there’s a certain fish that swims into shore with the tide
but it’s so vertically built that when the tide leaves, it’s stranded

washes up on the beach

waits until dawn

when the motivated insomniacs come and retrieve their winnings

fillet me
flay me
leave my essence like an odour

because no ants will crawl on my substance and devour me

like I’ve got some fancy flowers

or I’m coloured like fruit

or I never had a temple or a celebration

to die for
and I have enough money to feed my own baby, if I had one (which I don’t)
but the parading continues and the rituals are sustenance

never questioned,
just there because that’s the way it always is.

This damaged light
Jamie Cavanagh

this gated mind
no tongue can match/
reveal.

this rising blood
no heart can feign/
control.

these sullen stairs,
this endless night;
a chained dog
cries heroic memories
into a nameless age.

this damaged light
no eye can slip/
repair.

this fetid wind
no soul can halt/
escape.

this scripted fate,
these identical days;
a bird
plucks a gnat
from the air.

Mind: An Analogy
Patrick J. Cole

My mind is like the USS Constitution
isn’t it, the Constitution, too
is about 8% original
you’re always replacing parts
with wooden ships
so inside now there’s only
a few frames
a few futtocks left
from 1789 —
it’s like the farmer’s favorite axe:
“I only replaced the head twice
and the handle four times”
like the Buddhist campfire:
you call it the same fire
but after an hour
what is the same about it?
And you now, and you as a child:
— what is the same about you?
There may be 8%
of the original tool
8%
of the original ember
8%
of the original little boy
8%
of the original idea
there’s only 8% of the original
Constitution
but they still take her out
that great white tall ship
and when they do
the people gather on the shore
and cheer the shape of the hull
the pure yards of canvas sail
and most of all they cheer
the unconsciously brave boys
who scramble up the trees
and work
aloft

Poetic Manifesto (2)
Michael Ceraolo
In pre-printing press days rhyme and meter
were used mainly as aids in memorization;
yet half a millenium after the word can be printed
there are those who still insist,
and their number seem to be growing daily,
that without rhyme and meter it isn’t poetry,a sinister synecdoche that conflates
one tool in the tool box into the tool box itself,
and goes way beyond that,
saying
that screwdrivers and pliers and wrenches
aren’t tools, no matter how well used,
because none of them is a hammer

Poetic Manifesto (3)
Michael Ceraolo
In interview afterview with today’s poets
talk about their ‘engagement with language’,
confusing the tool for expression with expression itself
Put another way, engagement with your tool is masturbation
Try engagement with the world, and then
using the tools to express that engagement

Don’t be sorry

Vincent Augustine Cancasci

It’s funny how time flies, even when you’re not having fun. One minute you’re a bushy haired fifteen year old, whose only concern in life is where he’s going to get the next five dollar bill, to go to Skating Plus. The next minute life is slapping you across the face with a cold wet towel, and your waking up to realize that your twenty-one, you have two kids, a ring on your finger, a mountain of debt, and rents due in seventy-two hours and counting.
Welcome to my life. Take no prisoners. Perhaps your thinking to yourself, “ Oh look, another article put together by some whiney welfare brat with a knack for words, who shouldn’t have had kids in the first place!” It’s O.K., I don’t blame you. That was the kind of person that everyone had pegged me to become. I was placed in a state of confusion where my only options seemed to be doomed. I could either split, and leave the girl to raise the child (which was just way too trendy for my taste) or I could become a statistic of our society and forever live off of other tax payer’s donations.
Much to the disbelief of my friends and family, I chose neither. This is my personal gift to every teenager who has ever or will ever be put in the position that I found myself in. This is just a ray of hope that there are other options in life, and our parents aren’t always 100% correct. Sometimes you have to here it from someone who has lived and breathed the life that has been deemed impossible and ill fated. This is my story, and more important, this is my life.
At eighteen years old, I decided that I was not only going to accept the fact that I had to wake up and smell the coffee, but I had to drink it too. No matter how hard it was to swallow, and no matter how times I wanted to spit it out. I dug way into my past and searched for some inkling of talent that I could possibly use as a backbone to support a family. I wasn’t very athletic, and as close to Hollywood as Ventura is, I didn’t think I was gonna make it as an actor. It took me about seven hours, four Red Bulls and at least one pack of Marlboros to realize what it was. I was a talker.
It seemed so little to build on at the time, but now that I look back at it, it was a world of opportunity at my fingertips. I figured that if I could talk my way into a job, why not just keep on talking, and see how far I could get myself. What did I have to lose? This time I was going to see just how far my big mouth could get me. Well it got me far enough. It got me an appointment with a sales firm called Colorado Prime. The only thing I knew about sales was that it paid nine dollars an hour and you could earn something they called a commission.
The interview was set up in front of a board of regional managers. I stood there, dodging the obviously bewildered stares, in front of this room of big shots and suits, and proceeded to fast-talk my way right into a position in their staff. Little me, fully equipped with my clip on tie, and hand me down Pro Wings, was to become a real life (drum roll) sales representative. For the first time in my life I realized that if I really wanted something that bad, all I had to do was go out there and get it. There was nobody holding me back and there sure wasn’t anybody who doubted my need.
You might be asking yourself why I am choosing to reveal this little tid bit of personal information to tens of thousands of strangers, and the answer is simple. Inspiration is a necessity. Today I look around Ventura, Oxnard, and my own neighborhood even, and all I see is young adults who are finding themselves in the same situation as me. There in this state of utter terror because society has drilled it into their heads that life has a designated chain of events. Society says that if you skip a step in this chain, by having kids to early, you are not only ruining your life, but your straining everyone around you as well. Young kids everywhere are being forced into marriage by their parents and taught to believe that once the baby is born, they’re own dreams and ambitions will never prosper. They are told that that for the eighteen years every breath they take will be put towards that child and not themselves, I am writing this to tell you that Society is wrong!
I am twenty-one, I do have two kids, I have a great job, I am married, and guess whatÉ.I have life. Not a bad one either. I have a beautiful two and a half year old son named Anthony, and the sweetest little girl you ever laid eyes on named Bailey- Nicolette. I still have plenty of friends, some old and some new. I frequently go out, and I am actively persuing college along with my wife Danielle.
None of my dreams or ambitions have been banished to some far off island. I haven’t ruined anyone’s life, especially not my own. All I did was enhance my future with love. While most parents who have children my age are at home worrying about what their teenager is out there doing, my parents are relieved of those worries. My parents know that I would never jeopardize my life like that because of my kids.
Sometimes I wish I could go stand out on Main St., or set up shop at the Pacific View mall, and scream through a loud speaker that it’s not a bad thing to be a teenage parent. It may be an unplanned activity, but from constant reminder, it is a blessing in disguise. All it takes is a little support from those around you, for you to make it on your own. Trust me, I was that bad kid you hear about, I was out breaking all the rules, I was never anything to brag about in high school, but I did it, and I continue doing it day in and day out without hesitation or thought.
Whenever it gets tough, or I start to think of how my life could have been, I envision my son waiting by the window of my apartment at five P.M., for Daddy to come home from work. When my key hits the door, his face lights up, and he runs to greet me. I set down my suitcase, and lift all 30 lbs. of him into the air, and I squeeze. He puts his little lips to my ear and says in a language that only parents can decipher, “I love you”. That’s what keeps me going, and for the mere fact that I may have let some people down in my past, I will always be that little boys hero, that’s what makes it worth it.
It always strikes me as funny, when I introduce myself to someone, and they apologize when they find out that I’m a father of two. They act as if it should be a given for this nonsense to be protruding from their mouth. I always give these people the same response, knowing that they too have fell victim to society. “Don’t be sorry”, I say “I’m not, and I’m having the time of my life.”

Time

Paul Teodori

Time in timelines in history books is divided into neat even little sections.

But to you and me, time is like a rubber band:
It stretches, stretches, stretches
when you’re bored or when you’re doing something you don’t want to do.
It recoils,
And flies out of your hands when you’re having fun.

Time is merciless.
It pushes and drags us where we don’t want to go;
Towards old age with its wrinkles and arthritis,
Or, worse still,
Towards tragedies, accidents and premature death.

And then?

down in the dirt

Scrutiny

Rochelle Hope Mehr

It is the definition of self.
The defining moment
When you screech the chalk against the blackboard.
Everyone cringes
And the chalk breaks.

They give you the treacle
About being a good sport.
Blending in.
Not going against the grain.
Staying within the lines.

You get up slowly
After retrieving the pieces.
Everyone’s gone.
You face the blackboard
And eye what you’ve done.

The Unburdening

Rochelle Hope Mehr

I know my limitations.
I come here to lay stones.

The bare trees barely notice
As I set down my load and turn their way.

Away from their green plumed neighbors.
Away from the fleshed out.

Hunched and sodden I progress,
My pail heavy with the weight of infinite possibility.

Simon Perchik

*
You limp the way a caterpillar
is already forgetting how to crawl
scrapes its wings for the controls
growing wider in sunlight

to get a better grip
and over you the sky again, so close
though one leg weighs too much

—you almost make liftoff, the cane
aluminum, almost rain and marble
and the fuselage dragging on the ice
as if it would remember why stillness

heals and your plaster cast
dreading the thaw, the slow turn
pressed lifeless and against your thighs
the softening wingtips, the rain and bone.

*
Again both hands! this pen
half foam, half frost
half held for its heft
its breaking apart :the pair

useless, my left arm
the way every heart empties
from just one side though here

is where as if by changing hands
you return to read the light
and under this pen
its waterfall —always two hands

scrapping more paper
for its grass
twigs and dry stones.

*
As if this rock still had musk
could even now bring down
some boundary line —with both shoulders

Casey rubs against the moat
the great hall —once inside
yells for blankets, more string, the kid

rigs the hillside closer, a sky
side by side with kitchen chairs
grazing on the huge tapestries

still scented with the way snow
will cling to this castle door
he lets me open, let in his steaming horses

bridles, robes open at the magnificent throat
spreading my arms —let in
the stones for drinking water.

*
You walk the way these leaves
learn from each other, are lowered
and slow behind their root
that still needs the darkness
is anchored into those sunsets
long ago extinct and what one knee
can get away with
by judging the other —your stride

is inherited though this tree and moonlight
that now longs for what the sun
left over —one leg spreading out
as if it could pick this apple
just by caressing it
and one knee stuck in the ice

—you limp the way each star senses
how the others survive the cold
—you tamper with darkness! step by step
more dirt pulled loose, kissed, covered
behind your brightening lips and heels.

*
Inside this sling the kitchen table
half hooves, half wings and mountainside
though the doctor says it’s how stone
helps my
rest and flowers
slipping off the rocky edges

—it’s not the time! you don’t yodel
not in the same room, not with the window
open as if words mean nothing now

and still some mountain wail
grabbing those god-awful branches

the way this tablecloth is carried up
and around just one arm the neighbors
even here think you’re crazy, your throat
joyous for no reason at all.

*
At night and this beach bathed
as if it had two mothers, half sand
half stench and loving you

till your still soft heart
and the sun survives
by hiding, seeps from the surface

and the devouring light —in the dark
you will learn to splash
sooner than the others

get the jump, each shoulder
rinsed, taught to cool
and this great ocean from inside.

THE FIFTY-YEAR REUNION PARTY

Bruce Adkins

At eight o’clock that hot summer night it was not yet dark. Outside the bus station Archie Craig, a tall, husky high school football player, paced nervously back and forth with his eyes riveted on the street.
Archie still couldn’t believe his 68 year old Uncle Andrew Diamond, an oil and real estate developer, actually called and offered him a deal that would make him rich. “Meet me at the Trailway Bus station in one hour if you’re interested,” Uncle Andrew said.
Archie was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t recognize his uncle in a brand new Rolls Royce. “Get in, Lad,” a familiar voice called out.
A mass of cool air and soft music greeted Archie as he entered the car. The cushy leather upholstery and the shiny interior reeked of luxury, and the car ran so smooth that Archie could hardly tell he was moving.
“How are you, Lad?” Andrew asked, as the car sped through town and out on the open highway. “I thought I’d show you my ranch if you have the time.”
Archie hadn’t seen his wealthy uncle since he mother’s funeral five years ago and was shocked at how ill he looked. Uncle Andrew had lost a lot of weight. His face was chalky white, his eyes bloodshot, and his brownish red hair, his best feature, was really a wig.
“Oh yeah, plenty of time,” Archie said. Andrew inquired about Archie’s parents and about his football career as they drove the short distance to the ranch.
“I live in Switzerland most of my time, Lad. I came back to Valley Brook to attend my high school reunion tomorrow night,” Andrew said, as he slowed down in front of the big gate. The sign on the gate displaced a picture of a buffalo with the words, ANDREW DIAMOND RANCH inscribed on it.
“Its my fifty year reunion, kind of a farewell fling,” Andrew said, pushing a button and watching the gate rise.
They rode down a narrow road that led to a spacious brick house, bordered by a tree-lined pond on one side and two red barns on the other. It was dark now, but the brightness of the moon and stars made it almost as light as day. Andrew stopped his car in back of the house.
Archie followed Andrew down concrete steps that led to a basement under the house. “I call this my fallout shelter,” Andrew said. “It’s air conditioned and sound proof.”
The large two-room layout included a storage closet and a small bathroom. The back room was filled with kitchen furnishings. The front room was sparsely furnished with a television set, two easy chairs and a computer. In one corner there was an unmade bed and on a coffee table beside it lay a copy of the Wall Street Journals and a package of juicy Fruit chewing gum.
“Here’s the deal, Lad,” Andrew said, pausing and bending over to cough. “I’d like you to pick up an old high school buddy of mine at our reunion tomorrow night and escort him out to my little hideout here where we’re going to have a party. It will be a big surprise.”
“Of course, my buddy might not be eager to come,” Andrew continued, pausing to clear his throat. “So you may have to issue him a special invitation.”
“You mean like kidnap him,” said Archie.
“I’d call it gentle persuasion,” said Andrew.
Uncle Andrew must be insane, Archie thought a few minutes later as they headed back to town. This was kidnapping, pure and simple. “Uncle Andrew, are you going to harm this guy when you get him back to the ranch?”
Andrew’s face broke into a broad grin. “Let’s just say I want to say goodbye to an old friend in a personal way,” Andrew said. Then he pulled into the outside lane and slowed the car. “Lad,” he said, lowering his voice,” I’ve got cancer and I don’t have over six months to live.”
“You’re kidding!” Archie stuttered. “Does Mary and Bart know?”
“Bart knows all about my condition. He’s taking over most of my financial affairs. Mary is in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. Outside of Mary, you and Bart are my only living kin,” Andrew said.
As Andrew neared town, he turned off the main highway and drove to the back of the Valley Brook country club with its golf course and thick row of cedar trees. He stopped at an opening in the cedar trees that looked out on a top of tennis courts. The lights were on and two men with protruding stomachs were playing a game of tennis in slow motion.
“Lad, Howard Simpson and I will be standing out there alone on one of those tennis courts between eleven and twelve o’clock tomorrow night,” said Andrew. “All I want you to do is take old Howard out to the ranch and wait till I get there.”
Then Andrew drove Archie back to the bus station and let him out. “Now Lad, here’s the deal,” he said. Archie wished Uncle Andrew would stop calling him Lad. He had gained status as a football player and didn’t like anyone addressing him in such a condescending way.
“I’ll pay you 100 grand if you’ll help me.”
“You mean 100 thousand dollars!” Archie asked. He felt his heart speed up and his eyes quiver with excitement.
“You got it, Lad,” Andrew said. Meantime, here’s some pocket money.” He opened his wallet and handed Archie ten, one hundred dollar bills. “Think it over and I’ll call you in the morning.”
Archie stayed up all night counting, fondling and smelling the hundred dollar bills. Yet, there was the promise of many more, he realized. Was he on his way to being a big time criminal, he asked himself.
Archie could see himself driving a Rolls Royce like his uncle. He could see himself surrounded by beautiful girls and traveling the world in first class style.
Then, he saw his father and stepmother visiting him in jail. His dad was a schoolteacher. They didn’t have much, but at least it was honest.
But a 100 grand, Archie thought. He could play the stock market and if he invested right he could become a millionaire. He could forget college. “Archie Craig, the eighteen year old millionaire genius,” he said, smiling.
Poor Uncle Andrew, Archie thought. He only had six months to live. What was his uncle up to? The cancer must be in his brain. He mentally rehearsed a list of questions he was going to ask Uncle Andrew when he called, but he never got the chance.
“Lad, just say yes or no,” Andrew said, with a note of finality.
No, Archie had made up his mind to say, but instead, after a few moments of hesitation, he said, “I guess so.”
“Good, we have some details to go over.”

