Crack the Spine
Issue forty-Five
Crack The Spine Issue Forty-Five November 26, 2012 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2012 by Crack the Spine
Contents Lisa J. Cihlar Housekeeping Lucky Carol Colleen Houlihan Muffed Rasmenia Massoud Questions Crawling Past Craig Rishus The Picnic Artist Sean Beld Redaction Gary Clifton Daisy at Daybreak Diana Anhalt Yesterday’s Shoes In This Country Even the Leaves
Cover Art “Spit” by Eleanor Leonne Bennett Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 16 year old internationally award winning photographer and artist who has won first places with National Geographic, The World Photography Organisation, Nature’s Best Photography, Papworth Trust, Mencap, The Woodland Trust and Postal Hertitage. Her photography has been published in the Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC News Website and on the cover of books and magazines in the United States and Canada. Her art is globally exhibited, having shown work in London, Paris, Indonesia, Los Angeles, Florida, Washington, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Germany, Japan, Australia and The Environmental Photographer of the Year Exhibition (2011) amongst many other locations. She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See the Bigger Picture global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity 2010.
Lisa J. Cihlar Housekeeping
Every winter Kate collects the hair trapped in her boar bristle brush and saves it in a plastic sandwich bag. The long strands are more white and gray than auburn now. In April she wraps the tresses loosely around pine boughs and maple twigs then sits silent for hours in her blue Adirondack chair in the back yard and watches hummingbirds and chipping sparrows pull hanks of it to line their nests. If she is motionless enough, and silent enough, for long enough, one bird, or maybe two will land on her head and pluck at the source. In autumn when the leaves drop and the cold winds begin to shriek in from the north, she collects the blown down nests and lines her windowsills and coffee tables with them. Her favorite is an oriole pouch, still attached to a branch. Only white curls are threaded through it.
Lisa J. Cihlar Lucky Carol
Carol has a wooden bowl of two pronged bones knotted together with fine silk thread. Thirty years of unused best poultry wishes with all the fortunes and futures she needs. She carries a lucky rabbit’s foot dyed a deep blue that is almost black. It works so well she buys a pregnant doe from the farmer down Atkins Road. When that rabbit is kindling Carol sit beside the cage and counts to nine. Nine plus the mother was ten, times four is forty times the luck. There is not a single bit of blight on her tomatoes this summer, so that is proof enough. The rabbits eat all the four-leaf clovers in the yard. The math is getting out of hand. Mrs. Brennan and her dog, Fred, herd three escaped sheep up the dirt lane one acre to the north. Carol hurries over to meet them. The roast chicken for dinner is filled with lemon slices and garlic cloves. She ties the wishbone to her collection before going to bed and sleeping facing south.
Lisa J. Cihlar's poems have been published in The South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, In Posse Review, Blackbird, and The Prose-Poem Project. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook, “The Insomniac’s House,” is available from Dancing Girl Press and a second chapbook, “This is How She Fails,” is available from Crisis Chronicles Press. She lives in rural southern Wisconsin.
Colleen Houlihan Muffed (An Essay) The combination of being raised Roman Catholic and in Iowa stunted my sexual development in ways I am still discovering. Sex education at my Catholic grade school was put off until sixth grade, and when it came time, our teachers herded us into the school library where our morbidly obese gym teacher popped a VHS tape into a VCR and hit “play.” The video detailed a sleepover-gone-wrong. One of the girls got her period during the course of the night and her friend’s mother took this opportunity to review the inner workings of the female body with the girls. The mother cooked breakfast, whipping together a batch of pancake batter. She crafted the pancakes in the shape of the female reproductive system, using them as visual aids to discuss the functions of their various lady parts. After her technical demonstration, Mom dished out an ovary here, a uterus there, and voilá – breakfast. It should come as no shock that in this, the