The Plum Plum Spring 2013
The Plum Plum Issue 1 Spring 2013 Copyright Š March 2013 by The Plum Plum ‘Zine Artists All rights reserved. Editor: Mabel Lee Designer: Maggie Lee
“...And a bowl of fruit offered in their name returns to them as the memory of a mouth rapt in joy around moist and living flesh. Who among the dead does not long for the sun-wet meat of smooth-skinned plums, the bitter sweetness of each pitted heart?” - Jim Tolan, “Cemetery Plums”
Heinrich Waegner
A murderous year In January the Christmas tree lost his life February was the end of Carnival And March murdered the last snow In April Christ was crucified And May contributed the first traffic casualties In June the May bucks passed away And July simply killed the first half of the year In August any hope for a warm summer died September declared the migrant birds lost in action And October cracked the hardest nuts In November the trees dropped all their clothes So December didn’t hesitate to finish off the whole year
waves
breathe with the surge, but never escape high sea, seeing nothing but undulated surface, face-to-face meeting with windy void, face lifting uphill, while aging valleydown, in hardly face-saving agony, but fishing lively deep down in the undercurrent absence of light and motion, just mystic glimpses of phosphorescence hint at submarine life that the oceanic sunny side never gets to know, this lightly enlightened crest of wave, in brittle breadth freely flying, like sea’s gills, crowned by gusts with whitewashed garlands, scattered to mist, yet gone grey by the height of fall with thundering energy of the cloudbursts, poured back into one massive whole remembering descent and finality, in bulged tubs until they flood the seaside, cruising coastlines like being in the same boat, seeing each other without knowing each other’s lengths, rush to overflow turf like conquerers because of neither distress nor reclamation, thus encrusted with nourishing salt, land puts to sea, where coloraturas of sirens echo death, howling over toil that sounds like leisure for gentle surf riding and smooth retreat forever, just waves
From Bishop to President I’ll never forget the fellow student who didn’t really play better chess than me, but nevertheless always won. As soon as he discovered my preference for the bishops, he snatched them away, sacrificing his knights for them. Having then developed new strategies with my knights, I couldn’t succeed because he eliminated them with his bishops. That way he taught me how to employ more and more new tactics. Yet with his destructive creativity he countered all of my potentially ingenious long-range moves, and somehow he was always a bit ahead. During the sit-ins, political gatherings, or drama rehearsals of the 1968 upheavals at the German university, he never spoke up, was always sheer ear. But at the committee meetings of the opposing groups, panels, and seminars, he bloomed with insider news, an informer with nothing to offer by himself. Like a sniper he shot his verbal arrows from behind at brave and responsible backs he couldn’t conquer otherwise. Thus he soon became head of the important selfgoverning student board. You couldn’t really say in advance what he was up to - except that maybe one day he would become president.
Violeta Brana-Lafourcade
Oblivion of Dreams Longing for that heat and darkness I sit once again in a rickety train car, speeding through a long black tunnel into lit stations and back in a two-minute rhythm. My eyes spy my neighbor’s paper. It says your soul can be read on your face. A scientific name confirms the fact: Morphopsychology -- strikes, in bold. Underneath, two of the monsters of this century are on display in top-quality portraits large and colorful on the page. If only a computer had analyzed the psychopathic brow and nose and lips before they comitted all those atrocities, or even better, they could have been detected in the womb. The faintest drop of poison would have sent them into the sweetest of sleeps. They might have been two sleeping angels.
Marjorie Kanter
wEt on wEt I walk past this mature man peeing in the rain.
Today I found a surprise in my pocket. I wondered how it had gotten (t)here. I didn't remember putting it (in) there (so) it had to have gotten (t)here by way of a pickpocket in reverse.
Christian Legan
Jeff Pullen
The Queen of Hearts She was always there out on 42nd street and we never knew her name dressed like the playing card and accessorized by her with black stockings and stilettos she was known only as the Queen of Hearts and our first encounters she made change for our pinball nights but it wasn’t long and she ran the arcade from high above in her glass enclosed loft office and as we played on barely noticing everyone had questions everyone was searching and the Queen of Hearts owned all the answers. Those answers were of no use to young boys playing ski-ball and it was years before we’d learn the Queen ran the night ladies dabbled in money lending for a high price and as each decade demanded their drugs of choice were made available and those people always there those streets always dangerous were of little or no concern to us and you just learned who and what to avoid and long before I was impacted by this scene my time there was over and the Queen of Hearts was buried in a deep corner memory.
