![[Home]](http://interface.dreamhost.com/images/enrique20.png)
Fall 1998
Featuring:
Anonymous
Posterity
The Emperorwho became so by brutal, magnificent, terrifying, sublime forcewas not always Emperor, but King, and before that General, and before that son of the military head of a petty but ambitious city-state. He did not wish to be Emperor that others might bow. He did not order the hands and feet, the arms and legs, of men and women and children cut off and thrown into piles so that he could watch children and women and men lay legless and armless, footless and handless, bleeding to death.
He, like the greatest of men, was the most terrified, and would not die without a battle. He strove for the eternity of memory. He fought desperately, valiantly, against the day when no oneno scholar, no studentwould know, remember or care who he was or what he had done. That would be death. And even the living burial of lying mute and unknown in the cold, bitter darkness, could be endured, for years, for decades, as long as the possibility remained of being reborn, rekindled, for a while in the pages of some reader's imagination.
But always the threat loomed: Of being edited out to make room for some more recent tyrant with even more blood on his hands. Of being reduced to a footnote, to trivia, to the realm of the arcane. Of being forgotten.
Eventually, the books rotted in the dampness or crumbled in the very air itself, until no record of the Emperor was left.
One person, alone, remained who knew about the Emperor and his crimes. Old...feeble...memory fading...and wise.
Marc Awodey
One Brief Man: a poem in three dimensions
[Degradation dances on urban clouds as the description of another hour
wrinkles under the present tense. Enter MAN & CHORUS all dressed in street
clothes. CHORUS is tied up like a chain gang, gender, ethnicity unimportant.
MAN speaks with expansive gestures]:
MAN: Sweet air wreaths to crown this hill
transcending cast concrete grotesques,
no smokestack plume or fume can wound
my Mind's mirage, delicate as it is.
Inhale these unfledged chlorophylls
looming from path to garden's gate;
oil rainbows dissipate as spilled
near the lowly black and canary lines
that bless our Northeast avenue.
From tall coteries of philosophers
to sexton tended grounds
my meadow simply mellows into slough.
CHORUS: Let us shout,
from free libraries to ask why.
Why may no harvest thrive on salted fields?
MAN: Let us re-ingest ingested seeds
now broadcast from on high
by the Gordian gut of a hermit thrush.
And perhaps with equal justice
we can relish the boiling jams,
meads, and anisette liqueurs,
that earthbound starlings also knew?
Perhaps they may be gathered into one
amalgamated Brunelleschi seed,
put up in jars and sealed with paraffin?
Perhaps they must be counted on
to breed in slippery meadows
under blue and wrinkled elbows
that root in gnarled orchards
bound to mellow into slough?
CHORUS: Rejuvenated beyond a fear of being;
spread by one of several fluted blades...
MAN: but I have NOT ascended here to sing
with all the mindless husks of grain
nor truly storm in jumbled tongues
an old time, patriarchal,
'neath a loop of rattling serpent
jubilee tonight!
CHORUS: Praise be to GOD!
[murmuring, like a mercurial brook]
Blither Blather Blither Bleed...
Blither Blather Blither Bleed...
Blither Blather Blither Bleed...
MAN: Bejeweled shadows seep Chinese ink
through my paper portrait
underneath a feral Moon,
becoming evermore exquisite
more than any proof-like coin;
as gangs of ancient facets dug
from blue earth archipelagos
slog to shove wheelbarrows full
with pyramids full of fruit withdrawn
from fuchsia meadows under red delicious
branches wherein broad epaulets just begin
to touch the sweat stained petals stuck to
greasy orchids as they steam on mantis arms.
And hoisted,
I twist on a shaky trapeze
of humming liquid apostrophes
called forth to woo domed ladybugs;
uncertain of these certainties my predictions
die unheeded as they mellow into slough-
[in agony] Forgive my woeful retreat
from your lamentable city!
CHORUS [slyly]: Ah... but if one brief man
can survive this own noxious juice
to inhale the green ounces of hazy perfume
that sprout like dragon's teeth
from his unfledged chlorophyll-
[45 seconds pass in silence. MAN lays down to try to sleep, but cannot rest]
MAN: then all my freezing exhaled air demands that all these berries, spit and spread- be curled in well-born holidays to curdle and be placed in state within an all-encircling wreath- for each of my more savory treats may only bloom where there resides dead drunk and orphaned meadows under orchards, born to mellow into slough. [Exeunt severally]
Grand Canyon, New England
Voiceless spires harbor an angular town. Pale clouds alight upon the crushed brows of distant mountains. I am a limestone ripple on a painted mountainside above stone teeth strewn by my own ugly kind- as a double-edged daybreak seethes to petrify a few sub-orbital lines; painstakingly born and dried. My brother's bones rattled well in a tumbling bag of gelatin to find gravitational rest, to settle into a bloody heap. The lines of sledding runners etched parallel designs onto tender hills of snow- and I became unsealed tonight by frosted fields of white on white- as prickly pears began to blossom within bleached vaults of chest.