age before the internet, I gleaned my entire knowledge of sex from the film Dirty Dancing – a few scenes of sweaty bumping and grinding on a dance floor, and the understanding that nobody puts Baby in a corner. My sexual cluelessness didn’t matter much to me, as I had no interest in boys other than as sports teammates. I wore my hair so short, I spent my youth correcting strangers who referred to me as “him” or “son.” I owned every He-Man action figure, and preferred whatever sport the boys were playing during recess to playing house with the girls. I took no interest in fashion, opting for sweat pants with holes worn in the knees from slide-tackling on the soccer field. I dated one boy my entire adolescence, senior year of high school, and when he kissed me for the first time I laughed in his face, because it just felt wrong. Actually, I felt nothing at all. My mother always told me I was a “late-bloomer,” and that when the right guy came around I would know. This guy was the “right guy,” and I still felt empty. After years of forming confusing and intense friendships with girls, that one horrendous kiss forced me to consider the real issue – what I had known all along – I was a big homo. I had never met a gay person, nor really understood that homosexuality existed among the cornfields of my youth. But, with a year of college under my belt, at 19-years-old, I did the impossible. I told my friends and family that I was a lesbian. Though, I had no proof. I had never been on a date with a woman. Hell, I hadn’t even kissed a girl. Of course I hadn’t met anyone – I had been in denial for so long – but now that I was out, I thought I would be a hot commodity on the dating market. Of the few
lesbians I’d seen on TV and in movies, I stacked up well. I sported a sassy short haircut. I got my nose pierced. There were no flannel shirts hiding in my closet. But, I neglected to factor in the lost time. My straight friends had years on me – middle school, high school, their first year of college – years of experimentation in which they worked out the kinks of the dating world. Their awkward first sexual encounters were behind them and they had some idea of what they were looking for, what their lives should be. I didn’t even know where to find another lesbian. My first year out of the closet was a complete bust. No leads. It is not as if lesbians fall from the sky in Iowa, nor do they wear signs. Even if you’re on the lookout for stereotypes, the farm girls will throw you off your game. My friend Rashida took pity on me and escorted me to my first gay bar. She chose what was then our only choice, the 19-and-over gay nightclub in town, a bar notorious for drug trafficking. She collected a posse – the two of us and our straight co-worker Aaron. Rashida had been out to the clubs before, and being not only exotically beautiful but also on TV five nights a week anchoring the local news, she was popular. So was Aaron, who showed up for the outing wearing an orange mesh tank top. I didn’t know straight men owned articles of clothing like orange mesh tank tops, but it turned out to be a strategic move. Aaron didn’t buy a drink for himself all evening. The bar was hosting a “rave” that night and the place was packed. I had never really drank before. My mother was sick with cancer and passed away when I was in high school. I missed out on those early partying and dating situations in the bustle of taking care of her and then dealing with her death. It didn’t leave much opportunity for misbehavior. I knew nothing of raves outside warnings offered by anti-drug public service announcements, and believed I would likely be offered a tablet of “e,” roofied, or would somehow wake up naked in a trash can in the morning. The nightclub was essentially two rooms. As you walked in, there was a bar lined with stools and a jukebox. It was packed, wall-to-wall, and we waded through the crowd single file, Aaron following Rashida, me following Aaron. We maneuvered, shuffling sideways, threading our way through the throngs of people. Rashida veered left where there was another room with a half dozen tall tables and a stage that doubled as a dance floor. There was a working shower near the back of the dance floor, and two metal cages flanking either side. It was there, next to the shower, that I spotted a friend’s sister with her hands up another girl’s shirt. Rashida had already taken note of the spectacle, nudging me with her elbow. “Pretty hot,” she said, her eyebrows raised. “Dude, that’s my friend’s sister!” I said.
