A PRESSURE PRESS COLLECTION by ron androla

a pressure press collection

edited by ron androla

4 Mark Hartenbach Donna Hill John Korn Didi Menendez Carter Monroe Nicholas R. Morgan Kurt Nimmo Daryl Rogers Luc Simonic Bart Solarczyk Cheryl Townsend

A PRESSURE PRESS COLLECTION October, 1997, & my world was shattering. My then-wife & 2 children were leaving me in the house with the dog – she was moving out. A few weeks before this inevitable occurrence I bought a small metal box from an electronics store down the street: webtv. For the preceding few years I felt the internet & computers were elitist entities for those with money, but with the advent of cheap internet access from a small box plugged into one’s television, I changed my tune. I was online in my living room with a remote keyboard. I immediately sought out those poets I knew from the small press thru paper mail, & yes, Kurt Nimmo was right there. Jim Chandler. Both had been active in the early birth of the internet, & they guided me thru my ignorance. Another small press poet who was partying wildly on the web was Michael McNeilley. We connected & I was blessed with a man who no doubt saved my life. He’d been thru what I was going thru, the shit at the end of a long marriage, & he became a true & generous friend on the other side of amerika – all the way in Washington state. What used to take a week, 2

5 weeks, via mail across the country, was now in immediate time on my tv screen. He helped me design a webpage (it was awful, circa 1997, but provided me a unique escape from my exploding world). McNeilley was also the force behind the creation of the original RON ANDROLA’S PRESSURE PRESS PRESENTS: UNDERGROUND POETS & UNDERGROUND POETRY on a now-defunct message board. It became the place where I wrote – no more electric typewriter & paper. Soon, after the threats of foreclosure were close to actual fact, I moved into an apartment at the edge of the city. I set up my webtv before I even unpacked. I’m fuzzy what happened first, McNeilley’s early, tragic death, or the hosting site going belly-up, but I do know what quickly followed: Bill Beaver, an artist & writer I knew from the paper days of the ‘80’s/‘90’s, who had also discovered the PRESSURE PRESS board & was a core regular poster, offered to resurrect the message board, to keep it as true to the original design as possible. Thus, in March, 2001, RON ANDROLA’S PRESSURE PRESS PRESENTS: UNDERGROUND POETS & UNDERGROUND POETRY was alive & kicking again. It’s this resurrected board from which the works in this volume are gleaned, from the massive archives – everything has been saved these past 6 years, nearly a quarter-million hits later. This project was made possible thanks to a grant from an anonymous source. PRESSURE PRESS has always been about community. It isn’t something I, nor Bill, exactly control. So in considering a format for a print edition of the board, I deem it only right that poets choose what they find of value in the archives from other poets. There is so much other work worthy of publication, but regretfully it’s become a matter of space & paper. I have not been able to include everyone who’s posted material on the board.

6 For the entire picture, visit us online at: http://enhancedphotos.com/cgibin/board/view.cgi Thanks to all past, current, deceased, & future contributors for creating the PRESSURE PRESS universe. I want to especially thank those who have been instrumental in helping with the selections of poets & writings for this book: Didi Menendez, Cheryl Townsend, Jim Chandler, John Korn, Carter Monroe, Mark Hartenbach, & Ann Androla. Cheers, Ron Androla

ÂŠ 2007 Pressure Press Press

All of the material was originally posted on the Pressure Press site, except introductions, narratives, & interviews. Some of these materials have appeared elsewhere, in various forms, in cyberspace, & in print. All rights remain with the authors. Editor-in-chief: Ann Androla Editor: Ron Androla ISBN 13: 978-1-59948-074-9 ISBN 10: 1-59948-074-3 Produced in the United States of America by Main Street Rag Publishing Company www.MainStreetRag.com

7 John Korn Introduction by Didi Menendez I wonder if anyone in this book will still be read after a hundred years. After all, the writers featured here are what we call The Underground. What exactly is The Underground? I can only speak for myself so I will say that I do not have a college degree. I think most of the writers here are not from any â&#x20AC;&#x153;school of poetry.â&#x20AC;? We are read by each other in places such as Ron Androla's board and in some cases some of us were first introduced to each other from the online publication the-hold.com. That is where I first came across John Korn's poetry. And if anyone among us should still be read in a hundred years, I would like to think that John Korn will be one of those writers. He is the youngest among us, only 27 years old. He is almost as prolific as Ron Androla and as deep as Jim Chandler, however what makes Korn different is the innocence still there. He is somehow still wet behind the years and yet wiser than the oldest poet among us. His poems are little movies. We can with certain clarity see the colors, taste the flavors, poems which are remembered long past closing the page. I go back to them and read them again like a child who plays a favorite video over and over again. Each time I read the poem again I find a new image, a new take, a new still captured in life and how it all relates to the bigger picture. In some cases the experience is religious. According to Grace Cavalieri, when I asked her what she thought of Korn's poetry, she said, "...might be X generation poetry as it's cinematic, and graphic arts morph-thought. There seems to be a quest in his poems as well as cultural commentary, yet you get the feel that

8 everything is going to fall apart or come together at the same time." This is where John Korn differs. His poems become the eye of the camera. We almost become embarrassed to have been caught in the act of becoming part of the picture, part of the poem. After a few reads we sympathize with the narrator. We want to save him. We want to become his lover. We want to fly with him. And we somehow capture our own innocence again. We are salvaged. There is hope for us still.

John Korn lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 14 young women 14 young women outside of a rodeo huddled into a crowd facing one another lighting their cigarettes off each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cigarettes none had a lighter there was only one match they inhale and exhale precisely at the same moment and 14 tobacco puffs form one dark hanging cloud over these 14 young women

9 and one says, “Oh! did you see his lasso?” and gasps run through the group like a flopping chicken in a barn full of bobcats. yes they all had seen his lasso another says, “his lasso!” and sighs steam from 14 young mouths yes his lasso a thick one with smooth breasts stomps her foot down “never!” she says, “never do I meet a man like that!” and she goes on to describe the rodeo man and from her description the man she is trying to illustrate is Albert Einstein. She finishes by saying, “His intellect with that lasso!” and groans explode across this group. yes they had all noticed the intellect and how they’d love to meet a man with intellect. a tall gloomy one steps forth and describes the rodeo man as Evil Knievel “the daring with his lasso!” she cries and the moans ripple through them in agreement and on and on they describe the rodeo man the bravery yes yes the security the knowing

10 the ape-like phallus “yes!” one screams, “to be fucked on a staircase while he bangs my head into a splintery step!” the tenderness! “yes,” the same one spits, “to be caressed so lightly that he is barely touching me!” the vulnerability! “yes! to step on his head and throw tacks at his nuts!” the adventure! in his lasso the domestication in his lasso the punctuality of his lasso the practicality of his lasso the staggering rationale yes yes they agree and tremble in 14 different ways why could they not meet a man like this? and the smoke cloud above their heads begins to form the shape of this rodeo man in hat and in spurs, riding on top of a brilliant steed. this vapor man that dumps unending quivering loads of desire into their hearts they nearly sing head back and chin up at this apparition… but then the thick one with smooth breasts shushes them

11 and they all look to the left in unison as the real rodeo man, done with his night’s performance exits the side gate and slowly staggers over his jeans are covered in horse shit he pulls a chewed up cigar from his front pocket and asks if one lady would happen to have a light. all 14 women move in together with the ends of their cigarettes pushed together the rodeo man lights his cigar from this. “shucks,” he says, “I think some of this horse shit on my pants here might be my shit! no joke. I can’t wait to get home and eat some cheerios. ever see that movie with the man and he’s a robot from the future and he’s gotta help this lady and at the end he shoots that helicopter?” no woman of the 14 speak. they smile and nod quickly one sweats. another bites her bottom lip. “Well thanks for the light ladies, and thanks for coming to the show!” he says and walks off to his car. silence… then all women pull out another cigarette and light it off a butt of a dying one. the tall gloomy one steps forth “oh! did you see his spurs!” oh they scream and claw the erotic angelic wisdom of his spurs!!

sundress, it's morning sundress, it's morning on Milkshake Avenue, the construction workers use popsicle drills to bust up the crust on Pineapple Street. big apples on Miss Martha she walks along with a topless cigar puffing memories of a Cuban treehouse walking her robot dog made out of old broken toasters. her dresser's too small she's been piling up the clothes next the bed. she only wants to mail things but the stamps were sweet so she ate every one and now her envelopes are bare and the postman won't acknowledge their existence. barely noon now. your sundress, my toothache I keep dreaming of Loch Ness the beast in the Lake maybe he lives in a tunnel under water he must have family.

13 Riverview Park is a turtle trees grow on its shell there are two park benches at the very top you can watch the road and houses. the Observatory after dark holds a set of peach plum planets and cigarette cherry stars. sundress and toothpaste your purse is like a briefcase I only want to slip a few papers in I'll be short and discreet I know your mother has a hair appointment. I hear her nails are like pirate rubies. same nails that used to flick the food crumbs from the corner of your maple mouth trees growing on the Siamese cats from Puerto Rico driving cabs to the theater it's an array of foreign color washed movies Italian and French and a few Japanese. sundress pacifier, you're like a thumb in a pie. penile pencil boats race in the river nowhere to end but to point out the caramel blues sticking on the gums of the city cows grazing on the green grass of your eyes

14 Swimming with lizards, Hitchhiking with bugs 1. on someone’s back porch I’m stoned on various things, and the people huddle and talk to fill in gaps. the lawn down there looks patched like an old sweater and through the black lines of January trees I can see the road and the cars. it’s giving me a withdrawn feeling and this scenery I wear like a robe and sit on the front step in silent contemplation. feeling vague and specific at the same time. specifically vague. here I am. with the bug. I picked it up again, it was hitchhiking on a window sill with that little sign with those little antennae and all those little legs so I cupped it with my hands and stuck the bug in my soul where its particles merged in with mine and now I can barely think this bug has longings that I can’t bring myself to respect logically. all I can do is drift along with him. dreaming little bug dreams. 2. you know they tested salamanders? yes these scientists they taught the salamanders different tasks like how to get through little mazes and things like this.

15 then they cut out the salamanderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brains and put in another salamanderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brains in its place. the new salamanderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brains were not trained to go through the mazes but when placed in the trained bodies they did it anyway, as though they had not been tampered with as though the memory is not all held within the brain, but there is some other place not even within the body where a consciousness can exist and be recorded. Like if you gutted my head out like a pumpkin my brains a useless lump still in the air in the particles in the energy in the fabric of this this curiosity we call the world there would be my memories of your face and faces just swimming in there.

red oranges I was at a party smoking had been limited to the basement where I was and a piece of paper from my cigarette lifted into the air

16 and floated for half a second glowing red before it winked out making me think of you. a small man in overalls came down and joined me with dark red hair a big nose and small friendly eyes he had a wooden case with lines of dead butterflies pinned to a board. he showed me it, resting on the TV he said, “Habiscus Homcumus!” and pointed to a small butterfly in the corner velvet red with white specks, looked like something you’d pin to your collar if you were going to the prom in the 1950s. the man in the overalls with red hair explained that this particular butterfly lives near the tops of volcanoes and that he had to ride in an air balloon to the top of Mount Tikkipee and that it was very hot, but these wonderful insects hovered in wavering volcanic charged air that his eyebrows were singed off and his lips dried and began to peel yet still here they, swimming in their mysterious clouds “It was like being underwater,” he said, “and seeing a school of fish.” he left the case on the table and went back up to the party I opened it and retrieved the small red butterfly,

17 I stuck it on the bed of my tongue. it dissolved like sugar I would travel through swamps and urban wastelands to put this taste into your mouth. to kaleidoscope your vision with tiny bits of burning paper floating in swarms and winking orange and red orange and red.

dancing with you on some strange island (gayness) thank you for dancing with me for letting my eyes linger letting me stir that pond of silver fish in you thanks for sending things up out of those green waters dark crates and chests filled with those haunting treasures. how I sifted and wanted to keep sifting the games erected in a playful garden of smut visions the twirl that is there and the dream of possibilities thank you for letting me dream it was such a nice dance and how sweet and slow it lasted and how it falls apart at the end

18 because two different songs start playing and I start moving to one and you to the other here I should part but how I try to ignore it to make those two beats somehow work together how awkward the moves get and the searching of the blame. maybe you will come and dance for a little some time from now. I can't promise that I'll always know when the song is over but I'll try and listen for the sound of the needle moving into the next groove.

raspberry planet ron androla wakes up at 3:12 am black square window slick with rain erie PA sky like ink, like space like house on raspberry street floating on some asteroid street lights glare like robot Martian eyes he swings his feet out of bed somewhere in shadows Tyger watches foggy pupils, cat tongue licking cat paws ron stands and finds gravity pulling him back

19 to the mattress but he shrugs it off and when he lifts his head he finds his face heavy horribly heavy silence except rain on roof he turns around and sees Ann on bed, out cold blurry lump under covers his room feels alien like a strange replica of his room and maybe that’s not Ann under there ron runs a hand down the left side of his face and feels that it is massive bulging, contorted in bathroom mirror he sees large gourd-like nose, left eye as big as a baseball staring madly with heavy purple eyelids. lips are like rubber tires grotesque but only on the left side of his face other side all is well he’s somewhat confused he goes and shakes Ann in sleepy haze she drags covers off and her arms have turned into tree branches, beautiful, with white flowers and red leaves, and a thin layer of crayon green moss there are little strange birds on the branches they scuttle around making a nest ron and Ann stare back and forth at each other “what’s going on?” she says. “i don’t know,” ron says. downstairs they find that Bangles and Max have conjoined into one another

20 with Max’s eyes on top of Bangles so that they seem spider-like. Bangles is confused and nibbles at a jittering cat arm growing out of his ear but otherwise they seem fine. ron feeds the Max-Bangles creature he just mixes the cat and dog food together in a bowl. Ann says, “I feel great!” ron says, “me too!” they put in a movie. outside large glowing jelly fish swim past the windows. Tyger appears and is 8 feet tall. Tyger is happy. Tyger licks Max-Bangles and eats a chair.

21 Cait Collins Cait Collins was a poet & webmistress of the-hold.com ezine for many years. Her early death was a great loss for all of us. She was a true presence & energy on the Pressure Press message board. Introduction by Cheryl Townsend When she walked into my bookstore for the first Alley Way reading, I knew her instantly. Crazy, wild, raven hair... curled and glistening like the kinkiest sex. She was thin as the cigarettes she smoked and smiling, smiling, smilingâ&#x20AC;Ś I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember who contacted who first or how we came to know each other, probably Ronâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s board, but she became a monumental presence in my life and an incredible impetus for my own writing via the-hold.com. She filled that e-zine (and later print versions) to the brim with poetry, art, reviews, essays, and whatever else tickled her fancy. She networked, she promoted, she supported, she cared. Her own poetry had a voice that remained true to herself, unique in a world of repeat performances. No one had her audacity or tenacity. Honest, from the gut (and often twat) verse that either made you laugh with solidarity or cringe with inner awareness. When she confessed her cancer, it was only as an excuse...she never wanted sympathy, she never really told me the full extent. In letters, she laughed away the latest spot, the last chemo, the painful hands. She was just sorry she couldn't do more for her poets. It was

22 always "us" and never herself. She gave...even when she had nothing left to give with. Cait...you are a beacon that will never fade you are laughter that will never subside you are energy that still exudes you are beautiful always in my memory Tonight, I'm going to strap one on, smoke myself a joint, drink whatever I can find and let my own hair fly its own course... I'm gonna fly on out there and hug you goodbye.

**tongue pierthingths are thuper** September 26, 2003 iths not that i talk thith way all of the time iths juth becauths i hadta open my big mouth thpread it ath wide ath i poththiply could so pj the thlamdunk totally thwamped with wild and crathy gothic tattooths and pierthingths all over himthelf and one hunk of a body pierther could thick that thick neethle thraight through the heart of my tongue

23 i can see the future July 25, 2002 fur clocks perhaps for the weeksend 80 degrees and it feels like 80 degrees the full moon ain't never bong'd noon X's i go po and passin out feels good

for joy! December 19, 2001 for joy! I feel wonderful squat nekkid in front of my computer monitor savorin loooooong warm spicy supple sips of this california zif Cleopatra licks my toes as good as you line yer lips around my clit

24 president g w bush jr osama bin laden ny firefighters jerry springer Time takes polls for 2001 man of the year via dot com I add my 2 cents nominate me with a strapon on I have pigged-out on xmas cookies: santa claus parts body-building elves ears rolled oats rolling d o w n glittering teddy bear tails applesauce cinnamon sprinkled dasher dancer on donners antlers on comet! on cupid! prancinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and blitzen on boners! yea I am the vixen licking these cream peakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d finger tips I think of you

25 je ne sais quoi reindeer food confetti christmas trees swell like blankets of snow ball’d like I plan to be as you budge through 5 OH clock traffic in a rush to view the 6 o clock cnn news I search the internet on "how to hide-a-hickey from the other lover" and if I don’t figger it out in time I’ll still be there hanging from the wine rack upside down in between the red and green plastic crystal stemware goblets another another bottle of zif from CalifornIYAY and we’ll do dessert as is... honey.

26 Nicholas R. Morgan lives in Texas. for my queen She is really gone I have been a tired road warrior Last month it seems, just drive, sleep, eat, chain smoke, Trucker creep now My home is the road Had to come home for insane toothache pain root canal Till my final two weeks With another mentor Been to more states in last 4 weeks than in my entire life Would bore you naming them all But the point is, after weeks of no Computer access, today, went to pressure press Scrolled down to ron’s poem, And one line said about Cait’s death At first I thought it was just some horrible joke Then went to hold graffiti board & it wasn’t an awful joke Went into shock and denial Cait had been a great loyal fun loving friend to me Since she started publishing my stories every month For the last 5 years. I never met her in person, But for 5 years we talked via email She supported me and so many at the-hold.

27 She was full of originality, humor, radiated love… creativity It still hasn’t kicked in It has to be some cruel joke I got a big empty void in the pit of my stomach When I heard…so the way I deal with pain is to get wasted, hadn’t drank in 4 weeks, I felt all shaky, I decided to go to a titty bar And drown my sorrows in about 15 shots of tequila Barely looking at the strippers on stage Alone with my self, thinking of Cait I don’t get why sometimes People who were so full of life, creativity, originality, happiness Have to die, I mean take me instead, take some grouchy moody manic asshole drunk, That no one likesMe, no one would miss a jerk like me. I haven’t cried yet, cause I’m still in denial, Ended up vomiting all over Ice urinals in strip club All the emails from 5 years, Her making me laugh Me making her laugh.. It doesn’t seem real She never had a negative thing To say about anyone While I sat alone at strip club

28 I couldn’t even stare at all the slutty strippers I just kept ordering drinks, alone, Thinking of Cait Wanting to fight some dumb hick Or idiotic college boy Or the bouncer, bartender… anyone More booze filled my sadness and anger Death doesn’t bother me If it’s someone I don’t know But Cait Collins? Queen of the underground lit zine A wacky loving poet great publisher With never a cruel word to say Fuck, now the shock is wearing off The denial, and after my 20th drink of the night Covered in my own vomitAfter being sober for almost a month Them gulpy tears Are getting harder to hold back I love you Cait & never had a chance to thank you For everything Soon, when my novel is done If it ever gets published It’s dedicated to a lively humorous talented True original Named Cait Collins A queen who left To some other dimension Way too soon

29 My love and prayers go out to her family Now that being said I must disappear again In my 18 wheeler Probably passed, went through So many towns Where I knew people who lived there Right now I have an excuse to overdo it To relapse Thinking of Cait, Cracking another beer As she would want me to

Bill Beaver lives 11 miles from the Mexican border. Flowers for Cait Cait emailed me once, said she had all these minutes on her cell phone, thousands, & to call her up some time for phone sex. Hmmmmm. Wellllll. I never did. But when I heard of her illness I emailed her, asked to talk with her. She called me the next morning, I was on the U of A campus, almost to work. She was on her way to Philadelphia. I talked to her for almost two hours playing hooky from work, hiding in the shade of some building as the vast heat of the summer morning grew and

30 blossomed. She has a great voice, deepened & roughened by smoke. Her energy caught me, we talked about all sorts of things, me telling her my troubles, as if they meant anything next to hers, then finally to her illness. She was so positive, hard not to drop into that blessed 'everything is going to work out' space. I should be cynical, especially after all the people I have known, dropping off the face of the earth due to cancer, positive for a cure every one. Damn it someone has to beat the odds. Hope, without hope you are no longer human. So we talked & laughed, about how her new tits were going to look - "Go for perky," I suggested, how losing her beautiful hair was the worst part, worse than all the pain and the sickness. Vanity, perhaps if they invent a chemo that doesn't lose hair more people will survive, who knows? Then we had to go, me to my room o' computers, her for a pit stop. "When I'm better I'll call you & we'll have that phone sex. Be sure you have a ruler handy." she sez. "Great, I'll look forward to it! But a ruler? What am I supposed to do with a ruler?" "You'll see." This time it was her that never called. She never did get better. So I repeat that last thing I said to her "I love you darlin'" & Cait, wherever you are, I've got my cell phone and a ruler handy, just in case. Hope, without hope you are no longer human.

my life as landfill thirteen years ago i moved to this house closing down an office apartment gathered junk from my ex-wife put it all in a shed where it sat until today now i'm cleaning going through sediment layers past lives buried under boxes of magazines papers photographs camping junk old lovers dumb awards letters from people i had forgotten assorted

31 knicks & knacks pieces of rusty metal end of a harpoon i found in Maine railroad spikes my father's slide-rules college id pictures negatives never printed from ChichĂŠn ItzĂĄ a wall of skulls a ball court pyramids stone serpent head on a jungle trail a huge stone penis projecting out of th inside of a room like you're back in mom's womb & your father's dick is bouncing against your soft head a pool where I swam & found a carved heart on th bottom myriad computer parts Apple II Vic 20 Commodore 64 Amigas lots of Amigas PCs Macs maybe 20 monitors printers disk drives CD players modems submissions to my magazine i never opened pages & pages of discarded collage cutup papers digital pictures proofs old lefty magazines so sad & naive to present day tribal fury computer magazines lists of projects i'm still working on will never finish to-do lists never ever done mostly it all goes outside in a pile tomorrow a rolloff will be delivered & next week it all gets hauled away

renaissance now I think my town is having a renaissance it happens on edges of things outside of mainstream oppression is fleeting sometimes tragic some say they are bad jokes by psychic vampire demons build people up so failure will bring such yummy despair me an optimist sometimes 34 years have seen so much so many friends lovers talent no talent swallowed by dust sunk into tracks great ideas proclaimed in bars we hit New Mexico still shaken by a run-in with cops in Texarkana wanted to go through City of Rocks Silver City but a darkness in afternoon herds of black clouds so thick they had a surface, a furry skin my yellow VW bus packed tight Kate our cat Ocean clouds

32 pounced blew us right off the road dodging trucks in blind buckets past alkali lakes rained for three days hit a grey town this goofy cowboy/cowgirl Welcome to Tucson sign cut through the slums south of the University Kathie cried what were we doing here I live in those slums now gentrified upscale my taxes becoming abstractions found an apartment out in what was then a saguaro forest sun broke out a double rainbow I swear I once saw a triple rainbow once at Hannigan's meadow walked in rainbow light pots of gold everywhere most of this place a swash of american nowhere car culture but still pockets bacterial sink into body no creative work to speak of talent quickly blows out to a coast then I see where some obscure movie is being released in 15 cities this is one of them music art planetary lab sez oceans of Titan are black sand sequencing the genome of corn or is it just spring a thin stick of mild weather before a six month blast of summer drives us all underground out of luck out of business do I hear a sound yes I think I do low demonic laughter squish of wet eating deep inside my brain

33 Bart Solarczyk lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Cait In Heaven Once adjusted to the light it's not so bad green socks, free drinks everyone pretty & willing poets sleep on top the angels are all ears God stumbles by sometimes winks & warns you to behave.

