a literary journal by the English Department at Gulliver Preparatory School
the pudding.
ESSAYS POETRY PROSE
the pudding. Issue Two
Edited/Designed By Monica Rodriguez
contents essays
The Good Life ........................... Inelissa Artzt An Unscheduled Driving Lesson ................ Dorielys Guerra From Body Politic, to Biopolitics, to Necropolitics ................ Timothy Bielawski
poetry Reflections ............................. Brenda Feldman Sharing the Ride .................... R. C. Ganser Moonlit and More Spatial Love ....... Hoyt Olsen Patience .................................... Monica Rodriguez For Cluck’s Sake ............... Adam Schachner Shattered Dreams: A Prose Poem in Memoriam ................... Andrew Woodbury
prose At First Sight .................... Better Days .......................
Tyrone Sandaal Judd Shapiro
Medusa’s Lament ................
Paige Vignola
art “Into the Distance,” photo by Monica Rodriguez; “Mr. Clucky,” photo by Olga Cano; “Pat Combing her Hair,” oil on canvas, James Valerio, 1983, photo of teens by Lee Smith, 2011.
The Good Life By Inelissa Artzt
As a former teacher of AP Literature
and Composition, college essay time is always interesting to me. Some schools provide bland topics that are sure to elicit formulaic versions of the dreadful five paragraph essay- the cancer of English Education and the bane of my existence …but I digress. Other institutions venture to the edge of absurdity. Forget ‘out of the box,’ they’re out of the stratosphere. This year, my Alma Matter provided the kind of topic that frightens me most, one that makes you wonder if telling the truth will cost you a rejection. “What does The Good Life mean to you?”
Sipping a frosty fruity drink from the warm
and breezy confines of a palm tree shaded hammock on the shores of the Caribbean ocean sounds like the epitome of the good life to me. No job. No bills. And definitely no grading papers or constructing of tests! But taking a step back from this idyllic picture, I quickly realize my scenario encompasses just a moment- a vacation, perhaps, but not a life. A life is the product of all of our moments, a symphony. A ‘GOOD life’ is the masterpiece that lives on; its impact will not necessarily be included in history books or judged on some global scale, but will be measured in the ways that matter most. In the lessons we teach others through our own experiences. In the difference we make in other people’s lives. In the memories we create and the love we share.
So what of this elusive ‘good life’? I
am a good mom, wife, aunt, sister and friend. I think I’m a pretty good teacher and colleague as well. I pride myself on being well educated, but not haughty. I try to treat others with respect and kindness. I love to make people laugh; to joke around and lighten the often dark world in which we live. My life is not glamorous or spectacular. It isn’t filled with daiquiri days and martini nights, but it’s enveloped in love and laughter, the things I cherish most.
I guess I am in deed - Living the GOOD life!
From Body Politic, to Biopolitics, to Necropolitics By Timothy Bielawski
Some will argue that the preceding points are evident in colonialism but that such “barbarism” has since been removed from Western politics. One could argue that the associations that I have been tracing between cannibalism and the political in the early modern period do not speak to the operation of the political in the twentieth century. What this chapter seeks to articulate, however, is that these forms of political violence do continue in the modern era, that the nation today is still understood through the guise of the human body and its bodily processes, and that such a logic legitimates the most grotesque forms of political violence. The continuation of political “savagery” into the modern era is best illustrated by the French Revolution, the so-called birth of modern politics. The Revolution certainly continues the spectacular display of violence that characterized sovereign power in the early modern period.1 Besides the fact that an estimated 16,000 to 40,000 were executed during the Revolution, the movement also evidenced the “cannibalistic” violence apparent in earlier forms of European sovereignty (Ballard 159). “[I]n the eyes of defenders and opponents alike,” the Revolution came to be “associated…with the detached body part” (Landes 148). Specifically, “heads bobbing on pikes through the streets” were the first instances of revolutionary violence that greeted the people of Paris and
“the taking of heads [became] a prime rhetorical metaphor for Revolutionary justice” (Sagan 348). Some will write off this violence as the residue of early modern politics; they will interpret the French Revolution as a middle ground between the naked violence of European monarchies and the peacefulness of enlightened Western democracies. I would argue, however, that the violence of the Revolution, particularly of the regicide, signifies the continuation of the same structure of sovereignty and the same modes of sovereign violence in the modern nation-state. The sovereignty of the king is only replaced by the sovereignty of the people, and the notion of the political body and its attending violence do not vanish, they simply mutate. Eric Santner explains: The complex symbolic structures and dynamics of sovereignty described by Kantorowitz in the context of medieval and early modern European monarchies do not simply disappear from the space of politics once the body of the king is no longer available as the primary incarnation of the principle and functions of sovereignty; rather, these structures and dynamics—along with