I never expected to run into anyone I knew at the bar that night. Yet, there I was, my first steps in the door, faced with just that scenario. I was conflicted, wrestling between feelings of pride (I was impressed by her naked display of confidence and of her conquest – her dance partner was cute), and of shock and disapproval at the public display of affection. It wasn’t exactly lady-like behavior, making out with your girlfriend in front of an audience, certainly nothing I’d be caught doing in public. She lifted the other girl’s shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor, leaving the girl topless in the middle of the dance floor. I couldn’t look away. “I can’t believe I know the biggest slut here!” I said and laughed. It seemed improbable to me, the entire situation. It was surreal, like a scene from a frat party in a movie. “You should go say ‘hi,’” Rashida urged, and when I scoffed, she pushed me forward a step. Clearly, now was not an appropriate time for “hello.” It was not as if I could walk up and shake the girl’s hand, as hers were far too busy at the moment. “Is this just… what happens here?” I asked. What I meant was, had this world really been here, in my small Midwestern town, available to me this whole time and I just never knew it? Before Rashida could answer, a tall black woman with a shaved bald head and more piercings than I could catalogue, carrying a megaphone, and wading through the crowd pushed me aside with a sweep of her muscled forearm. She stopped dead in her tracks in front of Rashida. I was used to this. Rashida’s beauty had often rendered me invisible over the course of our friendship. She was halfPakistani with perfect olive skin, dark brown eyes, blinding white teeth, a size two waist, and disproportionately large breasts. She wore her dusty blonde hair long, with its shampoo commercial body and sheen, and dressed in tight tank tops and low-riding jeans. My friendship with Rashida taught me an important lesson, one I felt fortunate to learn early, that you cannot employ a wingman more attractive than yourself. You may think, “I’ll use her as bait.” It does not work that way. The bald black lady was wearing a wallet chain and a black tank top with ripped jeans, and offered her free hand to Rashida. “I’m Jan!” she yelled into Rashida’s ear over the din of the techno beats. “I’m Rashida, and this is my friend – ” Jan didn’t bother to listen for my name, nor did she turn to acknowledge me. “You’re the woman from the news?” she said. It was more a statement than a question. Jan positioned herself directly between me and Rashida, with her back to me, making it clear this was a one-on-one conversation that in no way included me. I did not mind the snub, as I was too engrossed in people-watching to be bothered with meeting assholes. In addition to my friend’s sister and her shirtless dance partner, there was a gay man coated in glitter performing the exact dance from
Britney Spears’ “Oops, I Did It Again” video, a middle-aged lesbian couple slow dancing (oblivious to the beat of the song), a group of gay men in nothing but their boxers, and a taller overweight woman with her jeans undone, zipper down, being dry-humped from behind by a man who looked just like Eminem. This could not be the same Iowa city where I grew up. It was a gay version of Oz, Technicolor and vibrant and strange. There was enough scenery to keep me entertained while Chris monopolized Rashida’s attention, that I did not notice Chris’s megaphone whip around so that it was pointed directly in my left ear. “Twenty minutes until the MUFF DIVING CONTEST!” she shouted. I stumbled sideways, my ears ringing. The crowd erupted into a piercing collective scream that drowned out Jan’s megaphone and the music. It was the sound of thousands of tween girls at a boy band concert – this despite the fact women were outnumbered at the bar three-to-one. I hadn’t recovered my hearing when Aaron returned from doing shots with two drag queens, slapped me on the shoulder, and shouted something in my direction. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation and waggled his eyebrows. I had no idea what he said, why he was so hyped, or what “muff diving” meant, but judging by the reaction of the crowd I should have known, so I kept my mouth shut and feigned excitement. Jan hijacked Rashida, leading her toward the bar, and Aaron drug me, still disoriented by the ringing in my ears, to a less populated spot by one of the cages where we could see the whole dance floor. We tried to chat, but between the music and my new hearing impairment, it was a pointless exercise. Every few minutes, Jan would break out the megaphone to update the countdown to the “MUFF DIVING CONTEST!” a phrase she yelled at the top of her lungs to more squeals of delight from the bar. I found most sexual terms, things I had no knowledge of first-hand or otherwise, were easy to define using common sense. I could usually estimate what other people were talking about even if I wasn’t entirely sure. I did a good job of “faking it,” picking up clues along the way, eventually piecing together specifics. It was a bad habit, pretending to understand what other people are talking about, if only because eventually they are going to expect you to contribute to the conversation, to display some knowledge, knowledge that is simply not there. To be honest, I had no idea where to even start with the term “muff diving.” With only five minutes left until the contest, I finally asked Aaron, “What is ‘muff diving?’” “You are the worst lesbian ever,” he said, shaking his head.