Expensive Sleeves Bald birds cupped in manicured ham hands helpless baby we're that helpless.

34 Catholic School I painted rocks with salamander blood God died above my desk crows hopped on hardwood floors in sexless shoes.

Lunar Eclipse October crickets believe in baby pumpkin lost in backyard sky.

Friday Night Implosion The TV melts & I'm raped by Joan Rivers' face born to happen all this fluid plastic everywhere my innocence

35 stretched like taffy everybody eats.

Mr. Shaw (for Ron) I'm a mushroom you're a giving hand I'm a hurricane you're its blind eye I'm a drunk sometimes so are you I'm Dobie Gillis you're Maynard G. Krebs.

Piss Whore I dig deep & pay the piss whore so smug for a girl who knows one secret.

The Poem Is Drunk The poem is drunk the poem is stubborn it will not go to bed

I'm too old to deal with this shit the poem is yours.

Gravity Anchors Our Dreams If it all had been different it would still end the same kindness leveled off love ladled in small portions the meaning of a man the give & the big take his salt collar his good dogs run away.

I Met This Poem I met this poem she had good dope I bought the beer we started in I wrote her down she said I had her all wrong we hit it harder nothing worked someone had to go

a man dies anyway but the right poem is a shadow of forever.

The Last Mushroom Mothmen smack the windows as our satellite dies let's untie the kids & go bowling.

A Sad Little Poem About A Big Life Jack Kerouac sat in his pajamas chugging Schlitz Malt Liquor & Johnny Walker Red it began with the word he rolled it fast then the word bit back so he watched TV with his mother & drank & drank & drank until he died.

38 Some Call It A Circle Dead hair & flakes of skin blood & snot & fingerprints other bits & fluids trash the trail swept-up, bagged & hauled to the curb the moon's flat bone the sun a big pink baby.

Mushrooms With Dorothy The witch melts the monkeys shit emeralds on the fly lie with me in Kansas you can keep your ruby slippers on.

Playing Doctor Because she envies my penis I expect obedience she's all whore & more I stack her dreams

39 until they bend her neck.

Meant To Be A Nail This poem was meant to be a nail pounded hard between the eyes but I got drunk & lost the hammer bear with me this could take a while.

Kurt Nimmo lives in New Mexico. philosophy it occurs to me just about everything in this society

40 is for shit. I know it may very well be me and my life-long bad attitude however I've read all the books in the old bookshelf and nothing at barnes & noble interests me and cable television is a blur of waste and vapid boredom designed to sell me things I don't need. remember after nine eleven and the president said get out there and buy something it's your civic duty to consume. at the time I had little money and now I have even less. it is absurd to be reduced in such a way: an economic flesh machine and I've read all the books I am going to read in this life. I've had enough sex and booze and drugs for one life. it's said we go back around this atman or purusha is recycled

and we are allotted any number of chances and dispensed glimmer-new psycho-mental faculties only to go through another round of books web pages mindless sit-coms orgasms and to end up yellow and wizened silent in a chair watching the paint dry again.

self-indulgent poem here's what passes for reading material these days: understanding polyps and their treatment a treatise provided by the good folks at the gastrointestinal society. well not exactly a treatise more a brochure

clutched as I walked out of the clinic. they had cut a benign growth out of the darkness of my interior. more accurately the colon. I don't know why I am writing this self-indulgent business first thing on a sunny cold morning. the cats are moving around in the background and the wife is sleeping. take me out and shoot me if I ever get like that I said years ago upon passing a stooped-over geezer or one of those old folks' internment complexes where they charge exorbitant rates to wipe the spittle off your chin. now some thirty odd years later I still believe this. if I can't take care of myself feed myself wipe my fat ass read a newspaper if I can't remember what day it is or who the president is (actually this would be a blessing) take me out like an old horse

43 and shoot me. metaphorically of course. it would be much preferable to take a fistful of drugs and sort of float out of the realm leaving behind the cold yellow bright morning personal credit card debt overdue oil change five or six pairs of old shoes dust mites the sober-z variant computer worm chinese bird flu wars and threats of war and of course the adenomatous polyps.

44 Carter Monroe lives in The South. pre mortem one day bob dylan'll be dead don't know if i'll still be hanging then and not sure in what shape could be the pump but likely something else chest pains this morning i hope it's just gas one day bob dylan'll be dead and some pundit somewhere will say he died a long time ago maybe after "Blood on the Tracks" perhaps even with "Highway 61" when the amps became lit and old man seeger went apeshit one day bob dylan'll be dead and maybe i'll be sitting here in this cushioned office my own death behind me in a manner of speaking with lights, telephones, computers, and air a buried soul and a baseball cap one day bob dylan'll be dead and we'll all have memories, opinions, and stories white ponytails, old flannel shirts, and health care providers cd's, multi-speakers, big screen tv's, and car payments grandkids, divorces, cholesterol, and sugar

45 tax shelters, slush funds, annuities, and drug testing standard ideas, ideals, beliefs, and patented morality one day bob dylan'll be dead just like ray charles and miles davis and django reinhardt and louis armstrong and albert collins and bird/monk/diz one day bob dylan'll be dead

Provincial Nocturne In this dream, I strut through the bar door. Johnny Tillotson on the juke and white bucks all around. Might be reefer on Times Square, but this is the backwoods. Old Chevys and muffler-less Fords line the ditched parking lot. The underage guys park in the back. The beer’s in bottles. No cans. No draft. Turned up collars, white socks, and rolled up sleeves. The farm boys stand outside. The brown in the bottles, the clear in the jars. No fights yet, but the hair is rising here and there. What’s a Saturday without emotion. The football game doesn’t count now. I can’t see myself even though they speak to me. How can anonymity be the center of attention? A few girls scattered about with kerchiefs and lace.

46 Slow dancers in the corner with roaming hands and lies. The virgin boys get louder and louder as they stand away from it all, their hormones playing up to the view. Will there be a race, a rape, a scuffle to whet the appetites that beg for action? Is that Carl Perkins I hear in the background? Here comes Susie. Maybe I’ll be the one to get lucky tonight. I must remember as I sleep that I haven’t learned about probability yet.

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“for to abuse his spirit gave him the same feeling of contemporaneousness that abusing his body did – liquor and cynicism providing the illusion of hardheaded reality that people whose instincts are conventional, though their ideas are not, seem to need;” -- John Clellon Holmes

It’s always all about illusion, though seldom does it come from somewhere outside. Unfinished business is a mantra or at least it seems so when we stop at midnight and let the re-evaluation begin for the umpteenth time. I conquered the cynic, but used the bottle to do it, to take me

47 where I couldn’t take myself. A vehicle it remains ready to be my daily savior and aren’t all saviors crutches when you think about it and when you don’t? The philosophical paths I traveled were intertwined with the psychological ones. Still are in some strange manner that suggests on a regular basis that reality snuffs out dreams when placed in proper context without dilution or self-imposed blindness. Yet, as the progression continues I work to simplify the journey. Consulting frequently with St. Jude just to make sure that the lost causes are properly categorized and remanded to the pertinent files.

trying to reach back singed after a late afternoon’s guzzling when detachment forces one to honesty i confront myself with current demons those of the past having been previously cast out it’s all about, “can i believe this when …” “what about this” “what about that” “but you said . . .”

48 there ain’t no monk now a cliché ridden stone cold fact that forces adolescent rationalization to the forefront of cataclysmic existentialism the battle ensues in trenches of brainwaves right and left in a saber-ridden duel the pirates of my mind asserting themselves and swinging from convenient ropes in honor too many movies remembered too much experience ignored too weary to carry this thing through there ain’t much regrouping now i need the mirror once again the truth don’t always set you free i need to see the white hair and wrinkles need to see the death that is me

49 D.B. Cox lives in The South. the piano there’s a piano in a room downstairs that nobody plays some days i slip in lay my head on the keyboard & strike the lowest note— i listen to see how long it will ring one-tone music rising to fit the scene— small brainfingers paint a house by the roadside a place with windows i can look through— clear panes that hide no secrets— an unlocked door that opens onto a well-marked street that leads back home

mother dear iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not asking you to take the blame or explain those voices in your brain drip drip dripping like a broken faucet louder & louder until you ran for the door like the house was on fire i just wanted to knowâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; were you able to turn yourself inside out be brand new still beautiful & twenty-two i canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t recall your face anymore no photo smiles frozen in place your voice gray like something gone mother dear

51 your fear back then was no different than mine & i know that before this there was a time before that— & that’s what i must remember

a lesson in something or other voyager of a million midnights maintaining my own specific metaphysics nobody’s nothing moving quietly—at night like an infidel through a holy city dressed in practical black to avoid close examination lost in the white noise of christ-faced patrons eyes like overturned boats refighting the unfinished battle against the ever-encroaching doo-dah confused in a world where john wayne & clint eastwood have been replaced by fucking faggot

52 cowboys herding sheepâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; naked & dazed in a rotting paradise thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collapsing like a deserted cotton millâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; a mad world where the branches of the hanging trees have become reaching brown hands & starless southern nights the distant nephews of slaves

last chance motel a run-down motel clings to the shoulders of a two-lane highway a blinking neon sign shoots holes through the middle of a mississippi night -enfolded in the semi-darkness of a lamp-lit room a man leans over a table etching straight-razor

53 phrases into the pages of a hotel notepad recounting hazy days strung out behind like a thousand miles of bad road way past the possibility of finding something to count on like the orbit of the earth around the sun like moon-swung oceans guided by gravityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands like a lucky star to steer his feet past lonely streets that lead to places like this last chance motel â&#x20AC;&#x201C; where he sits with pen in hand

54 a pistol on the table & a bible in every room

55 Jeff Filipski lives on a Florida beach. vortice punch In a fit of brutish ignorance a voice blurted as if summoned from the gutters of hell PLAIN OR EVERYTHING !!! A thousand sunsets burned collectively overwhelming humanity a revelation of sorts fast food served indiscriminately what a concept nothing like lard enema action on the arterial a giant neon dick doffs its high hat and clicks its heels. The onset of dusk. Sitting on a dormant but smoking bulldozer The mayor picks his noseâ&#x20AC;Ś All around us people sneering paper cutout grins rubber band arms grab 4 brass rings their vision of palpability. Their hideous dream each time their hands snapping back with malicious intent right before tightening grips righteously about glowering prizes Oops! Missed again I think Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll kill myself Too fucking late... mirrored images snap nappy hair from cold bare asses your death is decided when you paint the first image your death is decided when you draw the first sketch

puerile interests flitting about driving kamikaze into burning lamps a summer sausage sizzles a cold keg swims through liquid minds soft music threatens madness bile at back of throat slurred vision blurred speech your perceptions differ from mine. There is no base only information depends how one dissects it. All the goodies are on the table. It’s finger food one palette is geared for bittersweet while the other is sweet and sour It’s all about titillation but let’s not share a space And I’m not standing next to you...

onus - accused of angled meddling a songbird cries fowl. more buzzard than measured once as a meal suppresses talk of politics. softened pills for reflux add mendicant dreams of days after they shall cause remiss in the whorl of nature standing at our feet.

57 frost fights with a blade of grass as the sun in a low moan creeps over chilled branches waiting to give the life it will also take away - I slam my floppy boot down into a frothing pool of writhing emotion. the rippling effect is disturbing. Were it not for remnant synergy, I would replicate my soul into the incommunicable scar tissue it once was and sit down to drink with it.... - pupils contract. contract signed. sign off on language. a pity. self. violins gone on acid binge. love elixir. Franken Christ gives the Eucharist. body parts flailing. silly girls smiling at mr. wonderful. he beats her. her body. her mind. severely. does it matter? but it is love. no? she says yes. he says sorry. their juices mingle. the cycle starts again. i look at her once beautiful eyes and think...thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not eye shadow...I look at him...with nothing but contempt - a welcoming of sorts. hands are extended. back slapping. facades tumble down muddy steps with guffaws of laughter in a 2/4 beat. the sweet wings of the hummingbird flutter. a state of becoming joins the union.

58 beating confusion with a bloody stick it sits and drinks its tea. i wring my hands with delight. i knew they'd be here. the others were skeptical. i scribbled them with crayons. muddied their ideology. questioned their intellects. offered them a snack then unwittingly pursued my own truths. for theirs were malfeasant.. because of this... I'm still finding crumbs. - spiders in the sky. rats in my brain. a need for catharsis like a need for orgasm. i feed on your excesses. i expel them as mine. the foul chirping of the unknown behind swollen walls and alligator eyes leads one down a path of cobblestone dreams like an unexpected antagonist in a thomas kinkade painting setting fire to the cute blissful cottage while holding a bottle of Cutty and spouting Nietzsche quotes.

oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s humble self portrait this whirring in my skull. incessant. stench of sameness. resentment. irritability. there is no way out, alive. the repugnant always gets a rise.

59 it lies within like a drunken god waiting to point his bony finger in the event of your puerile pleasures. I play the piano with my fists. naked, plaid skinned in sugar coated love with coiling angels sipping beat out of neon flasks with a fuck you in my smile i drink poetry from crushed bleeding stones

Jim Chandler lives in The South. where the last river runs there is something asymmetrical in death lining up life in its cross-hairs compression of time squeezing the trigger gently explosions of past mass blown into hollow holes of heart veins of redemption bleed rivulets of soul across landscapes gone from eyes turned inward no mystery in those mornings just lapses of judgment behind cells dying for lack of oxygen succumbing to a need for clarification as to where they stand vis a vis the urge to come back or to

60 turn the other way saints in sunday clothing breathe live air on dead faces in boxes marvel at how well stillness looks when the quick has escaped bad bones and muscles freeze in lockstep they stand by sad gates outside cities gaze skyward searching for heaven or perhaps hell wherever it is the last river runs

on the paint line â&#x20AC;&#x201C; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;63 dust & noise on the midnight shift the hiss of sprayers blasting overspray machines roaring around the lot, skidding corners madness in the pomona night the mexicans bring hot burritos & tamales for breaktime sing spanish songs above the roar laughing madmen good guys who befriended a young hillbilly newlywed from a world so different old gil chavez likely a

61 dead saint now slap a sombrero on his dark head & he could have passed for every mexican bandit in any western movie you ever saw paco the singer throwing down his grinding wheel to pose in song arms spread wide as he yodels out a lick that should be spinning on sixties acetate a smile wide as t-town splitting his mustachioed face booger manzito sneaking to the locker room to hit on quarts of thunderbird wine smuggled in going down one night behind his electric wire brush which spun inside his coverall fly before choking down drunken seizure victim bald "curly" champa the dago nodding behind a big heavenly beer after shift change grinning 'til his forehead wrinkled lifer on the paint line cowboy in the main spray booth bigmouth with his honda 50 newfangled little jap iron trying to drag terry with the new ford 427 after work slaughter on reservoir blvd the putter of one tiny cylinder & the squall of rear wheels turned by 425 horsepower pulling a fiberglass body

62 sometimes the little dwarf woman a tiny marilyn monroe clone perfect in every tiny dimension strutted past the outer fence under the lights & when she did the tools went down & everybody dug her moves until she faded from sight behind the bushes laughter & jokes about just "stickin' her on it" & spinning her around big ed in his golf cart smiling drunk all night cruising the darkened alleys inside the complex his face beet red from whiskey he didn't care much what you did long as you did something & didn't break too much & you didn't get his stool at ellie's lounge for long morning drinks a year of it & i was gone pissed off one night i took a walk as 22 yr olds will do & i went on to other things & wondered about the place i was decided that the golden west was just another armpit like most places and remembered that when i first moved there i thought the palm trees looked so exotic until i learned that rats lived in the top of them

63 booze at 10 i'd steal a pack of the old man's camels & fill a big empty listerine bottle with some of his booze make sure to run water back in the fifth so the loss wouldn't be so noticeable then off to the lumber yard i'd cut through wooden valleys between stacks find a shorter pile somewhere in the middle my nose filled w/the smell of sawn pine & oak poplar & sycamore momentarily good sweet camel & kentucky's finest sipping whiskey i'd sip away lying there on my back atop a wood stack with the blue sky revolving around my head my mind flying w/the clouds

64 on alcohol & tobacco i could get high just inhaling those unfiltered shorts a drunken young thing all full of myself i'd dream of killing people i'd heard about in someplace called north korea & about hank williams who died drunk in the back seat of a car & about my fishing pole & the river swimming down by the bluffs where snakes sunned on the rocks the wooden planks on the bridge that clattered musically when cars passed over

4 years later i drank a whole fifth of the old man's seagrams golden gin while the folks were out juking one saturday night they came in after midnight & found me lying in the kitchen floor out cold dad was angry that i'd drunk his booze but i heard a trace of pride when he said you drank that whole bottle by yourself that listerine bottle & the woodstacks were the start of a half-century road to boozeville & back w/all the good & bad that brings but damn i hope to tip a couple more before they slam the lid

66 and say so long old hoss ride steady

Poetry Road – In Search of the Word What possesses an old dog to leap into a 17-year-old car and embark on a journey of more than 3,500 miles (or so I thought at the inception) for the purpose of videotaping poets? I’d like to be able to blame it on intoxication, but I can’t. So I suppose insanity is the only explanation. Truth is I needed a project, something to do. In October 2006, I was still smarting from the sudden death of my mom three months before, sort of lost in a swirl of sadness and grief. I have a reputation as a tough guy-hell, a poetic bully, some would say. I’ve always been a caustic dude and as age has encompassed my old self that hasn’t improved much. But, despite all that, I am capable of soft and fluffy feelings if they involve someone I love. My mom would fit into that category. She gave me the kind of unconditional love we’re always hearing about from the touchy-feely crowd, loved me even though I worried her to death at times, loved me when I got in jail (and bailed me out time and again), loved me when I was unruly and obnoxious and drunk and crazy. Moreover, she tolerated me —

67 something I’ve had trouble doing myself more times than once. Anyway, I got the notion of hitting the road to document about a dozen poets I knew, some for many years and some for a lesser time. Several of them, especially the ones I had known the longest and had met in the flesh, frequented Ron Androla’s online Pressure Press board, which gave birth to this volume. Androla, Bart Solarczyk, Cheryl Townsend, Mark Hartenbach, I had met all of them during two trips to Kent for Independence Day readings in 1999 and 2000. Carter Monroe I met online around the turn of the century and in the flesh when he came to visit me late in 2003. We had become close friends— something, Carter said, which would have been destined had neither of us ever written a word, for we had a lot of “Southern” in common. There were several involved in the project that I didn’t know personally. Tim Peeler was a guy I had heard of and read over the years, editor of Third Lung Review and a stalwart in the small press and friend of Monroe. Donnie “DB” Cox, a South Carolina musician and Vietnam vet, another of the group I’d shoot in Hickory, N.C., had blazed into the small press scene a couple or three years earlier and made his presence immediately known with fantastic poetry, some of which I had used in more recent issues of Thunder Sandwich. Robert Canipe was a Hickory resident, college instructor, and coauthor of a book of prose and essays with Monroe and Peeler, “Writers on the Storm.” John Korn was another contributor on the Pressure Press board that I didn’t know personally, a twentysomething guy from the Pittsburgh area and a friend of Solarczyk. It was generally agreed that Korn had all the

68 tools to become a significant voice in the small press world and perhaps beyond, advanced as he was at his young age. Last, but certainly not least on the itinerary, was t. kilgore splake, the graydancing sage of the Michigan Upper Peninsula. I had known splake for more than 20 years but had never met him, something I looked forward to with great zest. Unfortunately, that leg of the journey failed to transpire for reasons Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll note later, though I did get some self-shot material from splake for the video project. We left out of McKenzie early October 6, headed for the first stop in Hickory, about nine hours away. We? Yeah, I talked my girlfriend Debbie into accompanying me on the mad adventure. She wanted to go but, having experienced one of my alcohol-fueled meltdowns in recent weeks, worried that I might get out amongst the poets and go over the sauce edge. To assuage those fears, I promised to limit my drinking to three beers on any given day and to forego the hard stuff completely. That turned out to be a promise I failed to keep on a couple of occasions, going one over on the Straubs with Bart and Korn and more than that in Erie when Ron broke out the Mad Anthony ale. The latter resulted in a bit of a spat, but nothing of lasting significance. After an uneventful drive, during which Deb drove for about three hours between Nashville and Knoxville, we rolled into Hickory around 4:30 p.m. Carterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s directions to Comfort Suites was right on the note and while I was checking into the suite he had reserved, the old boy showed up in the lobby, having arrived himself a couple hours earlier. We settled in at the suite, then visited and shot the breeze before Peeler and Canipe showed up.

69 Talk of supper came up and, being hungry all around, we loaded up in Carter’s snazzy four-door pickup and headed for downtown Hickory to satiate our growling bellies. After the meal, we returned to the motel and shot video. Canipe read a hilarious short story, complete with dialect, which had us breaking up with laughter. Unfortunately, it ran about 25 minutes and thus was too long to use intact, though an excerpt will find its way into the finished product. Canipe had plans for the following day and wasn’t going to make it back, so his video was the main point of the evening, though I shot some general conversation. I normally sleep like a log in motels, especially following a drive such as the one I had endured that day, but that was not to be the case either night I spent in Hickory. The bed was excellent, but I tossed and turned all night. I arose early and drank up all of the coffee service provided with the room, before venturing outside and down a breezeway connecting the diverse sides of the building, where Carter’s room was just around a corner.

