Mary
Literary
Mary
Literary
Photographs
Jennifer Wagner Cover Photo Take a Shot at Getting Lucky - p. 47 Kiln - p. 48 Aleathia Drehmer You Are a Dirty Robot - p. 8 Reflections Grassroots - p. 72 justin.barrett Love - p. 26 untitled - p. 66 Hannah Matthew - all photos untitled pp. 32-33, 79, 80
Without Line Breaks Patrick Nathan - After a Conversation Via Craigslist - pp. 11-13 Ricki Garni - MOMENTS IN HISTORY: WINSTON CHURCHILL: AFRAID OF MICE? (CHAPTERS ONE THROUGH FOUR) - pp. 17-19 True Confessions p. 78 Father Luke - It Smells Like Dinner - p.24 I See, Yes; I See - p. 93 Naoko Awa - Becoming the Wind - pp. 27-31 translated by Toshiya Kamei TsaphanBabe - Feminist Submissive? Not an Oxymoron - pp. 4951 Curt Eriksen - Of Wrong Turns and a Host of Other Likely Mistakes - pp. 52-57 Nathan Graziano - Three Scorpion Bowls - p. 65 Christina Casalegno - The Narcissus Flower - pp. 67-71 Lee Minh Sloca - hi/ki/ko/mo/ri wasn’t here - pp. 60-61
With Line Breaks Ward Wills - untitled - p. 9 Lee Minh Sloca - Directions to an Afternoon Wedding - p. 10 PS.sssshh - pp. 82-83 Stephen Hines - Laurence - p. 14 A Wishful Biography - p. 58 Matched p. 73 Lazy Hygiene - p. 88 Aleathia Drehmer - I Am No Barber - p. 15 The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far p. 92 Harrisham Minhas - Self-acclimatization - p. 16 John Egan - The Ferry - p. 20 Paula Cary - In My Dreams - p. 21 Paul Toth - Good Morning - p. 22 Justin Hyde - arms length - p. 23 Christopher Price - Midsummer - p. 25 Harry Calhoun - Summer Comes to Carolina - p. 34 This Old House - P. 46 The Verdict - p. 64 Noel Sloboda - Mementos - p. 35 Doug Park - “We’re Attacking Brucie!” pp 36-37 Changming Yuan - W.E.N.S: A Rotating Poem pp 38-39 In the Grove p. 43 The Man Under the Buttocks - p. 82 Patrick Nathan - A Boy in Love pp. 40-41 David Pointer - The Poet’s Plan - p. 42 The Lineup Loved - pp. 90-91 justin.barrett - whatever a moon has always meant - p. 44 foolproof - p. 63 with age comes wisdom - p. 83 Danny Fahey - We Carry Our History With Us - p. 45 Doug Draime - An Ex-Relative of the King’s Six Degrees - p. 59 William D. Jackson III - Untitled - p. 62 Mr. Lally - Darwin the Tortoise Lover - p. 74 McGuire - A Glaswegian Flower - p. 75 Bed is Always Right - p. 86 Sana Rafiq - Praises - p. 76 Seduction - p. 94 Jenifer Wills - Looking for the Right Thing Among All the Other Things - p. 77 Robert Lous Henry - Self Interview # 2 - p. 81 Vincent Turner - All Things Interior - p. 87 Ricki Garni - Lollipops - p. 89 Dessert - pp. 95-97 Carter Wills - Trees - p. 98 Father Luke - Sitting Alone at the End of Time - p. 99
I
’ve sometimes caught myself saying to people that I meant to do something, but that life got in the way. Sitting here now, typing this in a coffee shop before I go to work and do something for which I am paid, I have a tendency to think that it is things I do that get in the way of my life, not the other way around. Specifically, I have told people regarding this journal that I would have had it out sooner if life hadn’t kept getting in the way. Who doesn’t need to work right now? Who among us finds ourselves with the luxury of extra time we can fill with something that will enrich our soul? What I’m getting at, is that I’ve sat on this journal for a long time. I know that. I could give many excuses. I graduated college. I moved twice. Nevertheless, what it comes down to is that now it’s done. And while revisiting the work, I began to realize that I was sitting on a lot of really good, no – excellent work. Re-reading these pieces, I discovered them all over again. Reading them over again for editing purposes, reading them so slowly, I fell in love with them. What we have managed to capture in this journal is something that does not come along very often. My only real hope is that as you read these pieces, you read them slowly. Read one, and then read it over. Close it up, come back to it later, and read it again. If you like an author, search them on the internet. Read all their work. Buy whatever you can get your hands on. For some of them, it may be among the last of their work you can read. For others, it may be early work among many more brilliant pieces to come. For me, this journal represents what was always my favorite part about LiteraryMary: the work. And it is work, isn’t it? Even though most of us won’t ever be paid for it. Even though we set it aside to do the things, for which we are paid. Even though our real lives get in the way. When we are all dead and gone, these words will have been arranged and released into the world to say we loved, fought, drank, made a mess of our lives, and ourselves, and nobody else did so quite the same. Sincerely, Jenifer Wills
You Are a Dirty Robot
Aleathia Drehmer
Haikus are easy, but sometimes they don’t make sense. Refrigerator.
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Ward Wills
↨Directions to an Afternoon Wedding→
Go past the first single light way for happiness.
∙ ∙ ∙ − − − ∙ ∙ ∙ 2 stop at a two-
Not far from the year where Fenway Park Iliad and Idiots got to reverse the Curse of the Bambino.
After (s)miles of road construction, turn lively on 3rd and September for major intersections of bamboo Vietnamese tuxedo battle tanks little sisters Hampton Inn diamond ring Los Angeles till
rehearsal karaoke Jesus photo shoot diet groomsmen Neil Diamond Feeding Hills
finally – – – – – – you’ll see next to Our Lady of Hope – – – – – – our house of I do
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Lee Minh Sloca
After a Conversation Via Craigslist The boy looks at her as she lights her cigarette. The flame brings to her face a shadow and as she sucks to catch the flame her cheeks are sunken like starving clay. “You’re a smoker,” he says. It isn’t a question. “My husband never liked it.” She snaps closed the lighter and sets it on her nightstand illuminated only by the muted television. Her breath escapes grey in front of her and floats to the ceiling. “Your husband.” The boy turns to look at the nightstand on his side of the bed. Next to the base of the lamp is a tray in which rests a watch, its chain draped over the edge of the ceramic and coiled on the wood. “Are we expecting him anytime soon?” She takes another drag and exhales as she speaks. “No. Not now.” “Good.” He touches her arm and runs his finger along her bicep. “You were great.” She bites her lip to keep from smiling and flicks her ash into a waterglass on the nightstand. “People don’t actually say that after sex. It’s just something you see on TV.” “Oh.” He pulls his hand away. “But you were great, too.” She pats his leg, bare under the sheets. “For a first timer anyway.” “Thanks.” They watch the silent weather report—the man in his suit jacket sweeping both arms across a map of the city and its suburbs. Little numbers appear above each county, one at a time like stars in the darkening sky. continued... 11
“Rain tomorrow,” he says. She exhales a cloud of smoke. “Why were you in such a hurry to get laid?” He shifts on the bed, the sheets shimmering as he crosses his legs and leans forward. “I don’t know.” He picks at a hangnail. “It’s embarrassing, being a virgin.” He glances at her and looks back at his hands. “I’m nineteen. That’s just sad.” “There’s nothing wrong with it.” “It’s embarrassing.” “Okay.” She touches his back. He tilts his head back and looks at the ceiling fan. “Are you sure we didn’t need a condom?” “I’m too old to have children.” She drops the cigarette into the water. “Are you sure?” “I’m sure.” His neck cracks as he leans forward again. “I’m tired as hell.” “That happens.” She smiles and pulls gently on his arm. He turns to look at her and can’t catch her eye and when he leans against her she can feel his armpit still damp from that teenage ardor. So different, she thinks, letting his head rest against her breast. She runs her hand through his hair and looks into the room’s shadows which harbor clothes and framed pictures and little glass elephants. When the news is over and she’s halfway through a syndicated sitcom his body shudders and his head jerks up. He looks around like a rabbit. 12
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“Are you okay?” He looks at her and rubs his eyes. “Sorry.” “Don’t worry about it.” She unfolds her arm and waits for him. With a yawn he leans away, toward the other nightstand. “What time is it anyway?” He reaches for the watch and before she can say anything he’s holding it in his flat palm. He flicks it open, squinting in the room’s sapphire light. “Is it really four o’clock?” She touches her collarbone and swallows a breath of air. “The second hand isn’t even moving.” He sets it back in the tray, its chain splayed in a new kind of arc. He turns to her. “I think his watch stopped.” She shivers and looks away. On the floor she can see her bra flat on the carpet and open like a gutted animal. “Anyway I better go.” He swings his legs over the side of the bed and searches for his briefs. She hears the zipper on his jeans and the metal whimper of his beltbuckle. There’s a rustle of cloth as his t-shirt slides over his skin. “Thanks for this,” she hears. She turns to him and tilts her head to the side and smiles. “Of course.” He leans over the bed and kisses her on the cheek. “Can I see you again?” In the dark behind him she can see a pair of black shoes on the carpet reflecting the television’s flickering silence. She curls her toes under the sheets. “Of course.” She touches his soft and pliant cheek from which not even the facts of real tears have slid like wet stones. He’s not yet loved, she thinks. “Of course.” She leans back and watches him step through the door as though he’s conquered a wild and fruitful land. So different, she thinks. 13
Patrick Nathan
Laurence didn’t like to be called Laurence. it was Laurie. to everyone except this one girl. she called him Laurence. and it made the rest of us nervous, because you just don’t. but no, he was ok with it, maybe liked it some, and she knew he liked it some. he seemed to like it, or maybe he was too busy staring holes in her shirt to notice. and maybe she letting him stare holes into her shirt made him choose not to notice. but it didn’t matter after this one day, this fight between them, unfair in a way. unfair, not that he was bigger and stronger and louder and uglier. but unfair that she watched him be bigger and and stronger and louder and uglier. and then unloaded with this: Yeah? well Laurie’s a fucking girls name. see? unfair. but in the quiet and the noise and the quiet that followed, nature returned to its unfair balance.