Jan was busy rounding up contestants, and so Rashida rejoined us just in time to hear him mock me. “Aaron!” she chastised, swatting him on the shoulder. “She just asked me what ‘muff diving’ is! I mean, come on!” Rashida lost all inclination to defend me. Her mouth dropped open in shock and she waited for my confirmation. I shrugged. “Colleen…” Her voice dripped with pity. She nodded to Aaron. “Well, tell her,” she said. He leaned in and explained the process to me – a real sexual education opportunity, one you couldn’t illustrate with pancake batter. “How are they going to have a contest?!” I asked. “I don’t know, but I cannot wait to find out,” Aaron replied as a ripped, six-foot-five gay man interrupted us to tell Aaron how hot he looked. Jan stormed the stage, three bouncers in tow, and called on the “muff diving” competitors to line up. The crowd rushed the dance floor, forming a half-moon mosh pit, jostling and competing for a better view of however this contest was going down. The wave of people separated me from my crew, who ended up dead center a row or two back. I could barely see Rashida and Aaron, let alone the stage, from where I stood on my tip-toes at the rear of the pack. I counted six couples ready to compete, including my friend’s sister and her topless girlfriend (which seemed about right). Jan called for one girl from each couple to strip down to her underwear. The girlfriend, already shirtless, eagerly ripped off her pants. My friend’s sister also took off her shirt, eliciting squeals of delight from the crowd. Bouncers distributed cans of whipped cream to the clothed members of the couples. Even on my tip-toes, I could not see exactly where that whipped cream ended up, but armed with my new knowledge of the activity at hand, I had a pretty good guess. Then there were cherries, which also disappeared to some nameless location. The prep completed, Jan raised the megaphone over her head and blew its siren to start the competition. Heads disappeared, the cheering from the crowd was deafening and constant, and a minute or so later, my friend’s sister bobbed up, the winner, her face caked with whipped cream, a cherry dangling from her teeth. I stood, my hands covering my mouth, overwhelmed. It took a moment for the full effect of what I had witnessed to register, but as it did a wave of hysterical laughter erupted from somewhere deep inside me, laughter that sent streams of tears down my face, that robbed me of the ability to breathe or speak, laughter that would recur with no notice at all, intense and immediate, just as I had calmed myself down again. Rashida found me at the side of the stage, with tear-stained face, cackling
uncontrollably. Not only did I know the biggest slut in this bar, but she just won the MUFF DIVING CONTEST. “What is so funny?” Rashida demanded. I could barely manage an answer, so pleased was I with the turn of events of the evening. The bar was packed with a diverse, enthusiastic, and fun-loving group of misfits. No judgment. No censorship. Every single person had a smile plastered on his or her face. Here was a place where we could celebrate who we were – muff diving and all. And, while some of us were a little sluttier than I’d anticipated, I wouldn’t have traded a single minute of the experience. It was my first immersion into gay culture, and I couldn’t wait for whatever was coming next. “This place is absolutely ridiculous! I love it,” I said. Rashida dragged me onto the dance floor, which had been repopulated. The deejay was spinning her idol, Madonna. Rashida is a talented dancer. I am not. It’s not that I don’t have rhythm. I do. I just don’t have any moves, so after I spend a minute working my shoulders from side-to-side and swaying my booty to-and-fro, I get bored. I took tonight as an opportunity to bust my new move. You stick your ass out in a squatting position and swing it from left to right in a U-formation with your arms straight out in front of you, punctuating each rotation with a hip thrust. That’s all I had, and after working that move, I resorted to my normal dance activity: acting a fool. I was at the point in my repertoire where I was imitating barnyard and zoo animals, swinging my arm like an elephant trunk, when a guy my age danced up next to me. He was cute in that gay male sort of way, with frosted blonde highlights and green eyes. He was still wearing his shirt (he was in the minority). It was about a size too small, displaying a chiseled chest and abs underneath. “What are you doing?” he screamed in my ear, laughing good-naturedly as I stomped to the right and swung my imaginary trunk again. “Dancing like zoo animals! This is the elephant!” I screamed back. He picked up where my elephant left off, pulling out what he called “The Boar.” He hunched over, his index fingers at either side of his mouth like husks, and charged a few hops forward. We danced like idiots, giggling the whole time. I was relieved to have made my first gay friend. He worked in old classics like The Sprinkler, The Lawn Mower, and The Grocery Cart. I taught him some original moves, The Bulimic and The Prison Rapist (a two person dance). If I knew anything about gay men, I would have recognized right away that this was not behavior a gay man would condone under any circumstance. A gay man who saw me dancing as I was would pull me aside and tell me to stop embarrassing myself, whether he knew me personally or not.