I was surprised to find that DB Cox had made the scene sometime during the early morning hours and had crashed in Carter’s room. Cox, a guitar player with his own band, had played a gig in South Carolina that Friday evening and had driven up to Hickory afterward without even packing a change of clothes. He reminded me of a much slimmer Charlie Daniels, with that great gray beard, but I daresay Daniels has a hell of a lot more wrinkles that Donnie. Debbie was amazed at how smooth his skin was,

70 “smooth as a baby’s ass” slick, especially so in light of the fact that he had once been a grunt in the jungles of Nam and had in recent years lived the relatively hard life of a bar band member. It must be all that good living, something I, with my multitude of wrinkles and defects, never managed to accomplish despite good intentions. I had one of my cameras with me, so I shot some video of Carter and Cox talking and reading. Both of them had a forthright reading style and the quality of their poetry added to the overall affect. And, another blessing, the wall heater didn’t seem to make as much noise as did the one in my room, something that marred much of the video shot there. Peeler came back to the motel that Saturday afternoon and we all gathered in my room for more talk and video. Deb went for a walk so we could do some “male bonding.” Unfortunately, much of the video shot that afternoon will not make its way into the finished product simply because of time constraints; however, the likelihood exists that I may also do a stand-alone “Hickory” version later that uses much of the video.

Things wound down by early evening and the guys decided to go to a Hooters a few yards from the motel for supper. I wasn’t hungry and didn’t go, however Carter decided to bring us back a big box of wings, which we devoured nonetheless. Both Peeler and Cox then left, the latter to drive back to South Carolina while Tim just had to travel somewhere across town. Deb and I said our

71 goodbyes and thanks to Carter that evening, as he planned to be up and on the road early Sunday.

It had been an excellent weekend; great poetry, grand friends and fine food and drinkâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the latter of which I had kept well under control. Moreover, I had managed to shed some of the darkness and gloom that had hung like a shroud over me in recent weeks. It was not gone for good (still isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t), but being busy and with such people had helped. Up early Sunday morning and with the car packed, we decided to take advantage of the free breakfast we had skipped the previous morning. I had gassed up the previous afternoon, so, with gas tank and bellies full, we set out for another near 500-mile run, this one north to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and the abode of Mike Boyle. Mike had written detailed directions to his place, all the way from Hickory. However, looking at my atlas the evening before, I had determined that I could take a westerly route and escape the horrors of the Washington, D.C. metro area and all that traffic. I decided to take I-77 to I-81 and go into Harrisburg that way, a route that took us through a tad of both West Virginia and Maryland in addition to Virginia. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t an optimum day for travel. A light mist of rain began almost immediately and we were in mountains most of the morning. Deb got nervous a time or two at my driving style on the steep and wet highway and, indeed, I

72 damned near scared myself a time or two entering curves a bit faster than was prudent. Finally, in early afternoon we got out of the rain and much of the mountainous terrain and sailed into Harrisburg late in the afternoon. Boyle lived in a row house on a very steeply inclined street. I topped the rise and spotted his house number on the left as I went down the hill, but went to the connecting street below to turn around and come back up his side. Curb parking was the order of the day and there was nothing close to his house, so I pulled to the curb several doors down. He was expecting us and answered the door immediately with a grin. Boyle played in bands in the Big Apple back in the eighties, but nowadays he makes his living in a print shop, while still keeping a hand in with the music. He was shorter than I was, stocky, and had the same kind of receding hairline Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been sporting for a number of years, something to do with the genetic jelly on both sides of the family. He was also very soft spoken. I liked the guy immediately. We had some beers and sandwiches. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a big fan of sandwiches and Mike had a ton of fixings, with good 12grain bread, Lebanese bologna, ham, cheeses, lettuce, and a bunch of other stuff. I polished off two big sandwiches and some brews without any problem at all. After we ate, I set up the camera gear to shoot his reading. Mike was a little camera shy to begin with, but I asked him a few questions on camera and he began to loosen up. Soon, he was reading his poems and doing a good job of it. One near the end, a poem about the death of his mother in a nursing home, had touched me deeply the first time I read it online, and my mother was still alive

73 at that point. It touched me to near tears as he read it that evening there in his living room and, I could hear in his voice, it still touched him too. Mike had joked when the trip came up that he didn’t have an extra bed, but that he could fix me a bedroll in a spare bedroom where he’d strung a clothesline. He did say he would make sure he didn’t have laundry hanging on the line. We found the pallet made up under the bare clothesline as stated, and it had some layers of padding under it. At my age, I figured I was going to be a total wreck come morning and wouldn’t sleep a wink; as I’ve stated, I slept very little the previous two nights in the comfortable motel bed. You can imagine how surprised I was when I went to sleep relatively easily and, though waking up a time or two during the night to change positions, awoke the next morning fairly refreshed and not nearly as stiff as I expected to be. We didn’t get in a big rush the next morning. Bart Solarczyk’s in McKnight, a suburb of Pittsburgh, was the next stop and Bart had said he would have to work until early afternoon that Monday. Checking the map, it appeared that the best route between Harrisburg and Solarczyk’s place north of Pittsburgh was the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a toll road. I had no idea what the charge might be, but decided that travel on the turnpike would be the easiest, quickest way to go. I had no idea that the eventual $12.50 toll would wind up being worth twice the price, if seeing beautiful scenery plays any part in one’s life. I’ve failed to mention that we were observing great changes in foliage color during the trip, beginning in the

74 higher altitude sections of eastern Tennessee and continuing on through North Carolina and Virginia. It was as if the fall palette shifted to ever more beautiful color the further north we traveled, the reds and golds becoming richer every few miles. Nothing we had seen before came close to matching the beautiful sights along the turnpike, from the colors to the quaint little towns nestling in valleys off the main road to the three amber-lit tunnels cutting through the bottom of the Allegheny Mountains. Seeing such beauty spread across the horizon was as close to a true spiritual experience as I have had in many a year. After exiting the big road at mid-afternoon, we eventually wound up on a winding, narrow back road in a rural area and found the street where Bart lived, pulling up to the crest of his driveway and down the steep slope in back, parking very near the sliding doors of his den and kick-back room in the basement. You hear many people described as being “gregarious” and probably many times that’s less than true. However, in Bart’s case, it’s on the note—which is good, as he’s big enough to do some serious damage were he the nasty type. He welcomed us in and directed us to a guest room on the second floor, where we stashed our stuff. His big dog, Otis (who recently died suddenly, much to the consternation of Bart and his wife, Tami) was like his master—big and friendly. His tail was wagging 90 miles an hour and he leapt back and forth, all excited about the invasion of strange company. We settled in and then went down to Bart’s basement study, a fine little room where Bart does his thing. He had a nice CD player rig and a rack that looked to hold several hundred music discs. And, perhaps more important, he had a refrigerator stocked with Straub’s beer, which Bart

75 claimed had great healing power; that could be true, because after a couple pulls on the neck of a cold one, I felt somewhat healed and restored myself, at least to a shadow of my former self, which is about the best I can muster nowadays.

Bart’s wife, Tami, whom I had previously met in Kent, arrived home later in the afternoon and she and Debbie got acquainted. Not long afterward, John Korn made the scene. He was lanky and bespectacled and sporting a scruffy beard, the perfect appearance of a young poet/artist. Korn seemed a bit shy at first, but after a beer or two, he loosened up. I couldn’t help but recall my twenties and the quality of poetry I wrote then and compare it to what Korn was doing at the same age. I did not fare well in comparison.

After dinner, we went back downstairs and I set up the cameras to shoot the video. As with most places in which I shot during the trip, the lighting wasn’t all that good, but I hoped to correct things somewhat during the editing process. It would later dawn on me that, should I undertake another video project in the future I would certainly buy a couple of portable lights. Bart is something of a master of the short poem, frequently packing into a few lines ideas that stab your brain (and sometimes your heart) like an ice pick. In his professional life, he deals with dysfunctional families and the effects of those dysfunctions on children and he many times brings these powerful images to his poetry. He read

76 a number of poems after detailing how he got involved in the small press about 20 years before. They all rang true. Obviously, by virtue of his youth, Korn has much less time on the scene. His poetry ranges from near straight narrative to lyrical to surreal and near gothic at times. One gets the idea that it’s the work of a talented young writer searching for a voice that will be his alone, identifiable above the multitudes generated by the Internet. I finally went upstairs to crash sometime between 11 and midnight. I had the best night’s sleep of the entire trip up to that point, awaking not once until daylight came slipping through the windows. Again, we got in no big rush that Tuesday morning, as Ron Androla’s in Erie was less than three hours away, all of it interstate highway. I’d known Ron Androla for about 22 years, since the inception of Thunder Sandwich in St. Louis late in ’83. Of the four print issues and 25 Internet offerings, there had never been one without some Androla poetry in it. We had gotten together twice in Kent and enjoyed ourselves greatly both times—especially in 1999, when we had graced Ray’s Place in Kent with our presence and drank as if it were going out of style. We also met Cait Collins and Michael McNeilley that year, both great poets now gone far too soon, MCN to a heart attack in 2000 and Cait to breast cancer five years later. Androla was a factory poet, despite his college experience; that changed only in recent months when a union strike resulted in him going to work behind a desk. Somewhat of a legend in the small press world, Ron had

77 the good fortune several years ago to reconnect with his college sweetheart, Ann, and they got together and married, the kind of serendipity seldom experienced in a world where happy-ever-after stories are rare at best. About 10 minutes or so out of Erie, I phoned Ron and told him where I was and that we would be there shortly. Following his directions proved to be no problem and soon I spotted the two-story house on Raspberry with the Jeep parked in the alley beside it. Three legs down and two to go and I had maintained the schedule Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d laid out before driving the first mile. I should have known my luck would not continue.

Ron met us at the side door, all smiles, and ushered us into his kitchen. He had put on a few pounds since last I saw him, but looked good with it. At first glance, it was easy to see that Ron and Ann had a nice pad. He noted that a room off the kitchen would be our sleeping quarters and we stashed our stuff there. Armed with a cup of coffee from the pot brewing on the kitchen countertop, I followed Ron upstairs to his den/computer room, which appeared to be a near perfect setup: good office chair before an L-shaped desk, computer, plenty of seating, books and a fine Filipski painting adorning the wall. While Ann was still at work, Ron had talked with her on the phone, asking her to stop by the beverage store and get some Mad Anthony ale. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a clue what that was, but I was about to become acquainted with old Tony. Needless to say, he and I hit it right off. Ann and Debbie wandered off to talk while Ron and I got into the newly delivered Insane Tony, and I set up the camera to get some initial Androla on tape, taping a long monologue

78 about how he got involved in the small press and some poetry reading. We were expecting two local poets Ron had invited over to meet me and to read, and eventually they showed up. There was Cee Williams, a black guy who looked to be in his thirties maybe, and Chuck Joy, a fellow who appeared to be about Ron’s age; I later read somewhere that Chuck was a child psychiatrist, but if anyone told me that at the time it didn’t register. I’d consumed several Mad Anthony’s at that point and probably quite a few things weren’t registering as they should. Debbie had noticed that as well and she was somewhat short of happy with me.

Williams and Joy didn’t read poetry, they recited it from memory, and very well at that. I could be way off base, but I got the definite impression that Williams didn’t like me much; maybe it was the Southern accent. I’ve run into that before, and I could be totally wrong about the impression too. He was a hell of a good reader, or reciter, I should say. Joy was good too, if somewhat more dramatic, almost verbally acting out the lines.

As it wound up, Ron had asked me to sign his copy of “Smoke & Thunder,” my poetry collection. After doing so, I apparently decided to do some reading myself. Thank God, the camera wasn’t rolling because I am not a good reader. As I recall, I read quite a few poems before the evening concluded. Ron and I had missed the supper Ann had prepared. I made do with a sandwich, then it was off to bed where Debbie and I bickered some before I fell into

79 an intoxicated stupor. I was angrier with myself than anything else for breaking my promise to her. Morning brought, besides a headache and a hangover, bad weather news. A front was moving across the upper Midwest, with rain moving into the Ohio/Pennsylvania area and blowing snow forecast for Michigan and the Upper Peninsula—or splake country. My itinerary called for me to go visit Cat Townsend in Stow, Ohio, a couple hours from Erie, that Wednesday after leaving Ron’s and then head straight for Calumet, Michigan, where splake was located, without an overnight stop in Ohio. I decided at that point to forego the trip to Michigan, as much as I had been anticipating finally meeting the old graybeard poet. I decided instead that, after winding up with Cat, I would head south to my sister’s home in West Chester and spend the night before returning home the next morning. We got in even less of a hurry that Wednesday morning because of the “short” drive (ha!) to Cat Townsend’s place. I broke out the camera again as Ron wanted to redo some of his reading from the previous evening and we shot a bunch more video. It was after the noon hour before we bid Ron a farewell and ventured once again off into the gloomy day, headed for Stow. We were in heavy rain shortly and I had the feeling the weather was going to continue downhill, which proved to be true. After close to four hours, we were somewhere in Cat’s general area, but having one hell of a time finding the correct turn to her street, with all the traffic and the vision problems caused by the rain. There were several cell phone calls back and forth between us and I finally discovered where I was missing the turn, and we soon found Cheryl’s house with the Jeep in the drive—yes,

80 another Jeep in the drive as with Ron’s. It was a little after four at that point and I got in a bit of a rush. Cheryl welcomed us in and offered me a drink, but with many miles to drive ahead of me (not to mention two DUI convictions hanging over me), I had to decline and go for a cup of hot coffee instead. She then showed us around her house, which was lovely. Down in the basement, she showed us the remains of Cat’s Impetuous Books, all the stock left from her former Kent bookstore. Believe me, there is a considerable bit of literature stashed at a place on Comanche Trail. I set up the best camera on a tripod and shot her reading several poems, after giving a brief description of her involvement in the small press. She did a great job, has a fine reading voice. Then, after only about an hour there, we were loading back up to hit the road again with darkness rapidly adding to the misery of the rain. I can’t see that well at night and, with the other problems, missed several crucial turns in our journey south that evening, though I always managed to find my way back without undue effort.

Near Columbus, we got into the big middle of a terrific thunderstorm, the wind almost buffeting the car off the highway. I spotted a huge wall cloud in the illumination provided by the lighting and told Debbie to break out the video camera in case we spotted a tornado. I’d taken a storm spotter course once and knew that the bubbleshaped domes hanging under cumulonimbus clouds were very frequently the harbinger of tornadoes. We didn’t see one, but I heard on television the next day that one was

81 spotted in the Columbus area at about the same time we passed through. We arrived at my sister’s late and spent two nights there. Friday morning, October 13, one week after beginning the journey, we left and arrived home around five that afternoon. That was about five months ago. I’m still working on the video and have it about half done, perhaps a bit more. Aside from the weather problems at the end and a bit of mechanical trouble in Harrisburg, it was a great experience getting to see old friends and meet some new ones. I’ll likely do it again, on my hundredth birthday. Don’t hold your breath.

82 Tom Blessing lives in Michigan.

she said she said: she said: i see a slow penis dancing with the lilies and the pony slithers across a dozen mantras of rhubarb the air is new desire has left the furniture my trombone snaps

losing the center i'm sitting in the library at ferris state my only access to the internet for awhile some girl is talking loudly on her cell phone and i know she got her medicine over the counter and someone doesn't understand what she is going through and her mother called and a boy called and she is doing her work now and i know i have lost my center i left it in the UP in the sunshine and now it is raining, drizzling

83 and he wants her to go to the party and maybe go to his place after and there are no cobble beaches here no rocky bluffs above the big lake no big lake with clear water all the water is gray green here and it is raining, raining, and the landlord makes promises day after day that never come true and the dogs keep looking at me like, okay, this was fun, so letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s go home, eh, like now, and they have fleas now, and she is going to go sit with him, not another guy and the only thing good about here is leona is here, but at work now teaching good catholic boys and girls science and math and stuff and my kids i taught last year are up there, maybe in school, maybe in jail, maybe on parole maybe pregnant, but i miss them nobody says 'fuck you' to leona nobody chases a teacher with an ice chopper, nobody rides their snowmobile to her school and there won't be much snow here and i will miss them and the snow and the huge poor rock pile from the mine that was always there when we went out for their smoke break and they don't give the kids cigarette breaks at the catholic school, they don't take them fishing or build sheds with them, let them DJ on the friday night radio show or

84 listen to rap or watch them smile when they realize they made it through a semester and passed every class and never got suspended and they found that adults can like them and let them shovel their roof and work on their car and treat them with respect, well at the catholic school they do treat them with respect but my center, my center is up there in the woods, at the cliff mine, at the shore of the big lake, at my studio in the vertin building, at the michigan house or slim's restaurant, talking with jikiwe, saying hi to splake and jack, waking up at 5 with billy plowing the driveway, taking the dogs out in the night while the snow falls in the street light, watching the ravens peck at the frozen carcass of a deer, talking about music and politics with my son, the center is gone, but only for awhile, i will survive and the bed certainly is warmer at night, and i have someone to cook dinner for, and to walk with, so, maybe there can be more than one center. maybe

she falls into the moon she falls into the moon late night at the kitchen table talking politics and poetry half a lime sits on the blue plate he squeezes the other half into

85 his beer and follows it with a drop or two of tabasco she watches her father's hands worn by years of work repairing cars at his shop he first read bukowski after he saw some movie he'd always thought poetry was what you read in school nothing to do with your life but buk opened a window and he climbed through mom never understood what he found in the poems never knew that what he'd found justified his life, said okay you're doing fine, yeah just fine they empty their glasses he closes his eyes and recites a poem it isn't one of buk's there are others he has read androla, chandler, monroe splake, moore, moffeit, townsend, lifshin,hartenbach a litany of names she'd never heard in her classes at university he places a book in front of her a long dead chinese poet a divine drunk like bukowski she opens to a well thumbed page as she reads she falls into the moon

86 last nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ramblings and revisions 1. joe buddha eats a chili dog enjoys it 2. bashkowski says: to know the beer one must go to the beer 3. she thinks the snow is beautiful stands barefoot on the frosty lawn takes two valium, sips wine remembers the blood and the poems and always his shadow on the bedroom wall 4. on the oarlock the dragonflyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wings reflect the sky 5. to my neighbor imagine my dog as a happy little pup

87 biting your balls 6. while writing in the new notebook a log truck rolls by 7. meditation on boston mountain, arkansas summer mist makes the hills seem distant hummingbird at the feeder appears/disappears we drink cream soda, enjoy the hickory smoke air hidden in the mist i'd like to think monks are chanting if i listen carefully i can hear them in the hum of passing cars looking out across the hazy valley i think of wang wei and his mountain home does the rising moon startle the birds here? do their cries echo in these hills? gray rainy clouds drift above us a groundhog family plays in the kudzu you tell me the hills are beautiful, but it is time to go cold fog parts for us as we walk to the car a startled crow rises from its armadillo lunch across the valley brief sunlight glints off a roof i hold your hand, warm your cold fingers, smile

88 Didi Menendez lives in the center of amerika. Deadly Serious The monks are dancing. The monks are lined up on stage. The monks are wearing Birkenstocks. The monks are lifting their legs a la can can. The monks are lip syncing West End Girls. The monks are shooting at us with their index fingers. The monks are twirling their beads around their necks. The monks are taking turns in the spotlight. The monks are pointing their bald spots to the lasers. The monks are lifting their skirts. The monks are showing their hairy legs. The monks have turned their butts to us. The monks are shaking their booties. The monks are doing the moon walk. The monks are putting their hands in their pockets. The monks are moving their hands around their crotches. The monks are bowing. The monks are celibate. The monks are winking at you. The monks are deadly serious.

Kennedy's Son Died I bought a bottle of cabernet sauvignon to share with my mother. When I get home, I offer her a glass. My mother asks if the bottle is from Spain. I say no: California.

89 No wait. This winery is in Washington, I tell her. We say cheers. I go to the sofa and turn on the news. My mother sits next to me and asks if the wine is from Spain. I say no it is from Washington. I start to flip channels as if I were a guy. She tells me that Kennedyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son died. Yes mother he died six years ago, I remind her. I did not know she says. Yes mother, you did know. No she says, he just died today. I saw it on the news. Mother he died six years ago. Then why did they put it in the news today? It must have been a documentary. Now why would they go and do that and confuse me. Is the wine from Spain? She questions me again. I flip the channel again. The weatherman is pointing to a circular colorful twirly radar. She says there are storms forming off the coast. I see that, I tell her. I flip the channel and there is a newscaster in New Orleans. He resembles a Kennedy. Did you know Kennedyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son died? Yes mother, I know.

90 Jack and the Mexican Woman (for jim christ) I woke up with Jack Kerouac and a tiny Mexican woman sleeping in my bed. The woman had a c-section scar and I wondered where her child was. I wondered why Jack was not concerned about the child when he fucked her. The smell of semen and an unwashed crotch was seeping through the blankets. I had to get away from them. I was menstruating and did not want to have any of this. The snow outside my window was melting. I could hear the cracks of ice breaking. The wood floors creaked when I walked barefoot to the bathroom. I heard Jack and the Mexican woman stir but they did not wake I wanted them to leave my bed. To go back to the Paris Review where I found them last. I sat at the edge of the bed and stared at the woman's scar. I stared at Jack's sunken eyes as he snored. I nudged the woman's toe to awaken her. Nada. Mira yo hablo espanol, I told her. No recognition on her part. Then I realized that she may not even speak Spanish. She may not even be Mexican. Maybe Jack had simply stereotyped her. I wanted to give her more depth. I wanted to give her a name. All I could think of was the name Maria. I would not stereotype her too.

91 I wanted her to be more than just some chick with a nice ass Jack picked up at a bus terminal. I wanted her to be more than just another woman that the famous Jack Kerouac fucked. I wanted to give her a poem of her own; Something conceived like the missing child. I wanted to turn her into a bird that could fly out of my bedroom or a mouse that would scurry up the walls and find a nest somewhere in my attic. I wanted to give her a reason to stay. I wanted to open her scar with kisses and fill her belly with my poems. I wanted her scar to bleed each night on my sheets with all the lost poems I ever wrote for you.

Sweeping The Floors There is some comfort in sweeping the floors, especially if it is raining, especially if there is a chicken roasting in the oven, especially if it is cold outside, especially if it is not cold outside and you are sweeping just water off the back porch after the dogs have been given a bath and the mango tree waits in sympathy for fruit to drop, especially since there have not been any mangoes since last spring, and as you sweep you sometimes hang on to the handle and stop to think, especially if you have just broken up with your lover and the silence of the bristles against the orange tiles is just as painful as if

92 you are sweeping with a broken finger or a sprained wrist, yet you continue to sweep until the memory is the dirt between the grout, especially if there you find a Charles Bukowski poem stuck in-between or better yet a John Korn poem basting, turning a golden brown, crunchy on the outside, yet tender inside, especially if by now your back porch is now swept clean and your floors mopped and your house smells of oregano and garlic, yes especially if your house smells of basil and sage and you have a straw broom to hang on to when you move up North, as if you were a witch riding across the moon.