Reverie
Men barked nonsense on Lunar hills, deaf to the music of our moon. When her glassine sands were pressed, to transmit clips of harlequin white; conquest illuminated the dome of night. To understand why her ungodly face appears to mourn; ask why we strolled the lunar hills, and danced upon her virgin humps- our follicles, and fragile toes encased in air conditioned boots. And when each nerve is dead enough, and soothed to see our silver mirror ebb and wax, as spheres and hemispheres descend to dream in undreamt volumes deepened by a drum of tidal urge- perhaps our sable voices will return so that we sing, to sail like drunken Greeks through timeless stars, and stir the rainless latitudes that sweep to span the Sea of Tranquility.
We Never knew the Sea
As small travelers subject to heavy clouds,
we silently sought the edge of our continent.
We vaporized near breakwaters as our path
met icebergs
warming under quilts of ocean.
I fell on my knees, and began sculpting sand
as two fair women wandered far out-of-the-way
to greet an easterly wind.
*horizons
On luminous ocean and salt water;
on inland sea and elegant foam;
on reclining savanna of spilling grass;
and interminable fields of ice,
horizons cannot change character.
Variegated grounds must meet
to overlap clear, broken or tumbling
firmament. Titans graciously embrace
as a father and mother do.
The colors of the land are in the clouds.
Cloudy colors are outstretched over land.
Our evening tide is lavender,
mummy is the morning sky. Split
is the vision of razor wire that hems
us into a living world each hour;
below a holed cosmos,
above groaning bedrock.
I have yet to be among the clouds,
I am yet to be devoured by umber peat.
*our empty sea
Under our empty sea
an indigo world exists
as a once familiar voice
beyond recollection-
and over trench, plateau, barrow
of cloudy schist,
on a tossing desert continuum resides
a pacific mind, and in each ocean mind
there are dreams of drying soil.
Solitary whales ponder the odds
of an earthen surface
laying above heaven's lucid touch
of rolling amethyst.
In pencil thin ends
of falling daylight beam
and over trench, plateau,
barrow of cloudy schist;
wrinkled pods of philosophers
sing to theorize
of crossing high ocean
under clouds of billowed sail.
We may follow the smooth descent
of necklaced emperor penguins
from high above heaven's lucid touch
of rolling amethyst,
into the open jaws of unimpressed
killer whales
who antiphon on ocean floor
the prayers of killer whales.
Do not mourn the passage
of sea creatures into sustenance,
while crossing high ocean under clouds
of billowed sail-
By that unwholesome meat,
tossed red into sponginess
will arise an unknown landscape
undreamt of.
And forever anon and forever these
dancing penguin must
harmonize with the hungry souls
who antiphon on ocean floor
the prayers of killer whales.
While posed as sailing angels
we are tattooed on high,
though in our breaking epiphany
skyscrapers must pale
to know the ballast stones
of sunken merchantmen
will arise on unknown landscapes,
undreamt of.
Uncaring flukes concentrate
to ply compassionless brine
for in each ocean mind
there are dreams of drying soil-
fashion scrimshaw as your vessel
rides on mumbling heaves,
though in our breaking epiphany
skyscrapers must pale.
Let terra incognita
dissolve in faultless sea
for under our empty sea
an indigo world exists.
*intermezzo
Plum is the voice of evensong
intermezzo over unsung phrases of day;
when septet tunes and turns a page
then stage belongs to a lone nocturne
intermezzo over unsung phrases of day.
Silence is briefly an inwrought song;
then stage belongs to a lone nocturne
sung by birds who have nested and gone.
Silence is briefly an inwrought song
as played by oboes that have no reed,
sung by birds who have nested and gone
on declining stars in rising dawn;
as played by oboes that have no reed.
When septet tunes and turns a page
on declining stars in rising dawn
plum is the voice of evensong.
*
They scooped their watery beds
where a silver river wrinkled and rose
to raft the fry that failed,
over embryos, and last year's leaves.
I followed arcs of salmon,
reflecting sun, they spawned
on gravel gems;
costumed in false red jaws.
They scooped their watery beds
where a silver river wrinkled and rose
to raft the fry that failed,
over embryos, and last year's leaves.
*harbor
We knew a seemingly endless thread
of peppery beach and beach grass,
we watched an azure haze enfold horizon-
but we never knew the sea.
What we spoke of is sincerely lost
though could shoreline be refound
the sound of sounding lighthouse
would not acquiesce to variance
beyond an ashen, inevitable sound.
If hollowness could again disperse
all shade of ghost below
an empty western field-
sandpipers
would not conjure fewer risks,
frail rows of curling waves would break
in strains that do not murmur any less;
and yet your sound
would not resound a sea-
for we never knew the sea.
Tree of Hearts
I
Devolution has a stealthy march.
It begins in an elephantine evensong;
and an old longing for what was.
Electrum clouds are then closely cropped
to resemble the hair of an elderly priest,
and all seems to be moving east into west
to bathe a stoic neighborhood
in reams of squandered light
while west to east is a hidden truth,
perhaps.
Thunderstorms coagulate
above molting birds of prey
at humid sunset.
Thunderstorms enter to baptize black
pavements adorned by accidents
in yellow, night, and canary lines;
droplet, drop, the traps of heaven unhinge
submersions of rain to roll like dimes
upon this flatiron
of burning grease.