At eleven o’clock the country club parking lot was filled with luxury cars. A steady breeze carried the sound of orchestra music and loud shrieks of laughter through the warm summer night.
Archie, dressed in dark coveralls and a black cowboy hat, sat in the van his uncle has provided, waiting to launch his criminal career. He held a 32 pistol, also provided by his uncle, but he’d never shot a gun in his life. He’d run before he’d shoot somebody, he thought.
It wasn’t long until Archie heard his uncle’s voice as two well-dressed men came walking out on the tennis courts. They stopped by the net. Andrew waved to Archie.
In the dark, old Howard Simpson appeared to be a handsome man with white wavy hair and a white moustache. But he was slender and hump-shouldered.
As Archie approached old Howard, waving the gun in the air, he forgot his prepared speech. “Put your hands up and keep your frigging mouth shut or I’ll shoot your ass off,” Archie said, surprising himself at how mean he sounded. Then he put his hand over Howard’s mouth and squeezed so hard he could feel the man’s false teeth come loose. Howard squirmed like a hooked fish while Archie dragged him a few yards and gingerly maneuvered him into the back of the van and locked the door.
There’s no turning back now, Archie thought, driving off waving at Andrew and listening to Howard’s kicking and banging on the side of the van.
Archie wondered what his football coach, what the kids at Valley Brook High would think of him now? He recalled the words of his football coach. “Archie Craig is not only an asset to our football team, but he is a young man with character and integrity.” Asset my ass. My only asset, Archie thought, is kidnapping weak, helpless old men.
Archie directed Howard into the fallout shelter without a struggle. Archie couldn’t get over how calm Howard suddenly appeared.
“Did Andrew put you up to this?” Howard asked while taking off his coat and tie and brushing off his clothes. “Do you know the penalty for kidnapping, young man?”
“Shut up,” Archie said, waving the gun. He was uncomfortable holding it to Howard so he ushered him back to the storage closet, loaded with food supplies, and bolted the door. Then, he sat down in one of the easy chairs and turned the television on loud so he could drown out Howard’s yelling and kicking the door.
Saturday Night Live was on. As Archie watched the various comedy skits he began to relax. For a few moments he forgot his criminal image.
It was one o’clock in the morning when Andrew came staggering down the steps with a drink in his hand. “Hello, Laddie. Where’s out illustrious guest?” Andrew asked.
“Uncle Andrew, are you drunk?” asked Archie.
“Slightly,” said the older man.
“Andrew, is that you?” Howard yelled, banging on the closet door. “Have you lost your mind?” Howard asked when Andrew popped open the closet door. “Is this some sort of game you’re playing? Why did you allow this young hoodlum to drag me down in this disgusting hole? I haven’t seen you in over 40 years and you treat me like this. I demand an explanation.”
“Howard, you sound like some nervous old lady,” Andrew said, taking off his glasses and removing his coat and tie.
“My wife will have the police out looking for me,” Howard said.
“She already has,” said Andrew.
At the mention of police, a sudden stab of anxiety swelled in Archie’s gut. “The police are looking for us?” Archie asked.
Stripped to his waist Andrew was not a pleasant sight. His chest and arms had no muscle. He was all bones. “Prepare to defend yourself,” Andrew yelled. “Let the party begin.”
“You want to fight me?” Howard asked. “What for? I’m not going to fight. You’re a sick man. Just look at you. Besides, I have a heart condition. I can’t afford to get excited.”
“Uncle Andrew, you old guys can’t be fighting now,” said Archie.
“Don’t worry, he couldn’t knock a flea off my butt,” said Andrew.
“Gong, there’s the bell for round one!” said Andrew. Archie watched in amazement as Andrew, so drunk he could hardly stand up, danced around, waving his pipe stem arms and tiny fists in the air. Then, Andrew crashed a lightweight blow off Howard’s chest.
“That’s for all the times you told Daisy Hancock all those lies and spread all those rumors about me,” Andrew said. “This is for the time you told Daisy I wouldn’t dance so you could take her to the prom,” Andrew said, swinging again and missing badly.
Howard stood there motionless. He refused to defend himself. He appeared in shock. “This is crazy,” he said to Archie. “He belongs in an institution.”
“Uncle Andrew, you’re acting crazy now,” said Archie.
“Remember the time you told it all over the school that I had sex with Daisy. Daisy hated me and never spoke to me again. Then she was killed in that car wreck, and I never got a chance to explain what a liar you were. You ruined my life and I’ve never gotten over it,” Andrew said, his bloodshot eyes burning toward Howard.
“Andrew, I’ll admit I did a lot of dumb things back when we were kids, but we’re all grown up now. I’m a born-again Christian now, and I beg your forgiveness,” Howard pleaded.
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” said Archie.
“Yeah, well I’m going to help the Lord out this time,” Andrew said. With both fists flailing, Andrew betted into Howard knocking him against the wall, and blood squirted everywhere. Howard landed on top of Andrew and they both hit the floor hard.
Howard’s shirt was torn down the front and the mop of gray hair on his chest was covered with blood and curled into balls. Finally aroused, Howard punched Andrew in the stomach. Andrew groaned like he was dying and then came alive and threw a looping right hand that connected with Howard’s eye.
“Gong, end of round! You old guys better break it up now,” Archie pleaded while they rolled around on the floor squirming, gouging, and kicking.
One man had cancer and the other had heart trouble. What if one or both of them died?? thought Archie. They would have him up for murder.
“That’s enough, Uncle Andrew,” Archie yelled, as both men lay panting and groaning for air. The nostrils of Andrew’s nose were soaked with blood and Howard had a black eye that was clearly swollen shut. They took turns trading punches, but with no impact. Finally, in a bloody heap, their bodies exhausted and physically spent, they gave up.
“You got your revenge?” Howard asked, between groans. “You satisfied, Andrew?”
“When I get my strength back, I’m going to get up and kick your ass,” Andrew said.
“You already have,” said Howard.
“Y’all can be friends now,” said Archie.
“Level with me, Howard,” said Andrew. “Did anything happen that night after the prom when you and Daisy sat out in your car outside her house for two hours?”
“How could it when you kept circling the block and honking every time minutes,” said Howard. They both laughed. The tension subsided and Archie breathed a sigh of relief.
Howard sat up. “Look,” he said, glancing out of his one good eye. “It’s 2:30 in the morning. I’ve got to get back to the hotel.”
“Are you going to turn my in to the police?” Archie asked.
“I ought to,” said Howard. “I resent being manhandled by a punk like you. But you know that high school reunion party was a bore. And to tell you the truth I’ve always had a certain affection for old Andrew here. We were best friends all though school until Daisy came along. Isn’t that right, Andrew?” Howard asked, smiling and holding out his hand in a gesture of friendship.
“Go on, get out of here, you sorry bastard,” Andrew said, refusing to shake the extended hand.
While Howard brushed off his clothes and combed his hair, Archie lifted Andrew into his bed and bathed his face with a cold cloth. “I’m all right, Lad. Just tired,” said Andrew.
Archie let Howard out within a block of his hotel and when he came back to the ranch Andrew was gone. Sometime after daylight, Archie located his uncle in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Andrew had been found, passed out, in his car at a signal light.
About the same time the TV announced that Howard Simpson, a well-known Chicago banker, was feared kidnapped from his high-school reunion. Later in the morning he turned up safe and sound. Mr. Simpson stated he left his reunion, voluntarily, to attend another party where he had a great time. Although Me. Simpson had a black eye, he was otherwise unhurt and there was no indication of foul play.
Two days later, Archie went to the hospital to see Andrew, but he was gone. Andrew was reported on his way back to Switzerland.
Did Uncle Andrew run out on him? Archie wondered. Would he ever receive his 100 grand? All Archie knew for sure was that every time he saw a policeman he wanted to hide. In his heart, he was a criminal and feared he would be arrested when he least expected it.
Finally, Archie went to the police and confessed. “I did a criminal act and deserve to be in jail. I kidnapped an old man,” he told the desk sergeant. But after a brief investigation the police laughed and dismissed Archie as someone who watched too much television.
Two months passed. Archie enrolled in college, reported for football practice, and acquired a steady girl friend when he finally received news about his Uncle Andrew.
Dear Archie, the letter began.

I’m writing to let you know my dad dies yesterday in Switzerland. His funeral service will be held next Wednesday there in Valley Brook.
Before Dad died, he made out a trust fund to you for one hundred thousand dollars that you will be eligible to claim when you’re 35 years old.
I’ll tell you more about it when I see you at the funeral.

Your cousin,
Bart Diamond

At first Archie was disappointed that Uncle Andrew made him wait 12 years to reap his fortune. But at least his dead uncle kept his word. Maybe now he could concentrate on football. Maybe now he could quit dreaming the police were after him. Maybe now he could quit thinking about that 50-year reunion party.

IN A HOT TUB

Kevin P. Roddy

Two lithe lesbians and I, calm lovers,
Lay lesson to the way it once had been,
Floating in our common mother’s waters
Before the age of owning had set in.
Adam patriarchal, limply evil,
By telling lies, cast sleek Lilith home-
Wrecker, enemy of Eve his angel-
Weaver, dividing so he still could roam.
Rather in paradise the love of kind
Someday will transcend simple greed and lust,
Providing parturition from the mind:
A generation clots, blood dampens dust,
Grows from fountains’ exhalations, through far
Astigmatic fogs, to splotches of stars.

PLUMMET

Kevin P. Roddy

At the conference no one’d hired me
The old man I propositioned had refused
In stark confusion, I went up to our room
And tumbled out the window—
The old men wait in rooms
And we like shit along the sewers
Rub ourselves headlong down the halls
Pouring out into an earth that mindless
Accepts us. I found no meaning
In my own descent.

Tequila Courage
Kelli Clise-Riffle

I stood on a good friend’s porch
and watched klansmen
wannabes in his front yard, set fire
to a cross, illuminating the
night sky with their hate.

Hid in their bastardized bedsheets,
they taunted and cussed, as if
we wouldn’t know their voices—
I felt sickened to my core.

I tossed back my drink and
with the courage of tequila,
jumped from the porch and kicked
their malevolent cross.
I chuckled when the sputtering
flames captured the hem of one
sheet and the fool danced in a circle.
I jerked the pillow case from
another man’s head and saw
a boy from school—
it’s the only time I ever spit
in someone’s face.
He punched me in the mouth and
we tumbled to the ground;
kicking, punching, biting.
A shotgun blast shattered the
melee for a few precious heartbeats,
before the sheets fluttered away
into the cooling night and my friend
helped me to my feet.
Silently, we watched the greedy
little flames flicker and dance.

He looked at me and said softly,
“That was a stupid thing to do.”
I looked at the gun glittering evilly,
yet reassuring, in the firelight.
With it’s presence, I realized I fought
not for the right reasons,
but because I was in a bad mood, drunk
and looking for a fight.

And the flames fluttered and died,
leaving us in near darkness.

Blink
Kelli Clise-Riffle

All I needed that night was a fix.
I didn’t plan to kill myself.
My mouth watered at the sight
my hands shook with anticipation
of the smack and my works.
High as hell, not much could kill
that buzz. The revolver on
the table between us and a suggestion.
A game.
A voice in my head whispered,
“Why the fuck not?” Another
said, “Are you stupid?”
The barrel was cold and tasted
of gunpowder and oil
when I placed it in my mouth and
looked across the table at
my opponent,
pulled the trigger and heard
the loudest “click” I’ve ever
heard. Put the gun
between us,
on the table,
and smiled.
A challenge.
Our eyes met and locked for a moment.
He swallowed hard and picked up
the gun, spun the chambers,
placed the barrel against
his head, closed his eyes
pulled the trigger,
“Click.”
Back to the center of the table
went the gun. I reached
out and picked it up.
The metal wasn’t as cold now,
spun the chambers around,
put the gun to my head,
took a deep breath—-
Suddenly, my arm was jerked
upward, and startled
I pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore through the
ceiling, deafening to me.
My friend, who came in
behind me, saved me from myself.
His eyes wide in fear and
astonishment, took
the gun from my fingers and threw
it out the window.
My opponent left quickly after
one look at my friends face.
My friend hugged and rocked me,
making me promise
never again, never again.
He cried and said “it’s not that bad.”
I nodded and said, “But I just didn’t
want to be the one to blink.”

AT THE SHOW
Matthew Lee Bain
The wait...anticipate
Mayhem;
Black & blue love - squirm, secrete, shove.
Sudden black -
Illumination blinds, guitar steel grinds -
Bloody vocal chords
Bellow radicalizations & truths - the presentation’s
Pandemonium; flesh maul -
Fall down go bleed, exhibitionism breeds -
Subtract inhibitions,
Add full-blown frenzy, hurl propagandic debris -
Get broken-tooth smiles, circle pit exiles -
Vault crowd tops, floor cracks, body drops -
Violent dislocations only -
Let’s fuckin’ go! Stage dive vertigo
Into a briny flesh ocean -
Dance like a devil, rip/tear fabric dishevel,
Stark bare ass,
Nipples & G-strings, clothes as offerings -
Body slam drama -
Bass reverbs God’s heartbeat, treble screams, beat meat -
Broken-fist laments,
Occipital bone strike - friction lust half-dyke.
Liquor-slick sweat ground, mosh-slip gurney bound -
Stillborn vulgarities
By the hundreds, middle finger symbolism widespread -
The world can’t hurt us here
But we can - anvil’s affection - testosterone projection -
Let’s fuckin’ go! Last song, last row...

BAAAD MAMMALS!

Matthew Lee Bain

You stare at your Bible
Like my cat stares at the refrigerator.
You both think there’s something,
Just inside,
That can fill you up.
But I know better,
And I admonish you with
the negative reinforcement of water
From a spray bottle.
Bad mammal! Baaad mammal!
I could’ve told you,
All that’s in there is
Beyond its expiration date,
And it gives off one God-awful stench.
Then again, I don’t speak a language
Either of you would understand...
One full of reason.

Gal at the Laundromat
Tom Racine

She bent over
and I viewed her naked breast;
she wore no bra,
the large tee-shirt
allowed it.
She rolled up her loose
pants, showed her
figured calves;
later she raised her shirt
to show her hard stomach.
“See how skinny I am—ninety-five pounds.
I’m eighteen and nobody believes it;
they think I’m much younger.”
She was a talker.
“I’m the oldest of eleven kids. . .
my father was a red-neck. . . my mother
died a year ago. . .”
She held up some mini-shorts, “They’ ve
shrunk—look.” She held up some lace to show.
Outside the Florida summer heat was still
coming up from the pavement. A cop’s
lights were flashing in the distance.
She was still talking.
I told her I was through, told her to take
care of herself.
Outside the breeze was picking up,
there was no mercy from the heat.
Sometimes,
cool things come in small packages—
too young to know the fires,
and the time it takes to kindle.

Tyler’s Beach CafŽ
Tom Racine

I have a raging hard-on;
well,
at least there’s one in my mind.
The two girls in skimpy bathing suits
sit crossing their legs, then stand
and move around, then sit back down.
Never mind the others whisking bye on
their way to cool drink
which flows all the way down
to their bare toes.

I sit, as tranquil and as dull as
can be, reading Epictitus’s routine.
No room for passion and art
in his Greek
days of cave dwelling
ascetic techniques.

Anyway, the sun is out—hot as hell—
in this Florida summer.
The sexy woman of the north await me like
fly paper
and the energy from this hard-on has to get busy
either thinking, plowing,
writing
something good.

Deviance: An Un-Still Life (Wet Paint)

Jennette Selig

He loves him and he doesn’t love him;
his body revels in the passion,
sliding on warmth, desire weeping in vapors of breath.
Sweat dreams out of pores and paints ripples, caves
into pools where the hollows grow and linger,
wandering over outcroppings of knees and collarbones,
where richness puddles and steeps a sultry brew. Temperatures rise.
Hands stick to want without fear of overindulgence,
eyes locked on truth and body and the motion of hairtremors riding thighs,
mouths wrapped around identity, teeth clenching in the truth.
He loves him unprovoked, he loves him unnanounced,
but if their love is unimagined and untold - he doesn’t love him.
Who bears witness? There is a certain sadness in this.

Why not an outspoken love - allowed as children
to be innocent and wise with stolen kisses - in sunlight even
uncovered and unafraid? Belief, recognition
that this love could be natural
as that which formed your cells
and this sex answers calls as strong
as your own hunger cries.

He loves him, despite you, he loves him
and there is fear here to be overcome
and guilt to be reminded of its artificial genesis
even as he falls into the happiest, blackest space. There is
a certain sadness in this. And a sweetness you may
never touch.
How much stronger is forbidden love.
How much more alive: desire unquit.

Unfinished:
Kansas City
Jennette Selig
just one block from Troost is the park
and historic buildings
and smaller cars with better drivers
but on Troost I am nervous despite myself
and try to smile (more than I would at white pedestrians)
at the black men and women catching the bus
and I do not make fun of the soul food restaurants
to prove I am not racist.

HOMEWORK

R. N. TABER

Photos by the bed,
posters on the wall,
press cuttings on a chair
likely to hit the floor
if someone opens
the door;
So the door stays shut,
keeping strangers out
while anxious faces debate
human rights, pollution,
nature conservation,
our salvation...
education, discrimination,
traffic congestion, political
correctness (on the face
of it), safer sex, drugs,
always having to
be alert;
Clamour of voices kicking
the soul, like a football
across the room;
Conscience, scoring
an own goal - now
and then;
Questions, answers, lies,
half lies, home truths
like moths to a light;
Please, someone, open
the door - and
let us out

The Self Absorbed

Jonathan Sismesmal

A freshly sheared ewe produced
Thread from the spindle;

Strung through toe and fingernails
One hand is drawn closed;

Crumpled toes like in ballet shoes
Pull beak shaped hand towards foot.