It seemed a lifetime later my work brought me back to those streets photo shoots at night on Broadway required and it wasn’t full circle for this Times Square was in its midst of radical change “a renaissance” the mayor cooed as porn shops, strip clubs and rip-off electronics were replaced by grand food courts and NYC souvenirs and I wasn’t revisiting a memory that is until I passed the food court across from the old arcade when I heard a rant from inside the doorway an elderly homeless woman or so it seemed sitting in the entryway and she was yelling orders and commands to no one in particular as New Yorkers no longer able to hear passed her by and from a safe distance the tourists stared a New York phenomena they imagined to be talked about when they returned home and to look at her maybe seventy maybe older they’d never know she was once well-known once important and nor did I until I saw up close
the robe and the hat were the same as so many years ago sneakers worn where her stilettos once fit it was the Queen of Hearts barking orders the same as she once did from her office perch.
And as I passed her one last time she took a drink from a silver flask a leftover from another time and believing changes are constant and nothing stops the time as we move through the decades I had to wonder why was she still here?
J.Lynn Sheridan
Left-pawed Her name, he says, is Anastasia, though I think she looks like Cleopatra shuffling her feet in rushes (rice.) After a few cat greetings, he wipes his nose and tells me, she’s left-pawed. I just nod my head. Sure, she’s left-pawed, she signs her name with a black Bic between toes. We stare at the cat staring at us with a slow wink and he shows me her water dish, how she taps at the water with just her left paw, how she clicks the remote with her left paw, how she answers the phone, flushes the toilet, cooks his dinner, and still I just nod. You don’t mess with a man who loves his cat. You don’t mess with a man whose wife is in the hospital for the fourth time this month. I set his dinner on the counter, the flash of a tear blinding me as I let myself out.
Paul Zinnard
The Walk I was alone at home. Outside, it was a perfect afternoon– not cold, not rainy, not crowded. I felt like I needed to do some thinking. My life was going nowhere. It‘s not that I was at a crossroads or had a dilemma or was taking too many risks, none of that; I was stuck. I had lost my faith and energy. I could say I wasn’t even worried. I was numb. I felt like I had disappointed everyone that trusted me at some point. Suddenly, I felt sad and anguished. I had to get out. I seized the keys and ran down the stairs. As soon as the afternoon breeze hit my face, I felt comforted, sort of relieved. My house was about an hour walk away from the city center, where there were plenty of nice cozy coffee shops and tea salons. So I decided I would go and have a hot coffee somewhere and buy a magazine on my way. I always had this strange idea that I couldn’t just simply walk without a definite target, a commitment, a mission; no matter how stupid it was. I just needed an excuse. As I started walking, I began to feel better, less numbed. Maybe I wasn’t that bad after all. Maybe I just needed to see some people to cheer me up. I was getting lost in my own thoughts of relief, when I saw two old nuns, all in black, looming over a bridge as if trying to spot something down below. The bridge crossed over the road to the airport and there were only cars down there. If they had dropped something, it was completely useless to try and spot it.
Both of them held small yellow and white flags in their hands. They looked like excited teenagers. I passed by. One of them was talking to the other. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but her eyes were like flames. They were illuminated and full of life. Her whole face was smiling. How nice, I thought. Maybe nuns and religions are not that bad after all, and I’m full of prejudiced ideas. I went back to my thoughts and my walk. Every footstep worked as a dose of medication. I could tell some energy was coming back to me. Then I vaguely remembered, wasn’t the Pope visiting town? Maybe that’s why those nuns were on the bridge. They were probably expecting him. Or maybe it was last week. I remembered seeing him on the news, but you can never tell where these people really are. He could be in the South Pole and it wouldn’t look any different on T.V. I crossed the street and turned left. I came onto a big avenue. I must have been deep in my thoughts, because I didn’t usually go that way to get to the center. I like the smaller streets and lanes better, where you always get entertained looking at shop windows, and the noise of the traffic doesn’t interrupt your reveries. Maybe everyone is just like me. The avenue was completely deserted, strangely deserted, first of all, because there wasn’t a single person on such a wide sidewalk, and secondly, because there wasn’t a single car in motion. It felt creepy for a second, but so quiet and unusual that it seemed like a movie. Unreal. Maybe I should watch more T.V. and buy the paper more often. It seemed like the town had been evacuated and nobody was able to reach me to let me know. But no, I remembered the two nuns on the bridge. So it must have only been that side of town that had been attacked with poisonous gas. Well, maybe it was a false alarm. They had all run away, and now it was just me, and the city.