Straight rain imagines nothing else.
Rapiers of rain fall in escadrilles
like devils after pride
through thoraxes crucified
under bags of windless perdition.
And people walk, and wrinkle,
and run before rain. People
of a city gird scum eyebrows
against centimeters of anxiety
by sweating out steady realism;
and they run past houses
and over bricks,
and over common pasturage,
to enjoy mobility in space,
and air in the plastique
physique.
They run
realizing advancing time-
through slashes of aureate beaming
and whites undisturbed by shade,
past cedar shakes across the avenue
past patches of devaluation
in unwashed streams of vesper light.
Devolution has a stealthy march.
It begins in an elephantine evensong;
and an old longing for what was.
II
A giant is revealed
in the yellow pine
that felt no axe sixty years ago.
Not rolled into the river
beside its tusk-like brethren
when this tract of neighborhood
was cleared
and these lilting structures
were framed
by quarter sawn beams from Canada.
It drinks in thunderstorms.
It looks without awe at heaven.
It bends to no wind in any season.
No lightning has touched it
(though it would be perfect
for lightning's play).
It is the last of its tribe.
It shades sidewalk.
It shades house
runner, raven, ambiguous
shadows that sometimes lengthen
sometimes recede
over this whole old quarter of
my sloped city,
collapsing
like a sugar cone.
Song birds preen
in the heart of that tree
of hearts and preen
somewhere the crispy notes
blazed on pearly scraps
of enigmatic wind,
since the beaks of all birds
first vied with hand
scrawled inversions
of song, such sounds
that eventually devolved
to become known to us
as sacred human songs.
Poems by Marc Awodey (11/4/60) of Burlington, Vermont have appeared in approxamently 150 publications including: [print] Writer's Journal, Humanitas, Defined Providence, Poetry Motel, Yamimono (Japan), Afterthoughts (Canada); [Internet] Recursive Angel, Brooklyn Poet, Poetry Cafe, The New Voice, Southern Ocean Review, Webgeist, Glossolalia, and many others. Collected works have appeared in four chapbooks, seven "minimalist" editions, and the nationally distributed 1999 Poetry Calender. He has been a featured reader at the New England Artist's Trust Congress in Newport, NH; National Writer's Union/Vermont local 1998 symposium, the Baggot Inn in Greenwich Village NYC; and other venues. His works have been netcast on C.B.C. radio, Go Poetry! and other programs. MFA (painting) Cranbrook Academy of Art 1984; BFA Johnson State College, 1982; B.Phil, Grand Valley State University 1980. He has received many minor literary and visual arts awards, and has recently begun to distribute folding books of poetry in readapted vending machines. As co-founder of The Minimal Press, he has distributed ten thousands of folding books worldwide. Awodey's visual arts criticism has appeared in Seven Days, Art New England, and several electronic publications. He has recieved the John P. Donoghue Award for Art Critisicm. Director, Rhombus Gallery/Artspace in Burlington.
Janet Buck
Certain Poems
The trumpets of a bleeding heart like faded cups of daffodils. Frost upon the green beret that might have been the summer lawn of passion's budding atmosphere. Hope I held as Easter eggs that rolled behind a velvet couch. Naiveté was thinking that a ring of gold would fin the fish of apathy and bring you back to life again like jumping someone's battery. Desperation's cannon poised and waiting just behind the door. You could take an autumn leaf and build a castle of regret. Coming home to need at night was much the same as diapering a screaming child. The bed 'n' breakfast of a smile another man would bring to me. Certain poems write themselves. Land so fast and urgently as bellies of a burning plane. Salvation armies ringing bells. Yours, I'd say, in retrospect, were louder than the sea.
Telescopes and Diaries
Screaming joints are seagulls angry at the sky for stealing easy motion's fish and leaving me with bones to pick and carcasses of broken dreams. The "cripple" stamp. Its scarlet letters in disguise. Mostly misinforming minds that carry passports to a cave that leads us to within. Pain attacks. The bunkers full. Of rocks and slides I took before. The army green of surgeons scrubbing, staring at the task of reconnecting hope again. More upon my shopping list and ragged calendars of time. Tears are snowflakes in the sea. Always seem so out of place. Rulers snapping knuckled pride. The sticker of a wheelchair hanging from my rear-view mirror. A crimson, clotted admonition. Frailty becomes a crime. Cadaver dregs of waltzing limbs I harbor as a shallow candle barely burning in the sand. My diary a telescope on very foreign submarines. Pressurizing anger's draft and hungry for a place to land.
Corpses in a Stream
This sloughing stuff. Cathartic urine on the page. Motives. Fine. Manner. Safe. Infected tears in angry seams. Looking inward elephants. They're standing in the living room. I hope to God I'm making space for joy to take the couch again. Sticky, sticky taffy thinking bubble gum is getting old. The scent of need a pilot light. Helicopters on a pad evacuating stranded souls. Clear the air of ceiling fans. Taverns full of smoking dreams. Lazy Boys of liberating, often yes commiserating, altogether urgent grabbing, holding observation tight. Poetry is coral reefs and labeled diamonds by mistake. Poetry is pumping blood and pouring corpses in a stream.
