Feb 2016 by The Wagon Magazine

The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

VOLUME: 1 - ISSUE: 2 - MAY - 2016

Columns: SOTTO VOCE- Indira Parthasarathy MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL -C.S.Lakshmi P&P - Yonason Goldson ALP - Ted Kooser Flash Fiction: Jeff Coleman Theatre - 10 Minutes Play: Robert Kirkendall Poetry: Tony Single Dave Ludford Tetiana Aleksina Collaborative - Tony/Tetiana Sadiqullah Khan Fiction: Thara Ganesan Alex Stolis Non-Fiction: C.Raveendran Art: Indran

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The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

PRASAD'S POST Dear Readers, My sincere apologies for the delay in uploading the current issue; well, I was not well and what should have been a couple of day’s ordeal was prolonged further by wrong diagnosis and medication. Dehydration due to the heat wave was the cause; might be overdose of literature drained out my body fluids. As informed earlier, from May, 2016 onwards TWM turns to be a subscription journal. We have kept the subscription fee minimal so that we could maintain and run the web site smoothly and continuously. Please subscribe. The second reason is to keep only the serious readers and writers connected. Check the Subscription page for more details. * Indira Parthasarathy, my mentor and well-wisher, has opened his account with TWM through his column SOTTO VOCE in his own grand style by posing a glaring question whether the ‘Poetry is dead’. Well, there is nothing new in that. If we are talking about the ‘cultural importance’ of poetry here, then, the discussion had started way back in the nineteenth century itself. In modern times, the discussion was carried forward by Edmund Wilson in the year 1928. In poets.org, Donald Hall writes,”For expansion on and repetition of these well-known facts, look in volumes of Time magazine, in Edmund Wilson’s ‘Is Verse a Dying Technique?,’ in current newspapers everywhere, in interviews with publishers, in book reviews by poets, and in the August 1988 issue of Commentary, where the essayist Joseph Epstein assembled every cliché about poetry, common for two centuries, under the title ‘Who Killed Poetry?’ And Hall concludes by saying, “While most readers and poets agree that ‘nobody reads poetry’—and we warm ourselves by the gregarious fires of our solitary art—maybe a multitude of nobodies assembles the great audience Whitman looked for.” Those who want to have a detailed study, please go to: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/death-death-poetry In her article, ‘Can Poetry Matter?’ Dana Gioia compares Wilson with Epstein The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

5 and writes, “Epstein essentially updated Wilson’s argument, but with important differences. Whereas Wilson looked on the decline of poetry’s cultural position as a gradual process spanning three centuries, Epstein focused on the past few decades. He contrasted the major achievements of the modernists--the generation of Eliot and Stevens, which led poetry from moribund Romanticism into the twentieth century--with what he felt were the minor accomplishments of the present practitioners. The modernists, Epstein maintained, were artists who worked from a broad cultural vision. Contemporary writers were ‘poetry professionals,’ who operated within the closed world of the university. Wilson blamed poetry’s plight on historical forces; Epstein indicted the poets themselves and the institutions they had helped create, especially creative-writing programs. A brilliant polemicist, Epstein intended his essay to be incendiary, and it did ignite an explosion of criticism. No recent essay on American poetry has generated so many immediate responses in literary journals. And certainly none has drawn so much violently negative criticism from poets themselves. To date at least thirty writers have responded in print. The poet Henry Taylor published two rebuttals.” Dana further goes on to question, “One sees evidence of poetry’s diminished stature even within the thriving subculture. The established rituals of the poetry world-the readings, small magazines, workshops, and conferences--exhibit a surprising number of self-imposed limitations. Why, for example, does poetry mix so seldom with music, dance, or theatre? At most readings the program consists of verse only-and usually only verse by that night’s author. Forty years ago, when Dylan Thomas read, he spent half the program reciting other poets’ work. Hardly a self- effacing man, he was nevertheless humble before his art. Today most readings are celebrations less of poetry than of the author’s ego. No wonder the audience for such events usually consists entirely of poets, would-be poets, and friends of the author.” As the critic Bruce Bawer has observed, “A poem is, after all, a fragile thing, and its intrinsic worth or lack thereof, is a frighteningly subjective consideration; but fellowship grants, degrees, appointments, and publications are objective facts. They are quantifiable; they can be listed on a resume. Poets serious about making careers in institutions understand that the criteria for success are primarily quantitative. They must publish as much as possible as quickly as possible. The slow maturation of genuine creativity looks like laziness to a committee. Wallace Stevens was forty-three when his first book appeared. Robert Frost was thirty-nine. Today these sluggards would be unemployable.” The article in a ‘western journal’ referred by Indira Parthasarathy is one by Alexandra Petri, with the very same title ‘Is Poetry Dead?’ published by Washington Post dated 22.1.2013. There were plenty of volleys served here and forth after the publication of that article. To quote Ms.Petri, “I think the medium might not be loud enough any longer. There are about six people who buy new poetry, but they are not feeling very well. I bumped very lightly into one of them while walking down the The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

sidewalk, and for a while I was terrified that I would have to write to eleven MFA programs explaining why everyone was going to have to apply for grants that year. The last time I stumbled upon a poetry reading, the attendees were almost without exception students of the poet who were there in the hopes of extra credit. One of the poems, if memory serves, consisted of a list of names of Supreme Court justices. I am not saying that it was a bad poem. It was a good poem, within the constraints of what poetry means now. But I think what we mean by poetry is a limp and fangless thing.” After saying this, “Poetry has gone from being something that you did in order to Write Your Name Large Across the Sky and sound your barbaric yawp and generally Shake Things Up to a very carefully gated medium that requires years of study and apprenticeship in order to produce meticulous, perfect, golden lines that up to ten people will ever voluntarily read”, She questions, “Or is this too harsh?” And she quotes Gwydion, “Poetry is dead.” Playwright Gwydion Suilebhan tweeted, “What pretends to be poetry now is either New Age blather or vague nonsense or gibberish. It’s zombie poetry.” And she concludes by “These days, poetry is institutionalized. Everyone can write it. But if you want a lot of people to read it, or at least the Right Interested Persons, there are a few choked channels of Reputable Publications. Or you can just spray it liberally onto the Internet and hope it sticks….. Hope may be as fresh on our tongues as it ever was. But is poetry? ” -www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/01/22/is-poetry-dead/ In one of the counters to Ms.Petri, Joseph Ross wrote on JANUARY 27, 2013, “No one needs ‘worry’ about poetry. Could it use more readers? Of course! Would I like for poets to sell more books? Sure. But the need for poetry is certain. We’ve been writing and reading poetry since we first wrote on the sides of caves and canoes. We’ll be doing it for as long as we draw breath.” Even before Washington post, Times of India carried an exclusive on this topic on January 8, 2011 itself, http://www.timescrest.com/archives/ 2011-01-08 - with a full page obituary. I would like to conclude with the warning of Ezra Pound that ‘Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clean. It doesn’t matter whether a good writer wants to be useful, or whether the bad writer wants to do harm. . . .’ If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays. Krishna Prasad

a. k. a

Chithan

The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

COLUMN

SOTTO VOCE

INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

‘Is Poetry dead?’ ‘Is Poetry dead?’ was the caption of an article I read in a western journal ,a few years ago. It also published an obituary notice bemoaning the demise of poetry. It read: ‘Muse; Birth: In the dim periods of proto-history. Death: A slow and agonizing end in the last few decades due to verbal diarrhea and image asphyxiation’. Leslie Aaron Fiedler, the great American literary critic, called his book ‘What was Literature?’ It created ripples among the literary circles, when it was published and as a logical sequence, Lacan and Derrida replaced many other names in the intellectual corridors of the western academic world. The Roman mob were, perhaps, the earliest among the literary critics, if one can trust the bard of Stratford-upon Avon. After the funeral oration of Mark Antony, the Roman mob rushed to avenge the death of their beloved leader Julius Caesar. They sought the conspirators and when a name-sake of Cinna, the assassin, arrived on the scene, they rushed to kill him. He pleaded pathetically, ‘I am not Cinna, the conspirator, I am Cinna, the poet’. One among the crowd screams: ‘Tear him for his bad verses,’ A greater crime it was to write bad poetry than to kill a popular leader. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

8 What is good poetry? According to the French school, a good poem should not mean but be. But, in the East, poetry is a means to meaning. It finds meaning in an otherwise absurd existence. This may sound existential, no matter what brand name one gives it, but this is precisely what Bhagavad Gita says; ‘Find meaning in your experience and this is more significant than the reward, if any’. Much before Aristotle, a Chinese poet wrote: ‘A poet struggles with non-being to force it into According to being. He knocks upon silence for the French school, a an answering music. He encloses good poem should boundless space in a square foot of paper. He pours deluge from not mean but be. But, the inch of space from the heart’. in the East, poetry is There is a famous Tamil poem by one of the vaishnavite a means to meaning. poets, which says, ‘to cage heaven and earth in a simple form in the ecstasy of one eternal moment is what poetry is all about and which is, in other words called ‘god-realisation’. Such good poetry is free from prosodic hyperbolism. It is simple, direct and interacts with the reader on a one-to-one basis, as if it is written for him. One finds many things in common between the early Chinese poetry and the poems in the Sangam anthologies in Tamil. They have no complex imagery but characterized by simple visuals. There is a famous Chinese poem, whose author is unknown but dated before the Common Era. ‘The sound of her silk skirt stopped On the marble pavement dust grows. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

9 Her empty room is cold and still. Fallen leaves are piled against the doors. Longing for the lovely lady How can I bring my aching heart to rest?’ (Translated by Ezra Pound) This elegy grieves for the death of one of the favourite concubines of a king. One feels the stillness in the atmosphere, almost a physical feeling, as a fruit in ones mouth. Everything is static and quiet, except the beating heart of the royal lover. ‘Dust grows’ is a beautiful image that reminds one of the ultimate truth, the dusty death that one cannot avoid. Here is an ancient Tamil poem written by the daughters of a fallen chieftain, killed by the jealous, mighty kings, who had surrounded him. ‘It was during the last full-moon day, we had our father and our hills. Today, on this full-moon day The victors have the hills, And we have no father!’

Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of R. Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright. He has published 16 novels,10 plays, anthologies of short stories, and essays.He is best known for his plays, “Aurangzeb”, “Nandan Kathai” and “Ramanujar”. He has been awarded the Saraswati Samman (1999), and is the only Tamil writer to receive both the Sahitya Akademi Award (1999) and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (2004).He received Padma Shri in the year 2010, given by Government of India. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

10 COLUMN

MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL

C.S.LAKSHMI

Burnt Books and Identities

I grew up the first eight years of my life in Mumbai in the Shivaji Park area. My mother had gone to Coimbatore, to her parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; house, for her delivery and brought me back to the two-room ground floor house in Lakshmi Nivas in Shivaji Park. The year was 1944. I remember a lot about that houseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;its designed grill windows through which I was thin enough to come out of the house to run occasional errands for my mother when I was four years old; its large rooms where we accommodated many uncles who came to Mumbai for a job; its closeness to the sea on the western side where we went almost every evening. But more than anything else I remember the large wooden trunk painted green in the corner of the hall, which contained all the bound books of my mother. They were serials that appeared in popular Tamil magazines which my mother carefully cut and bound. The serials came with illustrations which fascinated me no end as a child. Often I went to sleep hugging a book. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

11 When we shifted to Bangalore, in my college days I spent a lot of time in the Bangalore public library not far from my college. The green trunk had given place to book shelves in my house filled with books the whole family read. We were also members of a lending library in Malleswaram and regular trips every evening to the library was part of the daily routine. Later different university and archival libraries became literally my home. But one time I really became jealous seeing a library was when I took the elevator to the South Asia section in the Joseph Regenstein Library in the University of Chicago. SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women), my dream archives for women’s history and women’s lives, had been set up some four years before that. And the South Asian collections I saw in the University

of Chicago took my breath away. James Nye was the Bibliographer for the South Asian collections. A more meticulous, careful, sensitive and scholarly bibliographer it would be difficult to find. I went round the library and came to Jim who was getting a cup of tea ready for me. He knew about SPARROW. ‘Jim,’ I said seriously, ‘How long did it take for you to build this South Asia section? I would like SPARROW to be like this.’ Jim burst into laughter. ‘Getting ambitious, aren’t you?’ he said jokingly but during my time in the university I spent a lot of time learning from him and making impossible plans for SPARROW. Jim was never discouraging. When I told him about the awe I felt when I entered the British Museum Library and my own ambitious plans for SPARROW he would patiently listen and share many ideas with me. If my dreams were about building libraries that would last The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