Glenn Cooper lives in Australia. The Phony My uncle Lester plays the tough guy routine. Walks around like he’s king shit, cigarette dangling from his mouth, beer bottle permanently in hand. Pretends he’s joking when he says I’m a wimp for writing poetry and reading books. But I know he means it.

93 Says I need to toughen up, be more like John Wayne, whose stupid movies he never stops watching. But this guy doesn’t fool me. Beating your wife doesn’t make you tough and neither does drinking all day and night. And of course I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that John Wayne’s real name was Marion. “a patsy cline night” like Patsy Cline i am walking after midnight back home again after one of those stifling work-related dinners in a restaurant not of my choosing. sure, the food was okay and the conversation passable but it’s just not my thing sitting around trying to sound interested and interesting. so here i am walking home after midnight through the quiet streets, only the occasional barking dog interrupting the silence, the road ahead of me eerie and lonely like in a

94 dream when you set out on some vague expedition. when i get home i’m going to make hot coffee and pull out my Patsy Cline CDs until i find the one that has “Crazy” on it and press repeat until the memory of this night is slowly erased.

real men the men who’ve been coming to nino’s bookstore to install our new reverse-cycle air conditioner are real men: they wear ball caps, smell of cigarettes, swear like wharfies, traipse mud through the store without giving it a second thought. these men talk in deep baritones, play football on weekends, have compliant wives and girlfriends (usually pregnant) and are confident always in everything they do and say. they ooze testosterone. they are nothing like me. they are the men all young australian boys are taught to grow up to be. but you know what? they still can’t get the damn air conditioner to work.

95 feathers traveling to work on the bus this morning, I witnessed a small bird, perhaps a sparrow or starling, strike hard the windshield, leaving behind a trail of blood and guts. some of the passengers gasped and shrieked and others yet said “poor thing,” but all I could think of was the raymond carver story where the man who’s about to break up with his wife swerves in a fit of anger to deliberately hit and kill a pheasant. getting off the bus I turned discreetly to search the driver’s bloodshot eyes for traces of loss, for the tell-tale signs of female abandonment or infidelity, but saw only blankness staring back and a few sad feathers wafting down outside the window.

96 missing the sunshine as a little kid i always wanted a cubby-house of my own, or better still a tree house. but for whatever reason i never got one, and the best i did was the crawlspace under the house. there iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d sit, flashlight glowing between the dirt and spiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s webs, listening to the sound of my own breathing, happy to be alone but missing the sunshine.

CABIN Last night a storm blew in. Not having seen rain for quite a while, I went out onto the front porch to watch the show. Great blankets of cloud

97 wandering across the sky. The gutters overflowing. All that water reminding me again of how much I'd like to live near a lake or some slow, deep river. Just me, in a little log cabin, alone with a few books and some music. A little place where on wet days I could sit at the window and watch the rain streak the glass. Or else look out over the lake, thinking of other times, other places. My dog long dead, my family gone the same way. This is how I see myself as an old man. Soft and sentimental. The lake. The rain. Memories of a woman who said no. Everything moving towards its natural end.

hootenanny the other night i had this strange dream. in it i was walking along in the countryside when I came across these five crickets sitting around in a circle. except these crickets were man-sized, or

98 rather, dwarfsized, and each of them had an instrument – two of them had banjos, another one had a mandolin, others were playing fiddles and dobros. i sat down on the green grass and listened, and i’ll be a son of a bitch if these crickets weren’t playing some of the best bluegrass music i’d ever heard. one classic after another. it was a drag to wake up, turn on the tv and hear Eminem.

new ager she practiced the ancient art of feng shui on me,

99 moving me first from the bedroom to the living room, then finally out of the house altogether. she says this latest move has improved her spiritual well-being no end.

three waitresses 1. Rachel whose basic facial expression is one of perpetual disappointment: all hope drained. she runs the gamut of psychological hang-ups: insecurity, bitterness, jealousy, envy, resentment. everything is a disaster now or in waiting. you listen pain-

100 fully between slow sips of coffee. the details of her life infect you like a disease you should have known better than to catch. 2. Katherine who might have been very good looking a decade ago and in whose body still reside remnants of a potent sexuality. through doubleentendre we make fun of one another like two schoolkids who mask their mutual attraction behind jibe and insult. the two fried eggs she serves up in the middle of my plate hardly help matters.

101 3. Jacqui spills her words, the details of her love life, like so much coffee tumbling from a styrofoam cup. anyone whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll listen hears the sad song of her philandering boyfriend, her string of under-performing past lovers. yet itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never purely crass, verbal exhibitionism for the sake of it: you sense she really thinks people are interested; in some ways perhaps they are.

DESIRE She sat in front of me on the bus,

102 blonde hair smelling of cigarettes and shampoo. On my way to work, I was lonely and depressed, as always, wanting so much to reach out and run my hands through all that hair, to bury my face in it. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d almost forgotten what it was like to be so close to such beauty, to want and need so badly. And then the realization that desire never really leaves us, only hibernates, ready to

103 re-emerge at the first soft explosion of blonde hair you happen upon on a crowded bus at rush hour.

John Korn Interviews Glenn Cooper

What have you been currently reading? A lot of James Laughlin books. He's better known as the man who established and ran New Directions Paperbacks, but he's a fine poet in his own right. So I've been re-reading him.

What is the small press scene like in Australia? It doesn't exist as far as I can make out. Or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. I've never been published in Australia.

How did you find Ron's Pressure Press board? Gee, I really can't remember. Maybe it was via Bart? But then it makes me wonder how I'd have known Bart if not for Ron's board. So I really have no idea!

104 What was the first book of poetry you read? I couldn't possibly remember that. Probably something in school -- something terrible like an Australian rhyming "bush poet" like Henry Lawson or Banko Patterson.

When did you first start writing poetry? I recall writing songs in the late 80s, then I moved on to unpublishable novels and short stories, before arriving at poetry in around 2001. So, six years ago.

Have you ever written any stories or tried to write stories? See above! Mostly pale imitations of Raymond Carver and Albert Camus. I always tyrannize myself with the masters.

What was your first Dylan album, and how did you run across it? My brother used to have Blood On The Tracks, so I recall hearing that. Then I used to borrow tapes from the library, when I was in high school. But the first one I bought was Biograph, the box set, which, in hindsight, was a great place to start.

Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a Dylan fan, right? My first musical love was Neil Young, then I graduated to Bob Dylan. And he's remained an obsession ever since. He's probably the reason I write poetry.

Are there any Bigfoot sightings in Australia? I know there have to be many UFO sightings, right? in Australia I mean.

105 Our version of Big Foot is known as the "Yowi." There are still sightings from time to time. UFOs? Yep. Australia is somewhat of a UFO hotbed, probably because of the clear skies and wide open spaces. I'd love to see one; I'm a definite believer.

How many places have you been published in? Do you keep track anymore? I've lost track, but I know I'm approaching one hundred different magazines, 80% print, 20% online.

Who are some of your favorite dead poets? Rimbaud has obsessed me for a long, long time. James Laughlin. Ray Carver. Albert Huffstickler. There was a time when I read a lot of Bukowski. Some of the Chinese poets like Li Po. Some ancient Arabic poets from the 12th century.

Who are some of your favorite living poets? maybe talk about why... I'm bound to leave out someone I really love, but here goes. Michael Estabrook is a favourite; I like his sense of "familyâ&#x20AC;?; doesn't go the sex-drugs-and-hopelessness route like so many others. Henry Denander is another I greatly admire, for similar reasons to Estabrook. Mike Kriesel. Justin Barrett. Ronald Baatz is someone I've only just discovered, but I love his work; he's mastered both the short and long form poem. Todd Moore. Bart Solarcyzk. Locklin. Lifshin in small doses. Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal. Lots of others, too.

106

Joyce Chelmo lives in Minnesota. a dream we came under fire and when we ducked for cover you were at my side when the smoke cleared i found youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d disappeared i asked if anyone had seen you and a shadowed man opened a secret door you stood glowing like sunshine in a room the size of an elevator walls paneled with pale wood your face turned away from me as i reached for you you slipped behind another hidden panel i opened it quickly to a room just like the one before you stood there in monochromatic shades of beige your hair short bleached yellow blonde you turned to face me

107 with desperate steel blue eyes every other feature unrecognizable i let you go

Petersonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wilderness Cabin March is a fickle month, one day she teases us with spring, the next weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in a blizzard. Those little glimpses of spring make me long for the North woods where I was raised. Reminding me of ways we spent our summers. Three Peterson girls and me and my little sister. Five sprightly girls trekked a ragged path to a secluded tumble-down cabin on the edge of Boundary Waters. No electricity or indoor plumbing; dined by kerosene lantern on fried spam and toasted marshmallows. Water pumped by hand in a galvanized pail. Entertained by

108 skinny dipping as the sun set, chasing fireflies by moonlight, and ghost stories with flashlights under musty quilts. Come morning I would be found alone ... Seated on the end of the gray-wood dock, with dew-wet canvas shoes, watching a tangerine sunrise, listening to the first haunting loon call.

Luc Simonic lives in Colorado. shattered and pulverized i would take five barrels of this nasty dirty gook & pour it all out over your streets & onto your entryway as if i were desiring to pour out five hundred more over your head & would have had i done my push ups & my sit ups & drank my protein shakes + distanced myself properly from my foes

109

& it was as if i made continual enemies out of thin air on all the streets i walked & thresholds i crossed as if they were silver dollars from behind your ear on that dark sky day when you were eight. which is old enough to know better. it's plenty old enough! your skull is a french horn holding bothered silence at decibel levels beyond tolerable levels comparable to sounds like trains in canyons, truck's brakes gone up in smoke and shrill friction, or the hull blown clean off your submarine & you were at the other side, your ear drums shattered and pulverized. but who gives a shit about eardrums when your nuclear submarine explodes?

110 Ann Androla lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. FRUITCAKE, 1972 Even before he gave me a C for the second six weeks, I hated the new art teacher, hated his pointy wing-shaped collars and the way he tilted his head as he examined my work. His name was Mr. Sparks, which was unfortunate for him, considering his lisp. He stood at the sink, meticulously cleaning a paintbrush. I stared at the back of his head, wishing I had the nerve to throw a spitball. “Hey, Sparks,” Kenny called. “That’s Mister Sparks,” he never failed to answer, triggering snickers every time. “Come over here a minute.” Sparks sighed impatiently and dropped the brush into a coffee can. With quick, prissy steps he crossed the room to stand beside our table. “Yes?” He put his hands on his hips. “I can’t get this open.” Kenny handed him a small jar of green paint. “Can’t do my Christmas tree without it, man.” He smiled innocently. Sparks’ face turned pink as he strained to remove the lid. “Let me run some hot water over it,” he said.

111 As soon as the teacher’s back was turned, Kenny held up a tiny tube of glue for the rest of us to see, nodding in satisfaction. The whole class -- except Brenda, intent on her painting and unaware of the action – exploded in laughter. Catching on, Sparks banged the jar down on the counter. “This is school property.” He turned and glared at Kenny. “Are you prepared to pay for it?” “It was already like that, man, I swear.” “I am going to speak to the principal about this, and when I return, I will have his permission to send each and every one of you to his office for detention if this sort of thing persists.” Usually I tried not to make fun of the way he talked, but after that particular sentence it was impossible to contain myself. I roared along with the others, laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Sparks’ face was now bright red. “Brenda, you’re in charge. Take names.” He marched out of the room. Brenda looked up, nodded, and returned to her brush strokes. Roger sauntered over to our table and sat down. “Got some ‘shrooms, boys,” he said conspiratorially. Kenny swiveled his head around, looking over both shoulders. “You see any boys here?” he asked me. “I’m looking at one,” I replied, staring straight at Roger.

112 “Ha ha, very funny, dipshit. You interested or not?” “Better get back to your seat,” Brenda said. “I hear Mr. Sparks coming down the hall.” Roger’s jaw jutted forward. “I’ll kick his ass. That little faggot gave me an F.” “Yeah, he gave me a C,” I admitted. Kenny did a double take. “You?” he asked incredulously. “You’ve never even gotten a B.” “Ha ha.” Roger smirked. “How’s it feel, boy genius?” Both of them seemed to regard Sparks with new respect as he entered the room. “Back to your table,” he commanded, pointing an imperious finger. “Now.” Roger got up to go, and Kenny said softly, “We’re in.” “Not me,” I whispered. “I puked my guts out last time.” “You’re supposed to, asshole,” Kenny whispered back. “Boys,” Sparks warned, “no more talking. Get to work.” “I’ll get that little faggot,” I thought, surprising myself. That night my grandmother and Aunt Maureen came over to the house, as they did every December, to help my mother make fruitcakes. When I was a little kid I loved this yearly ritual, not only because it meant Christmas was just around the corner, but because they always let

113 me mix the gooey batter, studded with jewel-like bits of candied fruit, and they let me do it with my hands. “Too stiff for a spoon,” Gran observed as I plunged my well-scrubbed fingers into the sugary mess. “Who’s too stiff?” Aunt Maureen responded on cue. Mom and her sister clinked glasses. Whiskey sours were also an important part of the tradition. At this point, Gran and I normally exchanged glances of mock disgust, but that night I refused to look her way, unwilling to enter into the familiar spirit of the proceedings. I couldn’t help being angry at her, since she was the reason I had received the unprecedented C, and being angry at my beloved grandmother made me feel like shit. Four months earlier, after Grandad’s funeral, Gran decided to redecorate her kitchen. She enlisted me as her assistant, because according to her, I was the only person she knew who had both the artistic flair and the good taste required for the job. I may have been swayed by her flattery, but I really didn’t mind helping; in fact I enjoyed comparing paint swatches and leafing through the big binders of wallpaper samples, picking out new knobs to replace the old-fashioned handles on the drawers and cabinets, even shopping with her for curtains. Gran and I decided it was time for a radical change, and she agreed to trade in the outdated Colonial-style wallpaper for big Pop Art daisies in a bold combination of bright blue and lime green. Unfortunately, none of the stores in town carried curtains that went with the modern look. Opting for vinyl shades solved part of the problem, but the limited color choice -- white or beige – had us

114 stymied. “I’ll bet you can buy colored window shades somewhere,” I said, sitting at Gran’s kitchen table, wired on endless cups of strong coffee from the tall silver percolator. “I know what we’ll do,” she declared, placing her china cup back in its saucer, a bright red lipstick stain on its rim. “We’ll paint the shades to match the wallpaper.” She leaned back in her chair, triumphant. “We’ll take this,” she continued, tapping a cluster of stylized daisies on the wallpaper sample in front of her, “and enlarge it. Wouldn’t that work?” Theoretically it would work, I told her, but I wasn’t sure what kind of paint could withstand being repeatedly rolled and unrolled without cracking. She was the one who suggested asking my art teacher for advice on materials, as well as permission to work on the project in class. I finished the three shades, two for the windows facing the garden and one for the pane in the top half of the back door, in time for Thanksgiving dinner. The whole family congratulated me on the results, and I was pleased that I had done something nice for my grandmother while getting credit for it – pleased, that is, until the end of the grading period, when I saw that unfamiliar semicircular letter in the little box where the A was supposed to be. “I said you could do it. I didn’t guarantee you an A on it,” Sparks explained smugly when I confronted him after the bell rang, report card in hand. “It was unoriginal, not to mention kitschy.” That word – which I had seen in print but never actually heard anyone say – stung. I couldn’t stop thinking about

115 it as I sulkily squished nuts and candied fruit into the sugary mixture in my mother’s biggest stoneware bowl. Gran waved a hand at the cheerful yellow and white kitchen. “We should tackle this room next,” she said. Aunt Maureen lit another Salem and squinted through the smoke in front of her face. “Have you smoked grass yet?” she asked me, beginning to slur just a little. “No, ma’am,” I answered. It was a lie. Kenny and I had a standing order for Roger’s baggies of home-grown. “Well, I have,” she announced. “Oh, Reenie,” my mother breathed in a shocked tone. “Maureen,” my grandmother said ominously, her voice rising on the second syllable. It was at that moment, wrist-deep in sticky batter, that I got an idea. Ignoring the family fireworks beginning to go off behind me, I rinsed my fingers, called Kenny, and told him to bring over the stash of hallucinogenic mushrooms. I was willing to sacrifice my share for sweet revenge. By the time he arrived, the fruitcakes were cooling on the counter, and the women had adjourned to the living room. He watched skeptically as I chopped the reedy mushroom stems, added a drop of yellow food coloring to make them resemble bits of candied pineapple, and mixed them with some leftover batter. We baked it in a miniature loaf pan and decorated the finished product artistically with red and green maraschino cherry halves.

116 “Fruitcake,” Kenny chuckled. “Perfect.” The day before Christmas break I placed a small foilwrapped package on Sparks’ desk. “Why, thank you. I really didn’t ….” He smiled, showing his rabbit-like front teeth. “Happy holidays.” “Same to you, man,” I said. The next day as Kenny and I shared a joint in his basement rec room while his parents were at work, he mentioned the one-fruitcake theory. “What’s that?” I asked. “Nobody really likes fruitcake, but it’s a holiday custom, right? So people keep giving each other this one cake, the primordial fruitcake. It gets constantly passed around from one person to another.” He chuckled. Suddenly my blood ran cold. “We have to get it back,” I said. “We what?” “What you’re saying is that Sparks could give the fruitcake we made to somebody else, and some old lady or little kid could end up first puking their guts out and then tripping their brains out.” “Well … yeah.” “I never thought of that.” Jumping up, I grabbed my jacket. “You coming with me?”

117 “No, man,” he said. “Let it be.” My heart pounding with guilt and anxiety, I walked across town, located the address I’d found in the phone book, and rang the doorbell. The person who answered was tall and thin, with a brown ponytail and a purple apron. He regarded me curiously. “Is Mr. Sparks here?” I gasped, breathing hard. “No, I’m sorry. He’s out. ” “Does he still have the fruitcake?” “Oh, so you’re the one.” He smiled. “Come on in. I have something in the oven.” I stepped inside. Looking around, it dawned on me that Gran was wrong. I didn’t have good taste; I didn’t even know what good taste was. Whoever decorated this room knew, though. The tall man returned from the kitchen, where I was sure there were no blue and green daisies. “I’m Gary, by the way,” he said. “Randall won’t be back until later. Can I give him a message?” On the way over from Kenny’s house, I had tried to concoct an excuse for taking the fruitcake. Nothing sounded even remotely plausible, so I did what I had to do. I told the truth, shameful as it was. “Ah, the old electric fruitcake acid test.” Gary seemed to find my story amusing. “Sit down,” he said kindly, indicating a streamlined gray sofa behind which hung a

118 brightly colored abstract with the initials “R.S.” in the lower right corner. “He didn’t eat it yet, did he?” “No, he didn’t eat it. Just a second.” He left the room again and came back with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and the still-wrapped fruitcake. “Tell me something. Have you ever tried the stuff you put in here?” he asked. When I hesitated, he went on, “If you have, you should know that a man of knowledge would never do such a thing to another person, not even to one he considered a nemesis.” “You’ve read Castaneda?” I asked, astonished. “Yes.” He nodded. Our eyes met, and he held my gaze for several seconds as if daring me to look away. “And by the way, you’re right . Randall did set you up for that grade. He told me about it.” Gary shook his head ruefully. “A warrior?” I recognized the word Castaneda’s Yaqui shaman used to mean someone who strove for honor under all circumstances. “A warrior he isn’t. In fact, just between us, he’s a mean little queen. But even mean little queens need someone to love them." He handed me a cookie. “Tell me if these are any good. It’s a new recipe.” I took a bite and nodded enthusiastically. Gary pointed to the fruitcake. “Take it. I’ll tell him someone stopped by, and I needed a gift.”

119 I stood up. He extended his hand. “Merry Christmas,” he said. His handshake was strong. “Thanks. Same to you,” I replied. “Man.”

afternoon nap i don’t like to take naps...falling asleep is hard enough anyway, with thoughts chasing each other in my head like the tigers at the bottom of the tree who turned to butter they chased each other so fast...i hate first grade...it’s only october, and already i’m sick to my stomach every morning...i’m afraid of the walk to school, nine blocks from my house...there are dogs that follow me and they fight with each other...even when i get to school safely, the sick feeling doesn’t go away...tomorrow i have to do it again, and again and again for five days in a row until next weekend...and then there’s another thing that i don’t understand, but i know from the way everybody talked at the dinner table that it must be bad...about kennedy and missiles and the russians...and the bomb...that’s another reason i’m scared of going to school…we had our first civil defense drill on friday...i wanted to go home right after that, but i didn’t because if i went to the nurse and told her my stomach hurt and i needed to go home, she would have to call my grandfather, daddy hicks, to come get me since mom was home with my brother and baby sister and my dad had the car at work...so i stayed at school and all afternoon i thought about what the teacher said, that we would probably have to stay at school if there was an attack, because we wouldn’t have time to walk home...

120 ...nannie and daddy hicks live in a ranch house that is the most perfect place in the world...i spend the night here every friday night, and this weekend i got to stay saturday night...i always want to stay another night, but my mom doesn’t always say yes...this time she agreed without any argument, probably because she just came home from the hospital with my baby sister and didn’t want to hear me whine...staying another night means a whole afternoon to play in the worlds of nannie’s yard: the rock garden where i design fairy rooms, the patio where i make up games of skill like bouncing my ball against the brick wall of the house and catching it perfectly each time or else i have to start all over again, the blacktop driveway where i ride my bike, and the leaning pine tree that i walk up like a ramp...saturday night is when ginny and buck come over to play canasta, so i have the living room to myself for the evening, and i’m free to spread out barbie apartments on the wall-to-wall carpet while watching whatever i want on the big zenith tv...i’m allowed to stay up as long as my eyes stay open, wrapped in my favorite blue nylon comforter, watching a late movie...now it’s sunday and my whole family is here, which seems wrong somehow…i know it’s selfish to think that...sometimes i can’t help it, though, especially when my baby sister is crying and my brother is bothering me and my dad and daddy hicks are watching a football game on tv...i want to take out the special overnight bag i keep in nannie’s hall closet, which holds a brunette barbie and a freckle-faced midge with their wardrobe and accessories, but i don’t want my brother to watch me play...instead i escape to my grandparents’ bedroom, where i’m allowed to play with nannie’s jewelry if i’m careful...my brother won’t follow me because i said i was going to take a nap, and i know he’s not bored enough to do that...i close the bedroom door...