Throwing Stones
Opinionated agony. The swelling kind that's choking every reach I make. Burden's burden in itself. I hate the thought of passing this like stomach flus or chicken pox. A wheelchair is up ahead. It is a carriage wrought in Hell. Pain is sharp if it is ours. Pain is dull if it is mine. You have blessed distance here like tit-clamps in a magazine you read about but never feel. Scrapbooks of enduring sighs, their edges soaked in acetone. Rotten dregs of fateful jaws. Disability has teeth. It really truly sorely does. My stump, it writes calligraphy. A cavity to joyous lips that dance with all their present bones. Dental floss, a pen perhaps. But nothing for the aching parts except this spinning, spinning song of throwing very heavy stones.
Janet Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Recursive Angel, The Melic Review, Conspire, Gravity, Poetry Motel, New Thought Journal, The Artful Mind, Medicinal Purposes, Mind Fire, 2Rivers View, Allegory, Kimera, The Oracular Tree, Green Cross, Moonshade Magazine, The Poet’s Edge, Ariga, Seeker, Asylem, Woven Soles, The Free Cuisinart, Pif, The Waterloo Review, Illya’s Honey, Fires of Autumn, Ygdrasil, Ascent, Indie Journal, Orbital Revolution, Flaming Flag, Calliope, In Motion, Idling, Poetfest, Sapphire Magazine, Southern Ocean Review, The Rose & Thorn, Perihelion, Zen Rubies, Creative Ooze, The Astrophysicist’s Tango Partner Speaks, Maelstrom, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, and dozens of other periodicals. Janet’s poetry sites on the web have received more than thirty awards, including the distiguished “Predators and Editors: Author’s Site of Excellence” and “The Circle of the Muses Award of Inspiration.” “Writing,” she says, “ is a tuba in a long parade that chases pain and sorrow to its dissolution.”
S. Dietemann
Summer
I
He woke up wishing he were capable of love. He knew loving was possible -- in theory, anyway. For others. His old college roommate, Ron, for one. Ron had dated exactly one woman from the first day of class to the last and, assuming the alumni newsletter got it right, today he was the proud father of three girls and the husband of that same, one woman. The Gods were also alleged to be good at loving. Buddha or Christ, for instance. Unfortunately, even if he himself were able to love, he would not be able to practice it. He was married to a saint, and it is not possible to love a saint. Revere, idolize, even worship, yes, but love, no.
Soaked in the July morning haze pervading the bedroom, he twisted around to see the time. "Shit. Eleven o'clock already… Fuck the morning. Fuck everything," he said, pressing himself into the dank mattress. Linda was already gone, replaced by a note. Today's note was carefully taped to a bottle of Jack Daniels placed precariously on his bed table. "Well that explains the time", he thought as he studied the empty bottle. Also vague memories of a run through the woods surrounding their house, a nearly full moon, and a face. A full face, a female face, smiling ecstatically. Oddly androgynous, but nevertheless undeniably sensuous. Perhaps Jean's face. Perpetually clad in black, Jean paints with him in the evening at the free life painting classes at JCA sometimes. He was certain it was her face, but equally certain that she had not been there in person. "That's all right," he thinks, comfortable with this conclusion. Had she somehow been there in person it would have been more fun, but infinitely more complex now.
He pulled the note from the bottle a read it. "Maybe you had a bit too much of this stuff last night? Love, Linda"
Just a sentence and a question mark. A concerned question mark, to be sure, but not an angry question mark. They never were. He knew his wife was not being judgmental. She really never was, despite the fact that she certainly had the right. No, she was once again merely simply stating the facts in her own righteous way. God, she was pure! Despite bearing witness she offered no lectures about his naked tour of the neighborhood. No comments about how many times she had left this same note taped to other bottles, other mornings. Mercifully, no requests to discuss "things". Rather she watched from a respectful distance, like the Buddha himself. And waited.
Of course Linda had not joined his primal expeditionary force last night. She had not arrived home until things were well under way. Returned home late from a rally to close down an animal testing lab at nearby Cornell University. Dogs mostly, but some cats. He himself jogged by the laboratory occasionally, but was careful not to look too closely as he passed. Hell, he didn't like the place either, but Linda and her little army weren't going to change a damn thing, so why bother?
"You got a dog, you treat it right, okay? That's all you can do - save your own," he had told her again last night.
"But they all feel pain, Robert. Real pain! Just like we do."
She had let the word settle at this feet. He remembers looking at her, studying her carefully looking for signs of her holiness. Perhaps a radiance of some sort. She certainly deserved it She was always willing to be arrested if necessary. Like Martin Luther King, or Daniel Barrigan, or some other saints he vaguely recalled from church.
By the time she returned from the protest he was dancing in the living room. He had fashioned a respectable toga from their top bed sheet, but the electrical extension cord he was using as a belt was not doing its job. He found this quite funny and danced harder as she walked into the room. She turned to survey the extent of the celebration and had actually smiled. "She still has a nice ass," he thought as he watched her move, "and the protests aren't hurting her muscle tone either." He suspects some of her male comrades have noticed as well, but he doesn't worry about that happening. She wouldn't do it. She was, after all, a married woman.