One hand and foot point at sweet mouth
And yarn asks to rest there.

The eyes open;
The nose breathes;
The lips crack;
The string is swallowed.

The content smile reveals
The clean, white, and warm teeth:
The only things we see—
That will look the same

A thousand years after death.
Twine pulls arms and legs in mouth;
Teeth break down muscle and bone:
Digesting itself.

The shoulders and neck,
The spine, ribs, and heart
Are each enveloped—
Leaving the brain intact.

Who will make a hole in their head
And pull the line out?

CONFISCATED INTEGRITY

Cheryl Townsend

I chase life
with confiscated integrity
relinquish reason
(everything is status quo)
I have so many regrets
for sins hardly worth the bother
It’s more a case of why
than what
and it’s easy enough
to understand
the innuendo and
sidestepping
The white lies
that glow in the dark
as I try to sleep
unable

Almost Saved

Mike O’Reilly

I picked up the phone
and it was my youth group
pastor from church
wanting to take me out
for a Coke sometime and I
said sure that would be
alright, knowing all along
that he just wanted to
address the daunting question
of my spiritual status,
which was unclear, even to
me, at the time.
I hung up with a
tremendously queasy
feeling in my stomach and
started crying.
The issue would be
hammered out for me
over an ice cold Coke, the
American cure-all.
And when they shoved Jesus
down my throat I chewed
on Him for many years
before I spit him out like
a piece of cheap gum that
had lost it’s flavor.

My God VS Your God

Carla E. Anderton

Maybe your God forgives you
Now that you’ve made your confession
So let the priest anoint you
And forget all your indiscretions
Go forth and sin no more
Maybe, my god, if I had one
Could absolve me of my sins
Real, imaginary and disputed
ButÉI lost my faith in any
Tangible, reliable god years ago

Father, Madonna & Child
Carla E. Anderton

I stole a few minutes this morning
I’m not sure whom or what I stole them from
Or who is keeping track or do I even care?
And I was thinkingÉAbout the big As
Trying to figure out what they were, andÉ
Most importantlyÉWhere I could find it?
Apathetic agony alcoholic absentee
And I could apply, precisely, all of them to my father
That alcoholic, apathetic man that has
Caused me various agonies over the yearsÉand
Suddenly it came to me crystal clear
The man keeping track of the aforementioned was the aforementioned
Well, enough about my fatherÉI have not seen him in a year anyway
In fact, they only time he has bothered to call
Was when my first cousin won his appeal
Not guilty by reason of sheer lunacy and insanity
He was charged with stabbing his mother multiple times
Back in 1997, when my son’s flesh still mingled with mine
I never knew how to feelÉNo one ever told me
How can you feel, when a son resides within you, and
Eight hours away a woman bled to death
From wounds inflicted by her own son
When your flesh and blood is a murderer and you know it
No matter what insanity they try to pin it on
You are still kin to a killerÉbut
Then again aren’t we allÉreallyÉif
You take the time to examine itÉwell
We are all related to various types of evil -
I am fascinated by history, always have been
Especially the really gory, bloody parts
I once looked up medieval torture on the Net
You can find anything there, you know
I once typed in “cows fucking chickens”
And I found over a thousand entries
Anyway, back to my original story
I was looking up medieval torture instruments
Not out of any desire to use them on anyone
But just in an attempt to understandÉhowÉwhy
Any human being could inflict that on another
I never did find any answersÉI suppose
That hopefully I never willÉIncidentallyÉ
My cousin wrote me lengthy letters from prison
I never respondedÉWhat could I say?
“Dear cousin, I write you this missive
As my own son sleeps peacefully in the next room?”
I would omit entirely my qualms
That somehow all of our blood had mingledÉand
That there seems to be something tainted
Within my genetic codeÉI can only hope
That my fascination with violence isn’t fueled
By some inexplicable hereditary trait
Or by years of neglect by apatheticÉ
Absentee alcoholic fatherÉI fear
For my own sonÉHis father is lost to him
Possibly for reasons I accept blame forÉ
I couldn’t face stealing minutes away
For the entirety of my life, or my son’s father’s
I couldn’t bear to steal any more time
From the two of us it really belongs to

Ideal Situation
Lina ramona Vitkauskas

at bankruptcy court they said,
“speak into the microphone clearly,”
thin Gong Show contraption-
scent of lawyers’ musky lips
caressing the chrome rim cap-
housed the wire mesh
of sound particles, my voice
captured like a pearl at the end

at the end of the outlet,
into the wall
and where, between
the fiberglass insulation,
fusing with cobwebs
and molded, crumbling drywall,
would my voice go then?
these bytes of my larynx.

long, acrylic fingernails laced
with rhinestones at the tips.
burgundy smeared lips curled
into a cringe when I arrive
at the courthouse.

“where have you lived?”

blue-jean clad legs
in the other room
leaning over to her husband’s
tattered nubs.
reel-to-reel Watergate,
inquisitor to conspirator,
suddenly surrounded-
the same wood-paneling
and dank smell of hip huggers
on a summer afternoon, the part
in his hair momentous with intent-

the night I was born.

“do you have any assets?”

I remember, I said, glaze over my purple-blues,
I said, examining the girl my feet
popping bubble-wrap with clear determination
to deflate every inflated morsel of air. I said,

I know your kind.

“I have plenty.”

Being moored
Rochelle Mass
I thought a totem pole was God when I was young, I dared come closer
rarely touched, but when I did, I remember rough parts
and feeling scared. Size mattered then: faces towered over me
scowling, laddered one on the other, more at the top, then
the bottom. Wings in the center spread out farther
than I could reach. The colors weren’t from my childhood rainbow.

Reds were rusted and heavy, greens tough
as old grass, and blacks scratched blacker by weather.
I wanted to get to the message behind the eyes, release secrets.
My father once asked me: why do you nod at them?
He couldn’t understand, even though he could draw
the best hawk I’d ever seen, but he couldn’t see the moon

above the eyes, the canoe on the shoulder, the thunderbird beaks
in the middle. He’d tell me how they were carved, what tools used.
I wanted to know the chants the elders hummed
while they worked, watch the chief pull back the cedar bark
strip the trunks smooth. Wanted to see the rabbit’s fur on his jacket
for good luck and the abalone shells on his headband flash

back to the sun. My father told me how strong a carver had to be
and honor received for his work. But I heard vowel sounds of tribal dances
watched spinning capes. I raised my face to their God
as they tossed feathers of down on the earth to bless the place.
My father talked about craft, I wanted to spiral down
into the belly of the moon, settle into the bow of the canoe

hold tight to the thunderbird’s wing, soar with the abalone shells
to where the Gods really are. In winter my feet would stand in leaves.
The totemed faces stared back, mouths strained for spring and
I wore gloves. On spring days the sun opened what winter had split.
The last time I was there I didn’t take my father along, didn’t
want his analogies to the ancient rites of other peoples

his technical suggestions. Thunder clapped behind me
startled the pigeons and left me shaking.
My favorite totem at Kitsilano Beach, by the shore, stood firm
with peeled patches and splaying cracks.
No varnish smoothed the splinters.
The thunder rumbles down and I am moored again.

Waiting is brutal

Rochelle Mass

Sirens seared the air.
Soldiers made no announcements, just darted nervously -
and the line of cars behind us stiffened.
The officer near us removed his cap, wiped his face
didn’t look our way.
Traffic lights continued green to red to green - a monotonous roll
I tried to count, tallying my fear, but couldn’t turn it
into meditation.

Trapped in our cars, we gaped at soldiers swiveling guns.
Tension stretched round us. We repeated empty phrases
not remembering when we arrived, how long we’d been there.
Time hung, crumbled into another hour. Vague and confused
we craved diversion, dazzled by the panic of what might happen.
Night fastened a shadow to every form.

4 women

Rochelle Mass

4 women
spread avocado
mixed with
horseradish and
tabasco
over
chunks of bread with
sesame seeds round the edge.
One has a husband
with a cane,
colostomy and
a knee replacement,
who sleeps most of the day
and little of the night.
One had a husband
who left her as
the children left for
marriage
college
India.
One threw out her
husband. She’s got
an Arab now
who won’t leave his wife
but brings chickens
and apples from
the Galilee,
love
in the mornings.
One writes letters
to a man
she doesn’t know,
waits for proof that
she was heard.

4 women
spread avocado
mixed with
horseradish
and tabasco
over
chunks of bread with
sesame seeds
round the edge.

The honesty of change

Rochelle Mass

White sheets in the fog changed into sails,
ringed the branches of the lemon tree that morning.
As golden fingers stretch from the east
a woman counts loaves of bread, places tomatoes
near the window. The fog, lifted by the wind into a storm,
shoulders the mountain.

The land is hard, cracks like words. The woman
hears blossoms turn thin; she bows to the honesty
of the change, breaks a loaf, places
two parts on the table.
A kiss of sustenance, this is, she whispers.
I have nothing else to tell you.

Man or Beast

Ronnie Lamkin

Walking down an ancient path
I heard a rustle in the brush
I thought that it must be someone
For hunters flock this place

Then appeared in front of me a wild boar
Dark brown skin with bristly hair
Mucus running out its snout
Ivory tucks protruding from his mouth

He stood there staring at me
His brown eyes pierced my being
Like a demon trying to take possession
Searching for something in my soul

The moment seemed an eternity
Were we friends or foes from long ago
This I will never know
Just that I knew him and he knew me

I confess my first thoughts were of trophies
Yet this animal seemed more my equal
Than a beast to hunt
More a man than most my friends

Eyes like mirrors were his
Causing me to reflect on myself
What was I doing here
If not to meet this beast

Friend or demon, I know not which
This poem is for you
That some day we meet again
So you may talk to me

In the distance was the sound of hounds
Hunters were closing in
I told my friend to run and hidw
I would protect him

The hunters I went to meet
And told a tale of a stag
That ran in the opposite direction
Sending them away from my friend

We parted that Autumn day
And have not seen since
Yet I know he is there, in the brush
Waiting to talk with me, of men and beasts.

Getting Even

William Chapin

She was his Baby Doll, his one and only Baby Doll, but he treated her like a rag, like the dirty dishrag he used to wipe the counter after he’d closed up the bar for the night.
Baby Doll — that was her stage name, her real name was Lu-Ann, but he always called he Baby Doll or just Babe — had this compulsive little habit, this tic, this ritual of sucking her right thumb when she was in repose,because she didn’t read, not even a newspaper; hardly could read; didn’t watch television; didn’t go to the movies; didn’t cook; didn’t do much of anything except strip, suck her thumb, and lie down with her lover, who was names Sam, and who was brawny as a bull.
It was odd, but few things, indeed nothing, could simultaneously arouse him and enrage him the way the thumb-sucking did.When she did that, when the pink, pudgy thumb got all wet and slippery, it was not unusual for him to take her, quickly and brutally, and then, before he left the bed, to hit her upside the head with the back of his right hand as a kind of post-coital signing-off.
“Why do you do that, Hon?” she asked him early on, wincing in pain, ducking, sheltering her head in her hands. “Why do you hurt me, Hon?”
“Because I like to,” he said. It was an honest answer that, as far as he was concerned, needed no explanation.
Once, a good friend of hers, a stunning hooker who worked in the French section of town even though she was a Jamaican by birth and spoke virtually no French, beyond the word zig-zig, asked Baby Doll why she stated with him. Baby Doll said she didn’t have anywhere else to go. The hooker, who lives alone, had never let a client stay overnight, and was never broke, couldn’t quite believe this, but she let it go, let it go. What was the use? The hooker, well-versed in the ways of the world, thought it not impossible that Baby Doll had this quirky need to be punished for being a stripper. How can you be certain about these things?
**********
Baby Doll and Sam, they worked in the same place, a dingy joint called the Ideal Gardens at the lower end of Decarie Boulevarde. Sam tended bar, served Labatt’s Ale and Seagram’s whiskey to men still in their work clothes, Baby Doll stripped down to a sequined G-string and twirled her generous ass and squatted near the edge of the stage so that the men, holding aloft their bottles of Labatt’s, could stuff dollar bills into what was left of her costume. They were a rude crude bunch, mostly French, and to show their appreciation of Baby Doll’s dubious artistry, they shouted things like “Sacre milles cochons” and “Maudit enfante chienness” and “Donnes mois le zig-zig.”
The music was so loud it hurt your ears, and it came from the band of Bill Shorter, a black pianist who had been hustling his marginal talents for years in the sleazier haunts of nighttime Montreal. When Baby Doll was removing her clothes, pumping and grinding, away, Bill Shorter’s drummer pounded his bass drum so hard you could feel it in the soles of your feet.
For both Baby Doll and Sam, it was a living, but not much more than that. They worked all night, went home to their scrawny flat in Outrement, slept, made their own brand of violent, shallow love, ate food from cans, slept some more, took showers, and went back to work.
It was a living.
**********
At the end of one night, close to 3 a.m., April 8, 1995, Sam said to Baby Doll:
“Hey, Babe, Let’s you and me go up to the mountain this morning.”
“OK by me, Hon,” said Baby Doll.
Sam liked to drive up to the top of Mount Royal, the landmark below which Montreal stretched out in every direction like the spokes of a wheel. He didn’t go up there to look at the stars. He went up there to watch the lights blink out, a dozen here, a single one over there, a brace of them way off in the distance, perhaps in St. Lambert across the river. It was like watching the entire world die out, in miniature. Sam liked that. He wasn’t sure why.
At 3:30, they left the Royal Gardens, got into the Ford pickup, and drove up to the summit of Mount Royal. They parked in a sort of plaza and walked over to a low stone parapet, on the far side of which was a cliff. The cliff was steep, in fact perpendicular, and at its foot was a rock pile. To the left, perhaps 75 yards away, they could make out the dim outline of the city’s municipal ski jump.
They stood there a few minutes, saying nothing. Baby Doll was tired. She began to wonder if Sam would hit her when he got home. If he would do it before, or after. She thought about a disgusting customer who that night, when she was crouched and vulnerable at the edge of the stage, had run his filthy fingers up the inside of her leg. She thought about men. The man next to her, Sam, said:
“Here’s what we do, Babe. I’m gonna stand up on this wall, and I want you to get piggyback on me and tell me what you can see from way up there. OK?”
“OK,” said Baby Doll. Sam hoisted himself up on top of the parapet, and took a position near the outer edge, legs apart. He bent over at the waist, six inches or so, and dropped his arms around his knees, ready to sling his very own Baby Doll up onto his shoulders.
But Baby Doll decided, on the instant, that she didn’t want to be slung onto Sam’s rotten, stinking shoulders. Instead, she put her clenched right fist into the small of his back, just above his rotten, stinking bottom, and gave him a firm push.
Sam toppled right over and, with a frantic flailing of arms and legs, disappeared. It was a free fall. He screamed all the way down the length of the cliff, a high piercing scream, surprisingly high for such a big man, and he struck the rock pile. Then he was very quiet.
Baby Doll listened carefully for a moment or two. Nothing. She thought, that’s one of the most satisfying sounds I have ever heard in my life. That scream. Then she also thought, even more satisfying was the sound of silence that followed it.

from Scars

Cindy Sostchen

II. Scars From a Biopsy of the Breast

“War wound”, the chesty technician calls it,
the site where the surgeons
cut cut cut
checked for cancer and came up empty
“Want one for Christmas?”, I hiss at her, unamused,
“Red is a popular color”, she coos through hot lips and the steel eye of
the
machine
I feel small and imperfect under her kiss

Ward Stories

Cindy Sostchen

I wasn’t brought in kicking and screaming
nor strapped to a gurney or shackled to a cop
there was nothing illegal stashed in any orifice
when some cold dyke frisked me
at the barbed-wire gate
I defied the laws of triage -
no drugs were found in my urine or my veins
I didn’t jesus-ramble or tell them I was
Napoleon or Courtney Love

in the first hour I was checked for life-threatening illness or
communicable diseases, undressed, weighed,
probed and fed,
assigned a number

the doctors gave me mortar-and-pestle pills and held their
collective breath
were they waiting for me to twitch, blow a fuse,
wail at the window
or dance the hora for them?
a hallucination would have been applauded
but I remained colorless and dormant as a doormat

they recorded all my sighs and every sneeze was sacred
when they learned I was a poet they insisted I write like a
latter-day Sexton, then stole my poems
and combed them for Freudian slips,
for some manic message in Morse Code
(defiant and clever, I wrote well-balanced poems for their consumption
and autographed them with an inverted smile)

I ate just enough to avoid an IV
and too little to be listed compulsive

I was too healthy for the Quiet Room
and too sick for the sidewalk
(the closet was the perfect venue, I curled up against a broomstick
like a cat that is going to die)

the young boys liked me because I was blonde and blase’
I was a ragdoll in their arms
to myself I was amorphous, to them I had the shape of a siren
The Prima Donna of Prozac, the Erotic Neurotic,
they tried to mount me in the dayroom,
so I joined their schizophrenic orgy
and they chanted at my feet

at night I made a shield with the sheets, bunched up in a blanket,
large men, strong as coffee, shined a flashlight in my face by the hour,
they didn’t care if I wet the bed, picked at my scabs, bloodied my lips,
or made love to myself
only that I was still there, breathing, not plotting my escape

I never saw angels at midnight

I slept for months like a groundhog without a shadow
preferring the ridiculous grey of institution walls
to the ominous eye of daylight

a season tossed and turned while they waited for me to crash through the
prism,
to grow weak from the silence
and that’s what I did ...