121 ...the afternoon sunlight is strange in here, filtered through the closed drapes, blue walls bleached to gray...as my eyes get used to the dimness, the room looks less like a black-and-white movie, but still not like it usually does...i decide to lie down for a few minutes so my brother, if he’s listening, will think i’m really napping...the bedspread is nubby under my cheek...i pull the top of it down so my face will be against the pillowcase, which has its own particular smell, especially on nannie’s side...some nights i crawl into bed with her the same way i do with my mom, but only after i watch chiller theatre on channel six, which i try not to do but sometimes i just have to...a few scenes scare me so much that i try not to think about them, only i have to keep thinking about them if i let them into my head...i can hear the tv through the bedroom door, voices of football announcers sounding like there’s a big emergency, with a crowd roaring in the background...i close my eyes, but the scenes start and there’s nothing i can do now...first the one from the drivein, a preview of a movie i’ve never seen but still it frightens me...village of the damned...i open my eyes wide, hoping that will stop the picture of the children, but it doesn’t...if i could see myself in the mirror of nannie’s dresser, the one that tilts when you loosen the big screws on its sides, i would look almost like one of those children, with my staring eyes and straight bangs...that’s not what scares me, though, it’s not that i’m afraid of being one of them...i’m afraid of being the one they‘re all coming toward, slowly...my hands are pressed together, palm to palm, squeezed tightly between my knees...it suddenly occurs to me to pray...that’s what they say praying is for, for help when you need it, someone to save you, like superman swooping down and lifting lois lane up into the sky and out of danger -- only i never really felt the need to do it before...people in the bible or in movies only do it when the situation seems completely hopeless...i hear the

122 doorknob turning quietly, then the bottom of the door brushing over the carpet...i know it’s alex, sneaking in to see if i’m really asleep...i’m lying on my side with my back to the door, facing the window...i hold very still, and even though he can’t see my face, i keep my eyes shut...after a few seconds, the door closes softly...he’s wondering why i’m doing this, since we’re both too old for naps, except when we’re sick... he doesn’t go to school yet and was surprised when i told him you have to take naps in first grade...we all have to lie down on our mats after lunch, but the teacher doesn’t want us to really go to sleep, just rest...i don’t want to waste the end of the weekend pretending to be asleep and thinking about school, but i really am tired...last night i stayed up late watching a scary movie, not chiller theatre which is on saturday afternoon, but a special halloween late movie on channel twelve...it was the bride of frankenstein...lots of things to be scared of in that movie, mostly the scientist with the pointy nose...he was the one who forced the other scientist, henry, to make a new monster...henry didn’t want to, he knew it was wrong because he made the first frankenstein, but the other man had a crazy look in his eyes and you could tell he didn’t have any conscience...that’s what nannie told me when we were whispering in bed because daddy hicks was already asleep...and that’s what somebody said about khrushchev when we were eating supper...we had mashed potatoes and they said he was stubborn and he didn’t have a conscience... ...this morning i watched tv...i watch all my favorite cartoons on saturday, and on sunday, the different ones like crusader rabbit...now i have to watch religious shows if i don’t go to sunday school because in first grade we have bible class once a week, with a special guest teacher, and we each got a sheet of paper with a purple

123 outline of a stained-glass window that has a section for each sunday of the school year...if you go to church or sunday school,or if you have a good reason to stay home but you watch a religious program, you can color the piece for that sunday any color you want...if you don’t, you have to be honest about it and color it black...so far i have all bright colors...i watched two shows because i wasn’t sure if the first one counted...the second show was just like being in church, but it wasn’t the same one i go to...the first show worried me...it was supposed to be religious but it was more like the shows my parents watch after i go to bed, the ones i listen to from upstairs...it was about a man who was being brainwashed, and i don’t know what that means...my dad said the people in russia are all brainwashed...it might be like having no conscience, like the way those children look in the village...i’m starting to feel really scared, like i’m in a movie...suddenly the sun disappears behind the drapes, the room feels colder and the window makes a rattling noise...i want to go out to the kitchen to be with my mom and nannie and my baby sister...i even want to see my brother...but i’m afraid to move...i pray again, but this time it’s not to god, it’s to my nannie -- please come and get me...in less than a minute, she is coming into the bedroom, saying my name in her soft voice...she puts her hand on my forehead and holds it there tight, to see if i have a temperature...her hands are smooth, like all her skin, especially her face...she uses a special lotion called moon drops...it’s like i’m released from an evil spell, and i sit up to hug her, feel her cool cheek next to mine...

124

Bud Backen lives in Duluth, Minnesota. fish tail biggest fish i ever caught was w/a piece of pepperoni tried to jump in our boat swallow the both of us whole but my brother acted fast saved us w/his illegal switch blade he wasn't supposed to have cause it was forbidden to be a knife-toting killer at the age of twelve but that didn't stop him cause he had an agenda purpose mission to protect his little brother from every sort of danger be it big kids from chester creek who were always lurking & stealing our bikes & threatening to stomp our heads to giant fish in grandpa's lake that were way too big for two boys in a rowboat to possibly deal with later i told our fish story at supper & they took his switchblade away & that was the end just like that my brother cut the line between me & him under his breath & we never went fishing again & for all he cared i cld go ahead & get my head stomped in

125

never never done a whore so thought i'd try suzy labudda who wasn't a real prostitute but heard she'd pull it for a carton of kents or a six-pack so i brought over both figuring maybe i'd get more than a hand job and sure enuf she was willing to go all the way but first i'd have to make a run for a bag a dope so i took a bus to mick-town to find jimmy fozner but he was out so was billy the philly hiked back emptyhanded what i got was a palm of brassiere couple a fingers smelling like arse & limburger & a bad case of lovesick

126

the wind is off the laundromat tonight the sweet perfume of cling-free wafts in the bedroom window after eating an entire pizza at midnight i'm up for the duration lest i fall into a nightmarish swoon fueled by protein too many carbohydrates & salt the silence of the night is a paragon of peace & security even though i know twenty thousand miles to the southeast entire neighborhoods are being eviscerated by phosphorus & cluster bombs bought & paid for by everyone around me including mr.sheldon who lives down the block & drives the biggest pickup truck ever made & must be pretty loaded cause filling up both his tanks must cost at least a hundred bucks & he deserves it cause he doesn't even recycle & in my book that's unforgivable

deathism hope death brings clarity returns lust

127 spins imaginings hope it don't require work taxes monthly payments trade-offs sacrifice ambition hope it gets my attention earns my respect wins my favor hope it isn't just another distraction shameful disappointment rip-off lunacy kind of joke like everything else i noticed around here hope death is real eternally speaking

128

heaven called me up last night mama was no more than 19 waiting on a beach where the sand was colored coral water azure & clear as her eyes we was swimming home from island to island it wld be lunchtime soon a fishing boat drifted by scooping snow-white clams w/a single net a pool of minnows washed my thighs mama led the way northwest as i recalled the coast of my childhood even tho gravity pulled me & woke me twice to look at the clock & worry about work i slid right back to paradise to swim a bit further it was all too familiar like heaven is as much home as you can ever fathom but all too new & fresh & lunch will be anytime soon you feel like drifting in

129 Mike Boyle lives in the middle of Pennsylvania. It was Dave Christy. I sent him some poems and a letter after being out of the writing game for some years what with job shit and life shit. He wrote back what he sometimes said, that he was gonna hang on to them which might mean they’d see print and might not. Whatever, I liked Dave; his Alpha Beat Press had published some of my stuff over the years and we’d corresponded. He said it was good to hear from me again and that all the zines were going online now. I’d been online since ’97 but never looked. I started looking around and found a few places but they weren’t my people. I found Cat’s Impetus and sent her some poems that she rejected. I kept sending her stuff that she continued to reject but she said, keep sending and I’ll keep reading. No, she was right, I wasn’t getting it. I was trying to write THE POEM instead of being myself. Then Alpha Beat’s Cokefishing broadside came in the mail with one of my rambling story poems in it that I didn’t think much of. WTF? I thought. I dug out some old contributor’s copies and searched some names. Ron Androla, funny name, like android or something. I’d seen this guy’s work in many zines and liked it and here before me in Bouillabaisse #5 his extract from Reticulated Days. I did a search on his name and came up with some hits, some interview where he was rambling on about writing as an immediate thing and there was a link to his Pressure Press board. I went in there and looked. I swilled down my beer and got another. WTF was wrong with these people, why did they feel the need to post such mundane garbage of everyday life and call it a poem? Why did it seem so right? I posted a hello and maybe posted a dumb poem, I

130 forget. I was in hell, doing a 2 till midnight shift running some fucked up web press that I went back to. People like me weren’t writers; we were stomped out of existence in the new world order. They found us with needles in our arms in some ghetto apartment or eating the gun in some trailer park or just plain murdered in some drunken bar fight. It was February, 2004. I went back the next day to see a reply from Ron who said post some poems. I did. And they were my people. -- Mike Boyle, 3/16/07 Sometime during nihilism Talwin came in pill form and gave a junk high comparable to morphine. The best thing to do with it was put a bunch of pills in water and let it sit overnight. Yeah, right. Usually that didn’t happen. Usually you just crushed them in a spoon and added water, cotton and sucked up the juice into your syringe. But I had happened onto a small supply of morphine so I put the pills in a film vial of water and hid them in my rehearsal room, let them sit. The girl I lived with had no idea I was fucking with junk again. I had the morphine bottles hid with my syringe at our apartment. Morphine was a quick fix. No emptying out bags and cooking it, just put the needle in and draw it out. I could do two good shots in the time it took to take a piss. I had it all planned out. I’d do the morphine and then dry out for a few days as we had an engagement party to go to the next weekend. It didn’t work out like that. As soon as I ran out of morphine I dug out the talwin. It had really ripened.

131 We rented a basement from some doctor in the suburbs to practice in. The doctor’s office was upstairs and we could use it anytime after 5 and all weekend. It was a sweet deal; there was a parking lot out back and the rent was cheap. There was a toilet and sink down there, even a shower. Somebody had given us a couch, some chairs and tables. We had all our gear at one end where we would play and the lounging area at the other. The doctor had no idea the huge parties we threw some weekends. Kegs and hundreds of people. Parking lot filled and overflow parking on the street. That night there was no party. It was another weekday night and we ran through some songs. I wanted to keep the talwin juice to myself but couldn’t hold out. “Let’s take a break,” I said after a half hour of playing. I had a bit of a chill. Withdrawal. Mike, the bass player, said, “Awww, come on man. We’re just getting warmed up.” “Yeah, Tony,” Lonnie, the drummer, said. We were a three piece. A power trio. We had a couple of gigs coming up next month but were basically ready. Just had to work out some arrangements to a few new songs. I ignored them and took off my guitar, walked over to the corner where I had the talwin juice hidden. They stayed on the “stage” and fucked around with some rhythms for one of our new songs. “No. The accent is on this,” Mike said as he played a note. “This note,” he said. Lonnie started the verse again and Mike fell in. “Yeah, man!” Mike said. “Great!” They never ceased to amaze me. I would bring songs and they would make them way better than I ever heard them in my head with their arrangements. We all wrote songs and they told me the same thing. That they had quit trying to make up guitar parts because what I came up with was always better.

132 “That sounds great!” I said from the other side of the room. “What the hell are you doing over there?” Mike asked. “Oh, I got something,” I said. I got the fit from my jacket pocket and sat down on the couch, drew up a shot from the top of the juice. I’ll be damned, I thought. It really did separate. The juice at the top was really yellow and underneath was just water. I tapped the bubbles out of it and shot it. Oh, yes. It was good. Way better than crushing the pills into a spoon. They came over and I had to share. “What you got Tony?” Mike asked. “Talwin. Want some?” “Yeah,” they both said. I went to the sink and cleaned the blood out of my works and handed them to Mike. He grabbed the bottle and looked at it. “Don’t shake it man. The good juice is on the top,” I told him. “Hell. We always just crushed them.” “That’s no good. This is better. Believe me.” “No cotton?” “Naw, man. Just draw up a shot from the top.” “Where’d you get this stuff and hear of doing it like this?” Lonnie asked. “You know that Cindy girl?” “The one that follows us around? The slut?” Lonnie asked. “Yeah. She gave me a handful last Friday after our gig at Little Joe’s.” Mike did a full shot and sat back on the couch. “Oh, yeah. It is way better like this,” he said and then got up and cleaned out the works, handed them to Lonnie, sat back down. “Whew,” he said. “Don’t do a full shot, Lonnie.” “Where’d she get the stuff?” Mike asked me as Lonnie drew up half a shot.

133 “She didn’t say. Just gave me a handful,” I told him. “So that’s what you were doing talking to her in the corner Friday night,” Mike said. “Wendy was sitting with us, asking what you were doing with that slut. She looked pissed.” Lonnie did his half-shot and sat back on the couch. “Man,” he said. “That’s good shit.” I had walked by Cindy that night on my way to the men’s room and noticed she was crying. Some other band followed us and we were staying to see them instead of the usual break everything down and take it back to our room as soon as we were done. I sat down across from her in the booth after pissing, asked her if she was all right. “No. I’m not all right, Tony,” she said. “Where’s your boyfriends?” I asked. “Ahh, they’ve gone off somewhere. I don’t know. Are you really gonna marry that bitch?” “Maybe,” I told her. “She’s been showing off the ring you gave her, you know.” Yeah, I knew. She had changed. There was happiness there, sure. She was really happy when I proposed. It was nice. It made me happy seeing her happy. But there was something else there too. The only word I could use to describe it was arrogance. You never think people will change like that. “That’s neither here or there,” I told her. “What’s been going on with you? You come to all our gigs and parties and now I see you here crying.” She told me she had cancer of the uterus. I didn’t know what to say. What do you say? She was around the same age as me, 25. “Oh, god Tony. Don’t look at me like that. The doctors said I have a really good chance of beating it. For Christ sakes, don’t tell anyone. I’m just telling you cause you asked.”

134 I looked over at the table across the room where my Wendy sat with Mike and Donna, Lonnie’s girlfriend. Wendy sent hate-beams at me. I looked away, back at Cindy. She wiped the tears away with her sleeve. “She’s got you pussy-whipped man. You come on all tough; play and sing like a demon, but I know,” she said. “What?” “Hell. All the girls know. It’s a big act. That’s okay. I love you guys’ music. To be honest, I think it’s admirable that you stick with one woman. But I don’t think she’s the one for you.” That’s the same kind of garbage Mike had been telling me. At first, I thought they were wrong. Lately, I wasn’t so sure. The only thing I really knew was that only real friends would throw something like that at you. I looked back at Wendy and she was talking to Donna. Cindy laughed at me. “You should see the look on your face, Tony, ahaha! Quit looking over at her. You want a beer? Yeah. You want one. You sit, I’ll get.” She didn’t give me a chance to reply. I looked back over at the table where Mike, Lonnie, Wendy and Donna sat. They were drinking and laughing. I looked at the band playing. My old friend Brian’s band. Brian was going into another long guitar solo and some people were dancing. Brian could drag out that Bowie song, The Jean Genie, for a half hour with his solos. Ridiculous. Cindy came back and gave me a bottle of beer. We toasted to something. She smiled. “You junkie motherfucker,” she said. “What?” “Don’t pretend you don’t remember last month at Jake’s place. I blew Jake for a few Dilaudid. You watched after doing your shot.” She wanted me to fuck her as she blew Jake. I said no. “I left,” I told her.

135 “You watched though. Did you go home and fuck Wendy?” “No. We had dinner and watched TV.” “Ha! Big rock star! You funny man. Listen, take these,” she said and handed me a bunch of pills. Then she told me about the cold soak method. Then she gave me her number. “We’ll get together. I’ll show you pussy-whipped and we’ll do shots. I have a script for these things.” I put the pills and her number in my pocket. Then I leaned across the table and kissed her. “Thanks,” I said, leaning back in my seat. “Like I said, I have more pills.” “No. Yeah. I mean, thanks for the pills but thanks for speaking your mind. I like that.” She took my hands in hers and looked in my eyes. I looked back. There was something there. We finished our beers and she said she was leaving, that she couldn’t stand my friend’s band. I stood up and told her I’d call next week or something. “Walk me to my car?” “No. That probably wouldn’t be a good idea.” “No. It wouldn’t be proper, would it?” She traced her finger down my chest and stopped at my belt, laughed and walked out. It was a good walk. I looked around the room and noticed half the guys in the place watching also. I went back to my place with my friends and soon-to-be wife. “Did I see you kiss that bitch?” Wendy asked. “No,” I told her. We went back to playing after the shots. Played for 2 more hours, working out 2 new songs as well as running through a set of others. It was Tuesday night and we were scheduled to practice Thursday and Friday night also. “You gonna save us some shots for next practice?” Mike asked as we were leaving.

136 “There still seems to be a lot there. I put in 20 pills. Yeah,” I told him. “Cool,” he said. “Yeah. Very cool,” Lonnie said. They had no idea I had been fucking with junk again either. Probably thought it was just this short binge, these pills. Mike and I had been through a junkie period a couple of years before and then straightened up. I acted like I was locking the door as they drove off. They both honked and waved and I waved back. Then I went back inside, did another shot and put the vial back in the cabinet. I locked the door and went to my car, started it and drove out of the parking lot, down the street. Then I turned around and drove back, got the bottle and the works. By Friday night, there was little left. There had been the chill Wednesday morning and I did a shot before work, something I had never done. It had continued through the rest of the week. I gave those guys the rest after doing 3 shots before practice. They said it was pretty weak and I took the bottle and poured the rest down the sink. “It’s just water now,” I told them. Saturday, I woke up with the chill. I had lost count of the shots and both my arms were bruised and filled with little holes. It was a good thing it was winter and I could hide it with long-sleeved shirts. After feeding the cats I drove my fiancée to the engagement party her parents were having for us. It was like 30 miles away, out in the country, nice house. I kissed her stepmom and shook her father’s hand at the door. They had a grand feast prepared, wine, roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans and corn. There were muffins, pie and ice cream for desert. The talk rolled on. “Have you set a date? This is so exciting. I’m so glad my daughter found a good man.” “We haven’t set a date yet,” Wendy said and looked at me. “Can I have more wine?” I said.

137 “Yes. Surely,” her stepmother said. “I’ll get it. You sit,” I told her. “Oh, fine. Such a gentleman. It’s in the fridge.” I went out into the kitchen and looked in the fridge. Wendy yelled, “Bring the bottle!” and I heard some laughter. I was hurting. Grabbed the bottle and was about to walk back out when I saw something else in there. A bottle of paregoric with the stepmom’s name on it. Ahh, I thought. She’s a chronic shitter. Figures. Skinny bitch. I swilled down half the bottle. Paregoric was mostly prescribed to people with diarrhea. It was a way better junk kick than talwin but tasted really bad. It’s funny how I knew about all these drugs but didn’t know anything about love. I took the wine back out into the dining room and ceremoniously poured Wendy a glass. Her stepmom and father wanted more too so I poured for them also. Her dad made a toast and we all smiled and drank. It was horrible. I knew by then I would never marry this woman. Then they gave us some presents. Wendy opened them while I sat there. The junk kicking in from the paregoric. I started feeling really good. Then thought, maybe I shouldn’t have drank half the bottle. The shitter started clearing the table and I said I’d help. We took dishes out into the kitchen and she gave me a long look, sighed. Then she did the same thing Cindy had done the other night. Ran her finger down my chest and stopped at my Budweiser belt buckle. She pulled at my buckle a bit and giggled, put a finger over her mouth. “Jesus, Janis. Frank and Wendy are right in the other room,” I whispered. “It’s delicious, isn’t it?” “What?” “You’re a really good kisser,” she said and then laid a kiss on me. Her tongue darted around inside my mouth. Then I remembered kissing her on the neck a few months earlier when I was drunk at some dinner party. It was a foggy

138 memory but I think I had my hand on her ass, that I grabbed it good and pulled her crotch onto mine and ground a bit. Oh. I did the same thing again. My dick started getting hard. It was stupid, ridiculous. She moaned a bit as we wrestled tongues. She ground herself on my leg. “All in the family. Right?” she asked me. “Sure, Janis.” She backed off and laughed, yelled into the other room, “Oh, your son-in-law is such a hoot, Frank!” “What are you two doing out there?” Frank yelled back. “Yeah. He’s my man, Janis,” Wendy said and then laughed. Me and Janis went and cleared the rest of the table off. “Tony said he’s going to help me with the dishes,” Janis told them. “I did?” Frank said it looked like I was drafted and there was some more laughter. Wendy laughed loudest. Janis insisted everyone drink more wine and opened another bottle, filled up everyone’s glasses. “Janis?” Frank said and gave her a look. “Oh, don’t worry, Frank. It’s just for this night,” she insisted. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Frank said it was surely wonderful and I went back out into the kitchen with Janis. I could hear Wendy telling her dad that I had a record out that was being played on the radio across the USA. “Is that true?” Janis asked. “Yes.” “I’ll wash, you dry.” “All right,” I told her. She started washing dishes and I stood behind her, feeling her ass. I reached around and felt her tits a bit then started tracing my hands down her belly. “I’m gonna fuck you raw someday,” she whispered over

139 her shoulder. I sucked at her neck. I wanted to leave a good suck mark for some reason. She batted me away. “All right,” she said. “Cut it out. Dry the dishes.” She handed me a plate and I put it back in the water, told her I had to go to the bathroom. I opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and looked. Mucho pills. Pills upon pills. Bottles and bottles. I rooted around a bit. Found valium. Thought about it and put the bottle back. Then, there it was. Percodan! Wonder of wonders. I took a few out and put them in my pocket, then took a piss. Then I emptied the rest of the bottle in my hand and counted them. 30. Mmmm, yes. I put them in my pocket and put the bottle back, went back out and dried the dishes with the junkie shitter. By the end of the evening I had somehow also weaseled the rest of the bottle of paregoric into my coat. Wendy took the presents to the car and I shook Frank’s hand. Wendy waved, said, “Thanks, dad! See you, Janis!” They waved back and Janis got me in a lip lock again when I kissed her goodbye. “Janis!” Frank yelled at her. “Oh. I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry about that, Tony,” he told me. “She gets like that when she drinks.” “That’s all right, Frank,” I said and then the door slammed behind me as I walked down to the car. I heard some yelling. Wendy didn’t see anything. She was already passed out in the passenger seat. She got like that when she drank. It was cold out but I rolled down my window and howled as I drove down the country roads back home. “Wendy! We’re gonna get married!” I yelled. Nothing. Dead to the world asleep. I had to carry her up 3 floors when we got back to the city. Back to the slum apartment we lived in. I

140 threw her on the bed, thought of ripping off her clothes and fucking her but just for a second. No. I went out into the living room and turned on our little black and white TV. We didn’t have cable and there was three and a half channels of nothing. I smoked a little weed and drank the rest of the bottle of paregoric. Then I hid the Percodan deep in a dresser drawer. Then I went back out and played my acoustic guitar a bit, looking at the snow I had dialed in on the TV. Our cats sat there looking at me. A week went by before I was done with the pills. I had expected a call about the missing drugs at her father’s place but there was none that I heard of. The shitter probably just chalked it up as a loss and didn’t say anything to Frank. She probably had a new script by then. I thought of fucking her. I went out on deliveries one day at my job and stopped in at Dave’s place. He had $50 bags. I did one and saved one. Then I delivered printed forms to the state capitol and other places downtown. I was still thinking of fucking Janis. It was stupid. I couldn’t get around it. I thought of fucking other women but never once thought of fucking Wendy who I had promised to marry. Weeks went by. I went through withdrawal. There was cats the girl and the couch. I somehow never missed a day at work or practice. Then we had a gig and Cindy was there. She said she had Dilaudid. I walked her to her car that night and kissed her. Then I told her to wait and went back in to tell Wendy I was leaving her. She was sitting with some guy that had been hanging around our gigs who I thought came to see us. “Tony?” she said. “Uh-huh.” “This is Greg.” “Hiya,” Greg said.