their attendant paradoxes and impasses—“migrate” into a new location that thereby assumes a turbulent and disorienting semiotic density previously concentrated in the “strange material and physical presence” of the king. (33) This transfer of bodily power is evident in the almost cannibalistic acts that follow the regicide. For instance, the newspaper La Revolution de 92 reported, “Right away volunteers stained their lances, others their handkerchiefs, and then their hands, in the blood of Louis XVI” (Baecque 106). Prudhomme even claimed that one witness shouted that the French people “were thirsty for the blood of a despot” (qtd. in Hunt 59). What should be apparent in these acts is that the new “body of the people” that replaces the sovereign “head” of the king retains the same potential for “savagery.” The transfer of sovereign power to the body of the people does
not lesson the potential for violence; it increases it since what is at stake in this violence is now the “life” of the people itself. To understand these points, it is necessary to first delve into Michel Foucault’s notions of the transformations that take place in modern politics, what he identifies as the move from the traditional sovereign right of death to a “biopolitics of population” (Foucault, Society 253). Foucault first refers to biopolitics in The History of Sexuality where he explicitly positions it as a shift in the sovereign “right to decide life and death” (135). According to Foucault, in the classical and early modern formulations of political power, “[t]he sovereign . . . evinced his power over life only through the death he was capable of requiring” (History 136). His power was “the right of the sword”, “the right to take life or let live” (Society 240; History 136). In the modern era, Foucault believes that this power of “deduction” is receding, that “power is decreasingly the power of the right to take life and increasingly the right to intervene and make live” (History 136; Society 248). This new “life-administering power” is what he refers to as biopolitics (History 136). For Foucault, biopolitics signifies two trends that began to take shape in the latter years of the eighteenth century: the shift in political focus towards the protection of the citizen’s biological life and the development and utilization of technologies that aid in the management and reproduction of a population. Biopolitics, then, is a “power that guarantees life” accomplished through “an entire series of interventions and regulatory controls” such as public hygiene, inoculation, and public safety campaigns (Society 253, 244; History 139). In theory, biopolitics is constituted by measures that attempt to bolster the living without the concurrent production of human death elsewhere. In Foucault’s thinking, “[t]he old power of death that symbolized sovereign power was . . . supplanted by the administration of bodies and the calculated management of life” (History 139-40). This new “power [was]
bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them” (History 136). In practice, however, I argue that such a focus on the biological life of the citizen and the concomitant understanding of the nation as a storehouse of bodily resources leads to the naturalization of political violence in the name of the continued “life” of the body politic. Strangely enough, at times Foucault seems to acknowledge these points. Even as he sets up what appears to be a strict opposition between the old sovereign power “to make die” and the new biopolitical “power to make live,” he too is forced to admit the interpenetration of each, albeit in an obfuscated way (Society 247). Foucault recognizes that the modern era which gives rise to biopolitics is marked by extreme violence, that “wars were never as bloody as they have been since the nineteenth century” (History 136). More importantly, he acknowledges that this uptick in violence is “the counterpart” of biopolitical practices—“entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital. It is as managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race, that so many regimes have been able to wage so many wars, causing so many men to be killed” (History 137). Here, Foucault begins to articulate the point on which this dissertation will build: the naturalization of a politics of death through the ideology of a politics of life, the idea that if “[i]f you want to live, the other must die” (Society 255). This concept, I argue, is what has made total war possible and what serves as the matrix for state violence today. However, just as Foucault establishes these insights in The History of Sexuality, he retreats from his position and returns to his exploration of the disciplining of sexuality.2 Indeed, in this work he persistently uses semantic acrobatics to undercut the links he has established between biopolitics and killing. For instance, in the passage above he downplays