12 through centuries, my nightmares were about libraries being destroyed. I knew about ancient libraries going to ruin, being pillaged and burnt during various conquests. Some of them were stories that did not really have historical proofs but the images those stories created remained in the mind. Like the stories about the burning of the royal library in Alexandria. After Julius Caesarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s death it was alleged

that it was he who had ordered the burning of the ancient treasure house of precious scrolls when he had occupied the palace. Feeling threatened by the Egyptian fleets he had ordered them burnt and the fire went out of control and destroyed the warehouses where the ancient scrolls were kept. Later stories blamed many others as perpetrators of this crime. The last person who was seen as the perpetrator was Caliph Omar. The story goes that the Arabs in 640 CE had captured Alexandria. They had heard about the great library with its wealth of knowledge of the world. But the Caliph, it was generally believed, had said that the vast collection in the ancient library, if it contradicted Koran, would be heresy and if it supported Koran, would be superfluous and ordered the entire collection to be burnt. The manuscripts were then used as fuel in the bathhouses in the city and the vast collection of manuscripts kept the bathhouses of Alexandria heated for six months. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

Similar stories were also said about the burning of the ancient Nalanda Library. But none of these stories have really been borne out in terms of historical proofs. But what one does remember is the Nazi burning of books and the more recent one is the burning of the Jaffna library in 1981. That became a callous event that enraged even the most reluctant Tamil into action for the Jaffna Library was a painstakingly built library of the Tamils which was started in 1933. Apart from books it was a repository for a vast collection of palm leaf manuscripts. The act of burning it was a biblioclasm based on ethnic hatred and it was generally a declaration of hatred not only for a certain ethnic group but also for their language and knowledge that they owned. And it was the burning of books in Jaffna Library that came to my mind when I read about the looting of the ‘Thirukural Mandram’ library in Bengaluru on the 21st of this month, for the act was based on hatred for a language. Ulsoor is an area populated with a large number of Tamilians. When I was in college there was a ‘Bharathi Tamil Sangam’ there where all the Tamil elocution competitions took place. I think I still own a book of Bharathiyar poems which I got as a prize in one of those competitions. The Thirukural Mandram Library itself came up only in 1976, years after I had left Bengaluru but it is a library with a vast collection of Tamil books. The fact that a library full of a particular language got looted is of great concern because books and reading of books keep a language and its culture alive. The language may have been removed from its soil but it retains its memories of landscapes not bound by a particular soil alone. When people leave their lands for whatever reason, among the things they pack is their language and their diasporas life is often spent in keeping their language alive at whatever cost. Death of a language means the dying of one’s own self entwined in that language. To destroy a race, a community or The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

14 a group, the best way is to destroy their language. And that is why we see all over the world, ethnic groups struggling against odds to retain their language in whose death they see their own lives dismembered. In SPARROW when we began work on five volumes of the works of 87 writers from 23 languages we realised how little we knew about so many languages and how writing in that particular language was important to writers for whom the language was not just a language but their very identity. And we continued to see love for a language not as aversion for another, but as resistance to being absorbed entirely by another language. Recently a colleague and I were in the tea gardens of Assam for a collaborative project we are doing with Dibrugarh University. Most of the tea garden workers are tribals of different groups. They understand Assamese but speak only in their own language. They watch Hindi films so can speak Hindi fairly fluently but when it comes to a long conversation they would go back to their own language. It is as if they have to keep the language alive by speaking it to retain their selves. I met a Brazilian woman married to a Belgian a few years ago and began to speak to her in the Portuguese I remembered for many years ago I had done a diploma in Portuguese. She became ecstatic and we became good friends. She said she kept the Portuguese language a part of her life by speaking it every now and then and going back home every few years. I also have to keep my language alive differently. Writing in the language is only one part of it. I have not lived in Tamil Nadu. I grew up in Karnataka, I studied in Delhi and I live in Mumbai. I have travelled to many parts of the world. I am married to a Rajasthani and have three foster children The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

15 who are Nepalese. And my Tamil is informed by the Telugu kritis of Thyagarajar, the vachanas of Akkamahadevi and the songs of Purandaradasa, the stories of Nirmal Verma, Shekar Joshi, Nilesh Raghuvanshi, Mrinal Pande and Sudha Arora, the poetry of Ghalib, the songs of Kabir, the verses and abhangs of Bahina Bai and her guru Sant Tukaram, the lilting folk songs of Rajasthan, the poetry of Lorca and Pablo Neruda, the books of Borges and many more. Often when I stand in the Van Gogh painting section in a museum in Paris or the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam I feel there is a language in which he is speaking to me. All this has shaped my Tamil language as much as Sangam poetry, Bharathiyar and contemporary writing. Oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s language is then not just its actual vocabulary but the memories of various landscapes of its own it carries and that of other languages and the life experiences they carry. It is your identity in that it roots you in specific ways but I would like to think that they are floating roots I can hold on to which will take me to many places. However, even as one floats one would like to touch and feel books written in oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s language; carry their smell and the feel of their pages. One needs books to live. Books are not for burning. And language is resistance.

C S Lakshmi is a researcher and a writer who

writes in the pen name - Ambai. She is one of the founder trustees of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women) and currently its director.

The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

16 FLASH FICTION

JEFF COLEMAN

The Forgotten Magic The man stood beneath the moon and the stars, desperate and afraid. The world was bearing down on him, threatening to crush him under its immense and unyielding weight. He leaped into the air uselessly, tried in vain to spread his arms and fly. Long ago, on the outer periphery of time and memory, he could have done it, could have sprouted wings, kicked the dust from his feet and soared into the air. But that power was lost to him now, forgotten with age and responsibility. He couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go on. He no longer had the energy to trudge through the trenches of daily life. He needed to escape, needed to run far away from the world and its heartless machinations. He leaped again, flapping his arms from side to side like an off-balance windmill. It was useless. The man nearly cried. When had the world lost its magic? When had it transformed from a bright glowing ball of potential energy to a soulless machine that had consumed his humanity and left nothing of it for him? He The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

had given the world everything, and the world had spared nothing for him in return. The man looked up, away from the world. He gazed at the stars, and they gazed back at him with ancient understanding. If only he could touch them. They seemed to call his name, and he was certain that all he had to do was answer. Had he changed? Was that why heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d forgotten? Perhaps the world had always been what it was. Perhaps the problem was not that the world had changed, but that he himself had changed. Perhaps the magic was not gone after all. Perhaps it had only been neglected, a childhood toy abandoned in the attic. He basked in the light of the moon, bathed in it until he felt pure, and finally donned the cosmos overhead like a cloak. The stars accepted him then, adopted him as their son, and in a flash of clarity they granted him the gift of memory. He let it all go. He laid his burdens before the stars as a sacrifice, an offering to be exchanged for something much older, something pristine, and something everlasting. He closed his eyes and the magic overtook him. Transformed into something both new and ancient, he at last spread his arms, which transformed into the wings of an eagle. He flapped, and he could feel the air push back against him, countering gravity, bearing him high into the atmosphere. He flew toward the stars. He didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look back and he never returned.

Jeff Coleman is a writer who finds himself drawn to the dark and the mysterious, and to all the extraordinary things that regularly hide in the shadow of ordinary life. He writes modern literary fantasy for children and adults. He is from California He blogs @ http://blog.jeffcolemanwrites.com./ The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

Theatre

A 10 Minute Play

Robert Kirkendall

The A.P. P.R. Firm

CAST OF CHARACTERS: CHAIRMAN MR. CARNEY MR. GRAMM MS. HURTZ MR. PHELPS NEIL HOLTON LEONARD (OR LEONA) OTHER BOARD MEMBERS (OPTIONAL) Scene: A corporate boardroom Time: Beginning of workday (A board of directors are sitting around the table and appear agitated. The chairman is standing at the middle of the table.) The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

19 CHAIRMAN: Now I don’t think I have to tell you that the situation is dire. Our public image has taken a severe beating since the toxic toy crisis, and because of that debacle the parents will inevitably sue us for damages, hospital bills and skin graft surgeries. Other customer complaints have piled up to the point that we had to hire more than the usual amount of temps to wade through them all. Sales are wavering to the point that the upcoming layoffs will claim people higher up than the usual drones. The masses are so up in arms over the Gulf oil spill that it could lead to the worst catastrophe possible, government regulation of corporations. (Everyone gasps) CHAIRMAN: Yes, I was just as shocked when I found out. And now my sources tell me that 60 Minutes wants to do an expose about us. So as you can all see, and we have to act fast or we’ll hit rock bottom. MR. PHELPS: (Stands up) I know! We can improve productivity, take deferred payments to allow for recovery, and tighten our belts for the good of the company. (Everyone laughs.) CHAIRMAN: (Chuckling at Phelps as he makes him sit back down)

My, your are precious. (To rest of board) What we’re going to do is hire the best public relations firm in the country to improve our image and reshape the way the public thinks of us. MR. GRAMM: Genius! MS. HURTZ: Anything to pacify the rabble. CHAIRMAN: The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

20 Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Neil Holton of the A.P. P.R. Firm. (Neil Holton enters and is followed by his assistant Leonard.)

NEIL:

Thank you, chairman, thank you everybody. Now let’s get down to business. Your chairman tells me that you have the kind of problem that only the likes of our firm can remedy. MS. HURTZ: Yes, we’ve heard of you, but what are your credentials? NEIL: Credentials?

NEIL:

(Leonard laughs out loud.)

Who do you think put off enormous liability costs for tobacco companies for decades with a carefully orchestrated campaign of denial and misinformation, which we’ d still be continuing if it weren’t for all those weaklings dying of heart disease and lung cancer? MS. HURTZ: So you’re no longer working for big T? LEONARD: Au contraire. NEIL: We rose to the challenge by engineering the new program of false piety and some very strategic T.V. name placement. MR. GRAMM: Clever way to get around the law. CHAIRMAN: Did I tell you these guys are good? MR. PHELPS: (Naively) Well their new anti-smoking campaign sure has me hooked. Who knew that the tobacco industry really is The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

21 concerned about peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health. MR. CARNEY: Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why they got into the food business. NEIL: And when Shady Energy ran into interference after their privatization plan of the western power grid pissed off a few hand wringers, who saw to it that the good people of S.E. got their side of the story into the public and on every major and minor television network? And nobody went to prison. LEONARD: And nobody important lost their fortune. MR. GRAMM: Yes, the trickle up theory. CHAIRMAN: And with the collapse of Building 7 and all the records contained therein, the paper trail has disappeared. MR. PHELPS: Yeah, that sure was a stroke of luck. NEIL: And when it came time to once again marshal America back into military warfare, who concocted the perfect story to convince the majority of Americans that it was the right thing to do? LEONARD: And believe you me, convincing the public that a dictator we supported for years had suddenly become the enemy was no easy task. NEIL: But we pulled it off. LEONARD: With our most audacious campaign up to that point. CHAIRMAN: Yes, the part about enemy soldiers setting fire to a hospital maternity ward was a nice touch. NEIL: The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

22 And now I’ve been told that you have a problem which requires the expertise of someone such as myself and my firm. MR. CARNEY: This is where things stand. For years we were able to keep a lid on some of our more creative business practices, but now some nosy, ambulance chasing prick is making a documentary about us. MS. HURTZ: He’s talking to a lot of our former disgruntled employees, and you know once they tell their teary eyed hard luck story that’s going to tug on some heart strings. NEIL: Now, unlike most media, we don’t have control over what shows inside of a movie house, but we have a way to counter act that, with our “special” news releases. LEONARD: Interviews of select members of your organization will be sent to T.V. stations all over the country and will also be broadcast internationally. MR. CARNEY: But what’s going to happen if the reporters ask some probing questions? NEIL: Who said anything about reporters? (The board of directors all look around to each other quizically.)

NEIL:

The interviews will be conducted by our own staff. They will look like real reporters, talk like real reporters, and ask questions like real reporters. LEONARD: And as long it’s made to look like a real news report, that’ll be enough to fool most anybody. MR. GRAMM: My god, that’s brilliant! The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

23 MR. CARNEY: I don’t know, sounds like a pretty bold scheme. Isn’t anybody on to it? NEIL: Nobody who can cause us damage. MS. HURTZ: Just the late night television clowns. MR. GRAMM: I’d love to see all those jabbering fools in a gulag. MR. PHELPS: Or a prison.

(Everyone stares at Phelps for a moment.)

(Awkward silence.)

(Quietly to Neil)

CHAIRMAN: All things in good time, but first we must deal with the problem at hand. MR. CARNEY: What we need are more tactics. I was thinking of an infomercial, or maybe QVC. It’s longer than a regular commercial so you can really get the word out. MS. HURTZ: But the only people who watch that stuff are shutins and oddballs. MR. PHELPS: I love those infomercials! I’m only six pieces away from a complete War of 1812 chess set. CHAIRMAN: NEIL:

Legacy.

Infomercials and the like are not a bad idea, but not everybody believes what they see on television. MR. GRAMM: That’s a minority. NEIL: The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

24 Perhaps, but something that is more official looking will be more convincing. LEONARD: We can get a congressional subcommittee hearing with press coverage, send in some well rehearsed people, and use it as a vehicle to get your side of the story out. MS. HURTZ:

NEIL:

(Alarmed)

Washington? That’s the lion’s den!