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Stephen Hines
I Am No Barber I cut your hair in the narrow kitchen intent on the clipper’s buzz purring softly in my palm, fingers vibrating while speakers let out a howl beyond the crowd, slant perched on the lips of Waits that you overlook for the sake of a haircut and a view. I am no barber and we both know this having shared stories of demon coifs given to my brother before picture day two years in a row that incensed my mother. They did not lack creativity as much as they lacked pure skill and notion of angles. You taste the anticipation of my fingers brushing over the bristles on your crown, how I gently fold over each ear to claim escaped convicts and derelict marauders; you wait for me to measure tangents to make imposed hairlines; you wait for me to stand between your legs with skin so close you can smell the faint air of my ancestry. Your hands dance with temptation, steal kisses through cotton, stroke the rise of my thigh or leave fingers to rest in the tender cradle behind my knee; you read my breathing like a well worn book, binding frayed and rapidly declining but familiar. I feel the pulsing of your neck when I brush the hair away. We both smile unseen secrets. 15
Aleathia Drehmer
Self-acclimatization Playing at their humble home’s terrace during a power-cut summer evening, her son got petrified of the night insects and moths moving around the flickering lantern. She took a slate and drew a scarecrow on it, reassuring him that they’re protected. She taught him to be a fluorescent star-flower and blossom all the time in diversified angles, for even when the day sky hides the stars, they still exist overhead, unlike the sun and a sun-flower -sensing mundane east to west movements and a perplexing night.
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Harrisham Minhas
MOMENTS IN HISTORY: WINSTON CHURCHILL: AFRAID OF MICE? (CHAPTERS ONE THROUGH FOUR) CHAPTER ONE WINSTON CHURCHILL IS RUNNING AROUND THE KITCHEN IN A ELEGANT, WINE-DARK SILK BATHROBE with a champagne bottle in one hand and nothing in the other. The mice are scampering beneath his feet, hither and thither. For a man who writes books about English history, he truly is a plump man! Ordinarily, a man who drinks champagne is not afraid of mice. Is Winston Churchill afraid of mice? It’s hard to say. As we see Winston Churchill now, he appears quite agitated, and, frankly, not very nimble. One could say that mice are as afraid of Winston Churchill as he is of them, but actually, mice are afraid of men in general – Winston Churchill appears like any other man to mice only, with their keen mouse eyesight, decidedly more wine-dark. And so, their fear of Winston Churchill is no greater than that of any other man, dressed differently. Winston Churchill. W.C. Fields. Winston Churchill Fields.
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CHAPTER TWO Suddenly there is a terrible crashing sound and there are glass fragments and tiny pin-point champagne colored bubbles everywhere. “My Pol!” Winston Churchill exclaims, en lamente, as he sees his beloved POL ROGER BRUT scattered in tiny bits here and there, near the toaster and a coarse straw broom and dustpan. “What is it, Luv?” Why, it’s Paul McCartney, the mop-top rock ‘n roller–making a cameo appearance in a Sir Winston Churchill poem, mistakenly confusing Winston Churchill’s grief for lost champagne (“Pol Roger”) for the giddy squealing that is normally reserved for the Fab Four (e.g. “Paul McCartney.”) Needless to say, it was an error of no unsmall magnitude. And as such, Sir Winston Churchill did not dignify Sir Paul McCartney’s presumptuous endearment with a response or clever repartee, or, for that matter, any repartee at all. He could have, had he chosen to, believe you me. And if you don’t believe me, read one of his books on English history–they are replete with clever repartee. And so each of them just minded their own business in a ghostly silence. CHAPTER THREE It just occurred to me that if you were writing about Winston Churchill when he was still alive and using a manual typewriter and typing “Churchill” when someone came in through the back and shot you in the back and you slumped over the keys that it would just read “Churchill.” But if you were writing about Winston Churchill now and using a computer with touch type and someone came in and shot you in the back while you were typing the word “Churchill” and you slumped over the keys it would read: 18
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Churchilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll and so on. CHAPTER FOUR Winston Churchill and Paul McCartney. There is nothing finer than having two knights in some kitchen somewhere. I always enjoy watching Winston Churchill, and I always enjoy listening to Paul McCartney. Although, truthfully, I have to say that I don’t enjoy watching Paul McCartney playing his ukulele to scampering mice who upset Winston Churchill like they did. And what he Winston Churchill is saying is neigh on unintelligible. Understandably so. And there is nothing sadder than watching a Knight in a bathrobe, cleaning up a mess in the kitchen with a broom and a dustpan, all by himself, in the twilight of a great career
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Ricki Garni
The Ferry Tonight the wind scatters stars among the ghost-gums and the light- years. The Milky-Way’s a river. The wide universe engraved with lights for navigation – the channels and the beacons. Stars in torrents and tributaries in surge. Old suns swing their probes and lightshafts, lighthouse galaxies, the headland stars shimmer and sweep in the waves. Time is a ferry that glides downstream, the farthest reaches, the surest flow. The river and the stars that steer the years, highways to the tides of the gathering sea..
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John Egan
In My Dreams I know that if I wait long enough you’ll be there driving up the lane kicking up dust from your old truck tires while the wind kicks up my skirt my hair floating behind me in the winds of Texas in front of our dream house, an old adobe dwelling with a chili pepper wreath hung on the red-clay colored front door.
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Paula Cary
Good Morning
Up into sunlight chasm of consciousness and perils that count
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Paul Toth
arms length at arms length we can be best friends or even lovers. any closer i’m something like an arsonist.
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Justin Hyde
It Smells Like Dinner The road blurred as sleep covered my head, and dragged me to wherever it is we go when we doze. The kids, strapped into their baby seats, were eating snacks and talking whatever it is that babies talk to one another about when they talk. The automobile bumped along. And the road took me along with it, as Jenifer touched the dial and made the music a wee bit louder as she drove. The Smiths. Jenifer loves The Smiths. The babies, two older boys, Jenifer driving, and sleep coaxing me further into thoughts of what used to be . . . days when I was coming home from school, thoughts of being young once myself. Days, and memories, so long ago misplaced. It rains in Oregon, and when Jenifer nudged my elbow, “We’re home,” I saw sprinkles on the windshield. We got the twins unstrapped from their seats. Someone needed a diaper changed. And all of the children were off playing before we could get the groceries into the house. The babies would both get fresh diapers. In a couple of hours the house smelled like dinner.
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Father Luke
Midsummer The virgin rises from her bed, now waking from her summer nap. She meets the night. The city glows like her, a ring, and with reflectors, to gain some glow from the street lights. She climbs her bike and rides downtown along dark roads, by gardens with fresh stems that trail into the street. Air carbonates beneath street lights. Oh Glory, Hallelujah! The night now swings with radios and thwacks of air through spokes.