I could proclaim myself the King. What a shame all the candidates for Queen had run away with the cowards. I was feeling good. After all, I’m not that bad. For sure, I’m okay and the world is okay too. Everything is going to be just fine from now on. I realized at that moment that the sidewalk was covered with papers and leaflets. I was stepping on them. I couldn’t read them and wasn’t curious enough to make the effort of picking one up from the ground. But still, it was a feature to add to that whole weird and dreamy picture. You could have added some mist to the scene, and it would have been the shooting of a horror movie. I might have heard the yelling of the director any minute, “Get that asshole off my set!” I could hear the clear echo of my footsteps, and immediately hastened my pace. I wasn’t scared to the point of running, but it wasn’t amusing any longer, especially with the complete absence of cars on a big avenue of a big city on a regular Sunday afternoon. Something was definitely wrong. It smelt like catastrophe. Then I heard a humming coming from the end of the street. It was coming towards me. It was growing. It was traffic. It was a motorcycle. I could tell by the sound of it, not only one, but two, at least. Now I could see them. Four motorcycles. City police, followed by a car with tinted windows, with a blue siren on top. The siren was silent. Following the car were another four city police motorcycles and two similar cars with tinted windows. Camouflaged police, I guess. And then, the most extraordinary thing happened. A white car with a window structure added to the top approached. I couldn’t believe it. The Pope? It was the Pope himself, the master of the Holy Church, the proxy of God on Earth. Suddenly, I understood everything. The street was deserted because everyone was attending the mass in the square at the end of the avenue, and it was cut off
to all traffic, in order to escort the Pope to the airport as soon as it had all ended. Thank God there weren’t any poisonous gas attacks or a horror movie shooting. I wasn’t the King, and the Queens were all in town. They had never left. That was a relief. But I was lucky. Sometimes it’s weird how things happen. Thousands of people were fighting for some room to catch a glimpse at the holy figure of the Pope. To get close to him. Just to feel the smell of his sainthood. Right there down in the square, carrying their babies on their shoulders, and finally having to see him through a gigantic screen because he was too far away to be seen properly. And here I was, never interested in religion or holiness. All alone in the street with the Pope himself. I could see him perfectly, all in white. An old man, very old. His eyes were almost closed, but still, he was looking straight ahead and waving with his left hand, as if the street was packed with people. Only that the street was deserted. Well, there was me, but I don’t think he could see me. Or could he? I watched him inside his crystal shield. He was almost killed by a gunman many years back. That’s why he was protected by a thick glass. There was nothing inside of it but a neon light to illuminate him and a metal handle bar he was gripping with his right hand in order not to fall. He looked so weak and old. The Pope. The messenger of God on Earth, waving to a completely deserted avenue. Somebody should tell him that the show’s over, I thought. Poor old man. He should be at home in front of the fireplace on a rocking chair. Then I remembered the nun and her glowing eyes. I stopped. Maybe it’s not such a great idea to walk to the center today. I turned around and walked back home.
Shelly Weaver
Anita Haas
The Story I found a story. It fell right out of the sky. Whole. It looked good; a subtle beginning, a round tubby middle, and a climactic surprise end. So I caught it. And I swallowed it. And I thought, “What a great story this will be when I tell it, because it’s mine now.” But it wasn’t. When I tried telling it, it fell out of me in one piece. Like a cobra’s kill. No Magic. So I swallowed it again, and perplexed, I lay down under a tree, where, like the cobra, I went to sleep. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember the story. Not a word, nor a turn of phrase. “It has escaped,” I thought, and I wandered away sadly. A few days later, the call of a bird stirred some distant memory. It inspired a poem. Another day, the shape of a cloud gave birth to a song. The bubbles in my cider completed a sketch. A neighbour’s terrible discord ended a long neglected play. And the thread of my needlework followed an uncharted path. Like the hen who feathers my pillow, and the horse tail stretched on my fiddle bow, so my story that fell whole from the sky, flies off in a flock of a thousand silver fragments.
Alex Grover
The Secretary’s Calendar she looked at June and thought how nice it would be to see white blocks instead of messy ink monsters, scribbled memos, silent tirade masterpieces on the glossy sheen of rectangle, all the names and times and locations and prices and clogged pores, hairy dissonance, handy trick that molds Friday into Sunday for four weeks straight, magician’s slight that turns holiday in memoriam, work all of one day, work all of next. count the numbers and they add up to 465, sometimes 496, sometimes (onlytimes) 406 in the love month, the chilly love month. she liked that frigid commodity, the lesser amount involved in talking to other people, crossing paths with other possible memories she’d have to deal with, taking time with the family to honor the weird traditions that only affirm our strange fascinations. but June meant no passivity, no brevity, too much solidity, too many hotdogs, too many appointments with friends and date nights with greasy business panderers called boss and mister and good guy and company manager and no, she wouldn’t dare take those men in the love month, in the sweet refuge of lonelytimes. June was a hairy monster; the pen marks only proved it, the greasy hotdogs only alluded to the matter, the magician only tapped his hat.