Never fear. The key is that our people do not testify under oath, that way nothing that is said can come back and bite you. And it’s free, official looking publicity. MR. GRAMM: I like it. CHAIRMAN: That all sounds very promising, Neil, but before we get to that crisis point, we were thinking about concentrating on mass advertising and some strategically placed press releases. NEIL: Ah yes, plan A. We can plaster your logo on billboards, buses, and every public space where we’re allowed to advertise, basic but effective. LEONARD: The public will be inundated and have no choice but to be held captive to your relentless efforts to woo them over. MR. PHELPS:

(Wistfully)

We can really be a part of people’s lives. LEONARD: And don’t forget about the well placed campaign contributions. MR. GRAMM: Hey, what do you think we are, amateurs? The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

25 MS. HURTZ: Despite everything we still have our fair share of paid servants who are quite reliant on us. LEONARD: Of course you do, but we had something else in mind. NEIL: Now, who needs money more than our schools and children? MR. CARNEY: I don’t think I like where this is heading. NEIL: Just bear with me. As we all know, and as we’re constantly being reminded by all the bleeding hearts, most of our public institutions are quite underfunded, and nothing makes a business look better than making a highly visible contribution to such an institution. And who needs it more than schools and children? MR. CARNEY:

NEIL:

(Looking around the room)

I think I know some people.

Yes, of course, but what we had in mind is a donation program to public schools that not only looks good in the media, but it indoctrinates the youth to your brand name. MS. HURTZ: Of course, during the crucial formative years. LEONARD: You can become their world. MR. PHELPS: Wow! MR. GRAMM: They can carry around their books in our backpacks, wearing clothes their parents bought from us. You can’t beat that kind of marketing. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

26 MR. CARNEY: We could get control of the cafeterias and our food division can feed them. MS. HURTZ: We can give them teaching supplies with our logos. Our brand name will be everywhere. CHAIRMAN: Glee clubs all across the nation will be singing our jingles. MR. PHELPS: Yes! NEIL: So as you can see, an all encompassing campaign can be quite effective. MR. CARNEY: But what do we say to the inevitable critics? What’s our defense? NEIL: Two words. LEONARD: Blame game. NEIL: Accuse your accusers, put the light back on them, and never stop. That will win you a certain amount of sympathy, and you’ll need all you can get. MS. HURTZ: But what about 60 Minutes? NEIL: Dan Rather tried to expose the lack a military record for our president, and now he’s finished. Nuff said. MR. GRAMM: True, but there are other media sources. NEIL: So what if some fringe muckraker does a story on you? Only commies and people who live in trees follows that The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

27 stuff, and they have a very limited audience. MR. CARNEY: But enough to be bothersome. NEIL: Look, we may not be able to pull all the strings, but we still have control over the important strings, and that’s what’s important in this battle. And make no mistake, this is a battle. We at the Amalgamated Propagandists Public Relations Firm have a sacred responsibility to make sure that those in power stay in power. LEONARD: And at a comparatively reasonable price. CHAIRMAN: Excellent presentation, gentleman.

(To baoard)

So are we all in agreement? MR. GRAMM: Before I say yes, I need to have some more assurances that this will work. We don’t need another fiasco like the old Howard Cosell Signature Brand Hairpiece sweatshop scandal. LEONARD: Never fear, we do our operations in U.S. protectorates that have the best of both worlds. NEIL: U.S. protection without U.S. standards. MR. GRAMM: Well they’re not exactly high these days either, but I think it’s worth a chance. Count me in. NEIL: That’s one. Who else is on board? MS. HURTZ: Drastic times call for drastic measures. We can not fall behind in the battle for hearts and minds, and we can not be afraid to say the things that need to be said. We must now pull out all the stops because our very survival is at stake. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

28 CHAIRMAN: Well said, Ms. Hurtz.

(To Neil)

I think you’ll find all of us here “get it” and that it won’t take much convincing to get us to do what is necessary. MR. CARNEY: Now, before I can come on board, I have a few concerns. Let me just say that there isn’t a doubt in my mind we can pull this caper off, but there are still a couple of loose ends that need to be tied. I agree with everyone’s concerns, but with all due respect, if we put A.P. P.R. in charge of our public face, I get the uneasy feeling that we’re giving away a little too much of our power. I know we need your help and we’re all appreciative, but I do not want to give up our position on the inside track. What assurances do we have that we will not be relegated to second class status? NEIL: Ladies and gentleman, this is the best part. As your chairman knows we have connections, very important connections, and certain people in high places want to bring certain corporate high rollers into the executive fold. Open up the case, Leonard. (Leonard holds case in one hand and opens it with the other revealing a series of badges.)

NEIL:

On behalf of the United States government as an officer of the organization Intergard I hear by deputize all of of you junior members of Intergard.

NEIL:

(He hands out badges to everyone.)

As officers of Intergard you will receive advance notices of classified intelligence reports, be consulted about major policy decisions that directly affect you, and in the event of any unforeseen catastrophes that require the administration of martial law, membership entitles you to exercise The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

29 the power of policing. MR. CARNEY: You mean like law enforcement? LEONARD: Armed and dangerous. MR. CARNEY: Well count me in! CHAIRMAN: Excellent.

(Looks toward Phelps)

(Raises glass)

(Smiles sentimentally and graciously)

But I’m still not sure if we all agree with your proposition. MR. PHELPS: A cop! At last, Simon Phelps will get the respect that he deserves! CHAIRMAN: Sounds like we’re all on board. MS. HURTZ: A toast to Mr. Holton and his lackey! The saviors of our people! EVERYONE: (Raising glasses) Hooray! NEIL: I love this job.

Robert Kirkendall is from San Jose and lives in Santa Cruz, California. He is currently developing a live televised drama anthology show for CTV Santa Cruz and writing the final draft of his novel Redwood Summer. This play was written seven years ago and presented it at a Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre workshop on July 21, 2009. The events and topical references are from that time and may appear dated, but the underlying theme of disinformation from high places is still relevant.) The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

TONY SINGLE

the girl wore red she was a trace amid fell trees in the warp and weft of holocaust frames a stillness snagged there and the forgotten frayed yeah, her very existence got hid from time under stygian stare she stole her way through the sabled air and foreboded clime the shadows poised with baleful tongue still, boldly she leaned into the fungus trail desideratum iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d sooner take a bucket to sand and shovel my life away than to be without that brave girl desideration The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

31 i’d sooner melt into her skin than to be mere smoke, and dying one drab breath at a time brave was she with the fears she’d brung and picture box in hand’s bold quail nerves pleadingly clanged at periphery’s limb yet grit she did her resolve in the dim for her vision never to depart its glim and though the sun did rest behind earth’s rim no ominous wall nor roof thick thatched nor slam of pitch wings would she quease beneath desideratum i’d sooner take a bucket to sand and shovel my life away than to be without this brave girl desideration i’d sooner melt into her skin than to be mere smoke, and dying one drab breath at a time so, as the heavens’ pinpricked shawl unlatched and leavened down to steal her mind’s wreath she did past the shaky threshold tread from black to the red and a grisly sight of jawbones flung, their barren half-smiles a gore foamed scene to crib sleep tonight so she pointed instead and clicked between trees the scarified ground and skeletal remains because she’s my brave girl and she wore the red like she owned it

The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

while we sleep there exists a horizon that has kissed a lambent sun like the sun of my youth and tho’ the night has fallen, tho’ i fain no longer see i still feel, i can feel everything i’ve lost my shape to the darkness, and still do i decay i’m disintegrating and tho’ those days are gone now (they left with profound unknowing) i still need, i do need you beloved i feel i’ve nowhere left to run and nowhere left to hinge my mind yet the hollow earth still turns without you indifferent while we sleep a piano playing somewhere, it does not play for me to my starvation hue and tho’ fool dreams once succoured me, i fain no longer care i still want what i want tho’ my flesh concedes the river has flowed on and long, dawn gathers on the heath i don’t know where to find you and tho’ the grass is greener now, i un-know a profound knowing and yet know, and won’t ever not know i feel i’ve nowhere left to breathe and nowhere left to hinge my mind yet the hollow earth still turns without you indifferent while we sleep The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

the tavernacle choir in a tavern somewhere called the bag of nails was a bank of cloud, the lair of the bear he chain smoked so bad he’d light the whole box and chat up the fox working the bar a wretched man, we heard him to say, was he an astute man, we sniffed his way, would he be if in tongue lashing’s stead, he regained face and chose to be dead to the ways of disgrace “what would you know of grace?” he asked we “i was once considered lord of the dance” “really?” we asked, “could one fall so far off?” then we laughed like drains as he downed one last pint a wretched man, we heard him to say, was he but a blessed man, we ought to have said, was he a nazarene broke bread, bled wine in this place weighed with the dead, and waived time and space but wretches would not share grace with the wretched so a lorry got him

The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

solstice see there, the frost in eden tonight and dreams long shaken from the tree a soil in ruin and funereal white cold death come upon heart’s lea a hope so driven, the fleeting kite i’m lost in sleet and fury cloud vain, flecked in thunder light drawn inside the winter shroud i’m holding on to symmetry’s name does life abound above the dome? all fear and wonder in the flame put your burning in my bones consider the hidden sun over night sense the unquenched fire in snow great ember, thaw my lips aright dash to ashes my former woe i’m holding on to symmetry’s name does life abound above the dome? a distant star called like home put your burning in my bones

Tony Single is an amateur writer and ‘somewhat’ serious cartoonist. He is from Australia With Tetiana Aleksina he blogs prose and poetry at: https://unbolt.wordpress.com

The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

FICTION THARA GANESAN

UNDER THE MUSHROOM The dragon of darkness began to swallow the twilight. Where had the ashy redness which was prominent in the western sky few minutes back and the orange ball of sun that looked as if it was made to a precise measurement vanished, was not known. Every day the golden shine of the twilight with a reddish glow was smeared upon the western sky. Whenever twilight sets, Pragyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mind would refuse to focus on anything else except the glowing beauty of the sky. She simply watched the glowing horizon without a wink. An inexplicably strange delight overwhelmed her when a red river was spreading across the sky. It was a bizarre feeling and at those times it seemed to her reddish mushrooms bloomed from her heart that turned enormously big within few seconds. If she tells anyone about this strange feeling, they would only laugh at her because those awesome mushrooms were not visible to otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes. She envisioned those red mushrooms grown like huge tall trees spreading out across the sky like an umbrella. Not just a few but they were grown in abundance The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

36 like a red mushroom forest. When she rolled her eyes within herself to admire the beauty of the forest, it was a suffocating enchantment that created more and more waves of imagination within her. This is not something new to her. It had been happening to her right from the very first time; she went to the seashore as a little girl to see the sunrise and sunset with her parents. She was taken to the seashore on an evening. She was struck with awe to see the wide blue expanse of the sea, for the first time in her life. She was thinking that the sea is nothing but a large well where a big fish would swim around. She could not recall whether she was two or three years of age at that time. Standing on the shore she stretched both her hands as much as she could, took a deep breath and stretched even more. She tried to measure the sea with her fully stretched arms, but it was too wide to measure. She asked her Appa and Amma to stand on both her sides and stretch their hands so that all three of them could measure the length of the sea together. Still they were unable to measure its length. Appa laughed aloud with his curly hair swaying in the wind. Amma also joined him, and the laughter never stopped. Whenever her mother laughed or smiled, her slightly protruding front teeth made her look like a Bugs Bunny. On the right side of canine teeth a short irregular teeth revealed itself. Between the two protruding front teeth there was a small gap but with all the irregularities of the teeth line, her smile was beautiful. As they were laughing together, suddenly her mother dragged her, bent and kissed her. Pragya always felt the bunny teeth pressing her cheek while her mother kissed but she liked the kiss of her mother. Pragya kissed her mother on her cheeks and then sat on the sand to play. At that time, she saw a huge ball at the horizon. First she thought it is a huge red moon but her father told her it was the setting Sun. She could not understand how the Sun turned completely into a reddish orange ball, all of a sudden. She wanted to keep on gazing at it. She very liked the colour of the sky. It was not a blue sky. It was golden with of mild red tint. As she was gazing at the setting Sun, it turned dark. They returned to their room but the golden red sky with the red ball was The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