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Christopher Price
Love
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Justin Barrett
Becoming the Wind “If I cross the suspension bridge with my arms wide, will I turn into the wind?” Sayo wondered. “Will I become gradually transparent and disappear, except for my voice? Will I be able to fly anywhere I want?” “I’ll be the wind. I’ll be the mountain wind,” Sayo often chanted as she ran across the bridge, spreading her arms like wings. She failed every time except once. One day, when she ran with all her might, her body became weightless in the middle of the bridge, and she began to float in the air. Within seconds, she was swimming through the sky. “Oh, this is how my mother became the wind,” Sayo thought. “I’m a yamamba’s granddaughter, after all.” Delighted, Sayo flew over the valley. The stream shone like gold, the green summer leaves swayed in the wind, and the sky spread blue and clear. Sayo kept flying ever faster. She flew over three mountains and came to a place with an indescribably sweet fragrance. The smell tickled her nose, making her feel nostalgic. When she looked down, Sayo saw a deep valley strewn with white lilies. From the edge of the cliff to the bottom of the valley, everything was covered with white flowers. She felt dizzy and closed her eyes. Then she lost her balance and fell into a maple tree. Being the wind, she was invisible to the human eye, but she was able to see herself. She sat on a branch of the maple tree and looked down into the valley of lilies. The lilies seemed to be made of white satin. They looked noble, shining brightly. “They’re too beautiful,” Sayo mumbled to herself. “Wind, wind,” the lilies called to Sayo. “Yes,” answered Sayo from the maple tree. Then the lilies began to sing in chorus: 27
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“Carry, carry our perfume to Warabi Mountain Hurry, hurry, wind.” Hearing this, Sayo realized how wonderful the wind’s job was. “Oh, the wind can carry the smell of flowers!” she thought. “Yes, I will!” she cried and circled above the lilies several times. She breathed deeply, inhaled a lungful of air fragrant with lilies, and drenched her body in their perfume. Then she began to swim through the air, like a carp going upstream. Flying through the sky, Sayo reached Warabi Mountain quicker than she expected. She saw a wisp of smoke rising from the cedar-covered peak. “Someone must be making a fire,” she thought. She sat on the top of a cedar and looked down. The fire had almost gone out, and many silver dishes and cups were scattered around. There seemed to have been a tea party. “I wonder who...” Sayo flew up and looked into the distance. Then she saw a herd of white deer moving through the trees, led by a pair of their kind. On the right was a stag with a small golden crown between his horns. On the left was a doe with white baby’s breath on her head. “Ah, a deer’s wedding!” Sayo nodded deeply. “I see. The deer had a wedding in Warabi Mountain. That’s why they made a fire, boiled water, and had a tea party,” she thought. Delighted, Sayo followed the deer and slowly circled above them. “Congratulations!” she cried. Within seconds, the area was filled with the perfume of lilies. Enchanted, the deer closed their eyes. “I’ve never seen such a beautiful wedding!” Sayo thought. The deer slowly moved through the green summer leaves, enveloped in the perfume of lilies. As she followed the herd, she thought how wonderful it was to be the wind. continued... 28
The deer went down the mountain path. They hopped over a small stream, went up, and went down again, accelerating their speed. Finally, they began to gallop, moving away like a white gust of wind. Sayo still saw the stag’s crown shining like a golden ring. “Hey!” Sayo called. “Good luck! Be happy!” Seeing off the deer, Sayo turned back. She saw the sky beyond layers of mountains tinged with purple. “I’m going home. I’m going home to my father,” she thought as she flew over the mountains. “Hey, wind. Where are you going?” the cedars asked, swaying in the wind. “I’m going home to Takara Hot Springs!” she answered, waving. After a while, she saw something mysterious in a spot where the deer had their tea party. Glowing red, it looked like a ribbon. Like red lights at a railroad crossing, it flashed and swayed in the shadows of the trees. “What is that?” Sayo wondered. She went down to the woods and looked closely. There stood a dwarf with a bright red ribbon. She had gray hair and was dressed in gray. She was smaller than a child, but her face was all wrinkled. “Who are you?” Sayo asked with fear in her voice. The dwarf looked up and sneered. “Hello, wind,” she said in a grownup voice. “You and I were bound to meet. We’ve always been friends.” . “What does she mean?” Sayo wondered. The dwarf shook her head and said, “Look, I’ll get larger and larger.” She began to sing: “First a small ribbon then a scarf then a large shawl Finally a red blanket keeps spreading.”
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The dwarf danced while she sang. Soon her body became larger, and the red ribbon swelled into a red scarf, which covered her head and shone brightly. Sayo smelled something burning and heard the crackle of burning wood. “Fire!” she thought. “She must be a fire spirit. Fire and wind were bound to meet – that’s what she meant!” When Sayo had flown over the deer, she had woken the fire spirit. Sayo held her breath and flew up. As she moved, the fire spirit’s scarf became swollen.”You and I were bound to meet. We’ve always been friends,” the fire spirit sang again. Hearing the eerie song, Sayo shot through the air and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Fire! Fire!” She flew toward Takara Hot Springs as she screamed. She had been told about the horror of forest fires. Once the whole mountain went up in flames after some worker dropped his cigarette. A dead fire rekindled suddenly and threatened to swallow a village. No matter how small the fire was at first, it could spread wildly and get out of control. Sayo felt a chill run down her spine. The fire spirit would soon grow larger and become a normal-sized woman, then a giantess, the red scarf turning into a red shawl. She pictured the woman running through the mountains, her shawl flapping in the wind behind her. “A red cloth keeps spreading.” The song came back to Sayo. “Grandmother!” she screamed when she reached the bus stop in Takara Hot Springs. Realizing she was still the wind, she felt flustered. “I must go back to my former self quickly!” she thought. The image of the giantess with a red shawl flickered in her mind’s eye. She imagined a mountain in flames and screamed, “Fire! Fire! Warabi Mountain is on fire!” Then Sayo heard a strange voice: “Sayo! Sayo!” 30
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“Yes!” Sayo answered as usual. “Go down to the suspension bridge quickly,” the strange voice said. “Then curl up and run like a ball.” Sayo did as the voice told her. She landed on the bridge, curled up, and ran. She wondered whether the voice was her mother’s. She was able to hear her mother because both were the wind. Her mother taught her how to go back to being human. As Sayo ran like a rolling ball, a summer breeze danced behind her. Then she saw her own feet, her white shoes kicking the wooden bridge. “I’m Sayo again!” she thought. When she crossed the bridge, she stood upright. Then she heard the fire bell ringing in the distance. “Grandmother!” Sayo cried, sliding the inn door open. “Grandmother, Grandmother!” She stepped up to the entryway, clattered through the long hallway, and reached the kitchen. Grandmother stood at the kitchen entrance, looking out the window. “It looks like a forest fire,” said Grandmother, worried. The fire in Warabi Mountain was put out before it had done much damage. Apparently, some girl had reported it first, but no one knew what she looked like. A girl’s voice echoed through the sky, screaming “Fire! Fire!” The village office sent a helicopter and saw the fire. Thanks to the girl, it didn’t spread any further. “It’s a strange story,” said Grandmother as she washed rice. Beside her, Sayo dried the dishes. She wanted to say she was the one who discovered the forest fire, but she remained silent. She was glad that she had become the wind that day. Not only did she keep the fire from spreading, but she also saw a deer’s wedding, carried the perfume of lilies, and heard her mother’s voice. “But I don’t want to see that creepy fire spirit ever again,” she thought.
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Naoko Awa Translated by Toshiya Kamei
untitled
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Hannah Matthew
Summer Comes to Carolina air lukewarm as the summer ocean, it’s half-dark and still barely morning, my black dog sniffs dawn in every breath and lies content beside me while the birds chirp and warble a string quartet in counterpoint. This time I live for; heaven would be days forever like this. The greens of my back yard shrubs and flowers could be the borders of Paradise as the lights go up there each day. My dog, a contented faithful cliché, sprawls quietly and snuffles toward the sky as if he knows something beyond. And maybe he does. Even I, with my dumb human senses feel it, a goodness running in the blood,, something even these pesky predawn mosquitoes can’t suck out
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Harry Calhoun
Mementos You like little magnets from all over the globe, stuck to the front of our empty fridge, a two-dimensional chronicle of time away from home; the door has room for just one more sign: blankness over a cold interior. You are here should fill the space.
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Noel Sloboda
“We’re Attacking Brucie!” The children chant converging, chant converging, chant converging around that kid who, well. . . they don’t know exactly why. . . they just toss his coat into the air and laugh and pinch his butt and call him names. And then the teachers jump in and stop it for a while. . . because the kid might get a complex or something but they can’t help laughing. . . Brucey goes home and tells his mother what happened, and she comforts him and lies about how those kids will grow out of it and how he should tell the teachers on them. {Brucey’s (unspoken) reply? “Oh no--the teachers are no different from the other kids!”} Then a dad comes home and says stuff like “No one teases a dog that bites, son!” and teaches Brucey to land a punch but doesn’t explain and couldn’t care less about how, even if the strategy works, who might be Brucey next. 36
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But what are they to do? Tell him about those experiments where monkeys get painted green and set loose among their fellows so the scientists can watch the other monkeys have a ball with them? How, when people are young, they tend to be said monkeys, yet as they grow older, they try to be nicer, cause even if they’ve been Brucey at some time or another, they’ve also kicked him, . . .and isn’t it fun, so very fun?