I tell this story to document the holy war I waged

I confess to anyone who will listen

but, especially, for those who recognize my face
in their mirror

for them I tell my ward stories

* previously in New York City Voices

THE OPEN WINDOW

Erik Wilson

Manny shaved his head when he found out his wife had been cheating on him and they decided to split up. He said it was something that men in his culture did when their wives had done them wrong, but I’d known plenty of other Mexicans, and I’d never heard that one before. Still, he said it was a way of announcing to the world that he’d been treated unfairly. After being used to seeing him with his dark hair combed straight back and hanging below his ears, it was quite a change all right. You could see that his head was a little bit crooked on one side, smashed-in, sort of, and his skull came to a kind of a point at the top. I don’t know how that announced anything to the world, exactly, but I took his word for it and didn’t question him when he said it.
Right after he’d found out, and after they made the decision to break up, he’d just gone in the bathroom and done it with a pair of scissors and a disposable razor. Then he’d come straight over to our house to cry and tell me and Alison all about it. From his garage refrigerator he brought over a twelve-pack of Coors, of which he drank eleven himself, and, to be fair, he didn’t really start crying until the eighth or ninth one.
Gloria, he kept saying, and goddamnit, and that little bastard Carl, and why. He just kept repeating those words. After listening to him for about two or three cans of Coors, Alison got up and spent the rest of his visit in the kitchen, puttering around, cleaning up, and eventually getting dinner started. She and Gloria were friends, and I wondered if maybe she hadn’t known that Gloria was cheating on Manny before he did.
For almost two years Manny had been working the swing shift down at the Freightliner plant, working on the assembly line where they built the big eighteen-wheelers that haul food and goods all over the country. He liked swing shift because it meant he could sleep late, and he made more money because of the shift differential. But apparently Gloria didn’t like him being at work when she wanted to go to bed; didn’t like him coming home at two or three in the morning, still wired and wide awake from work after she’d been ready for bed at ten or eleven. She started flirting with Carl, who lived in the house two doors down from us, and three doors down from Manny and Gloria. He had his own troubles with his wife — they were always arguing, they never got along, in all the time we knew them — and he liked Gloria a lot. Pretty soon she started leaving the bedroom window open in the early evening, and Carl would slip out of his house, sneak around to Manny and Gloria’s back yard and hop in the window, and they would comfort each other for a few hours every night they could get away with it.
Manny said he had been wondering why the bedroom window was always open when he got home, even on cold nights. It was that little bastard Carl all along, he said. I ought to fix his lunch good, he said, opening another can of Coors.
About the time Manny started crying, Alison began banging the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen, and I knew she was ready for him to go somewhere else. I didn’t know where he could go at that point, but I also knew Alison didn’t care, just as long as he took his crying in his beer act some place other than our living room. I tried to urge him along, to get him to start thinking in those terms. What are you going to do now, I asked him. Where are you going to stay?
He just blubbered I don’t know, I don’t know, and then started in again on why and goddamnit Gloria and that little bastard Carl. I began to think maybe he should go over to Carl’s house and drink beer and cry; I know that would have made Alison feel better. I thought maybe he should hook up with Carl’s nasty wife, let Carl and Gloria take off together and then everyone would be happy. Especially Alison.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure why he had chosen us to be the first people he told. We were friends the way neighbors are friends — they would come over sometimes on the weekends, and we’d watch football or barbecue or something, but it wasn’t like we were really close. Alison and Gloria were a lot closer than Manny and I ever were. All I could think about while he blubbed and snurfled and moaned was how shiny his head was, how I’d never noticed the funny shape of it on the one side when he had it covered with hair. I mean, I felt bad enough for him and his situation, but I felt worse knowing that Alison would be pissed at me if he was still there when dinner was ready.
When he had drunk the last can of Coors and crushed it in his hand — I had long since finished nursing the one I took out of the twelve-pack — and he asked if we had any beer anywhere, I told him it was time for him to go. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here, I said, trying to lighten up the mood a little bit. That just set him off again, and he cried some more about Gloria goddamnit, goddamnit Gloria. How he’d never have a home again, because of her and that little bastard Carl.
I had to admit that I felt some sympathy for him. If the same thing had happened to me, I don’t know what I would have done. Probably not shave my head and go over to his house and cry in my beer all afternoon, but something. Having sympathy for Manny and wanting him to stay there all night crying were two different things, though, and once again I suggested that it was probably time for him to find someplace else to be miserable. Maybe he could work things out with Gloria, I suggested, but he just shook his shiny bald head and said no, no, no, it’s over, it’s all over. I just nodded and let him talk.
It took another twenty minutes of listening to him rant and sob, but I was finally able to coax him out into the night. I watched him stumble off into the darkness towards his house next door, relieved that Alison and I could have dinner in peace. Maybe he and Gloria could patch things up, despite what he had said. People say things in the heat of the moment, without thinking about them, that they don’t necessarily mean. Or maybe splitting up was the best thing for them. Who knows?
After I closed the front door, I went into the kitchen and looked at Alison, her back to me, pouring water into a pot on the stove. I thought about saying something, but instead I just walked down the hall to our bedroom to see if the window there was shut.

OVER THE EDGE

Erik Wilson

There hasn’t been a day in my life that I can remember that I didn’t think about suicide at least once. There have been many days when I contemplated it for hours, thought about swallowing pills or swallowing the barrel of a gun or swallowing my fear of heights and jumping off a roof or a bridge. There have been other days when it was just a brief, passing image in my brain, a last resort, a knowledge that, whatever happens, I can choose to end it all in a snap at any time if need be. It can come and go in a matter of seconds, but it’s constantly there, somewhere.
The reasons why I would consider doing myself in are myriad, and mostly banal. I’m tired, I’m stressed out, I’m frustrated. I’m embarrassed. I’m bored. It’s the easy way out, the light switch of life and death. Up, down. Easy. JustÉ there. Even when I’m relatively happy, or just unconcerned about any of the daily unpleasantries of life, the thoughts of killing myself creep into my consciousness. I don’t consider it a warning signal, or a sign of mental illness or anything, it’s just the way I’m made up.
I’ve discovered, though, that just thinking about it is the easy part. It takes commitment to commit suicide — a fact that should be obvious just by the phrase — and that’s one thing that’s never been a strong point for me. How apathetic is that? I’ve given up on life so much that I can’t go to the trouble of killing myself, because it would require too much effort.
Not only that, but I’ve lost the ability to cry. I used to puddle up at anything — a sappy movie, a particularly poignant piece of music, even certain television commercials used to get me all weepy and sniffling, but that’s gone now. I haven’t been able to cry ever since the incident at the Grand Canyon a few months back.
Rita and I had a couple weeks off, and we drove out to Taos to see some friends. We spent the better part of a week with them, then took a leisurely drive home, by way of the Grand Canyon. I’d never seen it before, so we planned on spending a few days there. By the time we got there, though, after spending too many consecutive days at close quarters, Rita and I were sniping at each other, both just wishing the vacation was over and that we were back home, where we could ignore one another in peace. Sometimes that happened when we traveled. We knew how to push each others’ buttons, and with no one else around through miles and miles of desert driving, we pushed. And pushed. And pushed.
She didn’t like the music I chose. She didn’t like how fast I was driving. I didn’t like her riding the clutch when she drove, or telling me how to drive or where to stop when I was at the wheel. It was all petty stuff, the kind of meaningless bickering that long-time couples engage in, but it had really gotten on my nerves by the time we got to that big hole in the desert floor. In addition to my daily suicidal thoughts, images of murder were creeping into my head on a regular basis.
It was late in the evening when we got to the Grand Canyon. We found a motel with rooms that were too small and too expensive, and started unloading our bags into one before we discovered that the TV in the room wasn’t working. It took us another hour to get into another room with a functioning television, and by then, I was spent, exhausted and unhappy. I didn’t say two words to Rita the rest of the night, and in the morning, we got up early, ate breakfast in silence, then drove out to the rim of the Grand Canyon with a dark cloud hovering over both of us. Even in my black mood, I had to admit that it was pretty impressive. Carved by the Colorado River over millions of years, the canyon stretched down and away from me in two directions to what looked like infinity. Joshua trees, pinyon and bristlecone pines, yuccas and creosote and other desert foliage dotted the rim and various outcroppings to the floor of the canyon, where the river wound along the bottom, a dark, narrow ribbon of what looked like perfectly still water. I was taken with how red the canyon was, a deep rust almost reaching the color of blood in the morning light.
Rita had the camera out immediately, and began snapping pictures of everything in sight. There were a few other tourists scattered about the area, oohing and aahing and taking pictures of their own. I figured Rita was good for three, maybe four rolls of film, at least.
I found a trail that meandered along the edge of the canyon, away from Rita and most of the tourists there, and I followed it just for the sake of walking. It felt good to stretch my legs after the last couple days spent in the car, and I walked for a while without paying much attention to anything but the magnificence of the scenery all around me.
There were iron guard rails set up at various points along the path, rails that skirted the very edge of the the canyon rim. On one side of them was the relatively solid ground of the desert, on the other side was a whole lot of air down to the bottom. I stopped at a few of those rails and leaned over them, thinking about how long a person would be in the air before he or she finally hit ground. I threw a few rocks over the edge and marveled at how long they sailed before they dropped out of sight without touching anything.
I noticed, too, that there were plenty of spots without guard rails, places just off the path I walked where the ground simply ended, dropped off to sheer nothingness for miles. A small outcropping just below the rim caught my eye, and I stepped down some rocks to stand there for a while. It perched outward from the canyon wall, about four feet below the rim and the trail, and beyond it was nothing but clear desert air. I imagined that many people had stood there before, gazing out at the canyon, taking pictures or getting their pictures taken with the dangerous, wide open space behind them.
There is a quality to the sky, to the air there that you will find nowhere else. The sky is somehow bigger, bluer. The air surrounds you, envelops you in its wide-open oppressiveness, the pressure making you feel like you’re swimming. It’s got a sound all its own, a subliminal drone like the hum of unseen insects or far-off machinery, a sound that echoes in your brain and reminds you of the blood pumping through your body and in your head and probably ultimately is just that, the sound of your own blood coursing through the organ of your consciousness, measured against the unlimited silence all around you.
I have no idea how long I was standing there. It’s hard to measure time when you’re looking off into eternity. It must have been a while, though, because the sun was high in the sky when I heard Rita say “Hey!”
“Turn around,” she commanded, her camera at the ready. She snapped a picture of me standing on my perch in the sky, then walked down to join me. There was room for the two of us to stand side by side, and not much more. “Impressive, isn’t it?” she said, taking more pictures of the canyon all around us. I agreed, but at that moment, I wasn’t thinking about the grandeur of the scenery. I was thinking about how easy it would be to bump Rita, to push her, to just give her an elbow or a quick one-handed shove from behind and watch her tumble and tumble through the air. I looked back at the trail and didn’t see anyone around. We were partially hidden from anyone on the trail who might see us, anyway. It would be a simple matter, I thought, and I could easily get away with it. She slipped, I could say. She stumbled and I couldn’t catch her in time. I told her to be careful taking pictures down there, but she wasn’t paying attention, and she must’ve lost her footing, and...
Or, maybe I wouldn’t have to explain at all. I could jump myself, push her off and follow her down in a few seconds. I wondered how long I would sail, soar along the side of the canyon wall, before I hit bottom. Would I stay conscious for the entire fall?
Maybe I’d just get back in the car, drive home alone and never say a word to anyone until the police showed up at my door. Any number of scenarios presented themselves to me in that moment, and I could see advantages in each one. Just a two-handed push, hard, at Rita’s shoulder blades, and it would be all over in seconds. Simple. Quick. Easy. Push.

* * *

I haven’t been able to cry since that day. I’ve tried, too. I’ve put on that John Prine song that always gets to me, the one about the old people, and nothing. Watched movies that brought me to tears more than once, and stayed dry-eyed the whole time. Nothing. Nothing makes me cry anymore.
I haven’t said anything to Rita about not being able to cry, and I doubt that she’s noticed. Of course, I’ve never told her that I think about suicide every day, either. There are a lot of things I don’t tell Rita.

THE SISTERS

Betty Ann Damms

Ellen anxiously anticipated her sister’s visit. Although they had spoken on the phone, they had not seen each other for several years. So, she was totally unprepared for the elegant stranger who came to call, and she was in awe of her sibling’s youthful appearance. Ellen experienced a stab of jealousy, as well as an awareness of how dowdy she looked in the oversized tunic and sweat pants with which she attempted to hide her ever expanding figure. In contrast, her willowy sister sat cross legged in a bright blue miniskirt. Any blemishes on her shapely legs were concealed by the unnatural whiteness of her hose. Perched like a canary on one of the two, stiff-backed wooden chairs in the tiny kitchenette in Ellen’s small but cozy one-bedroom apartment, Marguerite’s finely manicured left hand held an ebony cigarette holder. “I never light it, Honey. It’s only for show,” Marguerite soothingly consoled her sister, whose eyes nervously darted from her face to the cigarette holder that hovered in the air.
Touching the beginnings of a wattle on her throat, Ellen curiously looked for any signs of aging on her sister’s face. Tiny crow’s-feet at the corners of Marguerite’s eyes were the only thing that hinted at her coming half century. Only one year separated them, but the distinct, downtrodden feeling of lost youth was accelerated when Ellen compared herself to her older sister. Although not beautiful, Marguerite’s sculpted facial features were classically handsome. Her skin, bearing only foundation and blush, was alabaster smooth.
Acutely aware that the chasm that yawned between them was more than mere appearance, Ellen felt a twinge of regret over her life course. After winning her hard earned teaching certificate decades ago, she was still teaching first grade in the same school she and her sister had attended. And she had never married. Conversely, her glamorous sister and her successful husband lived a wonderful life of the nouveau riche. Ellen had the sudden and uncomfortable feeling that her career and independent life was only a stagnant pool of memories.
With a hand that trembled ever so slightly, Marguerite took a sip of tea, leaving a smudge of red on the edge of the cup. She pressed her lips together and hoarsely drawled, “oh thank you, Honey. I really needed that after the drive up here. The traffic from the city was horrendous!”
Ellen smiled timidly and said, “I can’t believe you’re finally here! I’m just so happy to see you.” She took a swallow of tea and asked, “how is Harold?”
Marguerite carelessly indicated the glistening white Mercedes sitting next to Ellen’s faded Buick Century. The tiny wiper blades that rested on the headlights looked like false eyelashes; and like its owner, the car exuded graceful refinement. “As you can see, he’s doing well. Making lots of money selling stocks and bonds for his clients,” Marguerite replied, boredom scrawled all over her face.
Despite knowing it would leave her dissatisfied with her own late model car, Ellen said eagerly, “you’ll have to take me for a ride.”
Marguerite nodded and, with a nostalgic smile, said, “do you remember when Johnny bought his car ‘way back in the ‘dark ages’, and we couldn’t wait to be invited for a ride?”
The teen-age sisters had been gaga over their good-looking neighbor, who at twenty, had seemed so mature and debonair. Freedom exonerated had been theirs when they had ridden in his brand new, red convertible Mustang in the long ago year of 1969. Ellen had shown her thanks by giving him a peck on the cheek and delivering a batch of home made chocolate chip cookies a few days later. When she learned that her sister had expressed her gratitude in the back seat of Johnny’s new car, she had been appalled and repulsed.
But romance had blossomed between the two young people. That is, until Harold Atwater the Third, if you please, had appeared on the scene. At her clerk’s job at the Granite Hotel, the fanciest resort for miles around, Marguerite had rounded a corner and bumped into one of the guests. Papers had flown everywhere. Both had furiously apologized as they bent to pick them up. As he had handed her a pile of letters, the handsome, mature man had gently laid his hand on hers. With smiling, crystal clear, blue eyes, he had said in a deep, throaty tone, “please accept my invitation to dine with me to make up for this confusion.” So the next evening, Marguerite had dined at her employer’s table and played the demure sophisticate. Charmed and amazed that such a delightfully elegant flower had been cultivated in “the country”, Harold had proposed before returning to the city and his retinue of clients. Swept off her feet by the promise of wealth and glitz, Marguerite had calmly and coolly dumped Johnny and plunged into plans for a sumptuous wedding, the like of which the little Catskill Mountain village of Kerhonkson had never seen. Without so much as a backward glance, she had deserted her family and friends, and whole-heartedly embraced the hustle and bustle of New York’s busy life.
After mooning about for two weeks, Johnny had asked the daughter of the police chief for a date, and they were happily married to this day.
“How is dahling Johnny and his dahling family?” Marguerite inquired, examining a fingernail as if disinterested.
“They’re fine,” Ellen said. “His daughter just presented him with his second grandchild.”
“My my, the boy has been busy, hasn’t he?” Marguerite sighed, flicking a piece of lint from the front of her silk blouse. “Things would have been different if Harold hadn’t come onto the scene, wouldn’t they?” Marguerite said and gazed out the window, a far-off look in her eyes. Ellen frowned.
Clenching her unlit cigarette holder between her teeth, Marguerite leaned back on the unforgiving chair and said, “know what I could go for right now?”
Ellen leaned forward anxiously, wondering if the Cornish hens waiting in the refrigerator would be fancy enough for her highfalutin sister. “What?” she said breathlessly.
“A good hump,” Marguerite sighed, stretching her lithe body like a cat. “Johnny was good, I’ll give him that.”
“What?!”
Marguerite examined her sister’s finely lined face and austerely pulled back, graying hair through half closed eyes. She touched her tongue to her lips and said, “you know. A hump. A man.”
“What?!”
“Harold and I haven’t slept together in over ten years,” Marguerite said. “Separate rooms, you know, Honey.”
“What?!”
“Tsk tsk! Watt! Watt! Watt! Are you a light bulb?” Marguerite teased good-naturedly, then stared at the ceiling, which desperately needed new paint. “Harold’s impotent, you know,” she said.
Ellen’s mouth went slack and dropped open.
“Oh, Honey, don’t look so surprised,” Marguerite said with a laugh. “He’s sixty-three, you know. And after almost thirty years, there’s no Harold Atwater the Fourth to carry on.” She waved her hand and shrugged. “I suppose it would have been nice, but children are such a bother.” Smoothing her auburn tresses, lackluster from constant coloring in an attempt to maintain an aura of youth, Marguerite said matter of factly, “it’s been very trial some keeping my tte-ˆ-ttes from him.”
Ellen swallowed the disgust that swelled up in her throat and picked up the teapot. “More tea?” she asked nervously.
With an imperial wave of her hand, Marguerite said, “Honey, I want to treat you to dinner. Is there someplace nice we can go?” She raised her eyebrows in recognition of their differing moral codes and said, “it’s the least I can do for your hospitality.”