37 in her dream. She had long hands and caught the ball in per palms. She threw the ball into the sea and it turned red. It was fun and she played all night long in her dream. The next morning they returned to her village. She was sad because she had to leave the sea behind. On their return she remembered the conversation with her father as they went back to the room. She kept on asking her Appa, when would she see the sea again? Her father promised to bring her back by next year. It wasn’t clear to her what he meant by ‘next year’ and asked him whether next year was the next day. Then she opened her little pouch, picked up few sea shells and dropped them into his pocket. Her questions continued... “Appa... where are these shells coming from”? “All from the sea, my child” Her father replied. “So now the Sun is inside the sea and will it float and come to the shore? Let us go back to the shore and take the Sun with us”. “Oh... hahaha... it is a big ball and will take time to float and reach the shore. Lets us go now”. Saying so, he lifted her up and walked beside her mother in the ankle deep sand. She placed her head on her Appa’s shoulder and kept gazing at the sea that has turned black. Tears rolled down her cheeks. From then on, she began to watch the orange ball every day. She wondered how the ball came back to the sky from the sea where it drowned. Every day she would watch the orange ball from her terrace. It made her happy. She stretched her hands, spun herself and looked up at the ball. The ball also span with her. The little skirt she wore span like a rotating wheel. Feeling giddy, she sat on the floor and the puffed skirt covered her legs like an umbrella. Her closed eyes made her dizzy and that was such a bubbling joy. After the dizziness subsided, she got up again to spin and repeated the sitting and spinning process. By then her mother’s voice was heard... “Pragya.... where are you...”? Amma does not like if she spins and would get angry. “It is not good to spin.... Won’t you listen to my words...”? She would laugh at her mother. Why was Amma not able to understand how happy it made her feel. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

38 With a slight resentment Pragya said, “Amma... you can also learn to spin with me... Oh my God.. how big is your saree... and if you spin and sit, how big an umbrella it will be....” – listening to her words, her mother laughed, leaving the anger. “I am here Ma... on the terrace, looking at the Sun....” Replying to her mother’s call she looked up but the Sun wasn’t there. The twilight was gone, the night was setting in. She can’t be on the terrace any more. Her Amma would take her down to do the homework. As she climbed down the steps, the golden light faded and the sky was ash grey. She hated a colourless sky. During her holidays she painted with crayons and watercolours and in all those paintings the prominent colour was the same red and orange. To her, the colour of the sky was either red or orange. She loved painting the Sun as an orange and reddish ball. As she grew, every day the sky was turning more and more beautiful. “Achchacho.... Amma.... come… quick…. see this....” she called out to her Amma. “Oh ho.... come down now... don’t you have any other work? … Don’t disturb me.....” She heard her mother’s weary reply. On hearing a grim reply from Amma, her heart was shrunk like a balloon without air. Even her friends won’t listen to her narrations about the beauty of the sky. They say she is mad talking about the sky all the time. She could never understand why people around her do not bother about the sky. Somehow she wanted to go to the sky. She thought that those who travel in the flight are the luckiest as they could extend their hands out through the window to touch the sky, Sun, Moon and the stars. When she told her father what she thought, he again laughed charmingly and said, “You can also travel in the flight, if you study well”. Her immediate thought was that, “ok... can I also stretch my hands out and touch the Sun” but she never asked her father. During summer holidays, her grandma had come from their hometown. Her patti (grandma) told her many mythological stories. The story of ‘Jambavan’, ‘Panchatantra’, stories of ‘Vethal’, ‘Ali Baba and Arabian nights’. Whenever she called her patti to come to the The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

39 terrace, she had never refused once. As soon as Pragya comes from the school, her grandma would go up and sprinkle water on the terrace to keep the floor cool. “Patti.. Did you see the sky”... on her questioning, her patti look up and made her happy. Also Patti would sing a song for her narrating how Hanuman flew in the sky. Pragya also wished to grow gigantic like the Hanuman and fly in the sky, but she knew not how. Even if her mother said “It’s study time... both of you come down... enough of sky watching”... her patti would say “hmmm... you are yelling as if your daughter is studying for IAS... ... be quiet... we know when to come down” and spent time with Pragya on the Terrace to enjoy the sky watch. One evening, at the twilight hour, her grandma made her sit on the terrace and stitched flowers on her long plait. “What a long hair like a whip...” exclaiming with a pride, she kissed Pragya at her nape. Pragya was extremely happy because her Patti decorated her long hair with orange, red and yellow flowers along with some green fragrant leaves. She wanted to put her plait in front of her shoulders, but due to its heaviness she could not do so. She went down and shown her floral decoration to her mother and her mother twisted her knuckles to remove the fascination of eyes. She stood in front of the mirror but could see only the jasmine strips kept upon the traditional hair clip which was seen on top of her head. Patti had placed a traditional ornament to decorate her head that hung on her forehead like a Tiara and on both side of her head she had kept a sun and moon sign ornaments. Pragya was delighted because she was wearing the sun and moon on her head. Those ornaments were made of blue and white stones. It would have looked real with red and orange stones and she thought one day she would make a new set with her favourite stones. Standing in front of the mirror she held another small one in her hands and moved it left and right to see her long plait. It was so beautiful. Between jasmine flowers, red, orange, yellow and green The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

40 flowers were decorating her long plait with a kunjalam hanging below the plait. She thought that she would keep it afresh without withering and told her Amma and Patti. Both of them teased her that she was an angel and twisted her ears with laugher. Somehow Patti took her once again to the terrace and the night has already set in. Patti showed her the constellation groups and told the names of stars. Though the glittering star studded sky was breathtakingly beautiful, she felt that only the bright orange sky is the real beauty. When they came down from the terrace, Devi Chitthi (Mother’s sister) was at home. “Hey... floral decoration for you.... so nice Pragya.... turn around, let me see my dear...” Pragya turned her back towards her and her Chitthi’s eyes found a red stain on her skirt below the long decorated plait. She knew that Pragya had attained puberty. The following three days she was unable to go to the terrace because according to the tradition she is not supposed go out of the small room she was asked to stay. Even after those three days, her Patti restricted her going to the terrace. Patti said that some bad spirits in the air may possess the girls who have attained puberty. Pragya wondered what happened to her Patti suddenly who had become tough not allowing her regular sky watch. Pragya was getting angry but she can’t express the same to Patti. However, she somehow managed by pleading her to come along. When Devi Chitthi left for her home town, she took Pragya also with her along with Patti. Her husband had a huge farm house, and a farm land. Pragya remembered her visit to the farm house, when she was little girl. When she went there then, there were many mangoes in her house. When she saw heaps of ripped yellow and red mangoes, she remembered the twilight sky. The next day there was heavy rain. The sky was cloudy due to the rainy season. Though Pragya likes the rain, she hates to see the greyish cloudy sky. She was upset wondering under which cloud the Sun has hidden itself. After a two day rain, on a cool evening her Chitthi and her husband took Pragya, Patti along with their kids to their farm house. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

41 Under the tall large trees, there were many white mushrooms that have bloomed in the rain. She bent down and touched them. The mushrooms felt so soft and spongy. Her Patti said from behind “don’t touch them... they are poisonous”. All of them spent a good time and then returned to the home. At night, in Pragya’s dream she stood on the terrace with outstretched arms and spun around. This time, instead of her skirt, she was wearing a mushroom which was spinning along with her. Spinning she looked up and the orange Sun also was spinning with her. She was bubbling with joy and became ecstatic over the happening. Then, suddenly one by one, many gigantic mushrooms bloomed within her and they rose up to the sky from her body. She tried to jump and touch the spongy mushroom tops by spreading her hands high and wide. But they were so tall that she could not touch them. Above the spongy umbrellas that have grown sky high, the orange Sun shined. Those gigantic mushroom umbrellas also turned reddish orange and she was standing below the umbrella like a dwarf. Those red umbrellas were growing constantly towards the Sun.

THARA GANESAN A Chennai based Bilingual Poet, Artist, Sculptor, Bilingual Translator, Literary & Art Critic, Curator, Art Collector and Founder Editor of www.Chikkymukky.com. She is at present the VicePresident, IIT MADRAS, INDIA. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

42 COLUMN

PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

One Step Closer to Eden Awake from the north and come from the south! Blow upon My garden and let its spices flow. Let My beloved come to his garden and partake of its precious fruit. -- Song of Songs 4:16

Would the world be better off without mankind? Many environmentalists think so. It’s hard to deny that, from a purely ecological point of view, life on earth would do much better without human beings around to interfere with the natural order. But without mankind, there would be no point and, ultimately, no reason for the world to exist at all. Only Man seeks to create; only Man strives to become more than he is; and only Man directs his efforts toward ideals that transcend mere survival and procreation. If we are to act as responsible custodians of the world, however, we have to stop from time to time and let the world remind us what those ideals are. In the late 1800s, the great Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch announced his plan to travel from Germany to see the storied mountain ranges of Switzerland. This was entirely in keeping with Rabbi Hirsch’s philosophy of integrating worldly knowledge and experience into his religious outlook. That being said, the incomparable leader of Orthodox Jewry was well into his seventies, seemingly much too old to undertake such an adventure. Some of the rabbi’s closets acolytes questioned the wisdom of embarking on such a strenuous journey at his advanced age. The The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

43 rabbi replied that it was precisely because of his age that he felt it necessary to go. “I may not have much longer to live,” explained Rabbi Hirsch. “And when I stand in judgment upon my arrival in the World to Come, what will I say when the Almighty asks me, “Samson, why did you not see My Alps?” Rabbi Hirsch understood what we too easily forget: That the wonder and beauty of the world are here for us to experience, for us to enjoy, and for us to find inspiration in the masterful Hand that fashioned all of Creation. But North Americans need not travel to Switzerland to find their inspiration. Within our own borders we have the “American Alps.” That’s what Louis Hill, president of the Great Northern Railway, called the mountains of Glacier National Park. It was Hill who found the region so extraordinary that he lobbied congress to designate Glacier as a national park in 1910. And it was Hill who influenced the Alpine design of the park’s hotels and facilities to echo the mountains’ namesake across the sea.

Even from the same continent, getting to the park in northern Montana is no simple matter. My wife and I flew into Spokane, Washington, then rented a car and began to drive, first across the Washington border, then through Idaho, and ultimately into Montana. The roads were mostly straight and flat as the miles sped by; The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

44 it took us six hours just to reach the outskirts of 1,583 square-mile wilderness. But as my own rabbi likes to say, the best things in life are rarely found on the beaten path. Our trip would lend plenty of evidence to this truism. As fields of goldenrod, wheat, and alfalfa took turns dazzling our eyes with their radiant hues of gold, yellow, and aquamarine, my mind drifted to the words of the sages of the Talmud, who found the glories of nature alluded to in the profound poetry of scripture: The fields proclaim: “The Almighty founded the earth with wisdom; He established the heavens with understanding.” 1 Eventually, mountain ranges begin rising up, first on one side, then on the other, and finally right before us. Our Subaru Outback handles the roads with ease. In fact, we soon notice that we were rarely out of sight of another Outback – clearly this is the car of choice for traversing the long distances and tortuous roads that connect distant neighbors and neighborhoods. Having grown up driving mountainous roads, I fall back immediately into my old habits behind the wheel, while my wife grips her console handle with white knuckles and tries not to whimper. Once we arrive, however, the travails of the journey are instantly forgotten. The easier hikes are far more traveled and, although breathtaking in their beauty, we can’t help feeling like tourists on account of the crowds. Parents keep focused on their children. Cameras are everywhere. A high school cheerleader practices her steps and kicks on the way down the trail. The more challenging hikes evoke real transformation. Something remarkable happens to people when they get free not only from the city but from the crush of city-dwellers. The massive walls of granite and cascading pine trees on every side replaced the skyscrapers of concrete, steel, and glass. Here, instead of being shrunk to insignificance by monoliths of human construction, you find yourself whispered into tranquil humility amidst the magnificence of nature's grandeur. Instead of feeling alone and intimidated, you feel part of something far greater than anything you could ever be on your own. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

It seems to affect everyone. People coming and going all greet one another with a smile, as if we are all brothers and sister in an exclusive fraternity. Voices are soft, idle chatter tapers off, and every sighting is shared with an eagerness to include others in the discovery of new wonders. A pair of muskrats beside the trail. A moose high up on the hillside. A mountain goat with her kid. A black bear foraging beside the highway. A falcon soaring above the trees. The bird of prey cries: “My help comes from the Almighty, who formed the heavens and the earth.”2 The beasts of the field declare: Blessed is the One who is good and does good.”3