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Doug Park
W. E. N. S: A Rotating Poem
West: not unlike a giddy goat wandering among the ruins of a long lost civilization you keep searching in the central park a way out of the tall weeds as nature gulps down new york with a mummy blue
East: in her beehive-like room so small that a yawning stretch would readily awaken the whole apartment building she draws a picture on the wall of a tremendous tree that keeps growing until it shoots up from the cemented roof
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North: after the storm all dust hung up in the crowded air with his human face frozen into a dot of dust and a rising speckle of dust melted into his face to avoid this cold climate of his antarctic dream he relocated his naked soul at the dawn of summer
South: like a raindrop on a small lotus leaf unable to find the spot to settle itself down in an early autumn shower my little canoe drifts around near the horizon beyond the bare bay
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Changming Yuan
A Boy in Love I: Within a year he chose which absence hurt him most. He touched his finger to the dirt and closed his eyes. It doesn’t rain in hell. The sky is yellow, pregnant with the smell of daisies. Still—he kept that love within him—beating where his heart once beat a thin and fetal memory of rain. Its touch is mine, he thought, remembering as much as he could stand in that unbounded dark. II: There was a tree in hell, its sunken bark engraved with crooked names and dates as though they mattered, etched into the knotted boughs that pointed up at heaven. There, in that primeval wood, he carved his own and sat and listened to the leaves. In hell the wind is kind. It brings a shiver to the skin and even ancients tremble when there creeps across the plains a breeze. He fell asleep and dreamt he was in love. When morning fell the shadows trembled. Yawning there was hell 40
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in all its splendor, swallowing that tree. He touched his heart and kept its memory. III: He fell in love again, this time a lake beyond the meadowland. It didn’t take hell long to suck it back into the dirt. He stood and swore—regardless of hell’s thirst for pain he’d have his way—he’d touch that tree again, he’d swim that lake again, he’d see the gentle, trembling pearls of rain again. IV: In hell you overlook how long it’s been. He’s still there, searching for that tree, that lake. Sometimes he finds new love and hell then breaks his heart. A cruel thing, his heart—that cell in which those ruined loves are weeping. Hell, he knows, is endless. Hell goes on until it meets itself again, and yet he still is searching. Everything he loves—each new and gentle thing—he knows he has to lose. V: He’ll love the ache of hell, its calm. He’ll fall in love until there’s nothing left at all. 41
Patrick Nathan
The Poet’s Plan I can’t just barge into Andrea’s emotional life like a miscreant with a lumberjack lilly bouquet. I’ll need a special poem with a fairy tale pink perennial field, and a tealight lamp lit under etrnal lover’s stars, and there can never be enough double hug me hydrangeas or daylilies to help her forget about that bad dude who flopped on their couch and lawn chairs like a sea shore mammal for 25 years. Now some counselor at a domestic shelter might say she needs to big bolt the doors to her tears and heart, or add some defensive viruses and virtual attack pets to her computer arsenal, but, I’m just going to bring a few delicate creme roses, honesty, laughter, dreams and little Destiny and Breanna, of course, until the sunny border blue depression disappears fast as the sky blue toe nail paint a princess might wear to wonderworld or walking through the party dress pink pansies and bergundy star petunias of possibility.
42
David Pointer
In the Grove she is a willow gorgeous and graceful his whispers are breeze gentle and generous blowing through her branches slim and sunlight-glazed constantly making her tremble like a chuckling tree
43
Changming Yuan
whatever a moon has always meant cummings carried his lover’s heart in his heart so that he could have it with him forever. i understand the sentiment, and find it incredibly romantic, but i don’t quite know how to do that myself. so, instead, i’ll just remember how you look right now: asleep in my t-shirt; hair knotted with sweat; cheeks pink from the afterglow of tonight’s pleasure.
44
justin.barrett
We Carry Our History With Us The sound of the straw broom swept against concrete sets my teeth on edge, mother’s veined hands clench the handle, her eyes, dead like straw, her words, like nails down a blackboard, were worse, as she stood, hand holding the broom, eyes closed to me and her spread legs, in dull brown shoes, deny the world’s revolutions. Mother criticized the results of a visit to the hairdresser or a poor school report with equal obligation as we sat at the red laminated table, eyes lowered, feet scuffing her polished back and white squares of linoleum. Seated for dinner, summer heat rising up from the earth, simmering father red like her dinner - the heat entered the house, a fat black rat come for a feast. We sat around the table in white singlets, mother’s cloying disappointment at our hairlessness thick as the stew she always overdid. Her love - cheap kidney meat, sticky, chunky, the deep kidney smell hit the back of the throat when the back door opened; eyes would flounder like a fish’s startled eyes in a pail of water, there was no alternative place to eat now home breached. Sometimes at night my ears itch with the sound of the broom; my body set upon the bed as concrete, my wife’s back turned away, the words, dirt between us – there is no retreat from childhood. Our feet tread the sound of the broom across all choices. We live with the murmur of maggots; the insistent cry of the dead calling us home. 45
Danny Fahey
This Old House My father who once taught me to toss perfect football spirals in the huge eternal back yard of my youth now lies unable to rise more than an inch or two above flat on his back in his hospital bed my wife and I drive nine hours and stay in his house, the ground floor freshly carpeted and tiled and newly furnished but we sleep upstairs where even before the hospital because of limited mobility he hasn’t ventured and cobwebs and dust have taken over and my sneezes and nosebleeds define our trip, that and my wife’s fatigue, driving and the draining necessity of just being there, feeling death so close in that old house, where my mother nearly died, musty, moldy as the tomb and we finally escape back to our modest suburban home that looks like a castle to us our suburban palace where something wakes me at 3 a.m. thinking of my father, no longer even in his old house who taught me to throw perfect spirals and I hope someone can teach me patience and faith
46
Harry Calhoun
Take a Shot at Getting Lucky
47
Jennifer Wagner
Kiln
48
Jennifer Wagner
Feminist Submissive? Not an Oxymoron. When my darkest fantasies started coming into the light I was terrified. It may have been 20-25 years ago, honestly, that I first started believing something was seriously wrong with me. I assumed I had significant self-esteem issues (which I did, but my fantasies were not a result of those personality traits). I assumed I must hate myself (which, again, I did, but the fantasies were not a result of self-loathing). I certainly hated myself for my thoughts. In fact, as early as I can remember, my sexual fantasies have mostly revolved around being taken and used entirely for the man’s pleasure. But always, and this has never wavered, it was clear I was consenting entirely to the experiences. That was the turn on. What scared me most about my fantasies was that a) I must hate myself, and, b) if I ever examined why I had these fantasies, I’d have to give them up. Surely the root must be disturbing and unhealthy and, therefore, I’d grow and heal and not want these fantasies anymore. I didn’t want to lose them. It is true, there are some elements of my sexual orientation that may have come from being a survivor of sexual abuse. Always, without a single exception, my fantasies revolved around the fact that all of these dirty, hard core, brutal things I imagined only happened because I allowed it. The idea of having control over what happens to me is related to surviving that sexual abuse as a child and trying to get control where I had none. Like my alcoholism, though, it turns out that finding out “why” doesn’t change much. First of all, as with my alcoholism, my sexuality just is. It’s who I am, whether I understand why or not. Because I have traced several possible “reasons” that contributed to my sexual development as a submissive the knowledge doesn’t change who I am. I was afraid I’d be so disgusted by the reasons 49
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for my disgusting (at the time, I believed they were) fantasies that they’d become a turn off. And, again, I didn’t want to lose them. Intense amounts of personal exploration have confirmed for me that knowing some of the sadder reasons why I am the way I am hasn’t tainted the good feelings I have about my identity. I’ll even refer to the rage I sometimes feel (other times it’s just a dull groan of annoyance) about mass media’s portrayal of women. There is a part of being a sexual submissive that relates to that. When I submitted to my Dom I won. I beat the system. I became the most important woman in the universe and none of those other women mattered. I didn’t have to compare myself to them because I was the chosen one. Of course, this thought might make my sister and brother feminists bristle. But, truly, it is an empowering experience to be entirely free, if only for a short time, from the guilt and pressure I can sometimes feel from the outside world. It wasn’t that the other women were bad in any way, it was that I was all that mattered in the world for those moments. I was the source of all pleasure. A totally powerful experience. One important point, though, is the Dom/sub relationship is not about gender for me. That is, I happened to delight in his masculinity and he in my femininity. But, for me, there is no essence of “male domination over female.” It just happens that I’m female and he’s male. Externally, I recognize the risk for misinterpretation since I had the same misunderstanding. My healthy version of D/s is about two equals celebrating consent. Diving into each other with the deepest levels of trust. When I hated myself for my fantasies, I thought I was wishing harm on myself, condoning abuse of women, playing into a system that undervalues and violates women on a regular basis. I was asked recently, “How can you call yourself a feminist if you’re fucking someone who is getting off on rape fantasies?” Or, frankly, I was desperate to know, how can any self-respecting woman do 50
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that? Just like the questioner, I misunderstood what D/s was about. A good Dom doesn’t want to rape. Quite the opposite, in fact. Or, at least, in my limited experience and my plans for the future. It is precisely because of my consent that the mind-blowing sex happens. It’s not even the sex that’s mind blowing. It’s reveling in the consent. The gifts we give each other. I say, “Anything for you.” He says, “Only if you allow it.” And then the glorious games begin.