the bloodiness of modern biopolitical regimes through the use of passive voice: he does not speak of these regimes as murdering an outlandish number of men, but instead of “causing so many men to be killed.” His labors to dissociate biopolitics from killing are perhaps most evident—and most ridiculous— when he refers to it as a power to “disallow” life “to the point of death” (History 138). In Foucault’s schema, “deaths are never ‘caused’ as such; officially, they are merely ‘allowed’” (Murray 204). The biopolitical power to “let die,” which Foucault posits as part of the so-called “gradual disqualification of death” in the Western world, masks an entire field of the political, of the sovereign decision that continues to “make die” (Society 241, 247). By covering up the horrors of state violence, Foucault expresses an undue complicity with the powers and technologies of death. While Foucault’s obfuscating proves troublesome, several scholars who have come in his wake have provided greater insight into the relationship between biopolitics and the unprecedented political violence of the twentieth century. It is from this area of study variously termed “necropolitics” or “thanatopolitics” that this dissertation takes its cue. These theorists explicate the reliance of a politics of life on “the work of death” (Mbembe 16); they explain the ways in which biopolitics’ supposed protection of life is always predicated on the killing of an imagined other that threatens this particular life. The first scholar to discuss these matters, and still the most recognized, is Giorgio Agamben.3 Agamben offers his book Homo Sacer explicitly as a “correct[ion]” or “complet[ion]” of Foucault’s work on biopolitics (Homo 9). Specifically, what Agamben’s work clarifies is the “intersection between the juridico-institutional and the biopolitical models of power” (Homo 6). Unlike Foucault, he does not shy away from the connections between the powers of life and the powers of death under the sovereign right, the “point[s] at which the decision of life becomes a decision on death, and biopolitics . . . turn[s] into
thanatopolitics” (Homo 122). Building on Foucault, Agamben traces Western politics’ shift in focus from bios, “a qualified life or a particular way of life,” to zoe, “nature life” or “the simple fact of living” (Homo 4). This shift is the basis for his central claim, that “the entry of zoe into the sphere of the polis—the politization of bare life as such—constitutes the decisive event of modernity” (Homo 4). By bare life Agamben means more than zoe, more than simple biological life; bare life is rather biological life in a certain relationship to sovereign power. It is best explained through Agamben’s description of the concentration camp prisoner: “lacking almost all the rights and expectations that we customarily attribute to human existence, and yet . . . still biologically alive” (Homo 159). Bare life thus refers to “a being exposed to an unconditional capacity to be killed,” a body that is “separated from its normal political status and abandoned, in a state of exception, to the most extreme misfortunes” (Homo 85, 159).4 Agamben argues that “[t]he production of bare life is the originary act of sovereignty” (Homo 83). In one sense, then, “the modern State . . . does nothing other than bring to light the secret tie uniting power and bare life” (Homo 6). Following Hobbes, Agamben argues that in constructing the commonwealth, man “renunciat[es]” the state of nature, “a condition in which everyone is bare life and a homo sacer for everyone else” (Homo 106).5 Within the commonwealth, life remains bare only to the sovereign since he maintains “his natural right to do anything to anyone, which now appears as the right to punish” (Homo 106). The sovereign is thus able to execute any violence, to do “as he should think fit, for the preservation of . . . all” (Hobbes 214). The sovereign, the guaranteer of civilization, paradoxically utilizes the violence of the state of nature that his rule is supposed to banish. “Sovereign violence” is thus “an inclusive exclusion”; it reveals “the survival of the state of nature at the very heart of the state” (Homo 106). This is why the sover-
eign and the primitive “savage” come to look like one and the same as in the case of displaying severed heads. Both figures signal not only an exposure to death but also the possibility of bodily annihilation.6 It is the unbounded nature of sovereignty that makes it appear monstrous; indeed, this is arguably why Hobbes figures his commonwealth as a leviathan, a beast that is defined by its extraordinary mouth and its extraordinary consumption.
Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller- Roazen. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998. Print. Ballard, Richard. A New Dictionary of the French Revolution. London: Tauris, 2011. Print. Baecque, Anto de. Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths Under the French Revolution. Trans. Charlotte Mandell. New York: Routledge, 2001. Print. Derrida, Jacques. “‘Eating Well,’ or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida.” Who Comes After the Subject. Ed. Eduardo Cadava, et al. New York: Routledge, 1991. 96-119. Print. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1995. Print. ---. History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print. ---. Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College De France, 1975-1976. Trans. David Macey. New York: Picador,
1997. Print. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed. Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print. Hunt, Linda. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992. Print. Landes, Joan B. “Revolutionary Anatomies.” Monstrous Bodies/ Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan B Landes. Ithaca: Cornell UP. 148-78. Print. Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Trans. Libby Meintjes. Public Culture 15.1 (2003): 11-40. Print. Murray, Stuart J. “Thanatopolitics: Reading in Agamben a Rejoinder to Biopolitics.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 5.2 (June 2008): 203-207. Print. Sagan, Eli. Citizens & Cannibals: The French Revolution, the Struggle for Modernity, and Origins of Ideological Terror. Lanham, MD: Rowman, 2001. Print. Santner, Eric L. The Royal Remains: The People’s Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011. Print.