The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

46 Astonishingly, we all leave behind the distractions of the world of Man. On all our hikes, we see only one person -- a teenager -wearing earphones. For the rest of us, there is no temptation to escape into the coil of electronic impulse that asserts such power over the lives we leave behind. You dare not desecrate this cathedral of creation, which reflects the holiness of the Temple of Jerusalem from 2000 years ago. The smell of pine is omnipresent, like the clouds of incense offered by the High Priest. The naked peaks blaze with sunlight like the fire on the altar. The quiet fills every corner of the park, like the murmurings of the congregation in the courtyards of the Creator. No sound of planes, only the occasional military jet too high to be heard, and the periodic tourist helicopters violating the sanctity of the place, but quickly moving off and away. Then there’s the water. Everywhere, water. Runoff from glacial ice forming countless streams, rivulets literally springing from the earth and the foliage, crossing hiking paths every few yards, filling pools and ponds, upper lakes, lower lakes, reflecting the surrounding peaks and cliffs and forests. From this place literally at the top of the world – not just the Continental Divide but the Triple Peak Divide – every drop of water will flow down and down without stopping until it reaches one of three oceans – the Pacific, the Atlantic, or the Arctic. The arroyos say: “Rivers will clap their hands; mountains will rejoice together.” 4 The difference of a few miles, or even a few inches, one way or the other can send two identical drops of rain to opposite ends of the earth. Who can imagine the forces at play in our own lives that might direct two people to entirely different destinies? The water itself looks surreal. Glacial water is tinted turquoise with sediment from the marrow of the earth, colored by particles of stone ground away by the shifting glacial ice as it inches its way across the surface of the mountains. Even more fascinating is the movement of the ice itself, which mysteriously shifts more at the center of each icepack than at the edges. Inexorable forces act invisibly, hidden beneath the deceptive appearance of tranquility. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

Not so different from human beings: the greatest changes occur unseen, often unnoticed, little by little. Like the waters that flow from the pinnacle of creation, we become different people, for good or for bad, projecting the colors of our transformation for all to see. There’s a terrifying beauty in water, the source of life and the source of destruction, the mirror that reflects the vastness above while concealing the vastness below. All the more so when it bursts forth from some unseen reservoir and disappears into unimagined depths I don’t want to leave this place, contemplating the mysterious wellsprings that cascade seemingly out of nowhere. I don’t want to share it with others who see only a pretty waterscape. The Hebrew word for blessing – bracha – shares its root with bereicha – a spring-fed pool. Like life itself and the spiritual energy that animates all the living (both of which emerge as if from nothingness), so does water fall from the skies, trickle down as melting snow, and surge up from the hidden places beneath the earth to sustain us. The waters say: “With a roar He sets abundant water in the heavens and raises clouds from the ends of the earth.” 5 The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

48 We follow the trail ever upward, follow the course of waters streaming relentlessly downward, until we reach Iceberg Lake, so named for the giant ingots of frozen water resting motionless in the luminescent tarn. And on the other side, almost close enough to touch, it seems, sheer walls of stone shoot hundreds of feet straight up toward the sky. And there you sit, a hand’s reach from the basin filled by sleeping icebergs basking in the sun as the silent watchmen towering above dwarf you to Lilliputian scale. Down below, a few miles from the park entrance, travelers play golf and mah-jongg, seemingly unaware of the majesty they have come to behold and immediately forgotten. The following morning, we board the Sinopah, a 45-foot wooden boat built by Captain J.W. Swanson in 1926, to cross the length of Two Medicine Lake. On either side of us, ragged mountain peaks jut above the treeline with names from different worlds: Rising Wolf, Lone Walker, Rockwell, Sinopah, and Appistoki, to name a few. There seems to be some question over the origin of the name Appistoki, although there is general agreement that the name came about through a misunderstanding. According to some, the topographer R. T. Evans asked his native guide for the word meaning “overlook” in Blackfeet; instead, the guide responded with the name of the Indian god who “looks over everything.” According to our tour guide, the mountain was named by explorer James Willard Schultz who, upon reaching the top of the mountain and looking down upon the glorious Two Medicine Valley, asked his guide for a phrase meaning “master of all I see.” Apparently, by the time he reached the bottom, he misremembered the word as appostiki (or something of the sort), giving it the meaning of “one with fleshy ear-lobes.” So much for self-aggrandizement. Eventually, the local Blackfeet switched the pronunciation to the current, more dignified name. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

49 Our single disappointment is the sky. Across the border in Canada, forest fires are sending funnels of smoke, soot, and ash into the air. The hazy pall has drifted over the park, robbing the afternoon sky of its splendorous sapphire hue and the night sky of its starry panorama. It has been a decade since I last saw the Milky Way. Who knows when I will see it again. Day and Night say: “Day following day pronounces and proclaims, and night after night declares knowledge… to relate Your kindness in the dawn and Your faithfulness through the evenings.” 6 And who knows how the sparks and flames we kindle for good and for ill may change the world for others whom we will never meet. Fire has a strange effect on the land. Huge tracts of forest have turned white with the skeletons of lifeless trees, victims of wildfires that swept through in recent years. Perhaps it’s the thin air, perhaps the particular variety of pine, but the fire moves so quickly that it strips the trees of their bark and needles while leaving their trunks and branches intact. The trees of the field say: “Then all the trees of the forest will sing with joy before the Almighty, for He will have come to judge the earth.”7 Ultimately, it is not our bodies and brawn that make us what we are, not even our intellect and ability, but the blade and bract that sprout forth from us as the kindness, charity, and concern that we extend toward others. And then, even after we’ve gone, we remain alive through the influence we’ve had on others, like the countless baby trees growing up around the ankles of the passed giants who made way for them to come. It’s hard to imagine living here all year around. 12 feet of snow is common, 18 feet not unusual. The tourist season that provides most of the local income is brief, and the healing beauty of the mountains lies hidden beneath white blankets most of the year. But we sacrifice even more when we deprive ourselves of this wondrous testimony to Creation. In fact, a study by Stanford University graduate student Gregory Bratman published last summer in Proceedings of the National The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

50 Academy of Sciences indicates that a simple walk in the part not only improves our moods but has a distinct physiological effect upon our brains and our behavior. So yes, by all means, stroll through the park and walk through the woods. But donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop there. From time to time, as often a possible, head for the hills, climb the mountains, find the lonely strip of shore or the virgin lake hidden close to the heavens. Flee the noise and congestion of the city so you can hear to the sounds of the universe, and see past the limits of earthly vision to behold the majestic wonders of the great beyond. Learn the language of nature, then listen for the small, still voice that whispers from behind the curtain to draw you into the company of angels. All photographs by Yonason Goldson. They are, in order: Iceberg Lake Trail, Bearhat Mountain over Hidden Lake, Mountain goats, St. Maryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Falls, Running Eagle Falls, Iceberg Lake, Two Medicine Lake, Avalanche Creek Trail, Aster Park Trail ( Due to page restriction, could not place all the photographs. Please check the website to see all -Editor)

Notes:

Proverbs 3:19 Psalms 121:2 3 Babylonian Talmud 4 Psalms 98:8 5 Jeremiah 51:16 6 Psalms 19:3, 92:3 7 1 Chronicles 16:33 1

Rabbi Yonason Goldson, a talmudic scholar and former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, and newspaper columnist, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri, where he teaches, writes, and lectures. His latest book, Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for success and happiness from the wisdom of the ages, is available on Amazon. Visit him at http://proverbsandprovidence.com. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

FICTION EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM THE NOVELLA/CHAPBOOK BY ALEX STOLIS

uscript,

These are from the unpublished full length man-

‘Postcards from the Knife Thrower.’ Alex Stolis has used the ‘Al G. Barnes Circus Route from 1934’ which began its season March 31 in San Diego, made a circuit through the United States and Canada and ended the season October 29 in El Centro, Ca. Each part of this series consists of one month from the season, April-October. The intention is, as a whole, to be a narrative; a novella in chapbook/prose form.

APRIL - 3 - SAN BERNARDINO - CA

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APRIL - 4 - RIVERSIDE - CA

APRIL - 5 - ALHAMBRA -CA

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Dave ludford The Moon Through a Spiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Web

I saw the moon, seeming trapped inside Your web, as if you wished To capture it; take it to some inner lair A prize to covet forever. It fitted perfectly, in perspective, inside your silken, trawling net. That so fine a thread could hold That shimmering, silver disc! But a dark cloud passing by Tucked it deep inside its woollen pocket, and it was stolen away. But still you kept vigil Watching, waiting, patient as the grave Knowing it would be returned, restored. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

54 Tomorrow, as early evening melts into night If I perceive no lunar glow And you no longer sit, sentinel I’ll know The moon is yours.

Silent Movie: Waking Still Dreaming 2am: I wake and know I will sleep no more but still I close my eyes A film is running A waking dream This one I’ve seen before A different time, a different place but The plot is the same It starts with you and me Waltzing foxtrotting On sleek rain-washed city streets It’s night and as the music stops we stop You lift your face look into my eyes And say, say words mouth words But there is no sound all I hear is The hiss of static as the reel flips to the finish And the movie has ended. The kitchen clock ticks its slow applause.

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Spring Now winter’s deathly grip’s released From skeletal bended branch The wind has whipped and shook mercilessly; Now emerald buds emerge, declare their royalty, Pride of place New life on creaking deathly bones; Now the whispering susurration of the breeze Tells secrets of the year to come, brings Joy to life, new hope, new dreams We greet the season as strangers But embrace as friends once lost, now found. Cherish the Earth, our love protects The cycle we are part of, A delicate silken thread connects.

The Past, Hidden Put my past life into carrier bags and placed them under my bed. They’ll stay there for at least a dozen years before I’ll feel the need to take them out again, reminisceBut if I don’t live that long, promise me one thing: throw them away without looking through them There is nothing there of importance to anyone else. Let peace be peace be my peace Forever, forgotten. Dave Ludford is a poet and short story writer from Nuneaton, England. He is the author of over 40 published works of poetry and narrative fiction. He is currently at work on his first novella. His stories have been published in Schlock! magazine in the UK (www.schlock.co.uk), Fever Dreams magazine (www.feverdreams.co.uk) and poems at www.poetrysuperhighway.com The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

Tetiana Aleksina

Deglaciation your hand on my heart is everything that protects the huge melted hole in the centre of my chest please, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remove your palm because without your warmth my heart is nothing more than a mere nest for the black shrill crows

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Headlanded She bums far and wide. She collects emotions like fridge magnets. She sees pink elephants and pumps up on shimmering angel dust. He sits on the bench in the municipal park, reads Sputnik Sweetheart and sweeps away withered thoughts from yellowed speechless pages. She forgets own name and learns by heart addresses of nearby hellholes. She wastes her forces and soles On the Road to barathrum. He hopes against hope in the municipal park at the very edge. He warms her favourite bench. He keeps her favourite book.

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P.S: I Love You Such a weird language… I’ve never met it before. Wry conjugations. The daft sequence of tenses. Insufferable diphthongs. My patience has snapped and Google Translate fucked up. I close my eyes and start to read with my fingers. I read with my lips and tongue. I’m a skilled linguist. I flatten conjugations. I lick up diphthongs. That’s how I’ve learnt this language in which your face is written. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

Keep the Change You and me are two dinosaurs and our time has run out. Pity that we got lucky and thoughtless survived. Here below we come in nowhere, old-fangled, starry-eyed, delicate as an egg-shell. Unreconstructed. Side-by-side we look at the sky, squinting through rockets’ blaze, longing for times when the Moon wasn’t for sale: $19.99 per acre. Tetiana Aleksina is from Ukraine. She declares that her bio is laid inside her writings... or is lied and English isn’t her native language, but she has the impudence to write in English anyway. With Tony Single she blogs prose and poetry at: https://unbolt.wordpress. com The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

AUTHOR’S INTERVIEW BY KERRY J DONOVAN

Laurie Boris Laurie Boris is a freelance writer, editor, proof-reader, and former graphic designer living in Upstate New York. She has been writing fiction for over twenty-five years and is the award-winning author of five novels. When not playing with the universe of imaginary people in her head, she enjoys baseball, cooking, reading, and helping aspiring novelists as a contributing writer and editor for IndiesUnlimited.com.