We took a break from our dance routines to mock the woman with her zipper undone, who was only a few feet away. Eminem was trying to slip his hand in her pants. It was a bold move, made treacherous by her formidable paunch, which impeded the first few attempts. Forced to abandon this tact, he instead directed her under the shower, which was now turned on and spewing water all over the dance floor. Had this been a gay couple, there might have been something charming about the chutzpah needed to pull off such a maneuver. But, there was nothing magical or new about horny straight people or a man using lesbians to get turned on, so the sight seemed seedy and shameful and exploitative. I turned to my dance partner, our faces mirror images of horror and disgust. “That is nasty,” I said. He nodded, unable to form words to describe the debauchery before us or divert his eyes. We stood speechless, as most of the other gays and lesbians cleared the dance floor, keeping a wide berth from the couple under the shower as if heterosexuality was now airborne and contagious. “Do you want to go to dinner sometime?” he asked. I cocked my head to the side and studied his face. This was not the question I expected from my new gay friend, nor the facial expression, a mixture of Deer-in-Headlights fear and Begging-Puppy anticipation. “Like… a date?” I asked, the question drawn out, punctuated by the trepidation plain on my face and confusion in my voice. He nodded. “Wait… You’re straight?” I asked. We were now conspicuous on the dance floor, standing and staring at each other. I took a step back. He stepped forward to close the gap. “Yeah.” “What are you doing at a gay bar?” I took another step back. He stepped toward me. “I’m here with my friends,” he said. “Just like you.” He pointed to Rashida, who was at the side of the dance floor, chatting with Jan the bald lesbian. Aaron, standing behind them in his orange mesh tank top, waved at me. I cringed. “I’m sorry. I’m the lesbian. They’re straight.” He laughed, figuring this to be a joke, much like my dance skills. I shrugged my shoulders. He stopped laughing, studied my face, and shook his head as if he would never have guessed. I reached out and patted his shoulder to console him, because I didn’t know what else to do. “You’re a lovely dancer,” I said, and walked away. “What was that all about?” Rashida asked.
“I thought that was going to be my first gay friend, but he was just some straight guy who hit on me.” “He hit on you?” Rashida took one look at me when we first met and knew I was the world’s biggest lesbian. “I know.” She sized him up as he headed for the exit. “You have the best worst luck. You always get hit on by the cutest guys.” She knew this to be true from all the times I’d been hit on by men in the straight bars we frequented. I had chalked those mistaken passes up to simple disorientation. Those poor straight guys, once lubricated to a certain level, would hit on anyone indiscriminately. They couldn’t be expected to distinguish the straight chicks from the lesbian in their midst. But, over the years she has been proven right. I am cursed. I am a straight man magnet, which makes me a stellar wingman for my straight girlfriends – a much, much better wingman than Rashida has ever proven for me.
Colleen Houlihan is an inept lesbian. She has no gaydar. She attracts middle-aged men with porn addictions. And, she lives in Iowa, not exactly a bustling gay metropolis. Another tale of woe from her pathetic love life will appear in Punchnel's soon.
Rasmenia Massoud Questions Crawling Past Yesterday, it was a swarm of termites. Their silvery wings reflected the July sun, creating a pulsating curtain of insects. Thousands of wood-chewing bugs, scattered on the deck, the door, the window and the doorknob. They poked in and out of the keyhole, as if to demonstrate how easily they could enter and exit our home. Dustin, he scoffed the same way he always does when he wants to act like it’s nothing and everything’s normal. He narrows his eyes and curls his lip at anyone who freaks out, who says it is something, that it’s anything outside of usual. “What the hell is this?” I said. “Well, what does it look like? They’re termites.” “This many termites? Where did they come from?” “From… wherever. You don’t live in the city anymore. This is the country. There’s bugs here. You’ll get used to it.” He rolled his eyes. Shook his head. This is how he says my questions are ridiculous and exhausting. This is the kind of thing Dustin does when he doesn’t have any answers. I could see how much he hated questions the first time I asked about her. What she looked like. Why she left and where she went. How did it end. He often answers me with silence. I ask anyway. My hope is if I keep asking, he’ll give in and break down, even if only to stifle my probing. All second wives get curious about the first one. If they say they don’t, you know it’s a lie. Last week, it was the giant black millipede. I sat helpless and alone with my pants around my ankles, ass on the toilet, unable to do anything but shriek when I heard the tink-tink-tink of it skittering on the glass
shower door beside me. This long, black, shining creature, like a snake with legs, paralyzed me. Frozen and screaming, I wondered if its bite would be painful and full of poison. When Dustin kicked the door in and his eyes landed on the thing, I could see surprise. Uneasiness. Alarm. “It’s just a bug. Why do you have to scream like that?” He shakes his head and gives me that look. The one that says, I’m just as freaked out as you, but I’d never admit it to anyone. The day I moved in, it was a pile of spiders behind the dresser in the walk-in closet. I lost my breath and jumped back when I saw them there. I remembered how to inhale again when I realized they didn’t move. I took a closer look and discovered it was a heap of dry, empty skins. Years of arachnid molting in the corner of the closet Dustin gave to me when I moved in. He’d never even noticed. “I hardly ever went in there,” he said. When he kissed me and eased me down on the bed, I forgot about the dead things for a while. After we hosed off the front door to wash away the termites, I asked about her again. Am I living in her house? Did I fold my clothes and tuck them away in her dresser? Did she have to clean the corpses of creeping, crawling things from the walk-in closet, too? Dustin stood in front of the grill, turning bratwursts with a deep concentration. His face carved out of stone, his wild blond hair falling around it. I kept pressing, wondering why she is gone and I’m taking her place. I posed more questions, hoping, in spite of everything I knew about Dustin, that some other fragile, softer version of him would crawl out from behind his gray eyes and convince me that I wouldn’t have to live with her ghost. “Are you ever going to stop nagging me about this?” He stabbed a sausage with his barbecue fork. “I just get curious, you know? Sometimes the past affects the future.” I felt something tickle my arm. I brushed it away.