They carefully avoided any further mention of Marguerite’s lack of marital bliss and steered their conversation to reminiscing about the good old days of their youthful ignorance. At the restaurant, they shared a bottle of bubbly Spumante and giggled like two school girls.
Later, as they carefully tucked clean sheets around the sofa bed’s mattress, Marguerite insisted she would sleep there. “I’ll not put you out of your bed, Honey,” she said, then wistfully added, “do you remember when I would have nightmares and you would take me into your bed and hug me until I fell back to sleep?” She took her sister’s rough hands in her primped ones. “I never told you how much I appreciated you. And I want you to know that I love you very, very much and I’m so very, very proud of you.”
“Oh, I love you, too,” Ellen said. “and I’m so glad you came to visit.” They fell into each other’s arms and patted each other affectionately on the back. Ellen felt a rush of fondness for her erratic sibling. Despite her faults, Marguerite was her sister, and nothing could change that. And nothing could take away the camaraderie they had shared as children. “I wish you could stay two nights,” she said as they broke from their embrace.
“It’s been divine, but Honey, I really do have to go back in the morning. You’ll just have to come for a visit. We could go to a play, visit the Guggenheim, go shopping,” Marguerite said expansively, a genuine smile on her face.
“We’ll see,” Ellen said. “By the way, I put a night light in the bathroom for you.”
“Oh you dahling!” Marguerite gushed. “You remembered I don’t like the dark.” She blinked rapidly. “I do love the lights in the city, and I love the noise that drifts up to the penthouse. It’s much too quiet here.”
Ellen glanced at her watch and tried to stifle a yawn. Eleven-thirty! She grinned sleepily and said, “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t generally sit up this late.”
Marguerite kicked off her spike heeled shoes and peeled off her pantyhose. “I’m not going to sleep this early, but you go on to bed,” she said. “I’ll probably watch a little TV, if you don’t mind. I’ll keep it low; you won’t hear a peep.”
They broke into laughter when they simultaneously recited, “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Marguerite threw her sister a kiss and settled on the sofa bed with the television remote in her hand.
After softly closing her bedroom door, Ellen undressed and eyed her image in the full length mirror with dismay. She was one year younger than her sister, but she looked like what she was - a frumpy, old maid school marm. She sighed in resignation and drew on her plain flannel nightgown and nestled under the warm flannel sheets. Listening to the katydids’ songs that wafted through her window, which was open to invite the crisp September night in, she soon drifted off to sleep.

At four A.M., Ellen stiffened in fright as a weight touched her bed, the covers were gently lifted, and a small, bony body snuggled close to her. Ellen sighed in relief and lay very still until Marguerite’s breathing indicated she had wandered back to dreamland.
Sometime tomorrow, Marguerite would leave and return to her husband and deceptive lifestyle. Bright and early the following morning, Ellen would walk into a classroom filled with freshly washed, expectant faces. Although never bearing her own, these would become her children as she lovingly taught and encouraged this new generation that was placed in her competent hands.
Ellen pulled her sleeping sister’s frail body to her ample bosom and sighed with satisfaction. With a contented smile on her face, she soon drifted back to sleep.

WORLD CINEMA

R. N. TABER

Spread on your coat,
hands on hips,
watching clouds
like movie clips;
A coming together
of shadows,
words unfamiliar,
world cinema;
Our fingers touch,
marking a twin
celebration, cautious
anticipation;
Trailers over

The Lash

Shawn Briar McLean

She took me by the hand and demanded the truth. R. needed me to be honest about everything in my past, and wanted information on how I was feeling. She figured I was an animated corpse. She was right. I was just dragging myself along in a state of debauchery; overanalyzing people that brought my bitter moods even further down. Sleeping with anyone that showed interest in my vulnerability. Most turned into relationships that ended up very sour and, needless to add, lonesome. Anything was better than the ulcers, migraines and churning heart. Indulgence in all pleasures destroyed me in the end. Even the hard drinking that had sustained me for years, forced me to fade away. Far away is where I am now.
I felt the need to tell her everything that happened after our falling out, no matter how distasteful it seemed. First, I bought another gin and cranberry to build the liquid courage. It was the last of my cash so I had to tip very poorly. She saw this pitiable action. I knew she was doing quite well while I fiddled about with my empty lifestyle. She handed me her business card. The card burned as the effigy of what I had not become since our last encounter. My pathetic nature reflected off of it and blinded her. She had little idea of what I had been through. She only assumed I had been beaten low. Again, she knew more than I did.
“I hoped that you’d be something by now.” She threw the comment toward me as if in remorse. It was snide.
“Well...” I said “...I’ve lived many more lives than most people at my age.”
Sipping from her drink, R. locked her large green eyes directly at mine, which must have been hazed with scarlet. My unworthy eyes closed. I couldn’t bare the love that I felt for her still. Usually it was lust but nothing that delusive for her. ‘She was always the one!’ I would tell my friends this over and over. When we were together I pressured her for sex. She implied that she was into making love with me. I was too filthy and stuck in fantasy to see that I was also being selfish. Unfortunately we did it a lot. The love was obscured in the routine. It’s hard to do the right thing when you’re young. Every trait that I showed in relationships, including the one with R., was only a dress rehearsal to my new philosophies. Having her stare at me from under the microscope in that bar, ceased all thoughts, excluding the pressure of how I treated her inadequately in the past.
I thought for a moment that all the air and sound had been sucked from the room. I turned the collar on my blue trenchcoat upwards. Scratching my unshaven face, I leaned in close to her. We were already side by side yelling over the music. I needed to express what was on my mind.
“Look...I need to tell you that I’m really s...” I was distracted by her arm rising toward my face. Fingers gently stroked down the side of my brow and onto my lips. It lashed more than getting slapped. I closed my eyes once again.

Crash

Rudy Lopez

editor’s choice award winner

Body-Spirit-Soul
All gathered up as one
I am one now
I was not one once
I was just a Child
The Lord looked down on me
There was a lot to see
Not much looked good on me
So He crushed me in the flesh
Shook the spirit that was left
Took it home
Placed it in a Womb
Felt creation at it’s might
A savored moment out of sight
Then he spewed me out again
Back to crash into myself
Spirit, Soul and Flesh
Wrangled body of a mess
Then he closed his eyes
Left me to myself-Born again

editor’s choice award winner

Angeline Hawkes-Craig

Henry’s Daughters

1554 March, Tower of London, England
It was cold. Biting cold. Elizabeth pulled her wraps closer around her reed thin body, but the plushness of the cape failed to keep out the stout English cold. The barge lurched to the side. Elizabeth put out a hand to steady herself. The cold, crisp air did little to mask the undeniable stench wafting up from the murky waters of the Thames. Iron clanged somewhere up ahead, in front of her, above her. The barge lurched forward and they inched along, creeping to their destination.
“ ‘Ere we are, Princess.” The bargeman said, and then stuttered, “My Lady? Princess?” As if confused about how to address her.
“Quite alright, my good man. I get confused myself these days. My title changes with the wind, does it not?” Elizabeth smiled a dazzling smile, and solicited a chuckle from the embarrassed man.
The bargeman, comforted, smiled back a blackened, toothless grin.
The barge banged lightly against the stonewall, as a hand stretched out to hoist her onto solid ground. Elizabeth placed a velvet shoe onto the cold stone, and was startled when a warder suddenly dropped to his knees and rang out heartily, “God save your Grace!”
“Tis fine, My Gentle Warder. Twas a nice ride on the Thames.” She laughed.
The warder smiled and rose, bowing at the same time. Another man, older, stepped forward. “Your Grace. The Queen, your sister, requested chambers that were, unbeknownst to her, in need of minor repairs. Twill be done tomorrow. Until that time, the only other suitable accommodations available are ones that will require you sharing with another gentlewoman. We have provided separate sleeping arrangements so as not to inflict on your grace, any discomfort.”
Elizabeth sucked in her breath, quite winded after hearing this long drawn out explanation. Such a to do!
“Tis fine, My Lord. I have shared meager arrangements in my life before.” Elizabeth smiled and pushed back a curly lock.
The warder guided her along the cold, drafty corridor, finally stopping before a heavy wood door.
He unlocked it, pushed it, and the massive door creaked back, slamming against the stonewall behind it with an echoing commotion.
The red-haired woman inside, quite rattled, looked up from the book she had been reading moments before.
Elizabeth surveyed the state of the chamber. It was neat and orderly. Two narrow beds were pushed against each side of the chamber and a very narrow window was in the center of the wall between the beds. The woman on the bed had a stack of books on a wood table beside her and a worried look on her face.
There was a fire in the fireplace.
Elizabeth rushed to it, thrusting her hands out, eager to absorb the blast of heat.
“‘Ere you go then, Yer Grace.”
“Thank you, My Lord.” Elizabeth looked over her shoulder and smiled with the same warmth of the fire in front of her.
There was a short silence after the heavy door slammed shut and the lock clacked closed.
Finally, the woman on the bed spoke.
“What are you in here for?” She had a gentile accent and a clear voice.
Elizabeth laughed, still warming herself. She felt chilled to the bone.
“My sister is angry with me.”
The woman on the bed closed her book with a little pouf of air. “What’s that got to do with your being in this godforsaken tomb?”
“Ah!” Elizabeth said, “My sister is the Queen.” Elizabeth turned to the woman and smiled.
“Queen Mary?”
“That would be the one.” Elizabeth dropped her hood and came and sat at the end of the woman’s bed.
She was close enough to see the other woman’s face now. It took her aback for a moment. They looked enough alike to be twins.
“Are you the Princess Elizabeth, then?”
“Yes. What is your name? If I might ask?” Elizabeth said politely all the while thinking, “and why the bloody hell are you wearing my face?” But she didn’t say that out loud of course.
“Lady Marie.” She said it with a French pronunciation.
“Why are you in here?” Elizabeth emphasized the You.
“I’ve been accused of being a cunning woman.”
Elizabeth raised her eyebrow. “And are you?”
Marie laughed.
Elizabeth smiled. “Well, Cunning woman, I am to share your lavish chambers.” She waved her arm about her, “Until my chamber is made ready. Repairs, minor, the Warder said.”
Marie smiled. “I’m not much of a talker. I prefer to read. You’re welcome to a book if it suits you.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I love books!” She looked through the small stack. “German?”
Marie smiled. “There are ones in French, Latin and Spanish as well.”
Elizabeth smiled broadly, “I speak these languages too! We are a kindred spirit.” She selected a book and crossed the floor to her own bed.
Marie observed Elizabeth over the edge of the maroon leather volume she held. Her mother had been telling the truth, after all. Marie had thought Mary was only trying to flatter her, hoping she’d yield a bit of kindness to her by saying she looked like the Lady Elizabeth’s sister. So, she had been truthful all these years.
They should look alike! They shared the same father. Fat old Henry had been her father as well. Though she was the bastard Henry tried to make Elizabeth after he gave Good Queen Anne, her aunt, the Big Whack.
Her mother was Mary Boleyn, Queen Anne’s sister, who had been Henry VIII ‘s former mistress. Only Mary hadn’t been as stupid as her greedy sister. When she found out that Henry had got a child on her, Henry arranged for one of his best men to take the child and raise it as his own. She had been that child. She knew all the sordid details, as Mary visited often in the role of “godmother”. Her parents had told her the truth around age eleven. After that Marie was quite put out that Mary had allowed Henry to shuffle her off on her current parents as if she had been a cast off robe. Even after Mary married well, she did not try to get Marie back. Henry had said it was best to leave things as they were, and Mary acquiesced.
Now, she was sharing a chamber, in the Tower, with her half-sister and cousin, and Elizabeth had no idea Marie even existed. Of all the sorry luck.
Ideas coursed through Marie’s brain. Thoughts unfurled and hurled themselves through her mind. Elizabeth would be queen one day. Marie doubted that Queen Mary’s plans to marry King Philip of Spain would ever come to be. The country was up in arms over the proposed Spanish allianceÉand even if it did come to pass, people were already saying that the Queen was too old to bear an heir. There were even rumors of the Queen being ill.
Marie racked her brain. On the other hand, Elizabeth might not ever make it to being Queen. Mary might kill Elizabeth. Chop. Chop. The same way her aunt, Elizabeth’s mother, Anne, had met her end at the end of a French executioners sword, not too far from where they slept now.
Death or Queen.
What a gamble.
She, herself, would probably end up burned as a heretic, a witch, a protestant, whichever they wanted to make stick. Wouldn’t be a difficult task these days. Not with Good Ole Bloody Mary on the throne.
So the gamble was Marie’s to make.
Death or Queen.
Marie looked over at Elizabeth, who was sleeping soundly. Images to be crossed Marie’s mind and she saw herself with a robe of ermine and a golden orb in her hand.
She picked up her pillow and tiptoed to Elizabeth’s bed. She looked at Elizabeth for a moment in the glow of the firelight. They were doubles. Elizabeth was a few years younger, but not enough age to show a difference. Marie noted Elizabeth’s attire, how her hair was done up. She leaned closer. Close enough to feel Elizabeth’s breath against her own face.
Suddenly, she slammed the pillow down tautly over Elizabeth’s face and sat on her body to hold her down. Elizabeth instantly began to kick and muffled screams and curses came from beneath the feather pillow. Marie pressed down harder and with more force. Elizabeth writhed and flailed her arms wildly until, one by one, Marie was able to pin them under Elizabeth’s body. The kicking continued.
“Die, Sister!” Marie hissed through clenched teeth. “Die, you royal bitch.”
The kicking began to slow. Elizabeth’s body began to relax. Marie held the pillow there for what seemed like ages even after Elizabeth went limp. She was taking no chances that Elizabeth would only have passed out.
After an eternity, she lifted the pillow. Quickly, she slipped out of her clothes until she was naked. Then she stripped Elizabeth and donned her clothes piece by piece. Marie put her former clothes onto Elizabeth’s body and loosened her hair. Then she quickly restyled her own hair to look like Elizabeth’s had. She tugged the rings from Elizabeth’s fingers, and traded necklaces and earrings with her.
Finally, now exhausted, she heaved Elizabeth’s lifeless body over to her side of the room, flopped her up onto the bed, and rolled her to her side, facing the wall, to look as if she was asleep. Marie then slid into Elizabeth’s bed and went to sleep, waiting for the dawn.
The warder clanked the iron key in the lock. “Breakfast, Yer Grace.” He announced before coming in. The door swung open and Marie stepped forward in Elizabeth’s place. She was now Elizabeth.
“Good Mornin’ Yer Grace. Got some nice hot bangers for ye this mornin’.” He put down a large tray of steaming sausages and two bowls of porridge.
“Thank you, My Lord.” Elizabeth smiled and drew a chair up to the small oak table.
“My Lady? Food’s “ere. Better get it while its hot!” The warder said to Marie who was still sleeping.
Elizabeth bit into a sausage hungrily.
The warder crossed the chamber and poked Marie on the shoulder with no response. He touched her face to wake her. “Bugger me! She’s stone cold dead, Yer Grace!” He wailed in disbelief.
Elizabeth bolted up, her chair flying out behind her, hitting the ground with quite a lot of noise.
She hurried over and rolled Marie to her back. Elizabeth listened closely to Marie’s mouth. “I don’t hear anything, My Lord.”
“I’ll arrange for you to be moved to other chambers immediately. I am so sorry. I didn’t know such a thingÉ” The warder wringing his hands began, but Elizabeth stopped him with a touch on the arm.
“Tis quite alright, My Lord. Of course you couldn’t know her time was come. She was kind. Poor thing.” Elizabeth patted Marie’s shoulder and pulled the blanket up to cover her face.
“Pardon my saying so, Yer Grace; but, the two of you looked very much alike. Dead ringers.” Then the warder seemed to sense the horror of his unintended pun and began wringing his hands and apologizing once more. Surely, Elizabeth would report all of this to her sister, Queen Mary.
“Twill be alright. Now, go. Find me a new room and let me finish my breakfast while it is still warm!” Elizabeth sat down and began eating quickly.
“Send my condolences to the poor sweet girl’s family.” She added as the warder backed out.
“Yes, Yer Grace.” The warder bowed.
The new Elizabeth smiled and bit off a popping bite of her steaming sausage.
Death or Queen.
Which would it be?
In May, after months behind the Tower walls, the endless interrogations, the threats, the questions, her own pleading, letter writingÉthe guards came for her.
Elizabeth thought to herself that her gamble had been the wrong one. Her heart beat wildly. A messenger unrolled a parchment from Mary and cleared his throat to read. Elizabeth steadied herself for the order of her own deathÉBut none came.
She was being transferred to a manor house in Oxfordshire, there to remain under house arrest, until Mary’s royal decree stated otherwise.
Elizabeth gasped and grasped the chair closest to her and half stumbled into it.
She had cheated Death again.
In November of 1558 an envoy rode out to Hatfield House, Elizabeth’s residence, bringing news of Mary I’s death.
Elizabeth stood up with her hands clasped before her.
“Long live the Queen!” The cries of the men rang out as they bowed before her.
Elizabeth smiled. Oh, she intended to live a Very long time, and she would have her revenge on Henry and the rest of the devil begotten Tudors. Tudors who used and bent men to their whims. The Tudor line would end with her. She would provide no heir. The illustrious Tudor rose would hang its wilted blossom with no new bud to shine again. She would be the last Tudor.
“Long live the Queen!” The cries continued.
Elizabeth smiled again. Her gamble to meet death or be queen had paid off.
“Long live the Queen!”
“This is the Lord’s doing.” Elizabeth’s voice rang out clear and loud.
She was queen. She was Henry’s daughter, after all.