141 “I hope you and your slut have someplace to go tonight,” she said, really calm-like. “Yeah. You bastard,” Greg said.

Chasing the dragon There’s a concrete island, a triangle really, that sits between 1st Avenue, 1st Street and Houston Street called Peretz Square. There wasn’t room to put much of anything there but there are some park benches. I sometimes imagined it being a ship at dock, rolling slightly in the wash of the Houston traffic. By the time I started venturing over to Peretz Sq I was in the twilight of my messenger career as well as my city life. What led me there was need. Candy woke me up that morning, told me I was out. “Really out, man,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I could wake you.” I sat up on the sleeping bag I had spread on the floor for us. It was the third floor of the music building on 8th Avenue between 38th and 39th Street. It was my band Trouser Trout’s rehearsal room in a building of rehearsal rooms, 12 floors of them. It was where I lived. And I had had that dream again. The one in the mountains with the stream flowing by and the dogs chasing me. I had laid down in the stream and submerged myself. “Candy?” “Tony?” “Yes. Have you been up?” “Yeah. For a while. I got you coffee.” She handed it to me and I laid back on my pillow that was propped up against the couch. Sipped it. “How many bags did you do yesterday?” she asked.

142 “Uh, 6 maybe,” I told her. A flat-out lie. I had done 10 at least. “Six? Man, you gotta cut back. I’m strung out and only did 4.” I thought about it. 12. I did 12. She was strung out. “We never fuck anymore,” she said. “You get laid plenty,” I told her. “Stop it.” “Ahh, hell, Tony. That’s just work. You gonna be okay? I have to leave.” “Yes. I’ll be all right. You come back tonight?” “Yes, honey. I’ll be here around 11,” she said, kissed me and left. She hadn’t gotten to the wake-up shot stage yet and I wasn’t about to tell her I was there and beyond. And I had fucked up. Done the last of my stash the night before. Pretty soon… I had to find something before I started my day as a messenger. I looked at the clock. Almost noon. I pulled on some clothes and went into the bathroom down the hall which was just a sink and a toilet. Something came out of me. I must have eaten something yesterday but didn’t remember what. I brushed my teeth and hit the street. I had $50 so I took a cab downtown. Needed to get some dope but all my connections on the east side wouldn’t open till later in the afternoon. I looked around anyway. Went to Super-D at Avenue A between 13th and 14th. Nobody there. Went to 12th Street. Nada. Went down to 2nd Street. Again, nothing. I knew I could probably get something on Avenue D but wanted to avoid that, if possible. Not too many white people went there and when they did, it was obvious. I had gotten the shakedown there by some undercover cops a month before after leaving a dope house. Lucky for me, I had seen them outside in their car before I went into the house. They were sitting there, reading newspapers. Uh-huh. Just like in the movies. I snorted the bag in the lobby and when they tried to bust me, had nothing.

143 Walking back up to 12th Street I ran into another hardcore I knew from the copping game. “Tony. Anything happening down there?” he asked. “No. Nothing, Rob.” “You try Super-D?” “Nothing up there either,” I told him. “Apple might be open.” “Where’s that?” “Down on Rivington.” “Man. I never been down there. You know them?” I told him I did although I only copped there twice before. We walked over. I saw the junkie that introduced me to Apple on Peretz Sq and asked him about it. “Who’s this?” he asked about Rob. “This is Rob, Skipper,” I told him. “He’s cool.” “Man, why you call me Skipper?” he asked. “My name’s Tom.” Tom looked like the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island but with a beard and much more disheveled. And he was always hanging out at Peretz Sq. I didn’t want to get into the boat analogy with him. “All right, Tom. Anything happening? Apple open?” I avoided going down there to cop because the Skipper always charged for being a scout. “Apple went belly-up. But I know something better. 7th Power.” “7th Power?” “It’ll cost you.” “So I figured. Where’s Pig-pen?” “Steve disappeared. Nobody knows.” It was like this on the streets. People just disappeared. Pig-pen looked like he was about to dissolve at any given moment the last time I talked to him. Everybody called him Pig-pen because his clothes were always dirty and his skin was turning gray from long-term heroin abuse. Pigpen was the worst junkie I had ever seen – he was literally

144 dusty as if gray dust was falling off his skin and slowly stripping him to the bone. But he knew where to cop early in the day which meant something. Any junkie could cop late afternoon and evening. Pig-pen was another legend that got swallowed by the streets. I told myself it wouldn’t happen to me, there was a tunnel. The light at the end was fading, probably gone but there was still a tunnel. The Skipper took us over to 7th Power. We both had to give him 5 for the connection. Rob took off and I walked back uptown with 3 bags, snorted 2 on the way. The Skipper probably shot his on Peretz Sq as I had seen him do many times. That night after work we had band practice. I had run all over the island of Manhattan again that day, pocketing money. I had run downtown to get 8 more bags as the sun was setting at Super-D. I had done deliveries to models, Wall Street workers, artists, gangsters and regular folks. Again, I was in the shops and apartments of Manhattan with the streets and everything else running through my blood. The so-called streetwise rock&roller asked me about the streets. The uptown art magazine editor asked me about the art scene downtown. The Fashion Avenue executive asked me about fashion. The soap opera actress didn’t ask anything. The writer asked me about my job and said he could write a great book about it, would give me co-writer credits. No, no, no…. nonono. Thanks. “You have our number,” I told them. Candy showed up just as Trouser Trout was getting started. We had a new guitar player and a new drummer. It was Nick’s band now, mostly. Nick played bass and I played guitar and sang. It was still mostly my songs but I didn’t care anymore. Musicians were idiots. All these guys were bent on “making it big” which is a rather ridiculous

145 notion that I had given up arguing with them about. Candy knew. Gave the cop knock on the door. “Open up!” she yelled and slammed the steel door again. Nigel started hiding his weed, it was funny. I had quit smoking weed but all the other guys in Trouser Trout still smoked. I opened the door and let her in. “Oh. It’s you,” Nick said. “Hello, Nicky. Hello, boys,” Candy said and kissed me. “Mmm. Hello, doll,” she said to me. “We were just getting started,” I told her. “Have a seat.” She took a seat beside Lisa, Nick’s girl and I ignored her and everyone else, said, “Let’s give it a go,” and counted off the song we were working on. An hour or so went by. Candy and Lisa got chatty between songs and went down to the deli for beer. “Get me a coffee,” I told Candy, as I didn’t drink anymore. They all drank and I sang my guts out on my third floor, my squalid apartment filled with gear. After we were done I went into the bathroom down the hall to snort 2 more bags. Then I went downstairs to get smokes. Nicky tagged along and asked me about Candy. “What are you doing with that whore?” he asked. I didn’t want to get into it with him, was almost done with NYC, the band, him and… NYC was almost done with me. “Don’t call my woman a whore.” “But she is. You told me she was.” “Yeah? And what are we?” I asked him. Candy and I had a deal. Although we knew what each other did, we never talked about it. She told me after the second night she spent with me that there would never be any guarantee she would show up the next night or ever again. But she kept showing up, night after night. The nights ran into weeks. A month or so went by. A few nights I didn’t make it back there at all. I didn’t wonder where she went, didn’t ask. She’d show up the next night

146 and not ask either but there was some need in her eyes, some pleading question there. Then, one night she didn’t show. A week went by. I went out looking for her. Went to the coffee shop I met her in by Times Sq. Went across the street from the Milford Plaza where street whores would hang. Walked over to ask the whores on Lexington. Nobody knew nothing. She just disappeared. A couple of months later I was laying in some hospital bed in Pennsylvania and some nurse was standing over me. “You’re likely to experience some discomfort,” she said. I don’t know why that line seemed so funny to me. A blatant understatement, of course. Even now I wonder if that nurse was being sincere or was a true master of the sarcastic, the sublime statement. There was greatness there, to be sure. I laid there in bed thinking of greatness and grace. I thought of Candy.

On a train Things got turned around. Well, that’s how it goes. You start out with a plan and you’re all full of fire. You hear the saying, “life is what happens to you when you’re planning something else.” Or something like that. Yeah, well, that’s for suckers and fools, right? Here he comes. Look at that hat. Get your ticket, here he is. “Rail pass, huh?” “Yeah.” “20 days left.” “Uh-huh.” There he goes, would you look at that hat? Only conductors and organ-grinder monkeys wear hats like that. Nobody remembers organ-grinder monkeys, what

147 the hell’s wrong with you? Nobody travels by rail either, they fly or drive big-assed SUV’s. What are you, some kind of caveman? Don’t answer that, look out the window, the south, Texas. You went south to where it was warm, that’s good, keep it simple. Austin was pretty cool, the night life. Barhopping. No it wasn’t but old habits die hard; that’s another saying in the pile, isn’t it? Let’s go to the southwest, see the desert, maybe see don Juan in some train station in a straw hat. Let’s not think about it anymore. No. No. Remember what your daddy said? “Life is a series of chickenshit maneuvers.” He said some other things after that, actually went off on some damn tirade but that saying stuck, didn’t it? Mom said he was NOT a drunk, no. All right. When Wendy said, “the kitchen is on fire,” you said, “get out of the kitchen.” You had the remote in one hand and a beer in the other. That’s Zen, balance. She was always such a drama queen, you hardly listened anymore and the kitchen usually smelled of smoke when she was cooking. The joke was, it was the timer. Took a lot of water and/or beer to choke down her cooking. “THE KITCHEN REALLY IS ON FIRE!” she screamed. “All right, honey, come sit here next to Daddy and tell him all about it. Daddy’s got something,” you said and reached into your underwear. You were a good guy, found her in the deli department at the local supermarket. She had a slight accent, you thought she was Russian but she was German. Or something. Somewhere over there where they yodel. Goddamnit, let’s not think about it anymore. Let’s just look out the window. No. All right, she was a meat handler, heh-heh. Yup. She was a meat handler and you saved her. The night of your first date, you went to the video store and played a game. “Let’s split up and get movies, two apiece and meet at the counter.” She showed

148 up with the porno and you had one 3 Stooges and one Marx Brothers and she said, “so that’s how it’s gonna be.” Yuk-yuk. The kitchen really was on fire. You ran in and tried to put it out with the spray attachment on the sink but it was too late. You first grabbed the remaining beer from the fridge, then grabbed your insurance policies from the filing cabinet, then dialed 911. You ran upstairs and quickly packed suitcases, then ran outside. When the fire department was done, you looked at Wendy and told her, “we’re through,” and she ran off to her car, drove off. You never knew how they found you in the motel and never knew she had so many brothers and uncles but the goddamn yodeling mafia showed up at your door at 2 am one night while you were servicing some motel maid from Guatemala. Her ass was hard, she said she was a longdistance runner as well as a dancer. “Flash dance?” “Yes, I saw the movie.” “Great movie! I want to move to America!” “I have some connections,” you said. You weasel. The yodeling mafia weren’t packing and, for some reason, you’d been carrying around this steel pipe for years. You’d often thought of buying a gun but never did which was probably good. Crazy people shouldn’t own guns. If they come at you one or two at a time, it’s knee shots but if it’s a mob, you go for the head. Oh, Lola, look at this mess. Oh, Wendy, I see you in the parking lot, take your brothers and uncles home. Texas is a long-assed state, big hats and attitudes. Some locals on the train till the next stop or so and the pipe in the pack overhead. Let’s get to New Mexico, Santa Fe, there might be something there. Let’s go.

149 Goat & cow all day the machine rolls on, the cylinders against cylinders. the ink goes in up top rolls down over the rollers & the paper shoots out the end. people talk & some times yell, the scalp pulled back & i'm talking in some monster voice, where's that joe truck? where's that joe truck? someone yells back & out there when he comes w/lunch wagon at quarter to 10 everybody smokes but me i sit in the waning sun of august everybody talks all the things they talk all the time, the hillbilly from lebanon county gave his wife a goat for an anniversary present that shit all over the kitchen floor he said he was

150

really drunk at the time, that they're still married but he had to get rid of the goat. that guy on night shift that hit a cow in his truck, said, it was a fast cow. a fast cow. i get a hot sausage w/ mustard & onions & stand there a bit talking to joe. there used to be birds on the high wires. what. they aren't there anymore. what. the kid we call cornholio does his little dance & joe says, will you look at that.

The history of the world

"good, yes, you've done well; here is a small prize."

- Gang of Four

after all the howling is done the machine still screams. the machine is commerce & family & layers of guilt & the dead. it's high schools & cunt juice & asphalt & boxers & soldiers &

151 it's here under the talk. we don't get along. the phone rings & people come over, drink & talk & i look at them, look at them look at them. they bring dvd's but i don't have a dvd player. they look at me. well, no. call for pizza. i have beer. you have beer & no dvd player? yes. well. we have been piling down to the bar for decades, the world is bars & churches, astroturf & factories. it's the leech-woman sitting on some hill in sullivan county curling rocks through her hands.

I said I would never do this (for Ron Androla) The poem is the deadspace between you & i. it's the magical cluster fuck between then & now, object/subject. there is buckets of beer in it, & oh, all that blood & i might say some dreamworld where you don't gotta take it no more. it's peas thrown into microwave mac & cheese on a cold december night when all ghosts tingle yr nuts.

152

all the concrete & asphalt as well as astronomy. my halfmoon bleeds out on the table. my history vomit & someone yelling in my ear. we are made of wood. in a plastic world. our roots go to places we don't remember.

Factory song in b minor everyone sells the mushroom line but imagine being a contender, a huge beast of a man who runs from workplace to barplace sometimes wakes up on park benches that tunnel vision life riding a bike 3 miles each way, don't see any difference between him & the suckers with houses in the suburbs driving this way & that imagine the exoskeleton it takes to be a crab, the sheer weight of gravity they took my picture for my id card & photographer said, dude your head is huge imagine the holes in a crabâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heart if there is any left take off that sweaty shirt you stink, the car goes to derry

153 st beverage & there's a clean one in back.

Things wrapped in aluminum foil (for John Korn) I have been working on a novel that is filled with people I loved or knew. I'm up to chapter 6. And despite my love or compassion, the thing needs a body count. It needs people helplessly walking into some fire of some sort. All I know is, I'm all wound up and some people gotta go. Let's say that Cindy was a bisexual who I took to a strip bar in mid-December saying, kiddingly, homo for the holidays. That wet sheets stick to your back like a band aid. She's gotta go. And, I know how pretty all the people are and that they get uglier as you approach the center of town, the hairlips, the mongoloids, the addicts push shopping carts, leave them in the street. I'll get to them. When I go into the mountains pulling aluminum off my arms with big shit-bags laced to my feet I hear not only the screams but the songs that go with them. When I pull the TV off, my head is a pimple I stick a branch in and

154 when it bursts, I walk further up the hill where hawks light on my shoulders.

Daryl Rogers lives in Lexington, Kentucky. poem Girls sitting on the new grass their shoes kicked off reading textbooks in the sun like spring flowers dotting the grounds, pale shoulders, arms, cleavage and bright, naked legs bathed in warm April light. Red-headed dude walking barefoot across campus his sun visor turned sideways to casually catch the southwest rays. Young woman in a tank top and jeans playing on a rope swing in the blue shade of an oak tree

155 just beginning to bud. I'm on my way to the library to try and find a copy of Aldous Huxley's "The Perennial Philosophy." Brother crow says caw while picking at a rotted grey clump in the middle of the road that divides the student center from the chapel.

FLUSH He was sincere. I didn't doubt that. He had decided, he said, to burn his rock'n'roll records and his marijuana stash for his newfound faith. As his best friend I attempted to counsel him. I didn't want to see him take action he would live to regret. We were walking across campus early one morning when he related his plans to purge his life of evil influences. I listened carefully and offered my heartfelt advice. I said, "Bill, look at me.

156 You're losing it man. You're going to wind up giving all your money to some psychotic hick, living in a commune surrounded by razor wire and flogging your pee pee with a car antenna." Of course I was wrong. None of that happened. It was worse.

NOON LIGHT kids, their perfect flesh covered in tattoos, every protrusion and orifice mutilated with some ring or pin a legion of masochistic clowns symbolically trashing their youth inflated cartoon bimbos in the porn shop window with the o-ring mouths stuck in mock surprise and one million interchangeable glossy magazines and videos out back somber clientele skulk across the parking lot

157 with fake cocks, pocket pussies and bindings in paper bags street people stand brazenly on the sunlit sidewalks out front like brain-damaged prophets from some moron's version of Hell overhead the blubbery hot face of the sun fails to intimidate the faint cold countenance of the moon

PROPHET The fog is thick, here in the mountains, early in the morning and late at night. I could be in a midget, alien dimension, the horizon only fifty feet away. And I was already feeling a little surreal when I walked into this diner high above the interstate.

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I've finished eating but it's a bad day to hurry. I can hear women laughing back in the kitchen. Some poor bastard was lugging a wooden cross down the side of the road when I pulled into this exit. If he's made enough progress and I pass him again I'm going to throw a can of beer at his head.

Hustler (Atlanta, 1995) I'm talking to my dad about his longtime partner Joe, who recently died with AIDS-related complications, when he asks if I mind stopping by one of their old hangouts. "We'll just have a beer and shoot the shit." I'm surprised when he turns into the parking lot. The Griffin looks like any other redneck joint here in Atlanta. It's a squat, plain building with no windows and a small patio in the back. There are a half-dozen old American cars and a new pickup

159 parked near the entrance. "Yeow," a young guy playing pool yells as we part the heavy plastic strips hanging over the entrance, make our way to a couple of stools, my eyes adjusting to the dark, and order two beers. "Aw," he shouts, "tough break for the competitor." He's a handsome kid with dark short hair, wearing a Bud Ice t-shirt, cutoff jeans and basketball shoes. Working the room, he pounds the bar with the flat of his hand and waves the pool cue around like a conductor's baton. The guy he's playing pool with is older. He has short, dyed-brown hair, a neatly trimmed mustache and doesn't seem annoyed at the kid's antics, even though he appears to be trying to focus on his game. When he lays his cue across the table to mark off his next shot the kid yells, "Don't go measuring on me now. Put your geometry book away." Angel, a young hooker from West Virginia,

160 is introduced, by the kid, to those of us at the bar. She has one of those smiles that snakes up over her teeth in a pleasant snarl and shows some gum. She's wearing a low-cut, sleeveless mini-dress and a gold pendant dangles between her small breasts. Every time the kid says something she tosses her long, brown hair back over her shoulders and laughs. Dad says, "You-all have done some remodeling since I was in here last." The bartender says, "Yes we have," and points to several places. I can see insulation and ductwork where the ceiling tile is missing but it's hard to tell where the remodeling begins and the old place leaves off. An old man who is a dead ringer for Tip O'Neill is sitting across the bar from us with his eyes closed, holding his forehead up with one hand. I tell Dad he looks relatively healthy for a corpse. A scrawny, burr-headed dude, in his fifties I'd guess, is parked behind Angel, looking her up and down, his liver-colored tongue flicking through

161 the spaces in his teeth. Every once in a while he leans over and whispers something in her ear. The kid saunters over and stands between the two of them. "Let us have three butterscotch schnapps and a Bud Ice for me and a Bud Light for her." His pool partner orders a Miller and sits down, looking tired and slightly annoyed, just around the corner from me. Squatting down to look under the bar, and moving bottles and boxes around, the bartender shakes his head side to side. "Look at him," the kid says, pointing his cue. "Nervous as a pussycat because the owner's here." The owner, Irene, a plain, burly woman, is going over the books. "I hate it when you're here Irene: I can't get me no free drinks." The bartender disappears through a rear door. "Once you're gone Irene," the kid says, "we'll open up this damn bar." The bartender emerges from the back room carrying a bottle with an ornate label. He plunks the beers on the bar and pours three shots with his other hand. "That'll be seventeen-fifty."

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The kid says, "Don't do that to me," handing the bartender a twenty and snatching it back a couple of times before letting it go. The bartender sticks it down his shirt like he's stuffing it in a bra. Then the kid waltzes over to Irene. "Irene, honey, you know I'm just kidding around," while leaning over to kiss her on the neck. Irene shuffles her papers without looking up. When the kid gets back over to Angel he slides a shot down to his pool partner. "Make your dick as hard as a four-dollar jaw breaker," leering around at the rest of us for confirmation. The jukebox has been playing country songs. A new one comes on and the kid says, "Now this is a beautiful song." Then he sings along for the first few measures, in his syrupy, cigarettes-and-whiskey voice. Dad says when they tried to hook tubes to Joe he fought them, so they sedated him.

163 His living will stipulated he didn't want to be on life support, but his family wouldn't hear of that. When the kid distracts me by leaning over in his pool partner's ear and singing along with "You Must Have Walked Across My Mind Again," Dad says, "Keep your day job." Everybody chuckles at that and the kid stands up straight. "So, what? Now you're going to attack me too?" Dad looks at him for a minute, making him wait. "Nah," he says finally, "I'm just kidding with you." The kid tosses back his shot and turns to watch a drag queen walk in the door and over to the bar, fish through her purse for change and order a ginger ale. It's damn hot outside to be working the streets. When she leaves the kid says, "Know what? That was a boy." "Really?" the bartender says, rolling his eyes at the rest of us, "What gave it away, the five o'clock shadow?"