"You're quite a good heathen," she said .
"And perhaps you will join me in Arcadia? To celebrate the moon, of course." he said. The bottle of Jack Daniels he held tightly was already a good deal emptier than when he started, its energy transferred to him. "Energy, dear Linda, my perfect wife, is never lost, simply transformed is all," he said by way of explanation. She watched him move as if she were genuinely curious, a witness to a primordial event. As if he were Bacchus and she the first witness to his very first debauchery.
II
You recognize the brutality of summer. Promising so much and delivering so little. You are a stumbling fool in its path. You think, "Somewhere else there is a party, a place I belong. Maybe a woman is waiting for me there, needing me." You know you will never find that party but your optimism remains undiminished. You are always young in the heart of the summer.
Perhaps, you think in your own defense, it is because summer has so many disguises. But you know you aredeceiving yourself. Each summer is the same. You've witnessed it so many times now - thirty eight times to be exact . But you insist (only to yourself; no one else would permit such nonsense!) that you are innocent, a hapless victim on the day it arrives.
And today is that day.
You slept too late. A bottle, thick with recent emptiness greets you, bedside. Looking through the thick bottle glass the window beyond is distorted and with it July itself. There is no hope today of anything better or any clarity. A note from your wife reminds you of last night. She is here in her absence just as surely as she is absent when she is present. You recall the stiffness of her body as you reached out too touch her last night, a mannequin feigning fatigue. "Please, Robert, not now." Then, offering hope as if hope were a luxury rather than merely essential , she whispers, "Maybe tomorrow."
You left the room. Not with any anger - she's right, after all. You are a stranger now and that doesn't appeal to her. Flesh is still ancient, and it has its own logic. For years you thought that all logic involving men and women had pleasure, pure and simple, as its central argument, but of course you were wrong. Pleasure is your illusion and she, like all women from the beginning of time, knows that truth without the need to be told. Pleasure exists on the periphery of the argument, a relatively useless fact to everyone but you.
Later, before you get out to mow the lawn as promised, you join the static of the internet. Twenty-four hours a day of pure pornography. Now, the curtains are carefully drawn and the monitor's light isolates you in the darkness of the den. Three bodies move together in jerky, staggered motions on the monitor. Nothing is particularly clear but you recognize a man, a woman, and a man. Lots of smiling and silence. Soon it is all too much, a crass memory. You now are one player too many. You have to return to your own bed to force a little more sleep.
You would like to call Jean. And perhaps her friend Marie. They have told you they are "good friends." The way some girls laugh when they say that good friends leaves you in pain thinking about all the possible interpretations. Artists both, they are equally proud of their unconventional attitudes and various body punctures. You've even seen some of them, through her lip, her nostril, and heard of others elsewhere. Last week Jean explained to you what she did the night before and expressed a complete lack of understanding of the fuss you make. You could probably have retreated, but you asked more questions after more drinks. You needed to know the answers. "What's the big deal?" she finally said, "The three of us felt like doing it so we did." She looked away. Maybe she was actually worried she'd said too much. Then, turning back. "We all care for each other. Jonathan is a good friend of Marie also. He is an amazing man and very caring. Its not like you think…." "You perverted old man," you finished her sentence. You knew she is too young to understand your questions, but that someday she will understand, though it will probably be too late for you by then. Jonathan, whoever he is, was at the right place at the right time. Again you are left to drift away with your many questions unanswered.
But now you must get out of the bed. You have promised yourself you would go to the studio and paint after you finish mowing the lawn, but you already doubt that will happen. Instead you drink your coffee and think about the woman, the man, and the woman. If you could love, if the experience were not so alien, you would think about rescuing the woman and if things worked out, loving her. You think about her smiling at you. She doesn't worry about your wife, so why should you? But that would be love, albeit faithless love, so you doubt yourself again.
The mower struggles with the thick grass. Summer's fury rages. Grasses, wild flowers, weed trees have emerged from damp earth, choking the sky. You have not been good about fighting the battles regularly so now, while you danced and prayed night after night, they have gained a strategic position. But you press on; there is little else you will be able to do, today or the next day. You ignore a corner, gliding the mower down a slight incline rather than struggle with the uphill. You know that piece by piece you will abandon the lawn to the summer. It will return to itself. You are not necessary here.
As you wipe the sweat from your face you look down. She is stretched out alone before you smiling, legs apart, waiting. The heat radiating from her body threatens and excites you, engulfing you in her smells, rotting vegetation and slowly moving waters. Mosquitoes fly from her mouth, buzzing your head. She has gained an advantage. Perhaps with the other men gone her power has returned. She is not afraid of you now and you turn away.
III
I look down at Jean as she sleeps. She smiles in her sleep about something. I hope it is not about me.
"So do you want to make love with me or not?" She asked me so casually I actually stammered. Like teenage actors on teenage television shows used to do. "Well, sure, I guess. You are …. available?"
"Robert, I wouldn't offer if I weren't, right?" She touches my arm resting on the bar. "How about you? Your wife a problem?"