“That’s fucking stupid. Past is past. You’re here, I’m here and whoever came before doesn’t matter… and it’s none of your business.” He looked up at me, the flesh of his hand wrapped around the fork, white and trembling. “You have to let this go.” “Well, now that I’m living here, I have a right--“ I ducked out of the way of the sausage he hurled at me. It exploded against the side of the house, spraying me with hot grease and barbecue sauce. Dustin blew past me, stomping through the front door. The tickle ran up my arm again. I looked down at the house centipede scurrying toward my shoulder. I squealed and danced, wiping and slapping at my arms, legs and body. I watched it fall to the deck, then scuttle between two slats of wood, disappearing into the darkness below. I didn’t want to go inside with Dustin and his anger. I turned the grill off and sat down on a chair in the yard with my warm beer and smoked one cigarette after another, watching the door of the house, waiting for him to come out again. Dusk settled in among the trees around the yard. A gray shadow on the deck caught my attention. It darted from the edge of the wood and stopped in front of the door under the porch light. The light brought it into focus. A fat, hairy spider, not much smaller than the dinner plates sitting on the table next to the grill. Keeping my eyes on the spider, I called out for Dustin to come outside. I looked up as he appeared on the deck holding a broom. He brought the broom down on the creature. It scrambled back and forth, attempting to dodge the blows. It skittered left, then right, then toward Dustin, then away from him, toward me. I squealed and flinched each time he brought the broom down on the thing. A few moments later, it was finished. The spider lay on the wood, twitching in a small pool of blood. I turned away as Dustin swept the carcass off the deck. The sweeping noise was enough. “You ever seen anything like that?”
I stepped up onto the deck. “Like what?” “It bled.” His eyes open wide, this is how he says, maybe it is something. Maybe it isn’t normal. “Have you ever seen a spider bleed red… like a person?” “Well, there’s bugs here.” I shrug. I roll my eyes. This is how I say I don’t know. I go inside and leave him standing there, a broom in his hand, staring down at his blood-stained wooden deck.
Rasmenia Massoud is an American writer living somewhere in France. She is the author of the short story collection, "Human Detritus" and some of her other work has appeared in places like Metazen, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Full of Crow and Underground Voices.
Craig Rishus The Picnic Artist
Weißt du's noch nicht? Wirf aus den Armen die Leere zu den Räumen hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht daß die Vögel die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug. Rilke, Duineser Elegien
Clara's blond exertions in the rowboat bloomed her cheeks, lightly touched with powder, a sunburst color. Lazy tennis echoed from the club's clay courts along the shore. Dressed in pressed white flannels, Tom sat in the stern of the boat, a hand politely trailing in the water. The picnic basket he had packed rested beneath the slender bow seat. Clara had never met an American with a talent for painting. She was glad that Tom was no different, for a painting talent betrayed a brutality of mind. She had observed this in dozens of artists; once, had gone so far as to make the monstrous mistake of marrying talent. Her handling of the oars was taking them nearer the island. »Nonsense«, she said, her blue eyes smiling. Beyond the tennis courts began a field of alfalfa. If a cow gets into alfalfa, you must quickly poke a hole through its stomach lining, or it will die. That was something Tom had learned from his father. His father's father had been a farmer. »But I've felt Him«, Tom said. »A god who doesn't believe in Himself«. The water slapped a murmur of voices along the shoreline. Clara could still feel the wine from the night before, and she was glad that they were speaking English, for the natural wishy-washiness of the English tongue seemed created especially to rally hangovers. »Whatever can you mean?« she wondered. »Once«, Tom said, »I stepped into that energy of doubt, and for one godlike moment, I didn't believe in Myself either«.