51
TsaphanBabe
of wrong turns and a host of other likely mistakes clean air, sunshine, sparkling water…she slept through I slept through but the baby in the morning, the joy of warmth and cuddle and trusting me too…not every day, of course, but some days…the Spartans were like that says Plutarch says that the young men and the young women even when married met discreetly and secretly always in the dark so that sometimes a woman would give birth to her husband’s child before either had ever seen the other’s face by the light of day and its true in the dark I turn you but there is a late light a light of no source that filters through and finds your skin shuffling through the shades of our passion aroused also like the Spartans whose frequent partings always left behind unextinguished in each of them some remaining fire of longing and mutual delight so teasing and jostling and suggesting new games I pull you back into the warm warm bed where we tumble and my large hands find and fit and form you out of clay I swear I will make you again let me make you again and breathe into you again (wait) let me fashion the handles of your hips (I hear the baby) are where I can catch and turn you (but the baby) get a good grip and catch and turn you and trace the lines of (oh) discovery which lead back to the (very) center of the universe (and your wife) my wife (your wife) why are you always (your wife) will never know and what she doesn’t know is not good for me either but (sooner or later she will know) that you are a woman too and (the baby’s crying now) won’t hurt him either here (it’s late already and) if we can’t (we can’t) if we can’t (we can’t) if we can’t then let’s at least have a coffee together and start the day off right but surely that is only a dream how could it be anything else one of those dreams he is always interrupting where I see her again and she doesn’t hate me anymore and I am able to get close to her and actually speak to her words which always seem so clear and true in the tomb-dream silence but which I can never recall 52
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afterward when I wake up with the aftertaste of the dream image fresh and undisturbed as the filmy surface of a perfectly still pond just before a pebble tossed in the air arcs and in slow motion falls into the first step I take out of the bed in the morning because it was raining outside and my head throbbed against the density of this new day and I ached with the memory of some foolishness in a tree certainly some other different dream although my back was stiff and sitting on the edge of the bed I noticed a dark bruise on my left knee and my hands were also bruised and swollen and trembling slightly and the skin on my knuckles was cut as well and covered with a thin crust of dried blood and something somewhere smelled like the first time I ever saw a pig being slaughtered the scorched hair and the shriveled skin singeing my nostrils with a taste of death when she walked in and put her hands on the hips I have tried to try but have never really been able to fashion and looked at me like she hated me too she said would you like to explain now I said explain no what not now she said when then I said I don’t know she said well I won’t wait forever I said what are you talking about she said you stink of drink I said sorry she said what am I going to do I said do she said I can’t put up with this you’re running around at night like some nocturnal beast I said I told you she said yes what did you tell me I said I don’t know what did I tell you she said you’re disgusting I said you’re right and when I stood up to go to the toilet I found that I couldn’t put my full weight on my left leg so I limped across the floor and the regular rhythm of my limping made me feel suddenly very sick but the toilet was just too far away and she came back in at the sticky rushing sound of it splattering all over the floor and started screaming you are disgusting you’re a pig get out of here I can’t bear the sight of you anymore but the bathroom door has a lock on it and I shut it and spit the rest into the toilet and flushed it and washed off the cold sweat on my face with a splash of icy water and sat down and listened to her furiously pushing the mop back and forth and cussing me supposing that the baby must be taking her nap now 53
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down the road at the bar J was there too and he asked me what had happened to my face and I didn’t know and he started laughing so hard he farted and excused himself and I went into the water closet there to have a look in the small round mirror with the long branching crack in it suggestive of a thin-stemmed many-delicate-petaled flower where I have often contemplated the mildly disorientating effect of the fragmented image of my own face hanging by a string from a nail against the pale blue tile wall above the little wash basin with the permanent stain caused by the leaky faucet but this time I was surprised to see that what I had expected to see id est the same image of the same face I am accustomed to seeing every time I look into that particular mirror was instead an image somehow remotely familiar a face rosy beneath the surface as if flushed or sunburned and on the surface lightly dusted with what looked like charcoal mixed with flakes of dried skin that I must not have washed off earlier that morning and most surprising of all all of the hair on the face of the image in the mirror the eyebrows and the eyelashes and the fringe and the short sideburns and even the hair along the rims of the ears was singed short and seeing the image of that face in that mirror and knowing that it had to be my face because I was the only one looking into that mirror at that time made me feel very uncertain I didn’t know what I was going to do about it though because I couldn’t remember what might have happened among all the possible things that could have happened and I began to wonder if I hadn’t done something really foolish perhaps I had gone to Marimar’s place after all maybe I had found the way at last maybe I had scaled the wall and thrown rocks at her window and it wasn’t a dream our frolicking happily in her wide wide bed like a pair of puppies but even if that were so how could going there explain my face and how could I completely forget something like that when I dream of it all the time no something else must have happened something really stupid this time and I had a good idea who might know what had indeed happened but I neither knew where to find him nor did I particularly want to find him and since he always finds me anyway I decided instead to stay just where I was and rest my 54
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knee and hope that my headache would pass sooner rather than later while I drank one café solo after another and watched the rain come drizzling down we’ve never really been what you might call close although he has this theory about the unity of our souls but I’m not sure I would even consider him a friend except that he has helped me out on a few occasions but he also irritates me with his erudition not that I’m opposed to books and all that I read them too and I probably know as much as he knows but I don’t lord it over people the way he does it’s incredible really the way he seems to think he knows so much more than everybody else and he even dares to imagine himself omniscient somehow always telling me what I think and feel anyway and though he is usually pretty accurate he’s not always right and when he’s wrong he’s really wrong but he will never admit it like that time when it was all falling apart with Marimar before I even knew who my wife was going to be and Marimar had only just discovered that she was indeed pregnant for the second time and she said that she couldn’t do it again and I couldn’t blame her or ask anything else of her either although I wasn’t very keen on the idea it seemed like bad luck to me why me so we stopped in the first bar that we came to just down the road from the dusty clinic where the lab technician had repeated the verdict over and over again lisping sí sí sí a tourist trap with varnished bamboo walls covered with the framed and signed photographs of famous people who might have had a drink there once among the clutter of polished shells of various species of crustaceans offering among other attractions in the middle of the dance floor a circle of thick glass beneath which a baby alligator yawned as well as an enchanting view of the stony islets at the edge of the bay inexplicable in geological terms three remarkably Doric penises circumcised by the wind over the ages rising out of the deep flat shelf an anomaly illumined at night by red white and green floodlights which the locals referred to as los hermanos erguidos something to think about and describe in the small space of a postcard for the folks at home I suppose 55
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we sat by an open window and looked at the rocks which made me feel I admit it not so much inadequate as sad but the phalli affected Marimar in another way inspiring her to slip off her sandals and with her dexterous toes pinch and ply my inner thighs she thought it was very funny the way I responded so quickly against my will too and started laughing hysterically before the overeager Mexican with the fat droopy eyelid working the tables for a pathetic commission had even had a chance to bring us our first round of those happy hour tequila specials two-for-the-price-of-one served in little red plastic Dixie Cups that he deliberately set down right in front of Marimar bending as low as his courage permitted over her right shoulder close enough to have tasted the honeyed epidermis of her slender neck with his serpent’s tongue if only he would have dared that much but he didn’t he just kept me in check with his lame eye while he carefully set the cups on the table and stared with his good eye straight down Marimar’s flouncy blouse aggravating further my already aggravated state of mind but also boring me making me wonder whether he was going to reach out with his crow’s claw to have a good feel too but apparently he didn’t want to press his luck that far resigning himself instead to repeating the limited thrill bringing us round after round of the bittersweet drinks whether we wanted them or not and in fact we did want them we wanted to drink as much as we could as fast as we could swallow as fast as was humanly possible I suppose that was our way of handling it the way we drank and drank and drank and watched the sun sink behind the islets and streak across the fine wet sand iridescent bands that the retreating tide washed over leaving behind the seaweed that enriched the breeze with the memory of other beaches and other seas and other times wafting in and mingling with the music some strummy melancholic country nonsense about the pride of lonesome cowboys that made Marimar laugh some more and the Mexican interpreting her laughter as bonne vivre started pressing his luck bending lower and lower and giving Marimar a squeeze or two I was really too drunk by then to tell if she liked it or if her laughter had become a coded plea for help when he started whispering in and I thought I saw him actually lick her ear changing the expression on her face so 56
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suddenly though she didn’t budge or blink an eyelid she seemed to turn to stone and he ignorant of the tears clouding her eyes stood up triumphant and insisted upon bringing us still another round of four tequilas on the house this time and I knew that I should have stayed with Marimar then especially then the way she was looking at me without seeming to see me but my bladder felt so tight I was afraid I would wet myself so I got up from the table without saying anything at all and staggered to the toilet where the tiles were a faded and soiled ochre that was precisely the color of the Mexican’s teeth and as I stood there thinking about the Mexican’s teeth I could have sworn he was there behind me but I didn’t want to look the possibility of his presence alone in such a confined space was enough to make me so tense that even though I was about to burst I couldn’t relax and let go and so I stood there staring at the tiles for I don’t know how long while I cranked it up and down like the handle of an old fashioned water pump because it was still a little hard from Marimar’s tickling and being so full or perhaps even I admit the Mexican’s flirting turned me on in a cruel and vindictive way not the man so utterly insignificant but the repulsive animal violating the woman I loved pain upon pain like when I was a boy and I used to press and torment my sores and somehow it made me feel better I suppose to know that things could hurt more than they already did hurt until I felt like he had finally gone and left me alone at last and then it came streaming out in a high pressure jet which was also painful and by the time I had finally finished in the toilet and rinsed my hands and gone out again Marimar was long gone and all of the plastic cups on the table we had been sitting at were stacked on top of each other except for the last four the Mexican had brought while I was still in the toilet and they were empty and lying on their sides anchored by the weight of the squeezed limes and the Mexican stood there beside the table and looked at me and winked his good eye as if we had shared a secret but I didn’t hit him or tip him either I just walked past him and out into the salty breeze and instead of following the road I followed the beach because they both went in the same direction anyway and I needed to feel the firm wet sand between my toes to convince myself that I was still walking on the same earth I had always walked on Curt Eriksen 57
a wishful biography there’s a tiny dictionary on my desk Zippo dimensioned but thicker. pg. 303 is my favourite: in-sub-or’di-nate refusing to obey in-sub-stan’tial slight; not real in’su-lar of or like an island in’su-late cut off from surroundings; surround (wire, etc ) with non-conducting material in-su’per-a-ble that cannot be overcome or passed over in-sur’gent rebel in-sur-rec’tion rising in open resistance to authority in-tan’gi-ble (-tanj-) that cannot be touched or grasped by the mind in’te-ger (-tej-) whole number in’te-gral of or necessary to a whole in western movies or novels the cowboys used pages of the bible or dictionaries as paper to roll their cigarettes something about the texture or pliability. they can’t have 303. ride on tex. although they probably wouldn’t want it it’s too small.