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"Remember Eddy Small?" the kid asks the bartender. The bartender stops drying the glass in his hand and appears to be studying the question. "Little troll, that was always sloppy drunk?" The kid frowns, turns to Angel and says, "Eddy sat right here every day of his life. Drank forty-eight beers a day, two cases. Died right here too. See this, where he carved his name? This is Eddy's fucking coffin, this goddamn bar." She smiles that lascivious smile and tosses her hair back over her bare shoulders. Her eyelids are at half-mast. Her muscles make deep shadows in her thighs and calves, as she sits with her legs crossed, twisting one foot in a slow circle. "Have you seen Chili lately?" the kid asks. "Yeah," the bartender says,

165 rinsing a glass and setting it aside to drain. "He was in here a couple of weeks ago." "No shit?" "No. He's living in Dallas now." "Damn," the kid says wistfully. "Chili, he's all right. He's good people. Me and him stayed up for three days one time. He bought a birthday present for my mother. I didn't have a dime and he spent $150 on one of them little bottles of perfume. That's the good stuff, right? I don't know nothing about it; I'm from a trailer park in Alabama. I knew how to work Chili though. On the third day I said, 'Chili, let's go to the mall.' " Beginning to win the room over he says, "So, what about the Olympics; did they fuck us over or what?" The bartender says, "Everybody I knew, and I mean ev-er-y-body, left town." "I know," the kid yells, "I damn near starved."

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Dad looks at me and shakes his head, "Anyway, Joe never wanted anyone to see him without his hair, so I had a nurse put a surgical cap on him before his family got there that last time." "That's good," I reply, finishing off my third beer, "I'm sure he would've appreciated that." "Are you ready to go?" he asks. I shake my head yes and he pays the tab. We get off our stools and make our way to the door. The bartender says, "Y'all come back now." Before we're halfway across the parking lot the kid sticks his head out and looks from one side to the other. Dad says, "There's one in every bar: loudmouths. You could walk into any place with only two guys sitting there and one of them would be putting on a show." "Fuckers all cranked up like that make me edgy," I say. "You never know what they'll do."

167 "No bigger'n he was if he'd started something I would've just slapped the shit out of him," he says laughing. Later we're riding around looking for a place to eat and I ask him, "Do you think that guy is still down there at the bar holding court?" "No," he says. "I imagine he went home with somebody that gave him twenty dollars to spread his legs."

Ron's Board Dream I dreamed about this board once before, but that was a bland one. People sitting in a circle, one woman knitting. Last night though was different. I thought we were all helping Ron make something at a factory. Not the way I imagine factories are, dark, noisy, cold places with people chained to the walls, but a bright, sunny room, kind of like a big grade school classroom with colorful pictures and diagrams everywhere. And the machines weren’t cold, noisy, menacing things but looked a lot like handmade wooden looms the color of honey. Anyway, we were stamping out parts of some machine, but not from metal. We were using these big squares of phyllo dough, and everything was going swimmingly. At some point Ron comes over to me and puts a drop of something on a big wad of dough I’m holding. “After that dries,” he tells me, “just touch it with the tip of your tongue. Don’t get greedy and lick it all off. You won’t be able to handle that.” I do it and, in the dream, I feel high.

168 I’m energized and giddy and everything seems kind of hyper-real. I’m walking around and suddenly the floor has a fault line where the rest of the floor is two or three feet lower. So, I sit down to get to the next level and when I step onto the lower part I say, “I’m so tire.” That’s a line from an Elmore Leonard novel that an Hispanic woman who’s been drugged says, right before a mean man pushes her over a balcony. Then somebody, Marko say, asks how I’m doing and I say, “It’s a long way down to the valley sheriff,” and then, in another voice, say “Yes it is Dave. Yes, it, is.” And everybody laughs, wah ha ha ha. And we’re all having so much fun with the honey-colored punch presses and the goofy dough. That’s all.

Vietnam Redux He never talked about the war, and I despised him so I never asked. Years later, too bored to fight about it, I walked into his house. The History Channel was on. He’d been watching a show about steam locomotives. In its place was a film about the spotter pilots that flew into Cambodia and Laos like little single-engine bugs, not even equipped with ejection seats, whose purpose was to fly low and slow enough to see Vietcong. Then they would go into a dive

169 and fire smoke bombs to mark the target for B-52s, and, if they were lucky, pull up and get away. He started talking about being stationed near Da Nang, with infantry, air force and navy. He said the worst part was our beautiful planes coming back all shot up, some crashing just shy of the runways. Then he began to cry. We never spoke of it again.

NOSFERATU I have a thing for vampires. Coleridge’s poem Christabel, the first half of it anyway, never fails to arouse my interest. I’ve only met one, during the last days of disco. She had dark hair, fair skin and an Eastern European accent. I was snorting baby laxative, in the men’s room, at the Lowlife. I didn’t see her in the mirror when she walked up behind me. Her eyes were deep and dark like twin manholes. Her mouth was a cleft cherry sucker. She said she wanted my blood.

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I was in a very detached yet enthusiastic state of mind, so I agreed, only to find it wasn’t what I had imagined. She had a cordless drill, a vacuum pump and a grungy-looking beer cooler in the back of her ‘71 Lemans. I suggested my place instead and saved my ass by not inviting her inside. She screamed but didn’t enter. Around 6 a.m. she woke me up tapping on my third-story window. I put on Contemporary Christian 89.1 and she left disgusted. I was doing ninety miles an hour a couple of weeks later when a bat splattered on my windshield. Real love makes you nuts.

The Funny Thing Is He’s Right I’m walking north, up Limestone, past the Zebra Lounge and the corner liquor store, with its window full of MD 20/20,

171 Night Train, Thunderbird and meat magazines, past the checkcashing store and Western Union. I step over winos and dodge traffic. An old white man, on a porch, asks me where Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going. I tell him Florida. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re heading in the wrong direction he screams, spitting on himself, laughing and slapping his leg, his gut and tits shaking like an old whore having a fit. I keep walking to the Greyhound terminal, avoiding the freaks when I get there, trying to look as mean as a six-foot, onehundred-fifty-pound, twenty-year-old kid can. I buy my ticket, get on the bus, make camp and watch Lexington pass by the tinted windows like a bad dream.

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Marsupial Moon, Standing Deadwood Driving home at late night, under a saw-toothed, crescent smile, the road darkened with cold, greasy rain. Fallen brown and colored leaves litter the surface of the highway like moths with broken wings and limbs. My tires bark when I hit the driveway. The garbage can is overturned at the curb. Going to retrieve it I duck under our Japanese maple and its thin branches nod and weave in the wind like elderly dinosaurs with star-shaped scales. The rain dripping from their leaves is an icy sweat, heavy as motor oil. The rain should end in the morning. The TV show Six Feet Under is coming on. I fill a tumbler with cracked ice, vodka and olives, start a fire with wood scavenged from the last, devastating ice storm back in February 2003. The dogs are breathing hard and barking

173 at an opossum creeping out of the woodpile. I set up a trip-cage in the backyard and bait it with peanut butter. Tomorrow weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll take the grinning, palsied little rat to a nature preserve by the river. Opossum shit stinks. (Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve done this before.) When an opossum waddles into the brush you have the urge to stomp it in the ground. But you feel good, just the same, letting it go.

Cheryl Townsend lives in Stow, Ohio. Yellow Poetry His poems are yellowed fragile slips of promise I saved between pages of Kafka and Piercy When it rains he sets in like arthritis and I ache with every memory during our times

174 we both kept journals and I would read of our slow death There was one poem he wrote about my red hair but over these years even it has grown darker

DRUNK HUGS AND I LOVE YOU'S DON'T MEAN SHIT Too drunk to even write Beringer's Pinot Noir and chocolate martini's I lay down to sleep w/the waves of the Pacific lapping outside my balcony The sun went to sleep hours ago

Cracking Complexion In this rain I feel like I am too soggy while cracking at the seams I slosh slosh slosh up stairs and across floors dressed in sweats and baggy t-shirts My hair twisted into hair stick bun

175 Everything is too big for its intention tho I have forgotten what it was that I intended

Thursday Night There's maybe 5 inches of snow outside and it looks like the perfect holiday picture all pure and glistening under a waning moon while inside I am trying to fall asleep beside this man of 25 years and with every toss or turn there is an intake of startled breath a breach in his slumber a halt in to Caribbean beaches Indy 500's or Faith Hill I've never denied his desires so I grab my pillow and a blanket from the guest bed go downstairs to draw back the curtains open the blinds and watch the snow sleep

176 MY STORY OF LILAC PAINT AND POUNDS Larry is painting the bedroom upstairs This is the 2nd one he has done and there is one more after that Outside it is raining again Outside it is evening I have removed all the switch plates and nails from the walls I have taken down all the curtains This morning I started a weight loss program through a drug research company that is paying me $1,000 to be their guinea pig for a year I just want to be who I was The cats keep running into the room where Larry is painting and we both worry about hairy walls so I lock all 3 in a bathroom I will have to eat my food in portions Measured out and counted in ounces I don’t know why karma is doing this to me The shade Larry is painting is a soft lilac the carpeting in the room is navy blue This will be my yoga room and will only have a futon and bookshelves in it and an overstuffed chair to read in I had to buy all new clothes because nothing I had is even close to the size I currently seem to be stuck with even tho I was adamant that I wouldn’t Larry is on his 2nd coat of paint I’m into my 4th size from then

177 8 hours I flitted social butterfly from one conversation to one more Champagne brunch at Professor Culleton's Kent State minds getting drunker and more opinionated and there are so many books I have to read and music I have to hear and movies yet to watch and I could not have been hungrier for this mental stew for words that do not time themselves around an oval of asphalt for someone to know the names I spoke of At home Jerry worried The snow got deeper The hours got longer I was the last to leave

178 Donna Hill lives in Vancouver, Canada. Crepes This morning is a leisurely one; me, in my burgundy night-camisole, you, in your gray cotton robe. Another time, we could just as well be naked, the sensual freedom we cherish around your home. You've asked me to guide you through my recipeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; newly pinned to your fridgeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Blend the eggs and milkâ&#x20AC;Ś hand-over-hand, we sprinkle in the flour. The pan is heating on the element, a plate sits below in the oven. Peaches and strawberries are sliced, the maple syrup is warmed, a dusting of icing sugar awaits. I'm as famished as you, having danced to liveband Jazz tunes well beyond midnight, then home making love until fading into our Bohemian dreams, soundless as a hummingbird tasting Jasmine. But what stops me, here, in this moment, your arms around me at the counter, is your warm breath at my ear. Like air on silk, whispering I love you.

179 Thunder through the Willows The distant thunder tonight reminds me of Nick; big and loveable as a black lab, distinguished copper markings of the Dobey, and a thick, friendly tail that could swipe the nearest glass off any table. We got him as a pup when Sean was two and afraid of dogs— a sure-fire cure that worked. With two toddlers at my side, a baby in the stroller, I carried him, sleek velveteen ears, out of the pound like another child in my arms, resting on his haunches, belly snug against the soothing warmth of my own. When we packed up and left the coast in ’93 Nicky rode in the pick-up bed, wind-blustered by the December air, but happy as hell, staring down four cats in sedative dazes, languidly draped over the back of our seats for the long drive “home.” As massive as he was, Nick was terrified of thunder and lightening. I’d always bring him in from the storm to comfort his fears. Years later this had to stop. I’d left with three young teens, a hundred dollars to my name, and no fenced yard. The things you miss most about a marriage, or maybe it’s a sad commentary instead. The kids went back and forth and once in a while I’d have the chance to visit Nicky through the fence. Around age 14 or so he went deaf, and grew a number of painless tumors, but still seemed happy and managing the boys said. Until last Fall, I heard, when he got caught in the wire fence down in the field and didn’t have the strength to pull himself free. The neighbor let my ex know, who carried him to the barn to rest on some hay, and finally called the vet to put ol’ Nick to sleep. He’s buried

180 deep under the willow tree, safe from the rolling thunder I’m hearing tonight.

Silence

You can walk out of your life if sadness properly instructs you. ~ Stephen Dunn It wasn’t on a day like this— where you saunter through the field as dogs lope and dart about, stop long enough to introduce themselves to one another with an inquisitive sniff, an inviting tail-wag, or cock of the head. A day when the sun’s brightness threatens the rich blue rim of the sky, where a soaring hawk sounds overhead and the trill of nearby birds doesn’t perceptually match that threesome of auburn-breasted robins beaking for worms in the still-moist grass not six feet beyond your steps— No, for her it was a morning of crisp, vibrant whiteness, as though the day felt dainty, where the skin of your cheekbone could have cracked like china. A day where she lay naked and silent, begging on a bed of snow. Breath is precious. Always. All ways. Instead, the officer arriving on the scene promptly cordoned her off and sent paramedics away. This was now a murder investigation, he deduced,

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for the next four hours. Until the yellow tape came down and the coroner in his own surroundings discovered her warm, a contradiction to his sheet of metal. Too warm to have died at the time of that fatal assumption. Warm enough to have lived.

Offerings to Elohim

sometimes we stand on the highest mountaintop we can climb and call out to elohim for divine protection other times we vanish from dodge on the lam, slinking through the underground never making the proper connections ~ Mark Hartenbach I’m looking good these days and that’s not the id or the ego talking, really, just me, a feat in itself since self-esteem is a life-long journey for those of us with a disability— no complaints, just a multiplicity of truths. I’m down nine pounds from a few months ago and nineteen pounds from a number of years ago when I started dealing with the issue of my uncle’s abuse. I was twenty-three and trapped, visiting him and my aunt, with two babies and an airline ticket dated for home. The way he’d almost drool around me, drag me by the hand into the living room to watch satellite porn before I’d wrench it away, the day he timed it just right, to walk naked from the bathroom as I came down the stairs and

182 around. I remember screaming at him,

What the fuck do you want from me! Right here, right now?

His perverted reply was simple,

Don’t you know, the chase is better than the catch?

Years later when I was left alone to deal with it, those large Hershey’s chocolate bars that my ex was bringing home for us each night, sadly, seemed more comforting than him. This morning on my walk I found one of those balloon sponge-balls for hand strengthening and played with it the rest of the way home. At one point when I crossed a street I realized that for the first time Molly hadn’t followed me and I stiffened. My mind commanded,

Don’t call her until the truck passes— that’s how your friend’s dog died.

We made it through that harrowing moment, but why squeezing this damn hand-flex has made me think of him and want to write this poem, I’ll probably never know.

Lifeblood

Gasoline is the lifeblood of Shamattawa. - Geoffrey York, The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada It is the lifeblood of any Northern Indian reserve. Without it, the Cree cannot run any of their

183 skidoos or motorboats, and without these vehicles, they cannot collect firewood to heat their homes, nor can they hunt or fish or trap to supplement what little the government affords them in subsistence chequesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;social assistance for crowding several bands into a land mass too small to feed their population. The unemployment rate exceeds eighty percent. But gasoline is also the deadliest poison in Shamattawa. Children and adolescents sniff it to gain an easy escape, a cheap and immediate highâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; a few minutes of euphoria in a land of poverty and misery. It gives them a sense of power. Their fears and inhibitions disappear, and they begin to hallucinate. No longer are the plastic sheets tacked over shack windows tattered and flapping violently in the freezing winter wind. No longer are there thirteen people from three families sharing the same muddied-floor shack, each the size of a suburban garage, heated erratically by a 150-litre gasoline container converted into a stove. Their attraction to gasoline becomes irresistible. Children teach one another how to inhale. At night they steal the precious gas from any motorized vehicle, until it dominates their existence. By daylight children clutch plastic bags holding grimy rags soaked in the poison, for easy access. They amble through the bush, between the houses, with their bags; one girl playfully waves her rag in a dogâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s face. Some of these children are no older than five or six.

184 But they also know the hazards— An eight-year old boy is found dead in winter's grip; his body frozen and tangled in barbed wire. The autopsy concludes, “sudden sniffing death syndrome”— a common cause of death on Northern Canadian reserves today.

Pris Campbell lives in Florida. Chats With Eleanor Fairy Godmothers with ample laps and June Cleaver faces slid down the rabbit hole of old dial-up phones, ten cent colas, Betsy Wetsys, and scratchy LPs an innocent lifetime ago. Try strutting about nowadays in tiara and starched skirt, waving a wand---the madhouse will open its jaws and swallow you whole, but my Fairy Godmother is clever. She dresses like Eleanor Roosevelt, talks like Eleanor, looks like Eleanor, says she IS Eleanor, back from the dead. Each night she brings me hot chocolate, sits, tells stories about quiet fireside chats, her husband's withered legs and how much

185 she thought he loved her before Lucy. She reminds me to floss every night and to be sure to carry an umbrella should sudden thunderstorms threaten. She emphasizes that one must learn to be brave in cold emptied beds ever so much as on battlefields, littered with corpses of those who once called our name.

Bluebird of Happiness The Fallen Bluebird of Happiness caws, folds its molting wings around my house, my prison, this cell of karmic perdition. Mother's best china reels out scenes of too many Last Suppers; her crystal carries imprints of lips kissed and long gone. My grandmother's sideboard moans old family stories to a pale glass angel standing guard on my windowsill. She sparks back the passing lights of cars careless enough to venture this ruptured street. The Filipino couple next door argue until dawn snatches fire from the east wind, igniting the sky with its breath. They think redemption can later be found in a bottle of Christ's Blood Shed For Them or in a quick fuck on a mattress, its spine bent like a weeping cross. I am Moses crossing the Red Sea, I shout;

186 Frodo, grasping the golden ring, Ulysses, self-blinded in order to stay the way, but in my fake cockiness, I turn, stumble, arms flailing against my dear angel, too late to catch her, already tumble-crashing into that greedy Bluebird's beak.

Mark Hartenbach lives in Ohio. letter to a stranger (1-13)

father! father! where are you going? o do not walk so fast. speak father, speak to your little boy, or else i shall be lost. -- wm blake 1. the egg is cracked open. one in a million is satisfied beyond a groan of pleasure, ten seconds of bliss is always a premium in this life. when presented to us—it’s difficult to say no. we pick it apart. we’re not sure what we’re looking for. we often leave nothing but a mess. in case of emergency break the glass. don’t worry about the contents. react, don’t think. if nothing else, the sharp slivers can be used as a weapon against whatever went wrong.

187 we don’t need to understand why. only that our impulse flares upward—signaling to strangers. strangers who may sympathize, or not give a damn. but doesn’t it make more sense than standing there doing nothing. fire with fire. an eye for an eye. it’s not even close. 2. a small piece of paper is slipped in my shirt pocket without a word. i resist immediacy. this isn’t like me. i wait until i get home to take it out. i had three names to go on— none my own. but i needed to whittle it down to something i could grasp. the possibilities in fact, are endless. strands of renegade dna whipping me around like a carnival ride at night. nevertheless i’m surprised to find none of the above. a name i’ve never heard. a large city out west. further west than i’ve ever been. no other information is volunteered. if there is any more information—it’s being withheld. 3. i’m not sure what to think. not sure what to believe. not sure how to react. why think at all. why believe in ghosts. why take action, evasive or otherwise, when you can do nothing at all. eventually all blends into an epiphany or further confusion. but at the moment i’m unexpectedly ambivalent with what i’d imagined would answer my questions. but this raises more questions instead. i thought i might get a mirror image. i had simplified it down to cut & dry. i was nine fingers from giving up completely. a brilliant man—but a bad man. with just enough hesitation to get a glimpse of hope, to feel a rise of confidence. then

188 slammed with more evidence to underline my self-loathing in a tone dripping black periods, not blood red. 4. i can’t be certain you exist beyond hard science. or if you once thrust past an alternative of immaculate conception. i have some trouble with that concept. whether two thousand years ago or fifty, or maybe just yesterday in an isolated corner of the world. billions of chaotic cells suddenly congeal in an eye of a needle. space & time perplexed. religion & science equally fallible. constantly being readjusted to suit the latest facts—whether revelatory or penciled in equation. constantly being squeezed to fit an agenda. or is there room for me in one of these agendas? does anyone realize the amount of time lost wondering? i stay away from quick judgments. even those that bring me comfort, or anything approaching a plausible figure. i’ve been lied to on numerous occasions. as everyone has. mental health professionals claim i have trust issues. stopping short of flat-out accusation. but they’re not issues. there’s no denying the validity of my concerns. i’m told i have paranoid tendencies. doesn’t any sensible person? 5. i think i remember a black & white photograph of a lanky light-haired man towering over my mother. it looked to be taken in my grandmother’s yard in summer. i could be wrong. i may have dreamed it up. i think i remember a picture of a dark-haired man smiling in the sand. but the lines are wiped out. my memories, especially those reaching back to childhood, are unreliable. there

189 are always conflicting reports. there are no straight, unbroken lines pointing to moments that verify what came before, or what came later. no logical progression that clearly adds up to now. no dependable chronology i can trace my finger along. no hard copy. no test results. no witnesses willing to come forward. only continuous deception—though threadbare & wrapped in brittle brown newsprint. who shaped this position i’m cramped into? 6. i feel cut off from most of humanity. but i’m no pseudoavenging angel. i’m a demonic glare intimidating anyone who gets too close. i’m confused & bitter. a strange combination i suppose. 7. what does certainty feel like? i’d like to know before i die. i’ve had to construct my own mythology to compensate for a lack of solid evidence. names & dates & belonging. i believe there are 275 million, give or take a million, on this thick-bordered land mass where i happened to spring forth. though it could have been anywhere. though it had to be here—depending on your religious affiliation. i think there are seven billion within the entire circle. some holding hands. some murdering one another. some think they have all the answers. some have a dangerous sense of place & identity. some are content to wander. they’ll continue to move until they keel over. unconcerned with phony obituaries. unconcerned with where they fall.

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8. i’m not being protected. i’m not sure i ever was. i’m a grown man, at least halfway to the green room. i fear no man. i’m not being spared suffering. i’m being led astray so someone can save face. so someone can pretend they’ve forgotten. so someone can evade questions they feel are irrelevant so late in the game. but there’s truth somewhere. no matter how maddening, how impossibly swirling or dancing or chaotic—there’s always a center. infinity is no exception. do you need mathematical proof, or are you willing to take my word? it may be carved on what appears to be the outer edge as advertised. it may be six feet under. it may be a reasonable facsimile. it may be held within a single piece of paper. it may be hidden in a dark drawer. it might be blasted across the heavens but no one’s looking. it might be lying at the bottom of a river a few blocks from here. it may be packed tight inside a ball of mud or clay containing a code that descrambles the helix or the faith of the multitudes. it may leave size eleven footprints, the exact same size as mine. it might draw a deep breath before speaking. it might just sigh & look away absently, as if the distance is some consolation. it might be an endless list of theoretical possibilities. it might be a contradiction of terms. there are as many gospels as there are humans hulking round the planet or rattling wooden slats while holding on for dear life. yet only a handful are considered legitimate. this would mean we have to look no further than what we’re handed. it seems ridiculous either way.