Clara stilled the oars. The island birds sounded badly painted in some dark and claustrophobic sitting room. »What kind of belief would it be«, she asked, »to believe in a God who doesn't believe in himself?« Tom possessed the ability to turn his glasses into a prop of the stage simply by smoothing back his thinning brown hair. »Void question«, he said. Clara shook her head. She was quite familiar with the void; realized that a world of meaning seperated it from the mere absence of everything: her former husband, a German, had abused the void in his art. Alongside his talent. Alongside her. No wonder she couldn't recall her dreams anymore. And no wonder she had agreed to row Tom to her favorite picnic spot: conversing with an American was somehow restorative; was like speaking aloud during a stolen nap. »Such a God I could never believe in«, she said. »For me, God is dead, and once I die, I will simply make the good sense of joining him«. »Without any afterthoughts?« The rowboat settled in the water. »Well, perhaps one«. Tom saw the emptiness behind the face he thought so lovely. And behind the emptiness, he saw Clara's face again. Emptiness, lovliness, emptiness, lovliness... an infinitly intoxicating regression. »And what might that be?« »Whether what you'd packed for our picnic was worth my killing myself over these oars. Dare I peek?« Beyond the field of alfalfa loitered last night's moon. Tom's hand could feel its warmth in the water. He had met Clara for the first time only the week before; had watched her push her bicycle oh so slowly, oh so deliciously up a hill; had hurried to catch up with her. »Can you keep it a secret?« No, this time he would not turn red. »Keep what a secret?« »Whether you can peek in the picnic basket or not«. Clara was as beautiful as the picture of Ruth he had torn from the Bible as a child. »A secret?« Clara said, her smile unsure. »Very well, agreed«. Tom hated above all else the ease with which his face turned red. And it was the fertile field of his embarrassment which he mined in his art: he was forever deserting the source of his redness – himself – and creating works that celebrated the natural vacuity inherent in everyone.
What I pay Unless I owe Let no one be mistaken; But if I'm wrong I told you so -No god goes unforsaken. »Alright«, Tom said. »The secret is no«. »No?« »Yes«, Tom said. »No«. For a long moment Tom led the quiet. It hadn't worked; he hadn't quite put the right spin on his meaning, he could feel this now. Upon his arrival in Paris he had raced through the streets, trying to capture everything in pencil. And now here he was behaving in a premature fashion again, his face growing redder and redder. It wasn't him; it was never him – it was all, everything, simply a matter of timing. »It makes sense like a god who can't believe in Himself«, Tom set out to explain. »First I say, Can you keep a secret? Yes. Then I say, very well, the secret is no«. The report of a rifle shook from the island trees a confusion of blackbirds. Clara turned to watch the birds, their black wings scribble one long arcing shape across the morning sunlight. Americans fell in love so very easily. She could feel Tom's eyes watching her. The blackbirds, their tumult undiminished, circled to land again in the island trees. Tom's watching eyes made her feel so very empty. Clara savored the feeling.
Eldon (Craig) Reishus lives just south of Munich just north of the Alps and is an anti-nuclear activist, all-around pro webGuy, and translator of a broad score of films and books. He originates from Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Sean Beld Redaction
Atramentous dreams, smoke of insurmountable fire – the places & names gone missing as we set out in search of them; The voices buried, broken, twisted, the rooms given vacancy in the dry night; The wet words running over the threshold, the glass embedded in your hand for twenty years; The shards breaching the surface like humpback whales one night when you discovered the word victim would not stay put.
Sean Beld's poems have been published in Cartographer, The Whole Beast Rag, and The Apeiron Review. He currently lives in Corvallis, OR.