Lamplight illuminates a pale face, a wistful smile, cheeks resting on her hands Auburn curls cascade across frail shoulders, a provocative portrait But what about her soul? Light cannot creep into the lonely places, and dark shadows lurk where the heart never goes An old cape tossed aside covers hidden scars, unearthed treasures long ago discarded
Reflections By Brenda Feldman
“Pat Combing Her Hair” by James Valerio, 1983
Sharing the Ride By R.C. Ganser
We met like two passengers on a train Travelling toward some blurred destination. We could not see what we would gain Nor could we dwell on any past station. We saw only what flashed before our blinking eyes: Out-of-focus snapshots of life quickly gone-by. We By By By By By By
me on that journey. . . luck fate chance design coincidence the way the wonders in this world happen.
Mysteriously and magically Our paths crossed. Our eyes met. Our separate journeys wed as one Now with a goal, a purposeful destination. And the train slowed. . . Vague vistas became clear pictures. The honey smell of warm summer air. And at times the train stopped. . . Giving occasion to see blossom A beautiful, heavenly flower. Allowing us to experience The birds and the bees rule as royalty. Now after five years gone, Our love’s adventure rolls on With wonder, joy, and pride As long as you and I share the ride.
An Unscheduled Driving Lesson By Dorielys Guerra
There I was, excited because I was driving my friends on an outing in my old (new to me) car. Ready to take in the sun’s rays (the hi-light of our last vacation as high schoolers ) during the Spring Break of our senior year … before we would eventually drift our separate ways as some were going away for college and those who remained home, would disconnect. On financial fumes, most of us were either broke or saving our money for the highly anticipated, our class trip to Disney’s Grad Nite. A day of “first’s”: my first time driving to the beach, so they understood that I would take the long, scenic route through Biscayne Boulevard, and my first time wearing a two piece bathing suit, I felt bold and courageous. I could conquer the world! Or, at least I felt this way. Once we met up with our friends (who’d easily been there an hour before those who’d ridden to the beach with me), we had a great time. Although a native South Floridian, I have never really been able to understand why people enjoy baking under the sun. We played beach volleyball, sunbathed, enjoyed our lunch, and took to the clear waters. Eventually, like all good things, our time at the beach came to an end. We loaded into our respective cars. I remember seeing Joe’s hesitation to get in the car, but I did not pay any heed to it. I figured that he was struggling with relinquishing control. (He’d always been the one to drive us around. He was like our “big” brother). While I was making sure that my driver’s seat was comfortable for me, that my rear view mirrors were in the appropriate setting, Joe had walked over to
Betty who was putting her bags in the trunk. Once in the car… the radio was jamming and some were either bold enough to sing the song lyrics while the others simply hummed along. Meanwhile, Joe was giving me directions on where I had to turn to next. Traffic lights, turning signals and the typical beach traffic… everything seemed to be normal. Then, it hit me! Glittering with the reflection of the sunlight, expressway signs! I had never been on the expressway before! I mean, yes, I’d been on the expressway before… but I’d been the passenger… not the driver, the person responsible for all the other people in my car. Wait! One moment ago there’d been traffic lights and now… I slightly turned to look at Joe, sitting to my right, but I was too afraid to look away from the road ahead of me. Then, Betty softly, barely above a whisper, quickly asked, “Are you okay?” I looked at them. I could see the perspiration dripping down their faces. Joe’s face was turning paler and paler. I could hear the fear as his voice trembled, when he carefully uttered his question, “Do you know where we are?” I nodded. I couldn’t bring myself to say a simple, “YES!” Instead, after a few minutes, that felt like hours, I said, “We are on the … There are no traffic lights! You drove me onto the expressway! I can’t believe that you’d do this to me!” I was scared, furious. “If it weren’t that it would get us all killed…” I stopped myself from speaking. “So, who do I drop off at home first?” That was all that I could bring myself to ask. A couple of days later, my father asked me to drive him to work. As I was driving him there he said, “You have been driving for a couple of months now. I think that you are now ready to try driving on the expressway. Don’t be afraid. I am right here for you.” I didn’t tell him that day how mistaken he was. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d be driving on the expressway. It wasn’t until many, many, many years later that I would build up the courage to tell my father the truth…. Dad, do you remember the day you first told me to get on the expressway?
Moonlit Light limbed beauty, so finely laced, your foxy mind and feline grace waltz softly through their lunar phases— shone amid stars, your heart a maze is. Lost then am I, stumbling moon gazer bright blinded, stiff struck by stellar treasure (my feet fall through the dance’s measure to satellite dreams of lunatic pleasure).