58
stephen hines
An Ex-Relative Of The King’s Six Degrees Her mother is a first cousin of my ex-wife’s aunt. And her father has a great uncle who is the second cousin of Elvis Presley’s ex-wife’s ex-boyfriend, who used to live next door to his (Elvis’ ) ex-wife’s brother-in-law, who once bagged groceries for her mother’s friend, Sadie, who lived in Memphis on Beale Street, when she was hooker & one of her johns was the great Fats Waller.
59
Doug Draime
hi/ki/ko/mo/ri wasn’t here 1200/ for three hours i follow the broken trails of shadow that burrows in self-loathing across the ceiling/ later i try to shrink from it by blinking off and on/ but only in total numbness does my room stop spinning 1600/ i write the name Maya for an hour then count how many Mayas are laughing at me/ they shame to one thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight more slaps in the face 1800/ i stomach my fate but Maya continues to grow inside of me/ so i labor for three hours then head butt my gut with a stuffed bunny/ only then do i vomit all the ghosts that love obsesses/ finally there is a hole for me to withdraw into 2200/ for two hours i flare at the betta fish/ then i rub my head against its cage and cry/ dripping poisonous salt to its water/ i plead “I miss Her”/ “I miss Her”/ “I miss Maya so much”/ the betta fish just continues to swim away 0100/ i stumble and fall/ after three hours on the floor i finally scratch my way back to bed/ light continues to burn/ but i do not turn it off/ instead i let it worm its teeth through my eyelids/ blindly i am still free falling for Her 0500/ i snarl at the walls/ no i don’t want to be just friends Maya/ my napkin and i can be friends/ i will even name my napkin maya/ she will never reject me/ napkin maya will kiss my lips as she dries them/ she cares for what i eat/ when i sleep/ piss/ eat meat then shit/ and and napkin maya will always clean me off after i jack off
60
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0700/ for hours i thread the things that i didn’t give to Maya on Her last birthday/ then i cradle their whispers to bed/ there i lie down beside them and pretend they are Her/ a dark chocolate candy bar with raspberries/ tea bags laughed of apple ginger spice and cran lemon zest/ a little red mitten/ and an el che light switch cover 1200/ my heart sinks heavy but tomorrow waits even heavier/ so i use the hurt to crush things/ i crush my pillow/ i crush the walls/ i crush double-locked door/ i shred regrets and knock out windows/ then roll naked on broken glasses screaming “I refuse! I refuse to give up - not like this!”/ soon blood starts to spurt freely/ never more delicious when it percolates warm with a thick lemony flavor/ i can taste my crushing life again
61
Lee Minh Sloca
Untitled My walls have mouths that speak then smile. it’s disgusting. I sleep in the middle of the room so I’m never near any of them. Most of the time all you see is their teeth, shining bright and clean, still, ominous. Then you’ll see their lips move, speaking quite randomly what language I know not as they’re always on mute - I’ve never heard a word they say - but I’m sure whatever it is couldn’t be worse than feeling their smiling lips move and hearing nothing at all. I’ve never allowed a guest inside for fear of what they’d think of me if they saw them. And I never turn the light out thinking something might crawl out of one of those smiling mouths. In another room, on another floor, there’s the shadow of a man who appears hung from a rope when you turn out the light. 62
William D. Jackson, III
foolproof scientists and engineers and inventors are constantly coming up with better ways to foolproof our lives. but, i can’t seem to shake the sense that despite each technological innovation i am staying one step ahead of them all.
63
justin.barrett
The Verdict Look in the mirror, late at night, in the labyrinthine half-awake dark and see yourself as what you are, handsome but aging with some boylike persistence to exist but tonight missing the love of the one special one you have finally found and whether by reality or the weight of distance or the simple lack of sleep you realize suddenly you will never get any younger and now that you bring up the subject it comes as such a shock to you then you think even while it passes its judgment on us every day there’s something here maybe what’s in the mirror tonight that we all try not to think about.
64
Harry Calhoun
Three Scorpion Bowls Scorpion Bowl #1: The young couple at the table beside us suck it down through long straws extending from a red ceramic bowl like ladders for the white liquors to climb up, up, up into their bloodstreams where their inhibitions have started a five-alarm fire. Meanwhile, it’s May in the Japanese restaurant, yet Christmas Muzak still pipes through the ceiling as my wife and I sip iced teas and try to keep our kids from impaling each other’s eyes with chopsticks. Scorpion Bowl #2: The young man has moved closer to the young girl and rolled up his sleeve to show her his new lion’s head tattoo. “It’s symbolic of stuff,” he says. The young girl tosses back her head and sings, “The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful.” Then my son plunges his hand in the seaweed salad and yells, “It feels like dragon boogers.” I order another iced tea. Scorpion Bowl #3: The young girl, her voice rising like a flame, says to the young man: “If I’m still able to walk after we finish drinking, I’ll totally fuck you tonight.” The young man, letting the ladder drop from his lips, reaches for his wallet. As our children are momentarily occupied with the exotic fish in a wall-sized tank, my wife nudges my shin with her foot. “Do you remember when we used to have fun like that?” she asks. After seven years, two kids and countless near-separations, I nod. “Maybe you’ll totally fuck me tonight,” I say and show her my tattoo.