down in the dirt

TO TOMATOES

David Spielberg

Tomato juice has the same
pallor as my blood; the seed
-filled pulp gives me cells
strength, each seed bolsters
a dream, adds light to darkness,

sticks in my gizzard cutting however
whatever passes; the seeds give
my bone marrow fiber; after
a tomato meal, I stretch my legs
feeling the fiber-strength release

from my bones; the fiber-feel
goes through my formless heart, turning
it to a tomato shape with
sharp hips up-pointing
and broad smiling supportive under curves.

children, churches and daddies

architecture by Justin Maher

I lost my virginity in the 12th floor bathroom
Of a building my estranged father had built in the mid 80’s.
The guy was in a suit that, even now, is still quite sexy.
His dress shirt was pink though
And I kept thinking of that Matt Dillon movie The Flamingo Kid.
We rocked and bumped into porcelain and dispensers
And he moaned and I was silent.
I was still in my school clothes.
I looked down at the tiles and wondered
What the beams looked like below that floor.
I wanted to see my father below all the polish.
I didn’t come
He did and climbed off.

I wrote poem after poem, even right after on the train home
SubwayAlone used to be the most dangerous.
The next morning in the halls I was thinking
Of sex and love
And interchanging them among the kids who
Just all seemed like kids
And no longer the bronze towers they were yesterday.

I go from period to period
Feeling like I’ve just gotten my period.
I am somehow bigger
Have I grown?
Or have I swollen?

Adulthooded and I want to sleep.
Go home and listen to cd’s they’ve never heard of.

THE LITTLE WOOLLY BUGGER

Bruce Adkins

It was not yet daylight and Jeff Milligan almost didn’t see the little boy standing along the edge of the highway. The little boy, dressed in a baggy coat and a stocking cap, pulled down over his ears, was frantically waving his arms as Jeff pulled up along side him.
“Hey Mister, would you please help my mother?” the little boy pleaded, with tears running down his cheeks. “We had a wreck and we turned upside down.”
The little boy, with his teeth chattering and his face beet red, led Jeff down a deep ravine where smoke was billowing from an old model car that was resting bottom side up. About ten yards from the car a young woman sat leaning against a fence post. Her nose was bloody and she was moaning softly and holding her chest.
Jeff took off his coat and spread it across the woman. Then, struggling against a strong wind, he ran up the steep bank to his pickup truck. He drove about two miles down the empty highway to an all night truck stop where he called an ambulance. By the time Jeff got back to the scene of the accident the woman was moaning louder and struggling to get her breath.
“You’ll be ok, Mama. You’ll be all right now,” the little boy said while holding his mother’s head in his arms. His blue eyes, wide with fear, were full of tears as the ambulance arrived.
Jeff, all six foot, three inches of him, dressed in his work shoes and carpenter pin stripe overalls, lingered around the hospital waiting room hoping to learn the condition of the little boy’s mother. Later, Jeff listened as the little boy, who miraculously escaped the accident with only a skinned knee, explained to the highway patrolman what happened.
“My Mom and me were driving to St. Louis to see my Aunt Mary,” the little boy said, staring goggle eyed at the big patrolman. “I heard something pop real loud. Mama said it was a blowout. I was bouncing up and down and then. Well, then I felt real funny and I was laying in a weed patch and looking up at the stars and Mama was screaming at me. Go get help, she told me and so I did,” the little boy concluded.
“Your car flipped three and a half times and neither you or your mother were wearing seat belts. You’re lucky to be alive, son,” the highway patrolman said.
The little boy had one tooth out in front and his hands and face, sprinkled with freckles, were smeared with dried mud. His blond hair was thick and unruly and stuck up in every direction. He’s a real woolly bugger and sure could use a bath, Jeff thought, smiling at the patrolman.
Jeff’s wife had been dead for three years now and they never had any children. Consequently, Jeff wasn’t sure how to go about consoling the little woolly bugger. Still, Jeff hated to leave him all alone after what happened.

Original Sin

Todd Matson

i remember the thick, black smoke
billowing high into the sky
the bright, red flames
reaching over the burning pines
i remember the sirens
the red firetrucks
the firefighters in their
red hats and black coats
spraying water on the red flames
i remember the neighbors swarming
from every house on the block
to watch the firefighters fight the fire
i remember sneaking matches
from the kitchen cupboard
sticking them in my shorts
walking past my mom
out through the front door
because two bigger boys
in the neighborhood told me to
i remember helping the two boys
build a house out of sticks
feeling proud of the house we built
putting a grasshopper inside the house
lighting the house on fire
and as i watched the firefighters
fight the fire
all i could think about was that
we killed that grasshopper

Nooses and Lifelines
Todd Matson

too old for toys
too young to drive
bored out of our minds
in serious need of adventure
we took the nooses from
around our necks
the ones we made of hemp
imported from Columbia
the ones fashioned to end
our post-childhood misery
we turned our nooses into lifelines
and we went tree-hopping
me and my best friend
both of us suspended
in young adolescent limbo
each of us a cross between
tarzan and cheetah
we started swinging and
jumping from tree to tree
around a grove of pine trees
as big as a city block
the name of the game
to make it around
the entire perimeter together
without hitting the ground
contact with the earth
meant you were dead
and though we never
made it all the way around
the entire perimeter
we went further together
than either of us
could have ever gone alone
we took more leaps of faith
than we ever imagined taking
we fell through pine needles
and broken branches
more times than we could count
we hung on for dear life
bruised and bleeding
time and time again
with our only lifelines being
the ropes we threw out
the hands we reached out
to each other
we lived and died
many times over together
when we were
suspended in limbo
between times

Identification tag

Rose E. Grier

I can see you in a crowd
It doesn’t matter where or who you are.
I will always have a certain vision
that enables my energy to recognize
where your soul has been.
There is a quiet heroism.
It facilitates sovereignty
among us as kindred warriors.
We have wrestled the same rival.
Distinguished our triumph
over diversity’s directive.
We stand united, tall and, by God, alive!

WONDERS NEVER CEASE

Roberta A. McQueen

My cat leaps up in a single bound
balancing effortlessly along
the kitchen counter’s edge
with the grace of a gymnast

She pauses briefly by
the dish drain without knocking
down the precariously placed
herbal shampoo bottle

She peers around it
then stares in wide-eyed wonder
at the curious creature
who willingly wets her hair

DOLORES

Phyllis Berman

When I grew fat
my mother guessed
and called me sinner
and maybe that was true
but there was little
pleaseure in it.

In my dreams
the baby was always a boy
like Moses.
I knew they would take him in
and love him
and I could watch him grow
without him knowing.

I bought a little basket,
cut a piece
of my blanket off
to wrap him
and thought that I might leave him
at the door of a church.

In the end I was all alone
and it was a little girl in me
and what could there be
for either of us?

DOLORES TALKS TO MISS HANSON

Phyllis Berman
Sesion 1

It’s a nasty
trick that someone
dreamed up to trap
girls my age.
How stupid
I was! I never even
knew enough
to be afraid

Why would God
make us this way?
Is it a plot to populate
the world, to use us
for this purpose?
Why would something
like this
bring so much grief

and why doesn’t someone
come right out and tell us?
Who could I ask?
My mother with her nose
in True Love Magazine?
Brandon
with his sweet talk?

I know it was a terrible
thing I did.
I can’t remember
much
and when I do
I start to cry again
until I forget
why I’m crying.

DOLORES’ MOTHER TALKS TO
PASTOR SCHUMANN

Phyllis Berman

I threw her out -
and the devil with her
It’s his work, you know.

I used to bring her here
to the Lord’s house.
Do you remember her?

Only a year or two ago
she sat beside me,
a quiet child

with long blonde hair,
an obedient
daughter

but the devil marked her
for his own.
He gave her hips

to shake when she walked,
breasts to clothe
in clingy steaters,

her mouth
which used to pray,
an excuse for lip-rouge.

How could a decent
man love her?
So the devil took her.

EVERY NOW AND THEN
one receiving editorial advice on 3 prison poems

Gary D. Jackson

Yes, I need to develop my writing skills.
I could make the excuse that I live and write
under atrocious conditions. But that
does not change anything. I guess
I am just afraid. Afraid to hope, or dream, or
believe. Afraid to want. In your letter
you spoke of “going deeper” to “where it
hurts.” Of taking more risks. I don’t know
if I could survive it. My hold on life is
tenuous, at best. My pain is buried out of
necessity. I am a prisoner. Not allowed
to express emotion other than anger. I am
a man who tries not to “feel” anything.
Then you (a stranger), writes, and tells me to avoid
cliches, work harder, “feel” more. That hurts me.
It made me angry. Maybe it touched the truth I
hide from; it was so easy to think, “Who is this person
with the European name, obviously educated,
who thinks prisoners have computer access?
I’ve been homeless and parentless since 14;
I have an 8th grade education and a GED;
I’ve been in jail or in prison for most of the decade;
I have 58 months to go. I am watching my 30s
(my 30s!) slip away. Who is this person of wealth, privilege,
parents, education, travel, to tell me that I need to work
on my craft, go deeper, take risks, touch my pain?

I received a small grant from a foundation this past summer.
I used ti to submit my work to several hundred places.
The response was underwhelming. Yes, maybe I need to develop
my writing skills. Work a little harder. Dig a little deeper. Dare
to hope. Dare to believe
every now and then.

Hairdresser

Lorrain Tolliver

An ordinary guy—no philosopher type.
I trusted him.
“It’s the lowest, dirtiest thing
one person can do to another,”
I overheard him say as I paid and left.
I kept trying to figure out what he meant.
He had said it to the woman at his booth
while combing her wet, curly hair.
Another client’s wallet had just been stolen,
but something in his voice
told me he didn’t mean that.
He seemed to know
what was the lowest, dirtiest thing.
I worked two days while thw question floated.
Then I steeped back to the shop
and hustled to his booth,
I asked him for the answer.
His eyes slipped into quick, clear focus.
“Pretending to care
when the feeling’s not there.”

Unsaid

Iksha

I told you,
today,
of all that happened,
yesterday.
It took me,
exactly seven sentences,
to tell you,
both,
the essence and the details,
of the happenings.
Those seven sentences,
did not tell you,
about the death,
of expectations,
of youth,
of certainty.
and,
everything that was me

CEREAL

Karenina Lucille

I threw a fit today in the grocery store. The type of cereal that I prefer was missing. Sold out. I wanted to cry my eyes out. I puled and stamped my foot. Then I turned to either side to gesticulate like a wild chimpanzee. Atavism. My friend Teddy was chagrined because a family of foreigners were staring at me and expressing humor. He could not comprehend that there was so much more going on.
I never used to eat that kind of cereal in the morning. The only kind that I enjoyed eating was sickeningly sugary and fruity or sweet and chocolatey. Kids cereal. The kind that turns the milk a different color. I always indulged in these guiltily. Keenly aware that they were comprised of empty calories, rotting my teeth and sugar frying my brain. Eventually, quite randomly, I stumbled upon a nutritious adult cereal that was also quite delicious. I did not even have to add sugar. I was finally a genuine healthy adult.
Now my treasure was missing. I stamped my foot in frustration and indignation. The earth is just so unjust. When you finally come to depend on something it is immediately snatched from your clingy embrace. I wish that it had never existed at all. I am doomed to unending misery. No amount of comforting could ameliorate my condition. The more that Teddy attempted to reason with me and assure me that “we” could find another type of cereal, the more he seemed in on the cereal conspiracy.
The very next day I had to rise and pretend to function like a normal adult. At work everyone could sense my unarticulated petulance. I secretly resented each and every
one of them for having the perfect, tasty, healthy cereal picked out that is always abundantly stocked at whatever grocery store they happen to do their shopping. People are so smug with their breakfast cereals.
Many of my coworkers openly smirked at me for my deficiency. Without so much as a word from me on the matter, they could all sense that I did not quite measure up to their exalted ideal. Even the ones who only eat oatmeal had a grin on their mealy-mouthed faces. I could have switched to eggs for breakfast if only I did not find them to be quite so revolting. I briefly considered French toast, but that would be allowing the arrogant cereal eaters of the world to triumph. Then where would we be? They would be running around waving their oats and bran in everyone else’s faces. Perhaps some would even flaunt raisins. The very thought was unbearable to me.
Teddy wanted to meet me at the coffee shop the next day. I felt happier than I should have felt. We had been friends for almost a year. We spent hours discussing books together. Both of us had devoured them since childhood as an escape from parents and a world that we could not make rational sense of. We vehemently conferred that Gogol was a wonderfully mad genius and that Walt Whitman was overrated and sappy. I started to admit to myself that the day at the grocery store I was purposely chucking my most difficult, puerile side in his face. Please do not get the wrong idea. I had not been faking my fit or exaggerating in any way. I was simply taking what I saw as the next step. Throwing it all at him and letting the fruity pebbles fall as they may.
The scent of newborn bagels and blueberry muffins permeated the air of the shop. Teddy nonchalantly purchased a particularly plump one along with his coffee. I accused
him of being a traitor. Boycotting all solid breakfast food, I ordered a large mocha cappuccino with three shots. We nudged our way to one of the few empty narrow tables. Crumbs remained on it from another patron’s breakfast. I tried my hardest to ignore them. It turned out that Teddy had something specific that he wanted to discuss which did not involve our safe havens of literature or science. He was not interested in another one of our psuedo-philosophical discussions that we often shared. What he was interested in was my behavior the other day at the grocery store. Just how atrocious my behavior must have seemed that day had not really occurred to me previously.
I decided that he must have come to tell me that after this meeting he refused to ever be seen in public with me again. His vexation at my puerility was justified. At the same time I did not think quite so highly of someone who would be concerned with what a gaggle of supermarket strangers thought. When I finally stopped ruminating long enough to actually listen to Teddy, I discovered that he was not upset about it. Instead her thought that your typical adult often feels like acting in such a manner, but manages to conceal it more effectively. He was somewhat amused by the other shopper’s reaction to my little temper tantrum and wanted to know more about how I felt that day.
I was reluctant to answer. He could very easily be coercing me into relating something personal that he would use to hurt me at a later date. The people who know your feelings are the ones who can really do the damage. However, he had not done anything to hurt me in the past year that I had known him. On the contrary, he had been nothing but a kind and compassionate friend through many situations. I wanted a sip of coffee courage but it was still scalding. Instead I took a deep breath and attempted to make myself understood.