Poetry By Hoyt Olsen
More Spatial Love You, babe, you’re my Mars, some badass red planet with long dark striations more mythic than real. In your thin atmosphere, my lass, I’ll be your Lander tonight, crawl awkward aspirations across the rocky and rockier patches, leave splotchy tread marks between your cold carbon dioxide polar extremes, till stopping to dig, my claw hand scratches planetary dermis, blood-dust so brittle. Is there life below this ruddy mineral ore? Some moisture to fling through breathless air like spittle? So we’ll reckon at last the gravity of our core’s core.
“Into the Distance” by Monica Rodriguez
Patience By Monica Rodriguez
Patience – you make of love a mockery standing idly by taking your sweet time while we crumble at your feet. You scoff at love “Let them wait,” you say. “Let’s see how they’ll do.” Ah, you’re a clever one; stepping in just when things get good. Some say you turn fools into sages -Am I a fool for seeing right through you? With a wave you place a heavy veil over my heart stifling suffocating -like a pillow over a mouth. That’s fine.
I won’t kick I won’t scream I won’t fight
And wait.
I’ll mock you right back --
At First Sight (an excerpt) By Tyrone Sandaal
I look at her now while she sleeps, in the near darkness of the ungodly hour at which I rise to go to work and reach back in my mind to the first time I saw her. She emerged from Artie’s girlfriend’s new blue Honda Accord on a summer’s day in 1986 and stunned me. My reaction was visceral. I stopped dead in my tracks and let the tennis ball roll into the street and into the gutter. My heart quickened in cartoonish fashion. We became at the sight of her, three shirtless teenaged boys intensely aware of how we were way too old to be playing a game of our own invention and too girlfriendless to be of consequence. Of the three, I was the only one that fell in love. Lina wore a flowered sun dress that ended mid thigh and moved with her motion and the breeze. Her dark curly hair was pulled back from her tan and freckled face and in that moment I could not properly see that her eyes were green. She moved too quickly, as precious things often do, and in three quick steps she was inside Artie’s house. She was lost to me for five minutes. In those five
minutes I pretended to give a shit about the game that we were playing, something that we had called Wall Ball and that had come about from four boys sitting around trying to make use of time that felt excessive. The game involved base running and throwing the tennis ball as hard as we could at one another and Artie didn’t care very much for either of those two components. Had he, maybe Lina and I could have met, exchanged a kiss on the cheek, learned that we had Anne, Artie’s girlfriend, at the center of our lives and that through her we could learn about each other, maybe dream up a future that would take us to Istanbul together, that would find me in a seat among a thousand others in the La Jolla Playhouse watching her on stage, that would have us holding one another close in the NICU of a hospital in Los Angeles watching our almost weightless daughter breathe to the beeps and whirls of a hundred machines. But he didn’t. He was in a depressive state, two years away from unraveling. Anne was quick in her visit and the two girls barely even looked over to us, now sitting on the St. Augustine grass. Lina entered the passenger side and left with a flash of flower print and rubber flip-flop beneath the door and the outline of her face and hair behind the tint. When the car drove off, I felt a profound discontent, but also in possession of a certainty of feeling. I looked over at Alf, Artie’s brother, and asked, “Who was that?” “Dunno, bro, but she’s fine,” he said, effectively ending the conversation and any possibility that I would resume the game. I walked over to my bike, gave Alf and Alex each a high five and biked home, dreaming of first kisses until I lay the bike down in its spot behind the shed.
For s ’ k c u l C Sake By Adam Schachner
I am itchy and overheated from riding my bike, but I’m riding with a purpose. If there is a cause that can be fought on a bicycle, count me in. My friends and I organize bicycle rallies advocating for more bike lanes, reduced carbon emissions, and guilt tripping people who drive like jerks. Sweat stings my eyes and blurs my vision saturates my costume, but I am determined to do what is right. And tonight what is right is to ride my bike dressed like a man-sized chicken. Tonight what is right is to flap my cardboard wings at passing traffic. Tonight, I am riding to show my support for a rooster. If I can’t die proud that I’ve taken a bike ride for solidarity while dressed like a giant fowl, then I’ve never really lived. My costume is elaborate, but not because I’m enthusiastic about riding like a chicken. I’m embarrassed. I feel like a turkey. My friends have encouraged me to participate in this effort, but I’ve agreed only if I can do it anonymously. I’m a high school teacher. If one of my students sees me, forget it. Teacher Man will forever be remembered as Chicken Man. I’ll lose all order and control over my classroom. If I’m going to ride my bike in a chicken getup, I am going to wear the most encompassing rooster suit
imaginable. I want to do what’s right, tonight- I just don’t want to be myself while I do it. Here’s the background: Mr. Clucky is a rooster. A Miami Beach celebrity. A grandstanding bird with a narcissistic attitude. Clucky rides on the handlebars of his caretaker’s tricycle. He sips beer from a can in a paper bag. This loudmouthed bird is a ham. He poses with tourists on Lincoln Road and struts his way through the bicycle advocacy community. Because, hey, that rooster rides on a bike! I’ve always had a contentious relationship with Mr. Clucky. He shows up to events I’ve worked hard to organize, but steals the show with his charisma and eccentricity. No matter how hard I work to plan an event, the rooster will always Cluck it up. If there’s a spotlight, you can guarantee that chicken will take it. He’ll steal the mic and shout over any other advocate. He has denied legions of revolutionary minds the opportunity to express their ideas. We’ve been obscured by his monumental ego. I don’t get along with Mr. Clucky, despite our common appreciation for riding bikes and squawking at stuff. Maybe I am just jealous. But I swear, if I ever fall off the vegetarian wagon, I’m landing right on that bird.