Gary Clifton Daisy at Daybreak J.R. had chosen neurosurgery to serve and create, the urge to help mankind consuming him since childhood. Pressures often drove him to bone-numbed exhaustion, but gratifying because of his greater calling. He had spent the night struggling to re-brain a politician just paroled from Leavenworth, a task just shy of the Normandy D-Day invasion. To add to his stress, the patient had incredibly snapped out of the anesthesia and leaped off the table, only to hang, in politician on-the-fence mode on the light fixture like Tarzan's Cheetah. At daybreak on a gorgeous Sunday morning - the kind that smiled often on Texas - he staggered out of Uncle Jake's Surgical Center direly needing life giving coffee and a bite or two of sustenance. The lights of Daisy's, a SauvĂŠ faire coffee shop, popular with rich yuppies who infested the area, beckoned tantalizingly down the block. Daisy's, squeezed into a narrow old storefront, promised exquisite cuisine with a particular grabber: No crowds to impede service. He was hungry - desperate Rwandan war refugee hungry. J.R. slumped at the bar. Daisy, a lantern-jawed veteran of lunch counter wars, bore sobering resemblance to Boris Karloff. Well in distant last place in the race to avoid old age, she shuffled about behind the counter, wearing a slime-gray dress and pink, fuzzy slippers. Her face coated with enough makeup to grow corn, with deep, sunken eyes, she appeared to have died three days earlier. About eighty-seven, she looked twenty years older. J.R. sat in coffee deprived stupor, visualizing Bride of Frankenstein. "Whadaya have, Jack," Daisy croaked. Cigarette breath, lightly flavored with what J.R. thought might be rotten meat, preceded her by two yards. He vaguely recalled hearing Daisy had been seen chain smoking Chesterfields, one in each hand. He wondered if she might not have eaten a live chicken or two to top off her morning smokes. "Ur...J.R," he stammered, intimidated in the face of raw horror. "Well screw a bunch of that, Jack. Bet your waitress didn't come in stoned. Bitch is the only one knows how to make coffee. Now you ain't never gonna get no coffee," Daisy stepped back. Slipping on spilled eggs and bacon grease, she went down like a shot water buffalo.
J.R., now in extremis for want of caffeine, desperately tried for the door. McDonald's was across the street. The rustic little cafe suddenly went dark and J.R., at the ultimate of human endurance, collapsed beside Daisy like a wet rag as she wallowed in spilled fried egg and bacon goo. "Arrgh," J.R. gasped and stopped moving. "Anybody gotta couple of Chesterfields?" Daisy implored from the floor beside the shriveled, prostrate, and now an odd shade of purple, J.R. But he was too far gone to hear. He had expired of Non-Coffee-Syndrome, a deadly malady which had developed shortly after Daisy's had opened for business and, it appeared, stood likely to wipe out the whole neighborhood.
Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has short fiction pieces pending with over thirty online sites. Clifton has been shot at, shot, stabbed, sued, and often misunderstood. Now retired to a dusty north Texas ranch, he has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University.
Diana Anhalt Yesterday’s Shoes Listen to me. It’s time to kick off yesterday’s shoes and shuffle off into tomorrow, improvise, leave home and its remedies behind. Stop running in place. I tell myself this as I ride my imagination to work each day like a trolley its tracks. There are--although I can’t claim to speak from experience-worse things in life than the occasional derailment. Habit, let’s face it, grows rigid with use. Even on feet less traveled than mine the soles stiffen, the leather cracks and when you find yourself riding the same train back and forth, back and forth for fifty years never having flung yourself onto the rails, watched yourself stumble, regained your balance, fallen again, you may conclude you've mortgaged your life. On the other hand, I’ve seen the walking wounded returning from a voyage toward themselves, bloodied and on crutches. (All my scars are invisible.) and I wonder, perhaps, if I shouldn’t remain in my seat and forget to change trains.
Diana Anhalt In This Country Even the Leaves live up to expectation—80 degrees outside. They fall anyway, blanket the pavement. How do they know it’s autumn? But try telling your Mexican leaf what to do. It won’t listen, knows it must cling to the tree forever. Here people follow rules, end gatherings on schedule— There’s a Spanish word for schedule rarely used— Bring food to potluck dinners. Bring your own food? Nunca! They stand behind lines at crossings—Who’s heard of jaywalk in my country?— pay on-line, turn down the volume, keep appointments, send checks by mail, check weather forecasts, vote by machine, read the small print, buy insurance. Would my Mexican leaves relinquish their trees if transplanted? Or cleave to a life that no longer exists?
Diana Anhalt, formerly a long-time resident of Mexico, is the author of A Gathering of Fugitives: American Political Expatriates in Mexico 1948-1965 (Archer Books) and numerous articles in both the U.S.A. and Mexico. Her chapbook, Second Skin, is forthcoming from Future Cycle Press, and her poetry has appeared in Nimrod, Atlanta Review, Poem and Constellations, among others.
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