65
Nathan Graziano
Untitled
66
justin.barrett
The Narcissus Flower Gabriel shines luminous, reflecting the faint nightlight from the washrooms opposite. He is an imposing figure in the semi-dark. I see the curve of his powerful wings and know the coldness of his marble form, so often have I touched him. Clemencia, a bat in the night, swishes past the arch angel. Sister Clemencia has fat, wet lips. “Don’t linger in front of the mirror, Alice. Wash your face and hands ... and out with you, out, out, out!” I feel her words. They land as spit on my freshly washed face. The washrooms are cold. I am glad to be out, away from the concrete basins which double as laundry tubs, away from the smell of sensible soap, away from the mirrors, cruel reflectors. I am told that vanity is a sin. I am well versed on sins. Vanity is a venial sin. It will not damn me to Hell, but, if not confessed, it will increase my time in Purgatory. In the tense triangle of affairs between Heaven and Hell, I see Purgatory as a place of refuge. *** Katie is my friend, warm, creamy Katie, little Greek goddess, Katie Christodoulou. Her hair is as soft and luxuriant as treacle, her eyes deep, caramel pools. She has a little dimple, a small, shallow recess, perfectly positioned to highlight her smile. She is completely unaware of how pretty she is. That is exactly why I like her. There are no self conscious obstacles between us. We can just be. We sit in silence on a warm stone wall, our backs to the sun. She shares her dolmades with me. I am secretly measuring time. We have the whole term ahead of us, seventy days before the next holidays, seventy days of routine, of doing what has to be done, seventy days of carefully navigating the social minefield within the Convent of the Sacred Heart. 67
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After serious pondering, I blurt my disturbance. “Do you ever wonder about the Sacred Heart?” There is something reassuringly real about Katie. She cocks her head and smiles before delivering the expected reply, a frank, “No.” The Sacred Heart has a bleeding heart. His picture hangs in every hallway, every corridor and in most class rooms. Blood spills where his finger rests. It is lightly tainted at the tip, behind which a little fire burns. He is fire and blood. I feel his passion. It is caught in a backwash of tears at the back of my throat. The bell signals wash time, the end of recreation. Automatically, we jump off our warm seats, but my hands don’t want to leave. They continue to brush the surface of the stone wall, warm, rugged, real. *** The ‘in’ crowd are hovering by the washbasins again. They laugh in synchrony but the sound does not come from their bellies. It is stuck in their throats, high pitched and frivolous. They are a pack of hyenas. I enter the candied aroma of their sprays. It is sickly sweet and over-layered. There is a kind of feminine prowess about them that I do not fully understand. I feel invisible. I stare at my reflection. Spotted and sore, I bleed to blush, to tingle with freshness. The smell of coal tar soap accentuates my anxiety. Clemencia is hovering behind me again. “Good gracious child. Don’t be so vain. Haven’t you anything else to do?” “Yes sister, ... just going.” My words promise, but I linger longer. I search the mirror for Alice, knowing all the while that she is behind the looking glass. *** 68
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It is Sunday, day of rest. On Sunday we are given a special privilege, the privilege of wearing our own clothes, our coloured clothes. During the week and even on Saturday we wear blue. I like blue. Today the privilege of wearing coloured clothes presents a problem. Katie is not here. She has gone home for the weekend so I can’t borrow. I will have to wear the bell bottom suit with the Paisley pattern. It’s coloured all right! I hover in a recess at the bottom of the stairs pulling down my ankle breezers. I bend my knees but to no avail. My ankles are exposed and so are my patent leather platform shoes. I am a sparrow in clogs. The dogs are at large so I must be extra careful. Hungry for gossip, they are gathering in packs outside the recreation rooms waiting to prey. I must allow them to settle into their lairs before I attempt my escape. *** The garden is forbidden, but I like forbidden places. There is a pond at the far end where I dream of Narcissus. I imagine him, behind reflection, free from the constraints of image. Manifested in flower he rises from the murky depths to bloom on the surface. Light articulates form. It is all an illusion. I stare into the pond. My reflection stares back in ripples, distorted. Where is soul? Perhaps it’s behind my bleeding heart. I want to go home. I search for strength and find the trees. Ancient totems, they rise silent and steadfast, their only concern to follow the light. I wander up the side of the garden to the art room. It is a little hut with a welcome homeliness. Rows of Lavender separate it from the rest of the institution. The hut is Purgatory. It is my home away from home. It is my waiting place. Here, the scent of lavender mingles invigoratingly with the scent of linseed oil. I sit on the steps and wait, fingering the buds overhanging from the bushes, little pungent sponges with purple crowns. 69
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Sister Maria, the art teacher, is not here today, but I have her image firmly imprinted in my mind. She is different from the other nuns. Her French accent has a softer lilt than the stern, throaty accents of the German sisters. I like the way she wears her veil slightly askew. She is spontaneous and unchecked. Her little floral apron explodes in colour, breaking the tyranny of distance created by the black habit. She hails from a place where lavender grows wild on the hillsides. I feel gentleness in her eyes, tiny sunken stars, they twinkle in their orbits. Perhaps the art room is her Purgatory too, a little piece of Provence in a Dominican Priory, a little promise of tomorrow, a little slice of Heaven. *** The bell sounds dinner time. I must make my way back. The Paisley print of my bell bottom suit evokes laughter from the pack as I step into the foyer. Reluctantly I join the queue to enter the dining room. I look down. The floor is lined with linoleum. I know it well. It is a faded pattern of swirly blue. Like Jesus, we all walk on water. Miracles are possible. A familiar voice splits the air with sugar and spice. “Alice!� Katie is back. The miniature fire of the Sacred Heart warms my soul. In the hallowed hall he smiles outward from his gilt frame. He looks down from his window of Heaven. All fire and blood, I sense his pleasure as we twirl and skip with playful abandon. *** After dinner in the wash rooms we brush our teeth and giggle through foam while the packs gather in front of the mirrors for the ritual of cleansing and beautifying. They comb and spray, exfoliate and pluck. They stare into mirrors and their reflections stare back, mocking their solitary salutations. 70
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But we, we bravely skip past the mirrors, past Gabriel, now swathed in orange silk. This is the magical hour when rust merges with magenta and dips into cobalt. The colourful palette signals a window of opportunity before the final knell. We are in full flight now, racing along the concrete corridors, down the stairs, through the iron gates, to the garden. To the hut we go, to Purgatory, where we breathe a spicy cocktail of promise. Here, in the spirit of endless anticipation, our innocence prevails
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Christina Casalegno
Reflections Grassroots
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Aleathia Drehmer
Matched hello, spark yourself into this world. stoke and burn for as long as you can, or want. try and forget that you’ll leave fireless. and almost without smoke.
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Stephen Hines
Darwin the Tortoise Lover The giant tortoise, gentle lover, rolls his partner on to her back; rocks her as a cradle, until she calms. A sigh emanating from her cracked lips, he mounts her with an embrace. Heads raised to the sun, they climax with a tender kiss. She is wet: spread across the dewy moss. Yet still, he strikes a match upon her back, lights that post-coital cigarette, and whispers, ‘Te Quiero’ but she is already asleep dreaming of better days.
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Mr. Lally
A Glaswegian Flower
I have slept in secret for most of my life with a sentimental flower pressed against my chest always growing, but hidden, hidden in sleep and waiting, on fire.
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McGuire
Praises It is the warmest in the month of August, when the smallest of creatures pine after the cool shades of the evening sun, and the memory of the beloved’s voice dies down like a flickering russet eulogizing the past.
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Sana Rafiq
Looking For the Right Thing Among All the Other Things The cheese grater, a stiff slice of Parmesan. The hand rolled cigarette. The knobs on the stove all turned to off. The bottle of Budweiser, its label corner peeled. Your dirty fingernails. Pistachios in a cellophane bag, the shells in the ashtray overflowing. The blackening lung. The beginning of your end. The ruffled skirt, the wristwatch, and the glass mustard jar with a butter knife stuck in it. The Bicycle playing cards and the yet to be sliced baguette.
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Jenifer Wills
True Confessions I have always enjoyed Pall Mall cigarettes. When I do something that I am really proud of, I reward myself with one or two Pall Mall cigarettes. No one understands the pleasure of smooth smoking like the Pall Mall cigarette company. Although I would have to say that Bosco understands how delicious chocolate milk can be as well as Pall Mall understands that the greater length of fine tobacco travels, the the more the cigarette naturally filters the harsh tobacco to give you a smooth, mild smoke. Now you can imitate Pall Mall cigarettes, or Bosco, or Richard Nixon, or Leon Trotsky, or Hopalong Cassidy, or a dead Indian with an arrow in his stomach, but all you are really doing is imitating these refreshing products and historical and fictional characters and nothing more. No matter how hard you try, you can never be a Pall Mall cigarette. Or a glass of cold, refreshing Bosco. Although taller people tend to be smoother, like Pall Mall cigarettes, and silky, smooth woman with red lipstick who drink whiskey taste delicious, like Bosco. But this is only a pale imitation, and a comparsion that is best to forget. As for the rest, I would prefer to focus on the smooth taste of Pall Mall cigarettes and the delicious refreshment of Bosco chocolate milk, rather than real mortals and the terrible things that happen to them.
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Ricki Garni
Untitled
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Hannah Matthew
Untitled
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Hannah Matthew
Self Interview #2 [Sigh] Some days I write something [scratch nose awkwardly] I’ve been led to believe is honesty. [jazz hands] [air quote--air quote] Not necessarily a confessional piece [point up] [poke palm] just an account of an event [parallel chopping of hands to say “no”] without the sarcasm or the pretentious [point up, twirl finger like scooping peanut butter] whatever it is I generally enjoy about my writing. [Shakespearean fist] And I know I’ll be sad when [continue] next I see that page framed [expose arm bones, clinch fist] in the cusp of my arm bones [repeat sarcastically] Look, I’m doing it again. [count on fingers] I read bibles (KJV, NIV, ODB) [count four] classical literature [count five] and survival stories [palms revealed] [cross arm stance] growing up -- and anyway, [place hands on stomach] how’d we get to influences? [rip] [shove air into imaginary box] I tear the page out and hide it in a box of other hideous scrawling. [scratch nose awkwardly] 81
Robert Lous Henry
The Man Under the Buttocks The most handsome man Is the man under the little buttocks Of an infant boy, the one who is giving The child a thrilling experience By carrying it on his broad shoulders Flapping their arms together Like wings feathered with boyhood dreams Making it feel as if gliding, flying Swirling around Years later, the child will become a pilot A pioneer, someone who operates a machine To fly in an entirely new space The little child will not remember The way the man waved their arms Nor did it see the beaming smile On the man’s face when they Jumped over the ditch, dodged Blocking tree branches, or ran Against a sudden cold wind But the child can never forget How it felt As the man kept running forward Under its little buttocks
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Changming Yuan
With Age Comes Wisdom and age spots, forgetfulness, worsening eyesight, incontinence, arthritis, angina, high cholesterol and blood pressure, dementia, nursing homes, cataracts, and hearing loss, strokes, a diminished or disappearing libido, unending bouts of flatulence, glaucoma, aneurysms, and, eventually, death. even if wisdom is part of the bargain—and i’m not convinced it is—it doesn’t quite seem worth it.