Hi guys, Welcome to my writer’s studio. Yeah okay, I’m in my office in the attic, so sue me. Every fortnight, I’ll be inviting an author over for tea and cakes, although some of them insist on bringing coffee. Never mind, I’m such a genial host, I put up with the foul smell of burnt wood. See what a nice fellow I am? My wife, Jan, provides the cakes, and then disappears because she can’t stand to hear writers coming to blows. She also hates having to clean up the blood spills. So, first let me introduce my first victim guest, Laurie Boris, who lives in the US and writes literary fiction. I’ve put all her contact details at the foot of the interview so you can concentrate on the chat for now, (pay attention at the back, I’ll be asking questions later). The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

61 Kerry J Donovan: Welcome Laurie, thanks for coming all this way. Relax, make yourself at home, and take a slice of chocolate cake. I see you’ve brought a thermos of coffee, lovely aroma. (I normally wait until my guest has a mouthful of cake before firing the first question—perhaps I’m not that genial a host after all). Laurie Boris: Hi Kerry, glad to be here. KJD: Okay Laurie, I like to start with a simple question before I delve deep into the author’s psyche. What’s the best thing about your hometown? LB: Oh wow, so many things! We’re nestled between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River. It’s so beautiful here, with stunning autumn colour, postcard views, and a thriving cultural community. If that’s not enough, we’re an hour-and-change train ride to Manhattan. KJD: Fantastic. I live in the middle of the Brittany countryside too. Aren’t we the lucky ones? Tell me, what you see out of your studio window. LB: Trees, trees, and more trees. And occasionally, a bird will fly smack into the glass. Occupational hazard, I guess. KJD: Blimey, that’s uncanny. I had a kamikaze pigeon do the same thing last week. Can’t be the same one, as mine is now buried in the back garden. I gave it a good send off though, spared no expense. Perhaps pigeons are attracted to the written word. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

62 Okay, here’s the first curveball. Now tell me what’s really out there (Mwahahaha). LB: Sneaky! Actually, there’s more yardwork than I ever want to think about. That’s why I stay inside. KJD: Tee hee. Know what you mean. It’s great having a large back garden, but some poor schmuck (me) has to mow the blooming grass. Now, let’s get to know you a little better. You’re shipwrecked on a deserted paradise island. Apart from the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare (yeah, right), what other book must you have and why? LB: I must have Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. It’s my favourite book. Every time I read it, I find something new to love and think about. KJD: Interesting. Haven’t read that one, might have to check it out (Darn – showing my ignorance there. Onwards). Under the same conditions, what’s the one luxury item you’d take with you and why? By the way, no beauty items allowed. LB: Beauty items? Oh, you’re making me laugh so hard. Assuming that I already have an unlimited supply of notebooks and pens in this paradise, I’d like a comfortable bed. Everything else would be a cherry on my sundae. KJD: Sorry – that’s two things, I’m mean. Everybody needs a good night’s sleep, but you’ve now forfeited your right to either luxury. You’ll have to write on slates and sleep on the ground. MwahaThe Wagon Magazine - May 2016

63 haha. Now let’s skip right to the technical stuff, which I’m sure all your readers are as interested in as I am. What’s the first thing you do when starting a new novel? Do you research and write a detailed plot outline, or are you what they call a pantser (fly by the seat of your pants)? LB: Aha. Right. I sit down and start writing whatever the characters are telling me. Usually it’s dialogue. I hear them speaking and write down what I hear. Until my last couple of books, I was a dedicated “pantser,” but I’m experimenting with outlines now. So after I get a good start, I’ll rough out “story beats,” a kind of modified outline that’s loose enough to keep it interesting but tight enough to give me some direction. I try not to do any research until after the first draft, relying on my subconscious mind to pull up whatever keeps me going. Often, it’s surprisingly accurate. KJD: Brilliant, hold on a second while I take notes … great. Thanks. Next question. What excites you about writing and the writing process? LB: I love meeting new characters; I love digging into their motivations and their lives. I love the escape of writing. The house could be burning down and I’d barely notice. In fact, I’ve ruined several pots of soup this way. KJD: Most non-writers reading that would worry about your sanity, hearing voices and allowing your imaginary friends to ‘lead’ the way, but truth be told, I do exactly the same thing myself. Perhaps writing is a single step away from madness and I’ll see you The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

64 again in the asylum. When did you begin writing creative fiction? LB: I started in middle school, when a wonderful teacher gave us an assignment to start keeping a journal. In the margins of one of my entries, he encouraged me to try fiction and to write for the school literary magazine. KJD: That’s a great teacher. I didn’t start writing fiction seriously until 2011, I had no encouragement from my teachers, bunch of useless, aggressive, b*!*!* (expletives deleted). Ahem, sorry ‘bout that. I hated school, ended up being expelled in the days before they used the term ‘excluded’, but that’s another story. On to brighter things, let’s talk about your latest work. Where did you find the inspiration? What’s it about? When can we expect to see it on the bookshelves? How about a sneak preview? Come on, spill the beans, I want to know it all! LB: Part of my inspiration was from readers, who met the hero, Charlie, in one of my earlier novels and wanted to know more about him. I kept pushing the thought to the back of my mind. I had other stories to write and I’d never written a sequel before. Then Charlie popped into my room. He wanted me to tell his side of the story. It ended up dovetailing the original novel: a prequel AND a sequel. Yikes. We had some work to do and listened to a LOT of Frank Sinatra. The prequel novella, The Picture of Cool, is the story of how Charlie Trager and Adam Joshua Goldberg meet, and The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

65 how they struggle with what even a potential friendship could cost them and their loved ones. Playing Charlie Cool continues their narrative—the challenges that result when Charlie is all in and Joshua is not ready to commit. To complicate their relationship further, Joshua’s spurned ex-wife tries to keep him from their two children … and maybe Charlie. Afraid he might be losing Josh, Charlie connives a way they can be together, at the risk of destroying everything the two have worked so hard to build. KJD: Wow, powerful stuff. Sounds like a real pot-boiler, full of emotion and character driven, and makes a real change from car chases, gunfights, and vampire gore. I see why you call it literary fiction. Back to you now, if there were a single thing you’d like to change about yourself, what would it be? (Cosmetic surgery is out of bounds). LB: I’m pretty grateful for the whole package, considering how some things could have gone, but the horrid little voice that tries to edit while I’m writing first drafts? Yeah, I’d like that to go away. KJD: I know the feeling. That same voice plagues me too. I wonder if it has anything to do with those kamikaze pigeons. What’s next in your life? LB: I made a promise to myself to complete the first draft of my next novel by the end of January. No, I’m not telling you what it’s about. KJD: Aw, c’mon. Pretty please? LB: Nope. I’m bound by the sacred laws of author confidentiality. KJD: Darn it, give me back that cake! Tee hee, kidding. Okay, to make up for it, tell me something about yourself you wouldn’t want you partner/parents to know. Don’t worry; it’ll The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

66 be our little secret. LB: Oh, you’re so tricky. KJD: I try. LB: Here’s one – there are way too many empty jars of Nutella in my writing room. I think it’s my drug of choice. KJD: Okay – you’re forgiven. Anyone who likes and eats that stuff, which to me looks like doggy doo-doo, deserves all our sympathy. And finally, to wrap up, is there anything I’ve forgotten to ask that you’re desperately, desperately keen that readers should know? LB: I really love hearing from readers! Without you guys, I’d probably be in nursing school like my mother always wanted. Drop me a line, would you? KJD: It’s been fantastic chatting with you Laurie, a true pleasure. All that’s left is for me to say, thanks millions for your time and candour, and to wish you the very best of luck with your writing. As for me, I hope to play Kerry Cool for as long as I can still walk upright.

Kerry J Donovan was born in Dublin in the late 1950s, before the time of mobile phones and twenty-four-hour television. He spent most of his life in the UK, and now lives in Brittany with his family. Kerry’s psychological thriller, ‘The Transition of Johnny Swift’ became a number one bestseller only a few months after release and his ‘DCI Jones Casebook’ series are also bestsellers. He can be reached at http://kerryjdonovan.com/publications-by -kerry-j-donovan/ The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

Collaborative poems Ukraine’s Tetiana Aleksina and Australia’s Tony Single

anastasis tree thick scabbed bark like a panoply but tender than a wing-stroke stealthy touches, airy kisses, cracking, cracking i’m but a breath, thinly stretched by potter o’er clay and bone i’m a tumbleweed in tumble land a noose dropped at the hanging tree gnawing trails through rotten caudex weaving cocoons inside the heartwood The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

68 quivering fibrils, feeble pulse waiting, waiting you are closer than the wisp of lips you are deeper than oceans mere you are greater than fears all bring an empty space at the hanging tree gentle stirring feels like convulsions nobody asks you when you’re ready voiceless screams, waterless tears waking, waking we all submit that need to know we know love that seek out truth we love true another’s name our troubles left at the hanging tree you want me for you i want you for me so let it be a butterfly sways on a hangman’s noose at the dead tree

the bobblehead’s pilgrimage i’ve looked for jesus but the sky is too low it drapes over my eyes like a scurvy blindfold i’ve prayed to the god i no longer believe in for release but that’s ground that won’t soon receive me it keeps on pushing me away The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

69 i’ve suckled sweet milk but it goes down the wrong pipe it tears my throat to shreds like a white-hot ramrod i’ve tangled in the beard of a two-faced sanyasi for release but that’s sanskara that won’t soon protect me it keeps on pushing me away i’ve stood on the mount but the wind is too severe it tamps my ears to the brim with scalding red sand i’ve done sajadat till my forehead drowns in blood for release but that’s zakat that won’t soon purify me it keeps on pushing me away i’ve picked off withered minds but more grow from the tree it strangles empathy by way of reason’s roots i’ve hitched my ride to a dawkinian screed for release but that’s sound that won’t soon assuage me it keeps on pushing me away i’ve drifted, i’ve plodded up hill and down dale res nullius, i’m the thing that has no owner i’ve stood at the stop awaiting the last bus for release but suddenly you took my flawed hand and led me away from the platform and then there’s neither death nor immortality and then light shines and darkness won’t take it in and then sun and the moon glide in their orbits and the Word is Love and love’s more than a word it holds me and doesn’t let me go

Tetiana Aleksina The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

Tony Single

C. Raveendran

NON-FICTION

TOWARDS FEMINIST THEATRE: AN ENDLESS DIALOGUE

Frailty thy name is woman - Shakespeare You yourself are the problem-Sigmund Freud Like Sydney Finkelstein who poses a big question through his book on Shakespeare titled “Who Needs Shakespeare”, feminist theatre critics raise voice against Shakespeare’s treatment of tragic charThe Wagon Magazine - May 2016

71 acters like Desdemona, Ophelia but they coolly forget the agony of Hamlet expressed through the perennial question ‘To Be or Not to Be’ which stands for both genders. Sigmund Freud tried to solve the binary opposition of masculinity and femininity and to conclude that femininity as attribution that way created socially and culturally under the domination of sexually and biologically constructed world of patriarchal order. Taking cue from Freudian way of interpreting the construction of feminine, Jacques Lacan has given expanded version of subjectivity in terms of entering into the looming the web of language. “What Lacan had at his disposal, which Freud did not, was the science of linguistics pioneered in the twentieth century by Saussure. Lacan claimed the subjectivity is constructed through sign system” (Aston: 36), what Elaine Aston summarized the re-orientating psychoanalysis of child becomes the base for theatre critics to proceed the task of deconstructing the role of woman as other in contrast with her subjectivity. Entering into the’ mirror stage’ as Lacan pointed out, which gives the identity of child as constructed through the pre-Oedipal phase in relation to the symbolic order. It is interesting to note that Catherine Belsey has explained that “the entry into language of self in relation to the ‘I’ who speaks and the ‘I’ who is represented in the discourse” as quoted in Elain Aston (p. 36). Sincerely speaking Belsey’s analysis has been made out from the Lacanian notion of spilt ‘I’ in literary contexts which draw our attention to the transformation of ‘imaginary to symbolic order’ maintaining supremacy of patriarchal hegemony suppressing and oppressing not only female voice but also her body as text. It is one step further from the subjectivity between ‘I and The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

72 Thou” as Martin Buber formulated as theological question. In another word the subject of I or self is always in perceiving the world of other in a pluralistic, multicultural and multilingual society. The concept of Other as proposed by Edwin Thambiah in relation to the cultural identity as against national identity of multiracial and multi-lingual societies like Singapore poses two problems here. In the first level, the construction of the self of a female negotiating with biological and cultural forms of a dominant one, the male. On the other level, the representation of the self as the other is in the process of collision of subjectivity and objectivity through the annals of history. Throughout the history of theatre down from Greek to the nineteenth century, women were especially marginalized and suppressed their voice of emancipation. Even in the Greek theatre where performance took place in Amphi Theatre under the sun light with the concept of ’ everything under the sun light and nothing to be hidden. Male actors took the role of women even in the play Lysistrata, the first anti-war play performed in Amphitheatre. Similarly, Sophocles’ play Antigone still remains as the voice of the liberation “fight against the institutionalised strength of the male sex”. The dialogue between the sisters Antigone and Ismene stands as

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73 testimony to the power of human not yielding to the hegemony of the masculine power of state and the laws they created. From the days of Sophocles and Euripides to the days of modern playwright started with Henrik Ibsen, it is imperative our part to say that the representation of women and their role in the male dominated world become the centrality of the theme of their plays. And at the same time play like Euripides, women of Troy became the source of inspiration to the playwright like Jean Paul Sartre to adopt the theme of pain and power of women during the days of war. Influenced by Euripides, women of Troy and its modern adaptation of Sartreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Trojan women, Ebrahim Alkazi, the founder director of National School of Drama, New Delhi staged the play under the banner of NSD in 60s and it remained as a landmark in Indian theatre. In 1980s, S.Ramanujam has also given new version of Trojan women directed by his mentor Alkazi and staged it in the name of Veriyattam, the frenzy day as a workshop production in Tamil University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. Ramanujamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Veriyattam is a milestone in Indian theatre for its visual presentation of well chorographical movements of actors by way of depicting the agony and sufferings of women and children during the days of war and ethnic riots in the name of religions and racial supremacy. He has also realised the power of lullaby and the song of lamentation popularly known as Taalaattu and Oppaari quite common and popular among the rural folk of the women in Tamilnadu and appropriately used those singing tradition in the play Veriyaattam in terms of symbolizing the deaths of innocent women and children during the time of ethnic violence and genocides taken place in the Gaza Strips and Mullivaaikaal in Sri Lanka. (http://www.thehindu. com/features/friday-review/review-of-the-tamil-play-veriyattam-staged-in-thrissur/ article7681004.ece) The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