It is not a question, more an accusation. Of impotence or helplessness. You see it in her eyes. She continues to smile. She knows my wife's name is Linda but chooses to recognize her by category only. It is part of the challenge.
"Not a problem," I said.
She seemed to enjoy herself. I wanted to talk afterwards, to thank her or something, but she went right to sleep. "There's coffee on the top shelf if you want it." That was it. Nothing about my wife, or leaving, and no questions about seeing me again. No discussion of art, or Marie, or the man they once shared in bed. I watch as the darkness rushed the room as she turned the light out and tried to imagine what she will think tomorrow. What she will say to Marie. To that guy they shared. To my wife. To anyone. I imagine her with her other friends, her male friends, and try to project myself into her thoughts. Other nights in some other future I can only dimly imagine as I watch her sleep. As my eyes adjust I see the outline of her face. I am shocked at how closely it resembles Linda's face. The edge of the moon as it ends its cycle, a mere sliver of light in an empty sky. Then the darkness reasserts itself.
I look over at her again and realize that she is gone.
Benjamin H. Henry
6/7/98 (1)
What people-creatures could contrive; faking music of countenance painting lines of expression along the planes of hollow feature between breaths held at apex simple insight guides a following Went to water then climbed mountains, sought perihelion of incessant orbit what light source could clarify the intertwingled paths connecting every single point of reference?
6/7/98 (3)
what devices on ice held in storage netted to the insignificant wanderings of a strange beast of lore crave alias of nations the names of un-seen, un-heard power tottering in shadow beneath weight, pressure prominent mouth of disgust cleared longings by brushing flakes hardened crystal landed among shards pulsing in perceptible rhythm announces invitation a conspicuous order
6/7/98 (2)
what fluid allowances
could penetrate
a sullen silence
over broken coffee plates
knew the singers would also ripen
then harvest cords
for pulling
and tie-ing
bound diagonal,
off-center directions to
trying laced
fingers
clasping
folds
held
a plastic grip
along ridges
ran her fingernails
gliding sophistication
what meant, whatever meant
would go,
travel along the
roadways
walkways
paths
link footsteps in anticipation
of recorded voices
humming songs
between bites of an evening meal
Chris Kobuskie
Untitled
maker iron drip as it were to fry lightning pebble to your lip Hope your face asphalt a marker for reason uncertain wood die wetted black urn grease the link chimney I or up hang these crackles fold round dark gelatin spores dangle bent
Untitled
asitwere werenots fearpots sonotool stopsfor kilowatt asifwere beforewe rotsanti begunand groundto commonly
Artificial Intelligence Report
I mean to bury it. Like yellow is supposed to. A small conical craft. My mother made. Armies small in numbers. She passes the salt. You call that playing. Empty your pockets. Any hope or desire. Like yellow is supposed to. My mother made. She passes the salt. Empty your pockets. I mean to bury it. A small conical craft. Armies small in numbers. You call that playing. Any hope or desire. My mother made. Empty your pockets. A small conical craft. You call that playing. My mother made. She passes the salt. Any hope or desire. Like yellow is supposed to. Armies small in numbers. Empty your pockets. A small conical craft. I mean to bury it.
Ana Krahmer
PS121
PS 121 is a typical ninth through twelfth grade high school located in a typical American big city. Most of its students find entertainment in either getting high or laid--whichever works to keep them happy. Mrs. Walker’s eleventh grade class is almost always stoned, whether during school hours or not.
The tardy bell rings and most of the students who attend class on a regular basismeaning those who come three out of five days a weekwander in twenty minutes later. Wallet-chains jingle as the scent of pot floats in with the kids.
Mrs. Walker pretends not to notice; she started pretending years ago. Instead of wasting time taking role, she marks everyone as present and clears her throat to start class.
"Okay. Today we’ll have a reading day. If you don’t have a book, you can socialize, as long as you keep the volume low." Her instructions are spoken so dispassionately that she could just be reading aloud the ingredients of a shampoo bottle.
The students grin and give one another high-five’s. It’s been two weeks since Walker last lectured. One or two students opt to studyor cramfor major tests they’ll have in their next classes.
Mrs. Walker sits down in her metal folding chair at the desk that is bolted to the floor. She pulls out the latest Danielle Steele novel and settles back for an hour of escape.
"Oh man! That acid was good! I’m seein’ things now."
Mrs. Walker’s ears perk toward these words, though she doesn’t stop reading.
"Holy shit, it was good! I’m seein’ a huge-ass elephant!"
Mrs. Walker peers over the top of her book. Her eyes widen as they register a lily-white elephant standing in the middle of the room. The elephant does nothing but stand motionless.
The other students see it, too. They poke one another in the ribs, laughing and pointing at the sheet-white monstrosity.
"Must’ve escaped from the zoo," one girl with three eyebrow-piercings and a shaved-head observes in a typical Generation-X voice.
Mrs. Walker is still staring at the pachyderm. Slowly she rises and leaves the room to tell Ms. Hill, the teacher whose classroom is next door.