So, tonight is the eve of Mr. Clucky’s hearing. A candlelight vigil is being held in his honor on the steps of Miami Beach City Hall. Mr. Clucky is facing eviction. His caretaker faces heavy fines for housing a farm animal without a permit. Mr. Clucky has refused to be moved. He has enlisted an impressive cadre of personal connections—City Commissioners, local meteorologists, and even Ann Curry. He has made numerous appearances on national television. There’s an Internet site dedicated to his celebrity. I hear there’s an upcoming Reality TV series. All of this, his caretaker argues, can bring more tourism and revenue to South Beach. I have my doubts about his credibility, but I think I am alone. I see Mr. Clucky as a cloying, screeching, gimmick. But according to his website, his only crime is that he loves us just a little too much. Mr. Clucky is an outspoken voice for bicycle advocacy in South Florida, and that’s why I don’t want him evicted. Yeah, we’ve had our differences—and I’ve
often referred to him as my “nemesis”— but, I’ve come to terms with the fact that a chicken on a bicycle brings attention to our cause. So, tonight I’ve brought other riders out to show our support. We are eleven cyclists dressed like chickens. We hold up signs that say: “Eviction is a fowl ruling!” “Keep on Clucking!” and “Don’t Cluck Us Over!” Passers-by and motorists stop and stare at us- a gang of marauding bicycle poultry. I am mortified. I pull my chicken mask down over my face. I imagine one of my sophomores plastering Facebook and Twitter with images of Mr. Teacher in a chicken suit. We travel down the Venetian Causeway, and roll along 17th Avenue until we pull up to City Hall. A group of candle-bearing protesters sing “Let it Be”. They applaud us. They praise our costumes. Mr. Clucky hollers and scratches at the sidewalk and drinks his beer. And then the news van shows up. Since I wanted so badly to hide my identity, I’m wearing the most elaborate and all-encompassing costume. And since this is the news, they are drawn straight to me, clearly the most enthusiastic devotee. The reporter doesn’t hesitate in trotting toward me; the camera is in my chicken face. Now I
know how the chicken feels. They are hungry for me. I give them an interview but refuse to provide my name. I claim that Mr. Clucky transcends individualism. I insist we are all brothers in his eyes. And I say the appropriate things: “We appreciate what the chicken has done for bicycling in Miami.” and “We feel he is a victim of the oppressive roosterhating cabals of Miami Beach.” and “We know everyone feels Mr. Clucky’s pain.” “In Cluck we trust.” On the ride home, far away from the vigil, I rip off my wings and tuck my mask into my backpack. Monday morning, I arrive at school secretly satisfied and relieved. I’ve made a difference. And I’ve kept my identity and my reputation intact at school. Then, in first period, one of my students blurts out in the middle of class: “I saw you on the news last night dressed like a chicken. I told everyone.”