74 One need not think that it is a deviation from central issue of the paper title “Towards Feminist Theatre: An Endless Dialogues”. It is an earnest desire to say that the portrait woman as a protagonist occupies the focal point of the dramatic works of both genders. Here, theatre belongs to everybody and talks everything. In parallel to the verse libre movement as a way of breaking the clutches from the norms of prosody by providing milieu for new poetry movement in the west, Andre Antonine’s Theatre Libre was responsible in creating space for transcending theatre to the new ‘isms’ like naturalism, and realism starting with dramatic venture of Emilie Zola and Henrik Ibsen’s plays. The chapter of modern drama begins with Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”. It is a belief that the history of drama begins with the history of theatre. Andre Antonine’s Theater Libre was also a starting point for all the theatre personalities like Oscar Brockett, who has devoted more pages in declaring the emergence of Avant-Garde theatre movements in the west. And at the same time, there was a big silence about the Theatre Feminist established by Marya Cheliga in 1897 in order to provide space for the women playwrights to raise their voice against the silence imposed on them from the ‘cultural past’. In 1970s, it is quite relevant to say that the emergence of Feminist theatre as part of Feminist movement is due to the publication of seminal works of three great French feminist writers headed by Helene Cixous, Luce IrigaThe Wagon Magazine - May 2016

75 rary and Julia kristeva. As in Ibsen’s ‘A Dolls’s House’, the protagonist Nora walks out of the house after slapping the door shut, leaving her husband locked inside the house, Helen Cixous also has created something similar in her play ‘the portrait of Dora’ by just changing the protagonist’s name Nora as Dora. Dora in Helene Cixous’s ‘The portrait of Dora,’ “who walked out of the case before Freud had completed his diagnosis of her ‘illness’. Initially, it was produced as a radio play in 1972 and it was staged under the direction of Simone Benmussa in 1976. As quoted from the notes of Helene Cixous by Elaine Aston, “Le Portrait de Dora was the first step for me in a journey: it was a step that bodily needed to be taken, so that a woman’s voice could be heard for the first time, so that she could cry out, ‘I am not the one who is dumb. I am silenced by your instability to hear…’ this journey takes her from dependency through suffering, until she exists into an entirely different shape/scene.” (Aston: 48). This is one way of returning to the pre-Oedipal mother phase as conceptualized by Cixous. Thanks to Toril Moi, Luce Irigaray’s works “Speculation of the Other Woman” and “This Sex which is not one” are now available in English translation, and central themes of her writing provides space for speaking the body ‘the body speaking’. This conceptual framework gives emphasis to the women playwrights and women directors in terms of making exclusively women’s writings and theatre productions. As against the language of the The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

76 man’s desire, Irigaray points out, when a woman speaks out her pleasure; ‘she’ is indefinitely the other in herself.” (Aston: 50). Following Luce Irigaray’s way of breaking the linear way of expressing the life pattern as in the world of the men, Julia Kristeva asserts herself that a woman’s life and experience are ‘broken backed’. ‘The broken backed’ experience of women which goes against the hegemony of the masculine order of the linear order of narration of history thereby suppressing the feminine voice in a step towards the emancipation, becomes the base for avant-garde theatre artistes. Elaine Aston observes: “in this context of women’s theatre, it is breaking up a dramatic dialogue, form, character etc. which is analyzed in relation to the semiotic and the possibility of jouissance.” (Aston: 56). With this background of the issues and concept of feminist theatre and its multifaceted forms of representation through productions found handy in the seminal texts like Elaine Aston’s “An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre”(1995) and “Feminist Visual Culture” cited by Finna Larson and Claire Pajaczkowshe (2000), an attempt has been made to enter into the Indian theatre where the arrival of women playwrights, actors and directors took place in 1970s. In 1970s lots of playwrights and directors all over India started to create the sense of identity in the name of modern theatre movements by juxtaposing the commercialization of company theatre and ‘Sabha’ theatre all over India after the advent of Parsi theater. Women were active participant in representing them as against their male counterpart in theatre. Binodini Dasi (1862–1941), also known as Notee Binodini was one in Bengal and Balamani Ammal in Tamil Nadu. Balamani Ammal was the first woman actress to appear on stage completely nude for few minutes as per the requirement of the mythical story of Sathi Anushuya. Southern The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

77 railways started running specials in the name of Balamani Ammal’s special between Thanjavur to Kumbakonam to ease the hurdles of travelling in crowded trains and to help the theatre lovers to travel to see the play in 1940s. Notee Binodini’s autobiography was the base for theatre productions not only in Bengal but also all over India. Initially Notee Binodini’s autobiography was staged under the direction of Bhanu Barati at the end of 1990s. Vasuda Dalmia, in her book titled “Poetics, Plays and Performance: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre” (2006), has mentioned the life service to the theatre activities of the ‘women directors of 1990s’. Women directors like Urvashi Butalia, Neelam Mansingh Choudhry, Amal Allana, Anamika Haksher, Anuradha Kapur are lucky enough to find their names in just ten pages out of nearly four hundred pages of Vasudha Dalmia’s book on “Power, Plays and Performance”. Other than these women directors, she was silent about the activities of women directors like Jayashri in Kannada and Gandhi Mary, Jeeva and Mangai in Tamil Nadu. Out of the women directors of 1960s as mentioned by Vasudha Dalmia, only Usha Ganguly’s ‘Rudali’, Saoli Mitra’s ‘Nathabati Anathabati’ and Anamika Haksher’s ‘Antar Yatra’ are worthy to be mentioned here for their powerful representation of women’s voice breaking the silence. Anamika Haksher’s Antar Yatra based on Tamil epic Silappadikaram of Ilango in which the burning of Madurai becomes the symbol of women’s power in order to eliminate the evils of the kingdom by way of depending her husband’s innocence. Though the production narrates the inward journey of woman who violets the social norms by retaining her identity. The final scene ends with the frenzy dance of women dancers circling around Kannagi who sits on a pedestal and finally blackening her face and body by applying black. The hegemony of the power politics of the patriarchal society supports the unwritten law that if there is any violation of social norms or order, there will be a punishment in mutilation of body or killing and finally deification. This had The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

78 been not only the fate of Kannagi but also the fate of endless number of women met out in the annals of history. Amal Allana and her husband Dr. Nissar Allana have jointly ventured into staging plays in a neat and pompous way. When she became the chairman of National School of Drama, she took interest in doing experiments. In her production of Brecht’s Mother Courage under the banner of NSD, Manohar Singh acted as Mother Courage. When she did Notee Binodini as the production of NSD, she made it in a lavish way to give space for four NSD trained girl students to act the character of Notee Binodini. The casting of those girls for a single role simultaneously puzzled the audience. Amal Allana’s Notee Binodini has been short listed for many awards at Meta Theatre Festival at Delhi and won award for best actress to the four girl students of NSD acting as Notee Binodini in a collective way. It was a paradox of our times. Here, I conclude by taking the play “Mudivillatha Uraiyaadal” (An Endless Dialogue) by Ambai published in a little magazine ‘Meetchi’ in 1988. Ambai, the pen-name of Dr. C. S. Lakshmi, has been closely associated with the little magazines in Tamil, and the play “Mudivillatha Uraiyaadal” is her third play awaiting production. She was initially working as lecturer at the Miranda House, Delhi University, and went to U.S.A to finish her doctoral thesis on Tamil women writers which got published under the title “Looking through the Veils”. Now, she is a director of NGO known as Sparrow, Mumbai. Ambai is a polyglot and she is also one of the leading Tamil women writers, whose short stories centering on the issues of emancipation of women. But, she never claims that she is a feminist writer. Ambai’s play “Mudivillatha Uraiyaadal” is in the form of a dialogues of three women in the name of woman 1, woman 2 and The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

79 woman 3 who interact with each other by telling ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ to woman 1. At the same time, woman 2 and 3 represent the tradition and modernity and woman 1 is their target to teach her how to overcome the suffering and agonies inflicted on her through the centuries. These three women are on the stage by standing in three spaces symbolically representing the triangle and moving according to the necessity of the actions on the stage. In the middle of the dialogue of these two women giving instruction to the woman 1, a woman’s voice takes the lead and gives instruction to the women to act accordingly. The first improvised enactment according to the voice of the woman takes place just as the ‘mirror stage’. As per the instruction of the woman’s voice, woman 1 stands in front of the life-like size mirror in full nude and she slowly touches and feels the softness of her hair, breast and her vagina, and feels proud of her body as text. The second enactment is about the sexual act between the man and the woman. The movement of the bodies is just like an enactment of the course of the sexual union on the stage. The woman 1 is so happy to accept the man, as if there is no compulsion or force. It is almost journey through G spot leading towards orgasm. At the same time, the climax of the sexual enactment on the stage as per the woman’s voice, the other two women vehemently stop woman 1 and bring her to the cruelty of mundane reality. It is inevitable for the modern woman to enter into the freedom of postmodern sexuality and to live in a world of dreams. There is no point of redemption, but the dialogue between the man and the woman continues endlessly from the primordial times. Till now, Ambai’s play “Mudivillatha Uraiyaadal”, which refers to an endless dialogue, awaits a director. No feminist theatre group in Tamil Nadu is ready to stage this play. Here, the dramatic text is the pretext of the context which provides space for the debate in favour of woman’s voice in retaining its identity against the norms of the male world order. It may not be wrong to say that Ambai’s play is indirectly based on Luce Irigaray’s idea of ‘woman-speaking’. It remains to reflect the concept of Sylvia Plath’s Three Women: “it is a poem for three women’s The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

80 voice which was broadcasted as radio play in 1962 setting maternity ward and round about voices speak of their pains, joys, their suffering of birth and loss” (Aston: 51). The performance of “Vagina Monologues” was scheduled to be staged at four major state capitals including Chennai a decade ago and the performance at Chennai was stopped in a dramatic way. The reason behind the withdrawal of the scheduled performance of “Vagina Monologues” was that ‘no sex please, we are Indians or Tamils’. Similarly, we are also waiting for a director or better to say a woman director who can boldly visualize Ambai’s play representing the woman’s body as text in terms of ‘speaking the body/the body speaking’. No hope, but the waiting still continues. References: Aston, Elaine. An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print. Dalmia, Vasudha. Poetics, Plays and Performance; The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre. Chennai: Oxford University press, 2000. Print.

C. Raveendran was the head of the Department of Indian Languages and Literary Studies, Delhi University. Since 1981 he had been the lighting designer with almost all theatre groups and participated in International Theatre Festivals as a lighting deisgner. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

An Epic Poem by Dr. Sadiqullah Khan ...continued from April Issue,2016

Aristotle and Sappho Sappho and Alcaeus Act II Scene: Sappho with a lyre in Mytilene

Sappho: The fairest of all stars thou, rambling The jars of wine on Athenian youth pouring O joyous evening, O earth for the austere Barefooted, lofty a mind a soul For in the menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s affairs, underneath Thine music is solid cold, cold as stone The sculpted god, bent, your Politics Till today, the argument goes on, you The pupil, with the dexterity of a fox A lionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heart and having The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

Ordered all the papyrus by the ship from Egypt. Every utterance, without meter Without lyric, not even iambic. My word like air set ablaze by a fire Hadst it not been so, Why would then he the knowing say, “Some say the Muses are nine: how careless! Look, there’s Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth.”

Alcaeus of Mytilene: More full-throatedly singing Why wait we for the torches’ lights? Now let us drink while day invites. In mighty flagons hither bring The deep-red blood of many a vine, That we may largely quaff, and sing The praises of the god of wine, The son of Jove and Semele, Who gave the jocund grape to be A sweet oblivion to our woes. Fill, fill the goblet--one and two: Let every brimmer, as it flows, In sportive chase, the last pursue. Sappho: Although they are breathe The words I command are immortal, The knightly spirit of Adonis On the shield, yet your shield Not alive, a mother to the Greek A young man may return dead Or victorious. Your vines The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

83 Grapes would produce an enchant, The love’s tempest is mightier Mightier is the defeat’s bitter woes In the festival, bringeth Lute and lyre, sweet song A tale on the seas, a battle’s dust Of the posterity is known little A judge, immoral on a moral scale A poet, like Horace, a heart in love From fragments may, discover Like all human misery in self styled A philosopher king or inspired by heaven A praise your way, a song you make. Alcaeus of Mitilyene: Choral, O muse, a daughter of goddess From a sweet tongue, a honeyed smile I found the poor fisherman To the invitation I sang the abandon Wine before the sun goes down Cup on cup; sporting a lyre. Sappho: The men would on earth and Hereafter, remember nothing but women. End of Act II

The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

Aristotle and Sappho Act III

The Constituents of Tragedy Scene: At lyceum Aristotle walking with his students.