Ms. Hill and Mrs. Walker return to find the white elephant gone. The kids are all muttering to themselves. Ms. Hill smiles resignedly at Mrs. Walker.
"I need to get back to class. There was a knife fight brewing when you came and got me. I hope it’s not full-blown yet."
Mrs. Walker turns to look over her own class. She clears her throat again and tells everyone to take their seats.
"Go back to reading and talking."
Mrs. Walker had been pretending for years. Why stop now?
Ana Krahmer grew up in a dusty west Texas town and has forever participated in a love affair with books. As she approached the age of eighteen, Ana realized that her love for books was slowly morphing into a love for writing. At nineteen, she is a sophomore creative writing major at Colorado State University.
Stacey Orsini
The Poet
The telephone was an older model, functional in design, composed of black metal parts. It was squat and solid and occupied a corner of the desk. Likely a designer's afterthought, but especially lovely, was its rotary dial. The perforated disk was a silver d'colletage, dainty as a floating compass.
The Poet held the receiver tightly to his ear. He let it ring. He studied the telephone as he waited. When a voice, the voice is sluggish, edged with an accent, answered, he began.
Dinner hour - dinner bell, the sales caller persists
His pencil nudges margins as he calculates your appetite.
The Poet read through two lines before the voice at the other end shouted, Who is this! In sotto voce. Where did you get my phone number! Then the inevitable.
Click - dialtone.
Reciting -- this time I did manage to finish two lines - was careful business. Today's phone call was to Sheldon Graham, a name that sounds intelligent, friendly even, though The Poet began to harbor new doubts about picking people from the telephone book.
Entries, what to draw from their solemn lines?
Serial book of hammer-struck marks
A record of living lusts and loathings
Ordered by an alphabet smitten with Greek
The Poet was never surprised when a listener hung up, still he was disappointed. It hurt, it tortured him, no truthfully, it only bothers me a little, since he considered himself to be above most base emotions. Emotions are things to write about, not to feel about. Besides, The Poet guessed most listeners were secretly envious of his abilities. His ego swelled; he liked to cultivate a healthy positivity.What can I do? He could not help things. His poetry machinery, grinding at all times, even drives me a little crazy.
What could he do? The Poet chose to call Katrina.
He whispered:
English ivy drags from a flowerbox
To the sidewalk like
Rapunzel's plaited desire
Though Katrina never braids her hair. And, it is not golden hair. When she pulls it away from her face, she does so with the efficiency of a library matron. This particular gesture could never, unfortunately, be described as seductive.
Rapunzel's plaited desire
Baiting blurred men
As they speed by in automobiles
Eyes bound unlurable
Over knuckled wheels
But the vine, it swings
The Poet paused. He thought he could hear Katrina breathing. It sounds like air rasping the mouthpiece. Or is it static on the line? Was she still listening? He continued.
The vine, it swings
It rubs rosy the sooted bricks
As it motions
Soprano children
Double dutching
Fibers whisking air
Here, Katrina hung up.
Despite others' impatience, The Poet would persevere. But for now he had given up. Sometimes he felt he would crawl out of his skin -- the frustration of his vocation! The Poet decided to take a walk. He walked often, more it seemed every day. Some air, some sanity. First though, he went to his desk and pulled the gun from a bottom drawer. The gun is glinting, as noire guns will glint in venetian-blind light. He knew taking the gun wasn't necessary. Carrying it, he often felt like an overdressed woman. Even so, he never went anywhere without his
Sensible Piece, Coreless Lover
Oh Death, endowed, ready-made!
The Poet knew his friends were losing interest in his poetic ramblings but what can I do? Katrina, the Rapunzel inspiration: he could tell she was about to quit him. Initially she was flattered by the Rapunzel references, now they fatigued her. The Poet knew that Simon, his pal from childhood, blue house, black shutters, sister Naomi with the cross-eyes, was also dodging him. Even his writer-friend Niko -- he hadn't heard from Niko in months. He was losing friends and all with poetry at the blame!
Outside, the streets were quiet. It was raining. The Poet opened his
flimsy barrier, borne of industry and fashion
and checked himself, though the umbrella is a bit insectoid with those jointed limbs. Had he been talking aloud? Sometimes the muttering inside his head -- he just couldn't tell. The streets were quiet though. A man hurried towards him, umbrella-less. His heavy shoulders were dark with dampness. The Poet observed his round face, illuminated beneath a streetlight.
Lunar visage, descended
Tour the streets with us,
Leer with an eyeless crater.
You frighten us, upside-down
You make us laugh
The hulky man approached. His moon face was obscured now by shadow. They passed one another. The Poet reached for his sensible piece, hidden safely in his pocket. If a gun glints in darkness and no one is there to see it, did it ever glint at all? The gun was the real thing, official-looking, also comforting. He knew what it felt like to shoot it. One night The Poet had walked all the way to the river. It was so dark it is impossible to separate where the banks end and the river begins. He had stood tentatively; he could hear water lapping. He raised the gun and blasted. Six shots doubled back, echoing off the bridge with twelve stuttering reports. The Poet felt excited when he pulled the trigger but realistically he was worried. What if someone had seen or heard him?