In the Woods

Jeremiah Gilbert

If a man falls in the
woods and there’s
not a tree around
that hears him,
did he really fall?
Or will he blame
the abrasions on a
tumultuous affair
when asked?

Derelict

Jeremiah Gilbert

When did you take your first drink?
Was it on a dare, to fit in, or did you
have a darker desire? It preceded
your family (why did you have them?)
and your career, if that’s what you
want to call it. Your eldest son tried to
follow, but the shots of your existence
had yet to burn his lips. Do you
remember the beatings you would
give him and the presents after?
Or the gun held to his infant head?
Whose crying were you trying to stop?

His son would grow and never see
you out of your recliner, a fifth
of something concealed in its folds
as you sat before the pyramid of
ruined televisions watching war movies
on the small, flickering set at the top.
When you lost your leg it seemed
a futile sacrifice—why take from
a man what he doesn’t need? Is this
why you never lost your bottle?

Millennium

Jeremiah Gilbert

In the land of the brave
and home of the free

the most endangered species:
the unarmed man,

targeted by the constitutional
prophets draped in their

banners of liberty and spouting
their gospel of greed—

it seems during a holy war
only the innocent bleed.

Brother

Jeremiah Gilbert

Stillborn, not granted a name
or death certificate,
I sometimes wonder who
you would have become,
my predecessor, my replacement.

Had you lived, you’d have been
the only one, as I am now—
no younger siblings to taunt
or older brother to look up to,
sent to your room when punished,
left alone with your books.

Would you have been given my name?
Possessed our mother’s eyes?
The chin our father always wanted?
Would your beard be red when short
and your hair black?

In my place, would you have been
too afraid of being hurt by life
to truly enjoy it for far too long?
Or was your brief instance a choice,
terminated before the sterilized air
could infest your lungs?

Traditional

Dr Prasenjit Maiti

I like my women long - eyes and bodies,
and I like my days short like
dolls that pillow against your bust, and
I like my days cut short by

a sudden, bloody euphoria, I like

my days dead, haughty and hungry,

somehow the swollen, frozen heads

of reclining sculpture like so many
hollow women, cut and dried
like virgin forests, like

the disturbing rustle of fall,

like wasted memories

So

Dr Prasenjit Maiti

this is September.
I woke up with a hangover. Had
an untidy shave and a late shower.
The breakfast went cold with apprehension

but my
coffee was frightfully hot. I am supposed to

read poetry before
you all this afternoon. This word I do not quite like,
afternoon. It reminds me of all
that I do not want to be reminded of.
For I believe it was an afternoon when she walked
out of our lives, leaving me to savor our

dinner alone like a
heartless something. And this word, too,

heartless. It is so meaningless that I do not

want to be reminded of its meaninglessness.
So this is September. And I have read my

lonely poetry before each of your
lonely eyes like nothingness

September

Dr Prasenjit Maiti

This morning is playing havoc
in my balcony, it is hot and the ghosts
of city life are already
sitting at my breakfast table
that groans with fruits and
memories that have to be
peeled wisely and without malice.
If you, my distinguished
readers, do not know how
to peel a woman or memories, let
me teach you all an old trick or two.
You take the woman in
your arms like eggshells,
and you start telling her what the
joke is all about. She might not
be aroused, and then you are
always to fall back on your memories
and do nothing else

CENTRAL PARK 1

David Napollin

Cold twigs outspread like groping hands
against far-falling gray
and the shaft of Egypt’s strength piercing the sky.
The lowering sun
weaves the scebe with haze.

Your hands are cool as petals
your eyes candles of light,
joy of flowers in them
and blue morning.
Your laughter carries
soars away
and your lips yield
warmly press
as the wind faintly breathes.

NIGHTFALL

David Napollin

The evening nods with easy grace
Lower and lower from the western sky.
Velvety blues lie along the sidewalk
Lean against the walls of buildings
Touch the windows and slowly sink
\Into the alleys to sleep in darkness.
A Winter tree shadows the ground
And telephone wires stave teh sky with unsung music.
The street lights in a slow cresendo
ignite the evening.

WHILE WAITING FOR MASS

Brian Burch

I started writing
in places like this:

donut shops
on the edge of the world
where ins and outs meet

where priests and social workers and prostitutes
and panhandlers and cops might drop in
for a 20 minute reminder
of the potential that someone exists
who will treat you as an equal.

WATCHING A YOUNG OFFENDER WHILE WAITING FOR MY VERDICT

Brian Burch

A 13 year old
repeat offender,
a baby really,
stands in the custody of the state.

A violent history
both in his life and his actions
is shared with the courtroom.

Compassion fills the space
—-his behaviour
mirrors that of many of us at his age
(harsher edged perhaps,
but not beyond the limitations
of normal tolerance).

He’s not perfect.
He’s not an angel.
He’s not really good (or bad).

But 79 days in custody
before a hearing...

79 days...

A 13 year old
repeat offender,
a baby really,
stands in the custody of the state.

Untitled

by Michelle Joy Gallagher

The air tastes sharp.
Lip bit and thoughtful.
Hair flying like shooting stars
in summer’s wreckless abandon.

Untitled

by Michelle Joy Gallagher

I dont feel so young
as the minutes are slowly stolen
words failing me all the while...

while i sit lifeless at this lifeless thing
and spill garbage onto this abyss..

while you lie in stillness in the room next to this..
thoughts murdering sleep
yet unable to speak
a goddamn word of it to me.

Untitled

by Michelle Joy Gallagher

red lips against
bare skin..
tasting your need
for similar things
as we lay
in noisy quiet.

The fire that was saturday
extinguished.

the sun explodes, but secretly
in this quickly
consuming
night.

A Fire in Brooklyn

Alan Semerdjian

There’s a motionless waterbug
on the back of my girlfriend’s floor.
It’s been there for days.
It must have been there when the fire broke out
in the basement of the corner shop

on Hoyt Street. We saw it
coming home.
The slow scream of lights
replaced the sirens, the firetrucks
parked in alarm.

All this under a clothesline of those
crayon colored triangles that
hang like shark’s teeth over
used car lots and across projects.
The smoke coughed out the faces-

one, darkened and disinterested,
the other, mobile.
She forgot the name of her student
that surfaced on
the other side of the street

carrying a brown bag of liquid
to put the fire out.
It came to her later:
Sharief, she said,
Sharief is his name.

THE DAY THE CLOCK STOPPED.

BY PUJA GOYAL

The window lies open
The path is swept clean
Somehow the cup of tea
Never runs cold.
She places the black roses in the vase,
Fresh as they are from yesterday.
They resemble the thoughts in her mind.
Life goes on...

The milkman comes again,
It is the fifth day -
She orders extra milk.

She sits on the portico
And stares again.
Deep and thoughtless her eyes wait.
Her expressionless face -
“A Portrait in Disguise”
Her posture -
Straight and composed.

The letter she received from her son
Was seven years and four days late.

Sikes Hebert: Triangle Player

Chris Duncan

Entry number one: August 11, 1983. I am what one might call a musical genius. Jesus gave me perfect pitch. Thank you, Jesus. In addition to my angelic singing voice, I am a virtuoso triangleist or, if you prefer, triangle player. My wit ain’t bad either, let me tell ya. After a hearty meal I can arouse hysterical, pee-in-the-pants laughter by farting with uncanny precision any of several requested ditties. I’m grounded and earthy, a real people person, small in stature, delicately fingered, lithe, and attracted to hairy obese men that will treat me like the imp that I am-really put me in my place. Smack me around. Humiliate me. What really gets my juices flowing is the right kind of fat-assed bastard who can eat a greasy hamburger with one hand and spank me and auto manipulate me with the other.
But I digress.
Let’s see. What else? I knew I’d ramble. My hair is wispy and unruly, yet transcendent, kind of like kelp at the ocean’s bottom, flowing this way and that, gorgeous, an ingredient in ice cream. I paint my nails-nothing ostentatious, mind you. My name is Sikes. Sikes Hebert. Not HEE-BERT. It’s French. A-BARE. I’ve just turned thirty, but I could easily pass for fifteen or, maybe, at least twenty-three.
I am speaking into a tape recorder because my shrink Mr. Lipchitz (whom I call “licks dicks”) says that I am not in touch with the feelings of my inner child, and that I should record my thoughts. This led to a debate on the differences between thoughts and feelings. After two hours, he finally told me to shut the fuck up and keep a fucking diary because he was the fucking doctor and he fucking says so. Can one’s very own doctor tell one to the shut the fuck up? I’m like, Who’s paying the bill here, buster? A little respect would be nice. But, admittedly, people are often intimidated by my intellectual capabilities-particularly doctors. So I try to ignore their trite put-downs and occasional outbursts. I told him I’d keep a tape-recorded diary until my hands healed from their carpal tunnel surgeries (too much triangle practice and auto manipulation during my mid to late adolescence). He shook his head and stared at me saying nothing, obviously amazed by the genius incarnate sitting in front of him.
So after a week of procrastination, I sit here atop my Betty Boop comforter in my bedroom of my parent’s trailer where I still live, rent free, recording my very first diary entry. I feel warm in my trailer bedroom, kind of cuddly, like a puppy that’s just eaten his warm milk and Puppy Chow and is looking for a nice spot on the carpet to take a shit. My parents, though definitely unlearned and simpletons, recognize talent when they see it, so they take care of me, fostering my abilities all they can with what little they have. We all get along pretty well, me, Mommy, Daddy, and Jism, our albino cat, named, of course, by yours truly. I told Mommy and Daddy that Jism was one of the stars in Orion’s belt. They just nodded their heads and said, “Oh, really.” They haven’t a clue where Orion’s belt is! But all is not a Leave it to Beaver congeniality at the Hebert household. Just this morning, Daddy told me to quote, “Keep my perverted shit out of the bathroom!”
He can be so funny. ‘Daddy,” I said, wrapping my arms and legs around his right shin and thigh. “It’s just a butt plug!” He shook me with hostile belligerence and kicked me off, flinging me into the refrigerator; I could hear him mumbling none too quietly as he stormed out our trailer’s front door, “Goddamned weirdo little freak bastard sum’bitch queer-ass pansy fucker.” Daddy can say what he wants, but he keeps me in triangles.

* * *

Entry number two: August 15, 1983. Fuck. First of all, I am disgruntled to the nth fucking degree. Daddy has ordered me to quote, “Put my lazy weirdo ass in gear,” and help my Uncle Gene on his bull-insemination farm, which conceptually, granted, does sound inviting and exciting and provocatively stimulating, but in reality is grueling work. And totally thankless. These bulls don’t give a flying fuck about anyone else. As long as they get theirs, they could give a fuck less about anybody else’s needs-bastards. My forearms are getting so hard and gross; these purplish big veins keep popping up like I’m a heroin addict or something. I’m even growing black hair on my knuckles and big toes, due to my constant physical exertions with the bull peckers. I’ve Naired them, of course, but Jesus, talk about depressing. Do you have any idea how hard it is to jack off a bull? It ain’t easy. They grunt and snort and whine and moan and crap and are just awful. Uncle Gene doesn’t give a big shit. He’s just like Daddy. They think it’s funny when I am forced to perform manual labor, even though my heart beats like a humming bird’s, and I’m on beta blockers. Uncle Gene just says, “You’re slacking, Sikes. Keep jacking, boy.” He sits on a wooden bench out in the barn while I’m on my hands and knees, struggling to hold this big hollowed out vagina thingy that I pull back and forth over the bulls’ monstrous dongs, and good Lord, do they groan and carry on. Jesus, one of the bastards took FORever to get off. I mean, good grief, my back is aching, my feet hurt, my neck feels like it’s going to fall the fuck off, and all Uncle Gene can say while he’s trimming his damned dirty nails is “Keep stroking, Sikes. I believe he’s getting’ close, boy. I can see him tensing up his ass muscles.”
Christ! Daddy’s got me by the balls. If I don’t help Uncle Gene, whose wife broke a hip trying to jack off Buddy, a real mean assed prick who considers his cock his and his alone (I know the type), Daddy won’t pay for me to attend triangle camp at Julliard next fall. Daddy’s mean and spiteful. Just because I haven’t landed an orchestral position doesn’t mean I don’t have talent, but you can’t tell him anything. I’ve attended triangle camp every year for twenty-three years, and I’m not going to miss out on the instruction I need just because Daddy’s a motherfucker. Mommy cries when I talk to her and tell her about my unsightly forearms and how I’ve got a scrotal rash because of all the sweating I’ve been doing. Mommy told me yesterday that Daddy “got hot as a firecracker,” because he opened what he thought was his New American Farmer’s Magazine and instead discovered my new issue of Men on Wheels: Truck Driving Beefcake. “He’s never going to pay for your triangle schooling now,” said Mommy, whimpering, sniffling, close to a genuine sob.
I told her, “Mommy,” I said. “He’ll pay.” And you can bet your sweet ass he MOST CERTAINLY WILL PAY. I’m busting my hump here at No Bull (the name of Uncle Gene’s farm; I could definitely have come up with something better. What about Sweet Bullabies? Or, perhaps, Shooting Bull-its?). My fingers are so sore and calloused and cracked open. Neosporin doesn’t touch the pain. Mommy and I cried together tonight over the phone. We cried and I said, “I’m holding you in my heart, Mommy,” and Mommy said, “I’m holding you in my heart, too, Sikes.”

* * *

Entry number three: August 17, 1983. Not good. Not good. Not good. Did you get that? Not motherfucking good. “What’s not good?” you ask. Well, let me tell you. I’ve got hemorrhoids that actually jingle jangle between my legs. When you’ve got a hemorrhoid that hangs lower than your nuts, you know you’ve got problems. They are bigger than big. They have a fucking life of their own. One of them actually has its own heartbeat. I’ve seen it pulsating. I told Uncle Gene, and he rolled his eyes. “Sikes,” he said. “You’ve got bigger problems. We’ve got to get a load out of Buddy today. It’s imperative.”
Imperative is a big word Uncle Gene is proud that he knows, so he uses it a lot. Last week it was indubitably. Everything was indubitably. With sweat running down my back and into my ass-crack, I say to Uncle Gene while I’m jacking off Duke, who keeps smacking his lips together in a very disgusting manner: “It’s hotter than hell out here!” “Indubitably,” he says. Indubitably this, fucker.
I can barely walk. My cracked and calloused fingers are throbbing. My tummy is upset. I’ve already commented on my anal problems. I called Mommy, and she told me she’s running a warm salt-water bath for me in her heart. I said, “Shit, Mother, I need a bath in your heart like I need a hole in the head. I need you to get me the holy hell out of No Bull. Triangle camp starts next week, and I need to start practicing. Hang is already going to completely embarrass me-little bitch.” Hang is this eleven-year-old Korean bitch who was born with a silver spoon shoved in her mouth-or perhaps I should say silver chopsticks. She mocks me with her triangle virtuosity-little bitch. Of course, some people can practice twenty-four seven instead of stroking bull cock all day long.
“Daddy ain’t gone pay,” Mommy says, crying. “Not with you getting those perverted magazines in the mail.”
“Tell Daddy it was sent to me by mistake!” I respond desperately.
“But it weren’t no mistake, baby, and you know it. I know it. Daddy knows it. Even Jism knows it. And honey?” Mommy says.
“What?” I say.
“Daddy found one of those dirty men flicks underneath your mattress. Baby, it’s filthy. It’s filthy as filthy can be. Why, my heart felt like it’d been wading through a soggy cow pasture after I’d watched two minutes of that-that-that shit, Sikes. I felt like I was caked with cow-shit, baby.”
“Which one?” I ask her. “Which one did Daddy find? Was it Forest Hump? The Ass Menagerie? Huh? They’re all pretty vanilla, Mommy. No fisting or golden showers. Jesus, Mommy, I didn’t mean for Pops to—”
Mommy cuts me off saying, “You never mean to do anything, Sikes,” and she starts sobbing on me and hangs up. She doesn’t answer when I try to call her back. Great. Terrific. Then Uncle Gene screams at me: “Get off the phone, Sikes. We gotta drain Buddy’s main vein. It’s imperative. Hurry it up. God, boy, if somebody don’t get you off your mama’s titsÉ”
So I limp out to the barn, feeling like I’ve got burning charcoal stuffed up my ass, and all I can think is: Fuck, I should be practicing my triangle. I AM AN artist! Uncle Gene reclines on his stool and starts trimming his nails. “Don’t spill any, Sikes.”
Before he can finish I say, “It’s imperative, right?”
He shoots me a dirty look. “Yeah, that’s right,” he says. “It IS imperative. We’re talking white gold coming out that pecker, Sikes. White gold.” He starts coughing and spits a glob of phlegm to the ground that would disgust a maggot. Uncle Gene breaks the string of phlegm with a finger and says, “What you waiting on, an invitation? Get to it.”
Every muscle in Buddy’s gigantic body is quivering like he’s in the middle of the DT’s or something as I lower myself to my knees and momentarily stare at the fake vagina thingy in my hands. “You might need to play with him for a minute or two, Sikes,” says Uncle Gene between hacks. “”He’s kind of slow to pop a boner.”
My life is a living hell. I repeat: my life is a living hell. Uncle Gene yells at me, “Tug on his nut sack, Sikes. Not too hard. That’ll get a rise out of him-pun intended. Ha ha ha.”
I’m sitting underneath Buddy, pondering why Jesus has deemed it necessary that I endure this humiliation. I know He’s my friend and He knows better than I what I need. I smile. I really do. I smile, because I’m a suffering artist-a triangle player who will certainly be better than Hang. I will overcome. I will! I will! “OK, Uncle Gene,” I say. “You’re probably right. I WILL tug on Buddy’s nut sack.” I’m happy and friendly and see the world in acid-trip colors. I love everyone and everything, even my motherfucker of an uncle who winks at me. “Now that’s a boy,” he says.
Life is great.
I even love Buddy. I’m going to get that white gold right now. “Buddy,” I say, grabbing a huge tube of K-Y. “Get ready for a trip to Ecstacyville!”
Uncle Gene cackles at my antics and enthusiasm. “That’s a boy,” he says. My world is sunny as I wrap my wounded hands around the most enormous set of bull nuts you can imagine. Buddy whines angrily and snorts and shuffles his feet like he’s a drunken eighty-year-old man at a Ralph Stanley concert. “Easy!” screams Uncle Gene. “Massage, damn it! Don’t jerk.”
“What?” I ask, violently yanking you were then Buddy’s bulging balls toward the floor. Simultaneously, I hear Uncle Gene scream, “Oh shit!” and see a hoof flying at light speed toward the middle of my eyes. Blackness. Jungle heat. I’m sliding down my drain into a pit of angry monkeys, baboons with shiny red asses, their teeth gnashing, and the air humid and heavy.