Rachel K. Zall
How To Develop An Objective Viewpoint Of Small Rodents (And Other Household Pests) Begin with mice. If you don’t know enough about mice to write, good. On the other hand if you yourself are tiny and squeaking and have fuzzy black ears you should step back shut up and let someone objective tell the story. Here: let me. A photo of you chewing may be included but don’t waste our limited time with any nonsense about you reading Richard Feynman or solving quadratic equations
because we all know mice don’t do that, mice chew. I mean you are a mouse right? Right. So: Tell us all about your culture, especially the chewing... no, no one’s cares what you’ve learned about General Relativity. We are interested in mice: mice who nibble our food who scurry in our pantries and especially especially the ones who bit holes in my cereal box last night and carried off every cheerio. This morning I had to buy my breakfast, which left me running late
and that’s when I realized that mice might be worth the trouble of study. Anyway that’s enough about me. Put down that silly slide rule and tell us where you learned to chew. We are trying to help you.
Mary Ann Leitch
Mike Murphy
Woodshed Small, mice world, away from winter ice. I’d forgotten that wood bleeds too, resin-stink reminiscence on cue, seeping shedload memories of you working old whorls; blades whetted yet, still, anew. Seasoned shoulder honed over the vice, big, bigger, biggest hands of all shaving, planing, working his awl; making, make-doing, mending, curing, cutting, curving the grain, knot to will bending along the ear-pencil’s scrawl. Hand that had measured horse, sheave-stack, blackthorn; had held the slap, bolt, heard the smack of timber fall. Catholics, carpenters, Josephs, being about their grandfather’s business. The teens-familiar tools, Irish-scavenged off of English scrap tips. Dad’s “grandaddy had had to bury his on English decree to cut off all skilled Irish hands” on occupied but up-rising quicksands. Seems tradesmen’s tools too are “arms” in natives’ own lands. Saw-dust smell lingers still. Survived, passed on, down, squid quill skills pour, drip through famished, hollowed skulls. Pulp, paper, pen-chisel: carved words will be my wood, food, class-work, my war, my world.
Contributor Biographies
VIOLETA BRANA-LAFOURCADE was born in Montreal and spent most of her childhood between the US, Spain, and Germany. She is currently working as an independent filmmaker and university professor at Comillas in Madrid. She plays folk and blues violin in her free time. ALEX GROVER is a third-year jazz-freak viking writer at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, majoring in English and Education with an Honors concentration and a concentration in Creative Writing. He loves to write poetry and prose, having been published in magazines such as 50 Word Stories, trapeze magazine, and 365 Tomorrows. He is the editor-in-chief of his university’s student-run publication, Avant, as well as his own personally-initiated venture, Yorick Magazine. For a little more on him, check out his blog at www.alexgroverwriter.tumblr.com. ANITA HAAS is a Canadian writer and teacher living in Madrid. She publishes in both English and Spanish and her work includes numerous articles, short stories and poetry in magazines and anthologies, and three books on film; Eli Wallach (with prologue by Clint Eastwood), John Phillip Law (co-author), and Eugenio Martin, (co-author). Her latest story appeared in December 2012 in the anthology La Ciudad Vestida de Negro. *”The Story” originally appeared in Quantum Leap. MARJORIE KANTER (Cinti. Ohio) is author of “I displace the air as I walk,” “The Saddle Stitch Note Books,” “The Bagged Stories,” public word installations, and other works. She gives creativity writing workshops from her base in Madrid and Tarifa, Spain, where she has lived for the past almost 30 years. Her short literary pieces and poems are sparked from her journal entries and often focus on issues of in/communication within and across cultures and activities of daily living. www.elasunto.com/mkd.htm * “wEt on wEt” was originally published in Blades 50. The accompanying artwork is by Jose Luis Delgado Guitart
CHRISTIAN LEGAN is a writer, editor and photographer who loves nature, takes photos obsessively, and really really really needs to give more attention to his writing. He has a finished novel in the final stages of editing (again) that he plans to try selling soon. He recently sold a photo to a local publisher, Allium Press of Chicago, for use on the cover of its recent novel, Company Orders, by author David J. Walker. He lives in Wheaton, a western suburb of Chicago, with his black cat Bean, whom he digs immensely. Also, his Flickr page: http://www. flickr.com/photos/christiaan_25/ MARY ANN LEITCH’s works have brought much attention to the art viewing public. Emerging with the “Ladies” series, she sensuously depicted the “femme fatale” figure on large canvases with oils and on paper, pastels. She has published a book of 32 images from that era “Ladies”. In 1986, she broke her realist’s boundaries with a series of works mixing realism and abstract composition. Works on paper, “Legs and “Luvs” evolved