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justin.barrett
PS.ssssh Err, Maya, my love. You are so wrong: mo•rose does not mean “stupid.” It is defined as sullen, melancholy, and at times, a brooding ill-humor. Just as it was ill-humored that night, in the parking lot, with your car engine still running, when I stuttered, I had rehearsed but I can’t seem to remember a word. As the knots in my stomach clutched, kicked, and continued me on, I can’t be your friend anymore; I want to be more than friends. Then my heart went dark. What my words were driving at is that I need to be joyously free with my feelings: free as in the antonym to mo•rose, i.e., I need to write sappy, light roses, uplifting love poems to you, for you, and about you. I need to sing about the things that we dare to daydream together, down to that last smile per second and intimacy is just an afterglow. But you don’t feel the same, so I’m not allowed to express them. I am bound to the façade of being just a friend, like when I promised you that I would never ever use the word mo•rose and po•et•ry in the same breathy 84
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sentence, but you are so wrong, Maya, it is not stu•pid. It is not stupid for me to feel deeply for you as I do. It is not stupid for me to want to make you smile as I do. It is not stupid for me to put you above all others as I do. All that is left to do now is to put it all into a sentence: It was a morose moment in the parking lot that night; a sullen, melancholy, and a brooding ill-humorless fate that had sentenced you away from my heart, a stupid moment that defines by the fading of your taillights.
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Lee Minh Sloca
Bed is Always Right What made earth wake at all? Bed is a pleasant Century or Ten, don’t you agree? Bed is the Century for me. It slips by without notice. It ‘s not in-your-face balshy brazen or bold, it has the calmness of wisdom. A wisdom that has its eyes closed its mouth shut, drifts in its mind, dozes snoozes a snooze bear upon a cushion of mind; kettle warm bread baked morning sock warm amongst the great tossing and turning upon the great ease of duvet love and pillow love cozy foxes dose love. Bed is the century worth sleeping for. Life is the great war of the tired. Bed is the great peace of the content. Bed is the President of the United States of Zzzzzz... Bed is the only literal arena where equality lies. (Bed proclaims, hating bad poetry and good poetry. Shut up and come to me...) Bed is always right. 86
McGuire
All Things Interior Forget that naughty beam of morning light which spills from sill onto night-chilled floor, dismiss with a yawn how it travels to our coldest part is like a fond memory recalled. It was once enough: Stood on the sidelines by a paint chipped window, marvelling winter concrete the sky, I thought happiness was the distant murmur of a rush hour motorway. But then you. And the world was steamed, drawn, hushed to a six month sleepour mornings were drunk with sex as the patter of work-folk marched on. All things for us were interior. Days I lost, snared by the flutter of your waking eyes. Those unfurling petals entrancing each morning as though spring was just for a dayWe were jubilant as new born lambs. These eyes have now aged they shiver in their long winter courting silence and despair as though a single love. I translate only anger, unrest and fear and have offered to you my ownretreating further into the shadows of the garden shed, and walking the dog thrice round the block. 87
Vincent Turner
Lazy Hygiene I shave about once every 10 days or so. I used to shave everyday and wear a tie and suit but when I quit that job I swore, never again. same reason I only get a haircut once a year, but this is a shaving poem, not a haircut poem. 2 bits. when shaving that once every 10 days I clip the hair growing out of my ears and the ones creeping out of my nostrils. most of the hairs are gray. I wish I quit that job sooner so that the stray hairs like weeds in autumn were still summer grass.
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Stephen Hines
Lollipops Your old boyfriend did not read Machiavelli: you did. He looks stunning upon a black horse He was excellent in bed I took pictures of the lollipops In the mouths of girls mounted upon horses Behind him, giggling.
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Ricki Garni
The Lineup Loved -Dedicated to Mrs. Virginia Foster in Memorium Look, I didn’t bring you here to remember the fine glow on my grandmother’s Mason jars, nor do I have any pardon me dwarf daylillies to pass out like bottled water after the poem. The amputated extremities of my wellwishers are wrapped and refrigerated in the mind’s morgue of memory, and so it is with Mrs. Foster’s unexamined crash file, unautopsied in images, so bleak I can’t measure the neurotoxicity in each dreaming night since: I met the widowed Elephant woman, Mrs. Foster at 12-B Bradshaw Drive in 1973, she had swollen purple lollipop fingers soothing her children’s daily lives, had happy clacker-style clapping hands when kids played housing project baseball with house fire hot singles and homeruns, with crowdlessness overcome by her generous encouragement. In 1991, I learned she had previously adorned perfect high school attendance (1948-1952). And that a silver-plated plaque (retroactive) commemorated this iconic school event. What had thos hallway years been for her? Perhaps, like a horror movie’s hospitality committee her classmates cometh and down gauntlets of goodwill she went-four years club-footsteppingly faster until her diploma bloomed with delivery. Had she learned to circumnavigate the nonviolence of smiles 90
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better than the blue heron at Stones River, lifting, low still over the delicate waterlilies, better than the struggling bank robber’s son who would one day shoot for this poemwho could come down hills from his own school faster than a Lakota kid riding winter on a buffalo-rib sled slicing past the first fists of social class exclusion, lifting low still over rocket red larkspur her luminous smile rouge-chered honoring the children rowdy over bases, or royal with the romp-n-chomp summer recess: Look, Mrs. Foster’s inner-spirit was as the moon’s glow on my mother’s favorite music box.
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David Pointer
The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far At the grocery store last night, my child begged me for a journal. She wanted a place to keep her secrets and make lists of friends and would be husbands; I smiled at this, remembering my own childhood and the crack of the binding when the book with blank lined paper was opened. It had a smell of new beginnings and the feel of comfort. I poured every pain and glory on those pages and was never without a friend as long as I had a pencil. This morning she has it slung under her arm, the sun shining off its high-gloss finish with a new yellow #2 in her soft grip. I fight the urge to want to know those secrets she may never tell me. I want to be a page in her book of dreams, just one tiny page of lines.
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Aleathia Drehmer
I See, Yes; I See He stopped into the store to buy some avocados. As he reached for an avocado, a woman reached for the same one. He thought to himself, my wife’s hands are nicer than her hands. And he reached for a different avocado. Standing in line, a woman bumped into him. She looks sort of like my wife, but my wife is prettier, he thought. In the parking lot, he was getting into his car. A woman in a car next to his opened her door into him. He looked at her getting into the car. My wife has a nicer ass than she does. At home he pulled into his driveway, and his children were hiding in the bushes. They jumped out and squirted the car with a hose as he drove past them. He laughed. He waved to his wife sitting on the steps of their home, and she waved back.
93
Father Luke
Seduction self-confession is a woman provocatively sitting alone in a bar slowly caressing a drink between her hands, gently tapping her feet to the music, unafraid of the stranger looking in her direction.
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Sana Rafiq
Dessert Once I went to Spain and bought a post card and sent it. it read: “I love Spain and I wish you were here.� then, before I did another thing, I bought a big bag of Spanish fruit and I got in to a very big boat and sailed across the English Channel all the way to England, which is a beautiful country, too and then, before I said a single word to anybody at all, I bought a beautiful
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post card of English sunsets and wrote this on the postcard: “England is my favorite country in the world except Spain. I wish you were here, too!” I put an English stamp on it and said “thank you” to the English postman who took it from me and promised me that he would mail it right away. and so I thought to myself, “I must find myself a nice place to stay in England” but before I could even think a single thing I reme mbered that I hadn’t addressed my Spanish postcard to anybody. and then I thought, “but I must
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find a nice place to stay,” and then I remembered that I hadn’t addressed my english postcard to anybody. I liked England and Spain best of all, and so I bought a bag of flour and with my English flour and with my Spanish fruit I found a place to stay in England and then a nice place to stay in spain where I put on a wed ding ring and set straight away to make a real nice plum pudding and didn’t write a single post card ever again.
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Ricki Garni
Trees Trees are the kindest thing I know. They have shade And leaves. They give us wood And fruit. They are the first to live And the last to grow old. Trees are the kindest thing I know.
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Carter Wills
Sitting Alone at the End of Time I thought it all would be different when time ended. It really isn’t. It’s just a lot more of the same.
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Father Luke