* * *

Entry number four: The day after my last entry. All is not well. Buddy nearly decapitated me. I’m not exaggerating. Were in not for what the neurologist called my “freakishly thick skull,” Buddy’s blow to my head would certainly have killed me. Thank God for thick heads. Anyway, Mommy ordered Daddy to let me come home to recuperate. So here I am in bed, my Betty Boop comforter wrapped tightly around my waiflike body, my hair wispy as usual, my lips cherubic and awe-inspiring, and I’m sporting a rather chic patch over my left eye (Buddy’s terrific kick to my head caused my left eyeball to dislodge and dangle from my head. What a funny sight I must have been. I suppose I caused the EMT guys a good belly-laugh. Too bad I was unconscious to experience the joy emanating from my soul. I give and give, and I’ll never stop giving. People need people like me).
No Bull and my hideous Uncle Gene and all those huge bull peckers seem like a distant nightmare now that I am back in the safety of Betty Boop and my doting Mommy’s loving care. Mommy: what would I do without her? She’s been a real trooper: applying ice to my dangling hemorrhoids, a thankless task, certainly, but one which any mother would gladly do for her adult/ artist son. Mommy is very good with doctoring hemorrhoids; she’s helped me out quite a bit in the past. After a really raucous weekend my lily white, cute bubble bum usually needs some soothing, and Mommy is right there to do it. Daddy just grimaces at me and Mommy. What an A number one asshole he can be! He wouldn’t apply ice to my hemorrhoids if I were suffering worst that Job-you can bet your sweet ass on that one. At least the sonofabitch is going to pay for me to go to triangle camp. I’m so excited. Earlier today, while Mommy was diligently applying ice to my ass, Daddy pokes his-as usual-angry looking face through my door. “Sikes,” he said. “You still want to go to faggot camp?”
Ignoring his playful repartee, I gleefully answer, “Why, of course, Papa Bear. Baby Bear is so happy! Mommy Bear, did you hear what Papa Bear said?”
Mommy, crying with delight, replies, “Yes! Yes! Yes, Baby Bear, I heard.”
Mommy and I are crying with joy, literally sobbing with ecstasy, when Daddy guffaws and shakes his head and mumbles barely coherently as he goes into the kitchen to grab a snoot of liquor, “Anything to get your freak ass out of my damned house, pansy-assed sad excuse for a son dear God what did I do to deserve this I should’ve pulled out why the hell didn’t I pull out talk about a wasted load God Almighty.”
“Mommy Bear?” I say, lying on my side while my mother plays armature proctologist. “Baby Bear love you with all his heart.” I growl like a bear.
Mommy, kisses the top of my left buttock and says with a jovial laugh, “Mommy Bear loves Baby Bear beary, beary much.” Then Mommy growls at me. I love Mommy. Even Jism joins in the fun. He jumps up on my bed and licks my nipples; dainty nipples they are, a light pink, the color of fog filtered suns. I scratch Jism’s head and wish for only a split second that Daddy had the ability to love like me, Mommy, and my little pussy.

* * *

Entry number five: September 1st, 2002. Yippee! I’m the happiest thirty-year-old triangle player in the world. I’m at camp. I’m in a dorm room and, thank God, my floor has a community bathroom and there are absolutely no partitions in the shower room. None. Zero. That deserves another yippee. Yippee! I mean, er, how humiliating and embarrassing this situation is going to be.
Whatever.
My raging ‘roids are pretty much better. For precautionary purposes,
I apply large gobs (via my fingers) of Vaseline up my poop-chute prior to my thrice daily BM’s so everything’ll be nice a lubed. I wouldn’t want to exacerbate an already tenuous situation, if you catch my drift.
What else? Hang has apparently got the big head now that she’s turned twelve and already has an orchestral position. It’s all about who you know and who you blow-little bitch! Oh well, at least at the end of the day, I’ll have my self-respect and her best buddy’ll be a jug of Listerine. That was catty, wasn’t it? Mee-aww! Scratch! Scratch!
Segue time: Daddy, the evil motherfucker, didn’t even bother telling me goodbye this morning. However, Mommy and I had a good cry together. I know Mommy’ll miss me. And my cat, too. My little pussy loves me. Jism looked so pitiful, I let him lick the peanut butter residue from my PB&J sandwich from the backs of my molars-he loves that, and I thought he deserved a special treat since I’m abandoning him for a month. Daddy saw Jism tonguing me, and he let loose with a diatribe of hateful expletives directed right at yours truly (he also threw a couple of hateful remarks at Jism to boot). Mommy started sobbing, but I stood my ground. “Mommy,” I said. “He’s not worth it!”
Then I said: “Jism needs love too, Daddy! Go ahead, Jism, lick all you want!” Daddy then tells me to get my shit out and that he never wants to see me again, and that I’m an embarrassment to him and always have been-same old shit, S.O.S., you know. I go up to him, my mean old sonofabitch Daddy, and hug and nibble on his right earlobe-trying to irreverent and whimsical, you know. I want to give Daddy love, my love, but he won’t take it. I whisper playfully, “Papa Bear’s a meanie weanie!”
Daddy takes a punch at me but I duck deftly. Daddy is too drunk to make contact. He storms out of the trailer, and Mommy drives me to the airport, during which we both cry our gigantic hearts out. Did I mention my Mommy is clinically obese? No? Well, she is. Mommy told me that she’d like to get as fat as the universe, because that’s how much she loves me. But I digress.
Segue number two: Get this: The director of the camp tells me this morning that “your name isn’t on the registration form anywhere,” so I tell her, “Honey,” I say, “I’ve been coming to this camp for over twenty years. Somebody needs to get their shit straight and it’s not me.”
Mommy starts crying and I have to tell her to shut the fuck up right there in front of God and everybody. “HEE-BERT, HEE-BERT, HEE-BERT,” the twit keeps saying trying unsuccessfully to find my name on her stupid registration forms.
“My name is A-BARE,” I say. “A-BARE-it’s French.”
The twit keeps shaking her head. “Nope, not on here. Nowhere.”
People are starting to snicker. Why, I’ve been attending this camp longer than most of these little fuckers have been alive! “What instrument to you play?” the twits asks me. Can you believe that! What instrument? I’M A MOTHERFUCKING TRIANGLE PLAYER! EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT!
My lard assed mother says, “Triangle. Sikes, plays the triangle.”
Then the twit’s eyes light up. “Oh,” she says. “I’ve found you. Somebody thought your first name was your last name. That’s what threw me for a loop.” I’d like to have thrown that stupid bitch for a loop. She had a lisp, too. Did I mention that? Instead of Sikes she’d say Siketh. Talk about annoying. I’m definitely complaining to camp management about the treatment I’ve received. You should have seen Hang pinching off a giggle. Hang, with her stupid triangle earrings, loves it when I look stupid. Fuck her! She needs to go eat some roasted dog or something and leave the triangle playing to me.
Whew! I had to blow off some steam. I just need to remember that I’m where I’m supposed to be and, Lord willing, an orchestral position will come a’knocking at my trailer’s front door, and you can bet your sweet ass I’ll be ready to open it and say, “Howdy, Mr. Director, c’mon in!”
But I digress. I’ve got to go practice.
First I’ve got to go take a shower. I hear the water running.

poem from a small town you’ve never been to

John Sweet

sister calls and
says the baby is dead

says the bathroom floor
is blood

wants a window filled
with clean sunlight

wants oxygen

tells you the names
she’d chosen
and asks if you like them

asks if you think
she should
try for another

waits for an answer

sympathy

John Sweet

and men beat
their children to death
out of boredom

out of frustration

out of the
simple realization
that their lives have
failed as miserably
as their parents’ lives
did

and i won’t waste my
time
with sympathy

WILDERNESS

JD Schneider

1.
This is the place in the middle of America
The wilderness of childhood survival dreams
And here the sunset drips like soggy purple paint
And tickles the horizon, the mountains embrace their infant sun
And the proud evergreens are Chinese pagodas or ladders to the clouds
I lie here with the love of my life and we
Hold hands and suck in the essence of this utopia
As fireflies dance hearts around our lips
And rising above all else, between mountains
Is the McDonald’s M that reminds me of home.

2.
In the Sahara on a camel’s back, we ride
Together through sand and sand
Feeling the sun on our necks,
Our shirts off, we turn brown to blend in
And our tongues dry to match the dunes.
We feel safe from tourism and English speakers
And anyone else who is solid when you reach him.
Ever-present, in the oasis floating
A drive-in McDonalds always ahead
But with us wherever we go.

Daddy

© Melinda Varner

Glass shatters
to the ground
children scream out
in horror
Another drunken rage.
How easily
a broom
can clear a wall
full of forced smiles.

IMMUNE ANGEL

Myrina D. McCullough

Angel was fifteen. She had already been working for three years, and she already had AIDs. She was thin and small, looking much younger than her age, but her mind absorbed and produced more than most adults.
Although she was scared and sad when she left her home high in the rolling hills of Thailand, Angel understood that her parents felt they had to sell her. Many parents sold their children to the city. Soon after she started to work, Angel understood that she could easily catch AIDS. When she did catch the disease, Angel also understood that she would die young.
But Radiu — her slightly older, slightly sicker friend — brought her new information that surprised her. During a clinic visit, Radiu had overheard some women saying that it was wrong of parents to sell their children. They said the parents should value their children more than that. They had spoken about international laws about child labor and child abuse. Angel started to wonder if the soft, flailing, sometimes groveling, sometimes angry, scared or mean foreigners who were coming to her from faraway countries were breaking these laws — international laws. “International” — that meant bigger than her country and way, way bigger than herself, but it was out there, something that said what was happening to her was wrong; something that helped her make her plans.
Angel knew she was prettier than many of the girls. Even the older ones told her all the time, “Your mouth is so delicate, your eyes are so big; you don’t even need to do your eyebrows, they are naturally so well-shaped. You’re lucky.” Her sweetness and appeal had gotten her shuttled upwards through the brothel system rather quickly. The owners knew what the wealthier men and the foreigners were looking for.
And Angel did think of herself as lucky. She knew plenty of less pretty girls who were dying of AIDS as she was, but sometimes her added allure got her small tips beyond what was handed over to the brothel owners. With no family and no future, Angel spent these tips on meat and greens for herself and Radiu, who told her that eating well was the best way to keep stronger than the sickness. She kept her hair as clean as possible and folded her clothes carefully, so they would always look fresh. Angel wanted to keep working and living in order to reach her goals.

The Thai men who visited Angel might be wealthy, but they were often ignorant, superstitious, and in a hurry. With no questions asked, they would rip off their own clothes and hers, ignore her offered condoms, and quickly dribble out their “potency,” soaking up any offerings she might have just as fast.
When Angel was diagnosed with AIDS, the brothel owners knew they had to be careful. Occasionally, the brothels underwent unexpected inspections. Angel was sold to a “specialty” house where she was told to always use a condom and to always tell her clients — all foreigners now — that she was twelve. These clients were older, they came long distances once or twice a year and wanted to be touched and stimulated, and they brought their own “good” condoms for their protection.

Barrett came in and looked at Angel through his thin wire-rimmed glasses. For an instant, he thought he saw a flash of hostility in her eyes, but then she lowered her thick lashes and shyly bit her soft mouth. Her eye lid had the curve of a smooth, sweet grape; her cheekbone, the curve and softness of a fresh apricot; her lips — free of make up as far as Barrett could tell — were a deep maroon, moist and shining. He knew that her other lips would be even more erotic, and he wanted to dive straight to her core, but he held himself in check.
She let her brown hand rest a moment on his belt buckle and, looking up at him with her innocent eyes, asked, “American?”
He said, “Yes, baby.”
Angel patted his front zipper like a baby playing pat-a-cake and said, “Oh, good.”
Barrett wondered what she meant. Were Americans kinder than others? Harsher (surely she wasn’t looking for abuse)? Bigger? Smaller? His old paranoia shivered in his gut for a moment. What did she know anyway? She was just a kid. If she found him to be ugly, it didn’t matter; if she didn’t like his style, she would never say it; if his grasping hands got a little over-zealous with her body, she would tolerate it. He would burst and burst, come and come, demand and demand, in her mouth, frontside, backside, again and again, to his heart’s content.
Angel turned and went and kneeled next to the bed, her back to him, her small feet poking out from her sari, upturned. “I wait you ready,” she said.
Barrett fished his condoms out of his pocket, stripped out of his clothes, and went to her, lifting her heavy black hair in his hand. She spun her head about, her eyes wide and startled, as though she thought he might strangle her with her own hair. Her head was just below his extended member. She slid onto the bed, letting her sari drop open around her barely formed thighs. When her cool hand curled around his penis. he let himself go. He fell back, splayed out, eyes closed, glasses and condoms dropped to the bed side table. “Oh, yes, sweetheart. Do daddy.”
Angel started her routine. She moved her mouth down his chest, flicking her hair, so he would feel it lightly. Her tiny fingers crept around him to the back, stroking, circling, probing. She put her warm tongue flat against the head of his member and then took him fully into her mouth. He groaned and almost shouted, “Move — let me get the condom — come on —!”
“Give it,” she said softly. “Let me.”
She licked him and whispered loudly enough for him to hear, “Oh, big!,” as she expertly nicked the center of the banana-flavored condom with her teeth and then forced a larger hole with her finger. As she rolled the rubber up his length, she started to mentally prepare herself for the onslaught, as she had learned to do through experience. “Breath in, breath out; relax, loosen your legs, loosen between your legs. Receive him in. Receive and give, receive and give.” It was her mantra, a reminder of all she had left. “Give back; give back.” She was in no hurry. She was calm and receptive.
When Barrett pulled out, Angel was ready with a paper Kleenex, ready to remove the condom and get rid of it. How docile yet knowing she was!! Barrett reached for his glasses and looked at her again. “You are a darling,” he said, stretching out his large belly and stroking it. “What’s your name?”
“Angel,” she answered, looking up at him with a frightened air. “You not happy?”
“I’m happy, my little one. I just wish you’d never grow up. Look, take this money and keep it for yourself. I’ll pay your boss separately. And I’ll be back. You ARE an angel.”

Angel crossed her fingers tightly behind her back. Doubting that he would ever be back, she pulled her hair into a braid, called to Radiu to come with her, and went out to buy some more meat with the man’s coins.

http://scars.tv

Books
sulphur and sawdust
slate and marrow
blister and burn
rinse and repeat
survive and thrive
(not so) warm and fuzzy
torture and triumph
infamous in our prime
anais nin: an understanding of her art
the electronic windmill
changing woman
harvest of gems
the little monk
death in m‡laga
the svetasvatara upanishad
Hope Chest in the Attic
the Window
Close Cover before Striking
(woman.)
Autumn Reason
Contents under Pressure
the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism)
Changing Gears

Compact Discs
MFV the demo tapes
Kuypers the final (MFV Inclusive)
Weeds and Flowers the beauty & the desolation
Pettus/Kuypers Live at Cafe Aloha
Kuypers Seeing Things Differently
Pointless Orchestra Rough Mixes
Kuypers “Overstating” (voice sampling)
The Second Axing, Something is Sweating
Scars, Torture and Triumph compilation
Kuypers Change Rearrange
Tick Tock 5D/5D
Kuypers Stop Look Listen
The Entropy Project Order from Chaos
Kuypers Six One One
The Second Axing, two Live concerts in Alaska “Free Parking” shows






Copyright Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.