leading to the non-representational series “Exploration.” Fields of sensual color, impasto lines of movement, glimmers of glitter and cut glass jewels come together for an opulent celestial voyage. Her tones of color are uplifting and the use of mineral stones is nu-age in spirit. A selection of works are available as the book “Elements” & “Available Art.” To satisfy a desire to paint visual legerdemain, she produces fantasy still lifes with objects d’art. This style surfaced recently in the “Falling Fruit thru Clouds” series of paintings and pastels. Whimsical with a touch of the surreal for all ages to enjoy - 20 fruits in all - original paintings & pastels - also available as Giclee prints on canvas or paper thru Fine Art America - http://mary-ann-leitch. artistwebsites.com or visit www.artbymal.com
MIKE MURPHY is a writer from the UK who is currently living in Madrid as an English teacher. He has participated in a writing group there for nine years. JEFF PULLEN has been an exhibiting painter for over forty years with a deep desire since creative writing classes many years ago to one day write. About five years ago he started writing down short narrative stories of people and places he had encountered mostly throughout his career. Two years later, it resulted in a publication of 73 short stories entitled Invisible on the Periphery, Publish America 2009. J.LYNN SHERIDAN poems and writes in the Chain O’ Lakes area of northern Illinois where she lives with her scruffy construction-guy husband and children, but she’d rather live in an old hardware store for the aroma and ambiance. Her poems can most recently be found in Beyond the Dark Room (an international poetry anthology), a Poetic Bloomings’ anthology, MouseTail Press and her blog, https://writingonthesun. wordpress.com and @J.lynnSheridan. SHELLY WEAVER is a Phoenix-based lifestyle photographer who has been working in the field since she was sixteen. Her passion is people and the vast array of intricacies they have to offer, but she is more than content to spend the day with a camera, a location, and absolutely no agenda. Though her professional career of capturing families, graduates, bands, and events is fulfilling and endlessly rewarding, she has been spending her time recently with more creative and artistic intentions in her personal life. You can see more of her work at www.swphoto.tumblr.com
HEINRICH WAEGNER studied English and German Language and Literature in Erlangen (Germany), Exeter (UK) and Charlottesville (University of Virginia, US). He taught German at Va. Commonwealth University in Richmond and at the UVa and at German high schools. He not only taught English and German but also Creative Writing and Theater. Europe-wide renowned, Waegner was invited to perform with his drama troupe at many festivals, generally winning prizes when they were offered. Along with teaching numerous workshops abroad and teachers’ training seminars at home, he has published many plays of his own or modern adaptations and theatrical articles concerning physically-oriented theater work with youths, well-documented in his teachers’ manual From the Inside to the Outside – Acting via the Body. He also has published several volumes of modern poetry and prose and has created “concerted art-happenings,” i.e. poetry readings accompanying abstract paintings, supplemented by musicians and dancers. The themes of two of these art-happenings titled “what moves us when we are in motion” and “tango” have been filmed: www.heinrich.waegner.de.vu and www. theater_evau.de.vu RACHEL K. ZALL lives in Philadelphia, PA with her lovely partner and their three weird cats. She has published two books of poetry, The Oxygen Catastrophe: Poems 1999 – 2006 and New Problems, and her story “The Visible Woman” was included in Tristan Taormino’s Take Me There: Trans & Genderqueer Erotica, which won a Lambda Literary Award for Trans Fiction in 2012. She is endlessly working on a third book about the experience of living in a trans body as a woman, which may or may not be called Exonym. Her website is www.radiosilent.org PAUL ZINNARD is a musician and songwriter based in Madrid who also writes short stories and poems about everyday life.
Editor’s Note: Dear Plum Plummers: Here it is, the very first issue of The Plum Plum, ripe for the picking. and in time for spring showers. Thank you to everyone for your patience and for your collaboration; we hope you find it delectable. As you may have already gathered from our humble beginnings, we are intent on creating a cozy and attractive home for words and images to cohabitate, and we are especially enamored of first impressions. You may ask, What are these plums about? They involve a number of things: that sharp taste, the visceral color, and the concision of its image and its perfect “plumness,” as mentioned by one Count Almasy in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. We like the radiance of its flowers in the greyness of adversity and the way one’s mouth eats up the word upon pronouncing its short, sweet name. We like how all this defines how poetry and photography can impact the senses and bloom in the mind, which is where the plum trees really grow... Until the next issue, Mabel Lee