Sappho: I implore thee, sage Nothing superior Nothing in comparison Having dealt with life Of polity, rhetoric and Constitutions, world over Would the beacon of thy Lofty intellect, in the recesses A soul hidden, a love manifest An imitation, of what is inside Or what might be. Of the rage The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

85 Of your master, Socrates In conversation. Tell us What tragedy is, so ramp So is born the humanity with. Aristotle: Acting the stories, as they make it We turn to Spectacle first, the stage appearance Then comes Melody and Diction, being mediums While diction is metrical arrangements Melody is song, Action needs Agents Of distinctive thought and character To whom we ascribe certain qualities A Fable or a Plot, where action is done In the natural order of the things Character is the give qualities to agents And Thought is enunciating a general truth Providing a particular point. Sappho: Nothing the sort, a mind crosseth The arrow, once in the heart limpeth Cupid, a lover, from the maze of life A passing age, a beauty aglow How would then, a Plot unfold When living, nothing else Is a plot tragic. Aristotle: The plot is simply this, in the present sense Combinations of incidents, things done In succession, in a story. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

86 Sappho: What then constitutes a tragedy? Aristotle: Six in number. Of such or such quality A Fable or Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Melody or Spectacle Two of them arise From medium of imitation, One from the manner And three from objects of dramatic Imitation; There is nothing nothing else Of these six, its formative elements. Sappho: I didst not thought either Which constituent placed where A poetic diction, beyond reason and logic An inspiration, who knoweth from where All is placed as if, by the soft hands An angel, a muse, godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands. Aristotle: (Now sitting on a marble stone) Tragedy is an imitation not of persons It is, of life, an action; of happiness and misery. The end we live in activity, it is therefore not The person except for the inner representation The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

87 What we do, whether happy or the reverse, We assign it quality through characters. So it is the plot that is the end. Sappho: What misery that speaketh in love, A night awake, a mother’s tear, To some it is something else To another, else. Do you, O reason’s advocate, still believe That in the deep thoughts Emotions arising, anger and fear Such cold demeanors as a marble statue? Aristotle: How inferior are the other parts In misery, happiness and tragedy Having given the plot –a combination Of incidents; a true tragic effect succeeds. Sappho: How a human emotion plays Of nature how you spell the effect. Aristotle: Lend, O poetess of muses To the divisions, definition of tragedy. Dealing with nature and function thereof, Embodied in three aspects of imitation Object, medium, manner. The Object The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

88 Is imitation of an action of grave seriousness Complete in itself, and having magnitude. Sappho: I lend, but what is magnitude. Aristotle: By magnitude is implied That it should be long enough To produce rise and fall in circumstances, Of the hero. The medium is language And all the embellishments it allows. The manner of imitation is dramatic And not narrative. One in which characters Act out the action. End of Act III

To be continued ... Dr. Sadiqullah Khan Wazir belongs to Wana, South Waziristan Pakistan. A Physician by qualification the author serves in the Customs Service of Pakistan. He lives in Islamabad. The Voices, Chaos of Being, The Songs of Other Times, A Forgotten Song, Chasing Shadows and Orchard of Raining Petals are his works of Poetry. The author manages two groups of poetry, The Voices and generation 21 and a page The Voices. The author can be reached at https://www.facebook.com/sadiqullah.khan.92

The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

89 NON-FICTION : ART

Indran

JAYAKUMAR: ON MANIFESTING EROTIC METAPHORS

“The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible” --- Oscar Wilde in a letter

When we are in the process of describing, interpreting and evaluating an art - object, there appears the challenge of finding out the relationship between the art work and the artist’s intention. Some of the artists are open enough to leave the internal evidences of his The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

90 intentions in his own works of art. For others we have to go in search of external evidences for interpretation. In the case of Jayakumar, who is in the habit of narrating something incessantly in his paintings and drawings with recurring images of woman, bull, horse, peacock, dove, tree etc, he encourages every art-conditioned – eye to dig out layers of several meanings and sub-meanings. Any viewer of the works of Jayakumar indulging himself in penetrating in to the intentional fabric of the artist is amply rewarded, For the purpose of fabricating meanings Jayakumar often travels in to his favorite terrain of eroticism. It all started right from his early works like “Flower Vs ferocity “(1975) As a contemporary artist living in Chennai, it is not a surprise that he is much attracted by the theme of eroticism that has been handled by scores of master sculptors and painters consistently for thousands of years in various shrines of Budhist, Jain, Vaishnava, Shaiva, Shakthi and other cults of India. The temple sculptures of 10th century India are an undisguised exaltation of physical desire; yet they are great works of art because their eroticism is part of their whole philosophy. Extending the Indian tradition of erotic art of India to contemporary expression, Jayakumar is quite comfortable in handling the theme of eroticism with modern idiom in many of his works. Anyone can easily trace out the influence of Picasso, the modern master of erotic art in the works of Jayakumar. Just like the nudes of Dega were serving as a spring-board for Picasso, Jayakumar is The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

much inspired by the nude woman, bull, horse and other metaphors of Picasso In majority of his paintings and drawings Jayakumar is celebrating the nudity of female form. Knowingly or unknowingly Jayakumar has fallen in to the western art trend of giving predominance to female nude over the male in majority of his paintings. We can classify the works of Jayakumar on female nude broadly in to two major divisions. 1 a woman depicted as a lonely soul 2 a woman depicted along with a beast -- It may be a woman with a bull or a horse, dog or a monkey. Now let us take up the case of woman as a lonely soul. In such cases the form of woman undergoes a lot of metamorphosis. For example in one of his works a woman is portrayed in the form of a tree. She is being portrayed in several forms of trees, either as a tree overloaded with fruits or a tree decorated with twinkling stars. In another work she is described in the strange form of a banyan tree looking like a woman. Here the artist feels the tree as a symbol of motherhood with the thick foliage as the curling hair and the trunk of the tree as the body of the woman. I consider this sort of looking at a woman in the form of a tree is an extension of Tamil sensibility wherein the tradition of describing the physiology of a woman as a part of the nature. In the ancient Tamil literature we can find widely, the slender shoulder of the woman is often compared with sugarcane or a bamboo, eyes are described as Aambal or kuvaLai flowers, breast as the buds of lotus or palm fruits etc. Because Jayakumar had close relationship with poets like Kannadasan and writers like Jayakanthan his images are more literature oriented. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

92 Though the works of Jayakumar follow the style of western modernism, a touch of Tamil classical idiom is also coming and settling over his works. As we find in the Shilpa Sahstra the artist is trying to accentuate the femininity of a woman by placing a swan or a peacock, fish or a dove that were used widely in the classical sculptures and paintings of Tamil Nadu to increase the beauty of a woman. In ancient Tamil poetry women are often called as a peacock or a parrot, dove or a pearl. But at the same time, we should not fail to observe that the body language of the nude female forms of his paintings is not fully dictated by the Tamil sensibility. The women forms finding place in his paintings and drawings are all nudes. The stark nakedness of the human forms is not permitted to take place in the traditional sculptures and paintings of Tamil Nadu. Though the erotic works of art find place in various temple carts, temple pillars and the steps of the tanks, the stark naked forms of female are not freely circulated. If we take the Jain temple of Tirupparutikunram in Kancheepuram district the teertankaras in nude forms are permitted. But you cannot find a single nude human form in the paintings of the Jain temple. So the deliberate treatment of nudity is not generally permitted in the paintings and sculptures of Tamil society. If we take the Shilpa Shastras like Manasaram, they permit nudity only in two cases of Hindu mythology ---one in the case of Bhikshadana murty, siva in the form of a beggar and the Mohini avatar of Vishnu. In all other places the suggestion of garments are always insisted in all adult human forms. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

93 The treatment of nude forms has become a part of art expression only on the introduction of British art education in India. Jayakumar being a student of Madras college of fine arts and subsequently went for an advance training in art for an year in Surrey, UK, with British Council scholarship, he is resorting to a guiltless expression of nudes in his works. But at the same time Jayakumarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s works are dictated by the Indian classical expression and thereby giving way to a confluence of western and Indian styles in his works. So in majority of the paintings and drawings of Jayakumar an aesthetics of ambivalence and a sort of hybridism is in operation. Now let us take his series of works on the bull and the woman as well as the horse and the woman. We can broadly classify these works in to three types. 1 A woman is being attacked either by a bull or a horse. In most of this paintings a woman is often depicted as a victim fallen on the floor while the bull as a symbol of power and ferocity is attacking her with relentless violence. 2 A woman, after taking full control of the beast, is alighted either on a bull or a horse and passionately kissing the beast. 3 A woman is depicted along with a horse and a bull in the same canvas. In all these series of art works my area of focus is the play of power in man -- woman relationships. One should not fail to note the pre-structured value judgments about the place of women in Indian society in his works. In his first type of paintings the play of gender bias is to be noted. The binary opposition of Woman = weakness x man = strength ( bull ) is powerfully portrayed in his first set The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

94 of paintings. In many of his works the bull is vehemently attacking the woman on her chest; the horse is throwing the woman on the floor and standing above her. On the other side, many of his paintings celebrate the victory of woman over the man. In some of his paintings winning the man with love the woman is sitting above a bull or a horse with romantically flowing hair. The horse fully accepting her dominance is taking off in the sky with open wings. Jayakumar, as an artist successfully handles many sensitive visual metaphors in his paintings and drawings and thereby facilitate the capturing of our phenomenological experience of the world in a unique way. He creates a private mythology of his own by which he is able connect together objects, events and actions that appear to be empirically disparate and unconnected and are part of cultural expression

INDRAN, well known Art critic and Poet, is from Chennai, India. The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

95 American Life in Poetry: Column BY TED KOOSER

U.S. POET LAUREATE

“Pat Emile is Assistant Editor and Jill-Of-All-

Trades for this column. Were it not for her help I couldn’t keep these weekly selections coming. Here she is in another role, as a poet, stopping in a little food market and noticing things the way a poet should notice them”. -TED KOOSER

They Dance Through Granelli’s by Pat Emile He finds her near the stack of green plastic baskets waiting to be filled and circles her waist with his left arm, entwines her fingers in his, pulls her toward him, Muzak from the ceiling shedding a flashy Salsa, and as they begin to move, she lets her head fall back, fine hair swinging a beat behind as they follow their own music—a waltz—past the peaches bursting with ripeness in their wicker baskets, the prawns curled into each other behind cold glass, a woman in a turquoise sari, her dark eyes averted. They twirl twice before the imported cheeses, fresh mozzarella in its milky liquid, goat cheese sent down from some green mountain, then glide past ranks of breads, seeds spread across brown crusts, bottles of red wine nested together on their sides. He reaches behind her, slides a bouquet of cut flowers from a galvanized bucket, tosses a twenty to the teenage boy leaning on the wooden counter, and they whirl out the door, the blue sky a sudden surprise. The Wagon Magazine -May 2016

96 American Life in Poetry: Column - TED KOOSER I can’t help wishing that dogs lived as long as we do. I have buried a number of them, and it doesn’t get any easier. In fact, it gets harder. Here’s Mark Vinz, a Minnesota poet, from his book Permanent Record and Other Poems, from Red Dragonfly Press. - TED KOOSER

The Way We Said Goodbye by Mark Vinz So many years later, the old dog still circles, head lowered, crippled by arthritis, nearly blind, incontinent. We repeat the litany, as if we need convincing that the end is right. I’ll get her an ice cream cone if you’ll drive her to the vet, my wife says. So there we sit on the front steps with our friend, and in the car, as always, when she senses the doctor’s office drawing near, she moans and tries to burrow underneath the seats. What remains, the memory of how she taught us all the way we need to learn to live with wasting. There we sit, together, one last time as all that sweetness slowly disappears.

The Wagon Magazine - May 2016

97 American Life in Poetry: Column - TED KOOSER My father spent his life in the retail business, and loved almost every minute of it, so I was especially pleased to see this poem by David Huddle, from his new book, Dream Sender, from Louisiana State University Press. The poet lives in Vermont. - TED KOOSER

Stores by David Huddle Fifteen I got a job at Leggett’s, stock boy, fifty cents an hour. Moved up—I come from that kind of people—to toys at Christmas, then Menswear and finally Shoes. Quit to go to college, never worked retail again, but I still really like stores, savour merchandise neatly stacked on tables, sweaters wanting my gliding palm as I walk by, mannequins weirdly sexy behind big glass windows, shoes shiny and just waiting for the right feet. So why in my seventies do Target, Lowes, and Home Depot spin me dizzy and lost, wanting my mother to find me, wipe my eyes, hold my hand all the way out to the car?

FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY The Wagon Magazine -May 2016