Better Days By Judd Shapiro
I loved my bmx bike. A Webco with Redline forks and Motomags. I rode it everywhere, and on occasion I raced it at the local track ... I even won a few times. Ultimately, though, it was the freedom it provided me. Not that I minded being at home, particularly in my room. My father understood, and he let me use my room as a make-shift garage. I took my bike apart on a regular basis, carefully placing all the parts on an old towel. I would clean and grease the headset and bottom bracket bearings. I oiled the chain daily...far more than necessary. I kept my tires at exactly 38psi. All of this to insure that as hard as I rode my bike, it would never fail me. I rode far, at least from the perspective of an eleven year old. Most Saturdays I would get up early, fill my backpack with water and food (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were a favorite...they still are), and head towards Interama. Interama, once known as Munisport, was
approximately 100 acres of abandoned land about five miles from my house. In the fifties it was used as a toxic waste dump. Every weekend boys from all over would meet there. We knew nothing about the toxins, we were just amazed and thrilled that no one seemed to care that we were spending the better part of our youth in an unsupervised playground of woods, lakes, streams and swamps. As we got older many of us traded our bicycles for mini bikes and motorcycles. The riding got a little more intense, and the injuries a little more serious, but we remained essentially kids with freedom who loved to go fast. One by one, though, our numbers began to shrink. Girls began to take up our free time, and walking the mall or hanging at the arcade offered a better chance of meeting the opposite sex. By the time I was fourteen there were only a handful of us left. On occasion I would find a friend or two to go with me, but our playground was not the same. Saturday afternoons no longer brought the sound and smell of two stroke engines. Rather, the older boys had abandoned their bikes and motorcycles and returned in old vans and sixties muscle cars, and the smell was far sweeter than burned two stroke oil...it was weed. The guys who remembered us were cool, but the rest of them treated us like kids. It didn’t take long to realize that we weren’t welcome...
Medusa’s Lament By Paige Vignola
Strolling quietly through the garden of rock, I run my fingers over a pale shimmering face of marble. Lifeless, the beauty still shines through: smooth cheeks, virgin to a razor’s edge; a lock of hair curled delicately down the center of a wide, unblemished forehead; large wide eyes framed by impossibly long lashes on either side of a strong, manly and chiseled nose; I try not to look at the mouth. It would have been succulent once but it was forever drawn tight. My first visitor. I visit him often in the daylight hours. When the sun glints off his hard white frame he looks almost alive. Pausing in front of him momentarily I wish we could speak. I ask again all the questions I had asked in the past. Why had he come? Was it fortune? I have none. Was it fame? A visitation to this desolate land could offer no recompense. Who had sent him? Only my sisters know where I am and none could have persuaded them to tell of my whereabouts. What did he want with me? I had meant the boy no harm. I have no animosity for any save two.
When he had first come my hopes had soared. Maybe he had come to rescue me. Perhaps she had reconsidered. Perhaps he had finally taken up my case. I had been alone for so long that the thought of a visitation, by anyone, excited me. Not even the crows enter my domain. My only company is the writhing retinue forever attached to my frame. I didn’t know. I couldn’t have known. How could I have known? Since my transformation I had seen neither my own face nor that of anyone else. My agony at the loss of this young boy’s life weighed on me. The responsibility that was not mine but had been thrust upon me pressed me prone. If I had tears to shed, I would have. Alas, my weeping brings forth venom not tears and yet I call it weeping. I still weep whenever I visit him. My first companion. My hand still cupping his cold smooth cheek, I let my eyes wander over the landscape before me. It is gray and brown. Rocks and dead shrubs. If they flourished once, they have not since my arrival. Nothing lives here. Not for long. I miss green. I miss flowers. I miss birdsong. I long for the sound of laughter. The silence of this place is overwhelming. It crushes me. There was a time when I wished to know about the rest of the world beyond my island captivity. The world doesn’t interest me anymore. I wish for peace. I wish for conversation. Mostly, now, when the visitors arrive, I wish for solitude. I know that no good can come from any stranger setting foot on my island.