Lead slugs like bees
Slice air, the water coming up fast.
Too much to hope for:
To strike a can
Oddly floating,
Or a fish, its target eye tilting.
The water, brown
And rough as peat,
Eats it.
One thing for sure. Though the gun was loaded, there would be no shooting tonight.
As he walked, The Poet entertained a pleasant image of Katrina's face. She smiled. She really was a poem, was that his fault? Will you stop looking at me like that? Always staring; that or talking nonsense. What a face. That smooth forehead and eyebrows like little feathers. The feathers quivered. I just think we're too different. Her eyes, lidded and sleepy. You are not what I thought you would be. The Poet wandered toward Katrina's neighborhood.
The rain was coming heavier now. It canopied below streetlights at intersections. The Poet moved from light to light. Now water was dripping through his flimsy barrier. It drooled down the aluminum handle. Maybe the walk was a mistake. I am not feeling saner for it, just wetter. And, soaked as he was, he knew that he would not return home until he had talked to Katrina or at least glimpsed her.
The scent of thunderstorm sulphur
Cousin to silt
Blood metal
The Poet was really getting drenched now. He ran for the nearest shelter, an ornate tree, some dry spots showing on the sidewalk beneath it.
Blood metal
Midnight. From a bloated sky
Fluid falls, dredging squirmy crawlers.
Their scent is nothing so romantic
as say, the clarity of a woman
her scarlet mineral essence
The Poet thought of Niko and his constant complaining about writing slumps. He would call Niko, maybe when he got back. This time I will not let poetry figure into it. I will try to talk to him like a regular person.
Their scent is nothing so romantic
As say, the clarity of a woman
Her scarlet mineral essence
Or one's future death imagined
Smelling of iron and panic
It's over. Katrina is going to tell me she can't stand ... the poetry and such.
Smelling of iron and panic
Earthworms, flooded out
They color the air, yet
The Poet left his haven under the tree and continued along the shiny sidewalks. A car sped through the intersection, braked as The Poet crossed, then burned rubber, Watch where you're walking, asshole! The Poet watched the car's tail lights shrink. He fingered his sensible piece, warm and dry in his coat pocket. Learn how to drive, asshole-yourself.
As he approached Katrina's apartment building, The Poet considered his options. He could stand here, under the awning of the building across the street, and wait to see her pass her window. Most times watching is okay. The air smelled raw and meaty. It would be good to dry off a little. Or, he could call her from the pay phone in the lobby. Maybe she isn't even home. He noticed a light was on in her apartment. The Poet could also ring her doorbell and attempt to gain an invitation. Perhaps she is asleep. He really wanted to see Katrina. I wonder if she has company.
He shook his flimsy barrier and folded it. He entered the lobby in the building across from Katrina's. The guard glanced over with bored annoyance, Can I help you with something, sir? The Poet I admit I am a bit stymied by your question was temporarily stumped.
Nonetheless, he answered.
What aid can this visored defender yield? A swift boot, a vice clamped upon the elbow --
Would brass buttons tarnish? Would epaulets flap if he were to help, really help?
Help, another word suddenly.
Not a friendly salute. Not a warm hand nor a gentle word.
The guard's face shifted from boredom to anger; even the color changed, pale to red, You're making no sense. The guard's fingers caressed a holstered gun, a delicate gesture. He repeated, Is there something I can help you with? Pause. Sir. The Poet gazed through the vast lobby windows. It is still raining. I can see Katrina's apartment across the street. A dinging sound. The elevator.
Sir, I must ask you to leave.
The Poet, in an effort to bring civility to this tense situation, mentioned that he, like the guard, had a sensible piece. As a matter of fact, it was right in his pocket. The guard stared at The Poet and at the pocket where The Poet's hand and the gun were. What would Katrina think of this development? Things have not improved. I think we should call it quits. The Poet was thinking ahead. He noticed that he would have to pass the guard to get to the door. The lobby windows gave him a nice view. He glanced up to Katrina's window. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your...
The guard was busy pushing buttons on a wall panel. The Poet approached. The guard unholstered his gun. The Poet considered. He should leave now. I think I should leave now. Did he say that aloud? Did I say that aloud? He charged towards the guard and pushed out the door. He looked behind him but did not see anyone in pursuit. A police cruiser pulled up, lights flashing as expected. It was still raining. The street smells of car exhaust and of moldy earth and of the faint odor of a cigar.
The scent is nothing so romantic
As say, one's future death imagined
Smelling of iron and panic
Earthworms, flooded out
They color the air, yet
The Poet had left behind his flimsy barrier. Now he regretted the walk, he regretted everything. He glanced up to Katrina's apartment one last time.
What picture do you have of me?
But The Poet could not continue. He did not want to conjure it. He thought he saw Katrina peeking from behind the curtain. He imagined her eyes squinting below her little feather-brows. The Poet felt slightly embarrassed. If she were watching she would see this depiction: a police car pulled onto the curb and The Poet running. What can I do? The Poet jogged hoppity-skippity. He knew his stride had a funny pitch. I am not superstitious, I can step on cracks. But for the most part, he tried to avoid the earthworms. With the rain tonight there were so many.