One should not question the gods. All good children are raised to follow this simple constant. Once I too blindly did my bidding. I did all that was asked of me and more. I dedicated myself to her wisdom, her intelligence, her justice. It was I who first suggested to my mother that my father might want to grant me to her temple. What a pious offering! To give his youngest daughter to the great goddess herself. I sought no fame. I sought no reward. I wished nothing but to serve her and serve her I did. That was not enough. A woman can never give enough to satisfy a god. He took everything from me and it wasn’t enough. She, praised for her justice, her compassion, turned her back on me. Do I question the gods? No. I curse them. “You suggest that gods should pander to mortals seeking favor?” he scoffs. “In fact, I do, Uncle. Should you and I wage war to determine who has the greater right to this scrap of land, what would then remain worth obtaining? I for one would prefer a simple solution that will allow the victor to enjoy the spoils of her gain.” The calm aspect and air of self-assurance of his brother’s daughter brings the dark god’s suppressed fury closer to the surface. “ ‘Her’ gain, is it? Let us not declare the victor before the fight has even begun,” he seethes at her. “Yes, I will agree to your terms. We will each proffer a gift to the city. That which is deemed greater will
pronounce the victor. Let the best man win.” The Earth-Shaker smiles in condescension at the younger Olympian. A city on the sea is always in need of his favor. The messenger of the gods is dispatched to the king below informing him of his weighty duty. “I will go first,” the goddess suggests. “I think not. You may be the child of my brother but I owe nothing of my rank to you. I am your elder. I am the more powerful. I will go first,” the sea god bellows as his niece hides a smile behind her shield. “Of course, Uncle.” The great deity raises his right arm in which he holds his magnificent trident aloft over the mountainside of the town. The muscles in his wrist flex as he grips the symbol of his power tightly before thrusting it down toward the earth, scoring the rock with its triple point. An immense spring bursts forth from the fissure, spouting seawater so high in the air it rains down on both the Olympians and the inhabitants of the city below. Cecrops, the king and judge of the people, raises his hands in the air, cupping them to receive the great god’s gift. Once full, he lowers his hands to his lips and darts his tongue into the wetness his finds. He makes a face. “Salt,” he proclaims to the crowd which surrounds him. The people shift nervously wondering why the god would think a salt spring would be of use to them. The goddess steps forward. “Now, Uncle, it is my turn. Let me show you a gift these people will truly appreciate.” She produces a sapling tree from the folds of her robe and with delicate fingers plants it in the ground at her feet. “With this olive branch I
offer the people of my city wood, oil, and food. The branch of this tree will also symbolize peace and allow my people to remove themselves from unwanted wars.” With a slight bow and a smirk she turns to the sea god and whispers, “Wisdom, my dear Uncle. Shall we see who wins?” The king below considers the gifts of both gods and proclaims loudly to all those who hear, “Let the Goddess of Wisdom be our patron as she more fully recognizes the needs of our people.” The Earth-Shaker roars his displeasure. The salt spring, symbolizing a guarantee for naval supremacy among the warring Greek cities, is rejected in favor of domestic security and peace. He feels tricked by his niece, who maneuvered him into offering his gift first whereby she was able to offer the people a greater explanation of her gift. His cold blue eyes darken as he looks into her calm gray ones. “This is not over,” he warns as he turns his back on the city and dives into the sea.
Shattered Dreams A Prose Poem in Memoriam By Andrew Woodbury
That was long before the sky fell. We lived in paradise; in fact, we owned paradise. Fruit was abundant, pendant on each branch; the flowers poignantly aromatic--their fragrance wafted in the balmy tropical zephyrs. These beauties were drenched in colors, brilliant and radiant, more so than any rainbow. The vegetation was lush and verdant green, fertilized by nature’s own signature concoction, far beyond human horticulture. Our world was warmed by the temperate sun’s rays that vitalized youthful lovers who dallied in total innocence, frolicking wistfully on pristine shores. We enjoyed our days, in seclusion, in total abandon, sacrificing ourselves to our divinity of plenty.
That was until we experienced shame, an intrusion from outside, and we clothed our nakedness. Government officials arrived, wielding great sums of money that smacked of empty promises and assurance of stability, and then relocation to a place far removed from our once idyllic dwelling. We came to know the true meaning of emptiness. Our hearts lost their fullness, their vitality. They grew wizened by shattered dreams. Time seeped slowly through the stricture of the hourglass, no longer measured by the sun’s placement in a wide azure sky or by animal sounds in deep thickets.
Upon return, we shuddered. Our oasis had become a desert place with no means of deflecting the relentless rays of an angry sun, that beat down incessantly upon us and on murky waters replete with dead fish and other floating debris, seepage from overflowing, fetid cesspools that marked the land, void of potable water in this abyss of death. In our rummaging, we stumbled upon newly formed craters where once rich loam had provided sustenance. Here there was little chance of a mere tender, fragile sprout to crack through a virtual wasteland of rock. Sterility reigned in this man-made residence.
We stand now on the shore, in full attire, unable to clearly detect the horizon. Our blurred vision cannot at this time perceive whatever future is in store. We painstakingly await any harbinger of hope, some clarion announcement that our existence will someday return to its former state. We sense ships on the horizon, but we cannot fathom their cargo. Are they laden with tourists, seeking a glimpse of Eden? If not, why do these ships fail to venture close today? We miss the jovial passengers who once dangled from railings to hurl shouts of greetings and to offer gestures of camaraderie to us, their brethren.
We are but a far distant ancestry, once deserving of the envy on each onlooker’s smile, sought after Images, photographs, small keepsakes of remembrance when life was both excitement and celebration. Now, we wonder if anyone will take pity on us and heed our supplications to mete out retribution on those who brought evil upon us and take the necessary action to replenish our earth’s violation, the result of this heinous and nefarious act. We stand here broken, pleading for the tides of change to assuage our wounds by returning us to the sea, where we might find refuge and solace to end our days.