191 9. i have no black suit. i don’t recall ever owning one. i’ve never been a pallbearer. i have served as an altar boy, though. lighting tall white candles. only to snuff them out an hour later. now, i never blow them out. i let them burn all the way down. because it almost feels like defying reason. it almost feels like fate. it almost feels like the right thing to do. 10. i’ll admit to having obsessive-compulsive behavior patterns. but i think i have a small measure of control over them now. i can delve into the densely abstract, yet wouldn’t know where to begin if grilled about my whereabouts during the time in question. i search & destroy. i have unlimited, unconditional love. i’m a paradox that may one day crumble into something concrete. the fact that i recognize these conundrums doesn’t sketch out half the problem. i take a single step & cry out in pain. i back up another & the pain worsens. what does this have to do with striving? 11. i was never given a cool banana seat bicycle or a visionary erector set. i was never given a bb gun or a cheap teenage guitar. though i asked repeatedly. perhaps i begged. i don’t know. i can’t remember those obligatory moments. i was never lent the car to impress girlfriends. i learned to use my tongue instead. i never had a few dollars

192 tucked in my hand without even asking. i never had proper medical or dental care. i learned to think faster than my words. i was forced into a song & dance i had no talent for—because the alternatives seemed beyond my footwork even more. i was never given any sensible advice. i was never pointed in someone’s idea of the right direction. i was never allowed a dog. i was robbed of the only cat i cared about. am i any different than millions of others in this respect? probably not. we experienced the same disappointments. so why do we have nothing in common?

12. i’d give away all these ink-stained notebooks for a single line of pure poetry. it wouldn’t have to come from my own hand, as long as it was meant for my eyes & heart. i’d trade all i own for raining sheets filled with soul crammed into margins if needed, & whatever is left of a song i hear as they sing past my head. 13. what am i doing up at this hour? i can’t explain. i’ve never had to. i was given complete freedom that buddies envied. never seeing the flipside. there was no point in trying to show them something even i couldn’t see. i’m riding shotgun. but i don’t have a single shell. i can’t recognize the profile, though it’s within arm’s length. i stretch out my legs. but there’s never enough room. i’m not searching for metaphors. i’m not rooting through trash

193 looking for wadded up directions. i could suggest with a touch of pleading or bark out demands. either way, i’d be ignored. so i brood silently. then i’m asked why i’m being so quiet. i could say anything. it wouldn’t change a thing.

scenes from a ridiculous, wasted life (81-86) scene 81 the word heroin was created as a brand name by bayer pharmaceuticals—the name your family’s grown to trust, after being synthesized from morphine at the turn of the 20th century. they used it for a cough medicine. it was also thought to be effective in treating morphine addiction. every small-time dealer thinks he’s a bigtime gangster now. wears a piece in a shoulder holster. talks machismo though they’re scared & paranoid as hell. almost on the scale of crankheads. not the type to trust with firearms. it’s imperative to play it cool no matter what the situation. my cousin’s daughter was indicted on conspiracy charges. she faces ten to life because she didn’t cooperate in the case against her boyfriend who was still on the run then. they caught him. they said he was worth 3.5 million dollars. wellto-do society ladies used to serve morphine at afternoon tea parties. they would send away the servants & shoot each other up.

194 scene 82 it looked like a pipe bomb had gone off in the second story apartment on the east side of cleveland, a predominately polish neighborhood. many of the neighborhoods were strictly segregated by nationalities, & of course race. that was twenty years ago. i don’t know if anything has changed. every window was busted out. seven in all, counting the window in the door that opened to the fire escape where i stashed my cheap wine since i was supposed to be dry. she would bring me home the occasional joint when she got off work. that was ok. though she wouldn’t partake with me. it had been coming for a couple months. it had nothing to do with our relationship, which was good at the time. at least that’s how i remember it. it was about circumstances concerning only me. i’ve gone into it previously. if i haven’t—i will at another time. one afternoon i exploded. the police were called & i was taken to the psychiatric ward at johns hopkins. she got the charges dropped by paying for all the damage. i was released after a short, mandatory stay. she even took me back in for another year.

scene 83 the further west the better, we thought. california was the ultimate last stop. land of milk & honey, honeyskinned beauties & endless rows of top grade grain. we packed up & set out a few times. once we drove. the other times we hitchhiked. always in the summer when the pavement was incredibly hot, sitting on our bags, waiting for rides. getting picked up & asked for i.d. then called in for outstanding warrants.

195 given pieces of advice. told it was only legal to thumb rides on the ramps leading onto the highway or turnpike. of course the only people that ever picked us up were heads, that always had smoke, sometimes speed, occasionally something stronger. almost all carried guns in the console or glove compartment. & naturally we’d miss our exit, & lose our bearings. once two states south of where we thought we were. we never made it to the pacific. to fun, fun, fun in the the warm california sun.

scene 84 it was intolerable. having someone care that much about me. too much for me to emotionally handle. in addition to not feeling worthy of someone’s love, i lived in fear i’d screw up. when you’ve got a good thing there’s a lot of pressure not to blow it. not like when you’re in a casual affair & it’s looser, & you’re free to bolt without much commotion. all the tears & accusations. but when someone has your heart & your soul, it’s both elevating & constricting. there’s so much at stake. every moment together seems to be an oversized valentine waiting for you to cover it with words. & even if you’re a word man, a poet, there are days they don’t come. every conversation begins to feel guarded, too careful, stilted & methodical. every small gesture seems to have so much riding on it. it becomes difficult to let down, & be yourself. i saw it as a reason to get away. it felt puzzling & uncertain—the opposite of what it was in reality. & i still can’t say i understand it all that well.

196 scene 85 a dented hip flask filled with bourbon, sometimes mixed with coke, was a constant companion. that steadied my grip initially, then left me unsteady on my feet & in my thinking. a hard & fast rule that made it easier to break the others. i’d moved to the hard stuff from beer when it began to require almost a case a night to get where i needed to be. which was oblivion. i needed to not care. i needed to forget. i needed many more things that it couldn’t provide. it had gotten out of hand after high school. i was mixing the alcohol with any drug i could cop. it was an era of easily accessible pcp, or angel dust, or dummy dust, though we’d refer to it as thc which wasn’t close. coffee cans full. the only thing that curbed my drinking was psychedelics. but after twelve hours of tripping a few drinks could ease one back to reality. alcohol brought me more women than i’d ever had, since it made me more outgoing, unafraid of putting my emotions on the line. it also bought me more trouble than i’d ever had before, for much the same reasons.

scene 86 there’s no way i can map it out for you, for the simple reason i don’t know how i got here. it was irrational & reckless. & it’s difficult to trace these lines since they’re so unpredictable. it doesn’t matter how much experience you’ve had. if you’ve been down that crooked path or not. because chances are you’ve forgotten the details, & most of those details were more aberrations than checkpoints. i could give you a thousand words but it wouldn’t bring you any closer to understanding

197 my behavior, or what motivated that behavior. it would sound like a close call at best. it would read like a broken mirror. it would leave me in too many positions to gain a sensible pattern or logic. it would be rambling & roundabout, & veer all over the road, possibly causing a terrible accident.

scenes from an irrelevant existence (87-95) scene 87 it’s difficult to explain the look she gave me. i don’t understand it myself. as if she knew me from somewhere. somewhere that neither of us remembered. somewhere we spoke in lost conversation. it may have been a soulful exchange, or we may have been killing time. we might have passed it back & forth as direct mind transmission, or in a naugahyde booth in an all night diner. i could tell by the way she searched my eyes that she could feel it too. that much was undeniable. it may have been partly body language. maybe it was roman numerals. maybe it was all that space that surrounds total silence. the implications were there, but weren’t expressed in gospel or sutra or upanishad or secret lover’s words. but in a translation that is its own scripture. with none others close. with no two anything but. talking in circles? i suppose. but that’s how it sounded to me. that’s how i read those lips.

198 scene 88 if it were predictable, don’t you think i’d have harnessed it by now. at least a little tug. don’t you think I’d have my fingerprints all over it. or would it overwhelm anyone who thought too long. would it burn the flesh right off not only the philistines but angels. would it take down anyone who got it wrong the first try. would it be very dangerous business. universal at first glance, but completely individual the further we dig. if it were predictable, do you think i’d be standing here talking to you now, instead of bathing in the glow, slipping in & out between flawless thighs, gliding into narcotic tapestry that wraps its art around us in all the ways we imagined, & all the ways we missed, & we can’t believe how we ever missed them. scene 89 i have little ambition beyond painting over the advertising with the loudest colors i could get my hands on. i have little knowledge of what i do beyond impulsive & obsessive nature that implodes in on itself, then explodes screaming miles away from where it started. i have little understanding of how i do what i do, beyond throbbing desire with veins bulging, begging for a chance to get it down. i have little explanation concerning what i create or destroy beyond answering questions with more questions because there are no absolutes up here (pointing to my head) that can be named or described, so everyone would see the way i do. i can’t tell you why i keep grinding away at it beyond the need to cover from here to there—a mind in constant flux. i have little reason to let go beyond fear of abandonment. i have little reason to hold on beyond saving my life.

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scene 90 i have one minute so i can’t go over-the-top, or start chewing the scenery, or stepping on others’ lines. one minute to make my point. one minute to light it up or find a place to hide. one minute to put it bluntly, truthfully, but with a poetic touch hopefully. to lay it out on the page before i lose my nerve. to spill my head, leaving something behind. nothing that belongs to another. something that doesn’t need my signature as proof. i have one minute to fill the belly of the myth, or the heart of flesh & bone. one minute that could pass for anything. a moment or eternity. forward or backward. fallen or pushed. one minute to confess or cover my tracks. i need a minute to thread the world together so it doesn’t come apart. a minute to slide in & grab the wheel. one minute that’s now up.

scene 91 there’s no turning back. no time for one hundred eighty degrees of second thought or going up in flames. so tell me why. why you’re still here beside me in spite of it all. make me believe. i want to believe. roll away the stone with deviant, but beautiful behavior. throw me a kiss. aim for the juicy parts. raise the tower toward the heavens with down & dirty bump & grind persuasion. give me an example if nothing else. something i can riff off & run with. something that stirs my imagination beyond. that blows the top off, & miraculously brings a hundred dead birds back to life,

200 & they fly out of the question. we’ve come too far to turn back. we’d never make it back before dark. hold me so close i can feel coming & going simultaneously. shock still in a revolving cast of strangers & saviors, in a baby blue vortex, a drop dead maelstrom, a gyrating can’t stay away any longer.

scene 92 the angel circles until it gets caught in the branches. then it sings out. it professes undying love. it would never cry for help. that isn’t its style. or it’s an unspoken rule of conduct. but no one knows what or where the guidelines are. only the angel is allowed. it would never take us along. it makes us sneak through the back door. a clandestine affair with sacred overtones. turn up the music. i can’t bear to listen. i know i’ll give in. i’ll climb up & untangle the wings. but it will never bless me for my efforts. it won’t kiss me so hard that i can taste it some night when i’m all alone & it reminds me of that once. it will simply fly off. leave me struggling to forget.

scene 93 the words aren’t worth a dime i’m reminded. i have yet to establish a market value. but i can’t seem to get it right. i’m not a capitalist. i’m not a communist either. so any rhetoric is coincidental. i’m simply a tourist until i prove they speak louder than actions. persona non grata tattooed on forearm. a bloated survivor of the manic blitz. but nobody wants to hear this. it brings them down. this is

201 the new age of mindless chanting bliss. if i’d try to think more positive it would go away. just like that. so i confess to things i never did, never witnessed. that satisfies you, doesn’t it? a negative held up to the light speaks the language of dead intellectuals. an opened pack of soiled, bent playing cards are judged suspicious. though i’d think the opposite would be true. see, that’s part of the problem. i’m unable to distinguish what’s of worth & what’s only a flea market paperback.

scene 94 i’ll leave my coat on awhile until i start to warm up. my hat too. why don’t you turn up the thermostat a little? i know the heating bills are going through the roof. but you make good money. surely you can spend some on warmth. well, you throw it away on the silliest things. it doesn’t mean i’m not staying. i’m sorry it feels that way. i’m sitting over here because that couch feels like i’m falling through curtains, & in a half hour my back will be screaming. it’s that way because i broke it trying to keep all the other pieces from coming apart. not that it mattered in the end. i know you’re tired. i realize you worked all day. you’ve reminded me a dozen times already. i know i can get up any time i like. i’m not asking you to stay up. go on to bed. i’ll call you. i just don’t see the point of staying when you’re so worn out. you’ll only be angry at me when you wake up in the middle of the night & i’m gone.

202 scene 95 it’s scratched inside my skull like impulsive art. i didn’t miss a thing. i couldn’t take my eyes off you, even through the oily dishwater & blue-glassed smoke. you move recklessly. i fall for that kind of biblical dance. i know the judgments aren’t comparable. but that’s not the point. there is no ‘meaning’ to this. i’m rolling impressionistic. it’s not the same as scatological or talking in circles. it’s poetry of the soul. i heard it all. swirling wood grain profiles even stopped their chattering, so i could make out every word. a symphony of ghosts bleeding through a fifteen dollar radio soaked into the cracked walls leaving your words unimpeded. black plastic stepped aside for running mascara. a universe lost in dark thought except for an occasional wink. a sharp eye slicing through comic double takes & cruel cutting remarks. mixing metaphors, not caring about literary criticism. i couldn’t help staring. your beauty was so incredibly random.

scenes of disorientation (119-122) scene 119 you must have gotten that from your father. that’s something he would have done. he never took responsibility for his mistakes either. it’s not bad blood or the curse of cain. stop trying to romanticize it. it’s nothing but an excuse. another failure to make things right. you won’t sweep up the pieces, let alone consider the consequences of your actions. you never apologize. that isn’t an apology. that’s sarcasm. you’re never sincere. there’s always a slight smirk on your face. maybe others

203 don’t see it, but i do. anyone can string together selfcondemnation & swing low. that isn’t penitence. you never plead guilty or innocent. you scatter the evidence dramatically, then let someone else decide your fate. you never confess. you throw your hands in the air. an ambivalent gesture that could be read as hallelujah, i’ve been released, or thank god, it’s out of my hands. i do remember enough to make the accusations stick. you thought you’d get out of this one, didn’t you? jesus, you remind me so much of him.

scene 120 a mild hangover sunday morning spent staring into a blue screen when the sky is high & truer to its nature. i’m typing in whatever response seems adequate, if not particularly inspired. drinking ritual coffee, trying to shake the mud into the corner. not overly concerned with absolute clarity. emotions are pushed into the margins as well. yet it still looks convoluted to me. though stripped of beastly proportions & a shortcoming or two. i’m jarred by a name i haven’t seen spelled out in a year. or maybe six months that bought into the lie of the mind which compresses rambling into squares that are easier to read. i’m given a jolt that there’s a connection. a finely-tuned wiring regimented for immediate success. never questioning blind chemical chance, knotted-up reflex, or dulled impulse that won’t let me run with it at breakneck speed. i’m not exactly sure what went wrong. but i grieve the loss. am i forgetting part of the story—because it feels like i am.

204

scene 121 i can take the blade to my own flesh, but i’m not about to let you satisfy your fetish, or blood lust—whatever it fulfills in you with my pain. when i cut i feel weightless. i open my mouth as if to scream, but nothing comes out. i like that. i feel as if i have things under control. but when someone else is handling the knife it makes me uncomfortable. i could be sliced a dozen different ways, & it wouldn’t feel like penitence. it wouldn’t feel like i was working my way through purgatory. it would only make me angry. that’s what i’ve been trying to avoid. it would leave me in a deeper hole than i am already. it would defeat the entire purpose of the ritual. it wouldn’t help drain the lineage. it wouldn’t be feverish christ-like masochism rising to heaven in red beads. i would simply feel like a victim.

scene 122 a roll of incriminating film & a contaminated bang. don’t you have a conscience? that facade of yours leads nowhere. i don’t see how you keep reeling them in. i suppose i just answered my own question. now my yellow eyes circled in cheap mascara follow you everywhere. i wonder if you can feel it. i’m biding my time. waiting for an opportunity. i will make amends since i know you never will. others might see it as resolving issues. some might call it a cold-blooded ambush. but it doesn’t feel that way to me. i feel i’m administering justice. who better to take care of business? i won’t involve the authorities. it would drag on forever. i don’t need an intermediary to do the dirty work. i realize i was partly responsible. but it wasn’t

205 even close to a clean split. you took too much in too little time. that was a mistake.

scenes deleted from final cut, or not (156-161) scene 156 i’m smiling. i reach for you. you’re unhappy. you don’t try to hide it. you let me take you reluctantly, resigned, completely detached. i continue anyway. though i know how you feel. i’m a slave to my biology. this is no excuse of course. i satisfy myself then ask what’s wrong. you draw all the air in the room in, then let out a long sigh that stretches even further than the distance between us. cut to tomorrow. you’re bouncing around the apartment, singing a song i’m not familiar with. you kiss me, then ask how my day was. i shrug. i don’t say anything. i don’t feel like talking. i flip on the tv & fall back on the couch. you take my hand. you tug at me softly. you ask if i’d be more comfortable in bed. you would keep me company. i shake my head no. you let my hand drop. i hear you in the kitchen making dinner. you’re no longer singing. two days in two lives. two people never connecting. always out of synch somehow. an arm’s length away, yet unable to belong. emotionally isolated. we’ve given up trying to remember what first brought us together. it seems too far away to even imagine.

206 scene 157 it’s too late for confessions. we can no longer hear one another’s voice. somehow they’ve been filtered out. the words have been replaced with distractions. you have yours. i have mine. it worked for awhile. in the beginning i gave it a few weeks at best. but gradually it stretched beyond both our expectations. i no longer saw an end in sight. it was disorienting. i’m a man of extremes. though i don’t have the same range i once did. the distance between my cynical fatalism & my more delusional thinking has closed. they’re almost back to back. i expect a showdown soon. i lose my place. i start in the middle. i count backward. i can’t feel a difference anymore. i ask you if you have any idea what happened. i become angry when you don’t answer. i see your lips move. yet i hear nothing. nothing that i could possibly translate. i decide to write it all down. it reads like poetry. i didn’t intend for it to sound that way. i hand it to you. your face gives nothing away.

scene 158 there’s nowhere to hide. my world has become too small. there’s nowhere to run. she’s blocking the only exit. there’s a heavy cloud of smoke. it won’t budge when i try to cut through it. my hands waving about like two disoriented birds who have muddied their honing skills with too much nod. she says—i thought you were supposed to be baby-sitting. before i can answer she says it again, much louder than the first time. i explain that i am. she’s sound asleep in the bedroom. my buddy doesn’t say a word. he’s made no move toward the door either. i say she’s right in the next room. i can hear

207 if she starts to cry. i decide i better turn the music off. her eyes dart around the room. i try to follow them but can’t keep up. the immediate future is hazy. i can’t imagine what comes next. i see her lean down & pick up one of my steel-toed work boots. my reaction time is impaired. i don’t make the connection until it hits me squarely on the nose. white light pain shoots through my head, then turns to red sparks. i hear what sounds like canned laughter. i don’t get it. my eyes fill with tears. i’m blinded. instinctively my hands fly up to my face. i feel something went wrong. i feel some serious damage has been done.

scene 159 these things take time. i’ve run through all the other explanations. none were satisfactory. none came close. i can only hope that time is on my side. that it doesn’t wait to swing by when i’m not here. either dead to the world or out running an errand. i can only hope that by then i’ve learned the difference between a lucky break & a precise, graceful cut. between absolute want & absolute necessity. in the meantime i suppose i have no choice but to fall back on worn-out adages. the more ambiguous the better. the more possible conclusions, the less chance of being pinned down for an answer. i have to be patient or risk giving away my coordinates. i must throw my thoughts to dense abstraction, to absolute chaos—if that’s not a contradiction of terms. this could be the perfect disguise. but i have doubts i can pull it off. i may need to write my way around it instead.

208 scene 160 there’s someone else—we blurt out simultaneously. each of our words could be tagged with a question mark or trail off in small drops. i’m not sure if she’s asking me or telling me. she doesn’t know if i’m confessing or making an accusation. i suppose this is the best we could have hoped for. inevitability suspended in both disbelief & certainty with no wires showing. no reason to move closer to gather more conclusive evidence. nevertheless she’ll start digging with those sharp nails. nevertheless i’ll go to any extremes to prove i’m in the right. it would make sense if we both walked away. but we’re afraid to turn our backs. fearing a desperate, dangerous reaction, or possibly fatal retribution. we could both be innocent. we could both be guilty as sin. or it could be more complicated. it could be one or the other & vice versa. but right now we can’t see this. we barely recognize one another. soon we may not recognize ourselves. i always suspected that she was faking those simultaneous orgasms. i probably would have done the same if i could get away with it.

scene 161 it’s not necessary that you believe every word. a line here & there would be sufficient. i’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t interrupt. if you’d let me finish before you cut loose on me. i know what your reaction will be. it will come fast & furious & without mercy. therefore i’ve worked this scenario into the story ahead of time. it doesn’t have to be startling. it doesn’t have to be unpredictable. it doesn’t need to be inked in. it doesn’t

209 have to mention every small detail. it doesn’t have to be entertaining. it doesn’t have to qualify as art. however there must be something in there to hold your attention for a few moments. i know it must seem as if i’m stalling. but i’m not. i realize a build-up like this could spell a huge letdown. i’m hoping that my words will deepen your understanding of a situation that seems to defy any logic, or explanation. i’m hoping we can work around all this. i’m hoping it will soften your blows.

scenes from a beautiful world (250-255) scene 250 the darkness never fell. it rose slowly through slivers of doubt. love faded into the distance & no one made a move. a refusal to acknowledge the importance of those stray nights that can sneak up on us, can be a mistake. but it didn’t feel natural. it had never been explained in such a fashion. there was no precedent to gauge our reactions against. we only knew something was wrong. it didn’t matter if we approved of the methodology or not. or whether we weighed our words carefully or pounded them into the wall. there were many times we wrote it all off as simply running out of things to say. there were moments so completely out of synch that either the world had shifted or our results weren’t even close. the darkness enveloped us in its warm, wet mouth. it felt wonderful. however we could no longer see one another clearly. & neither of us would have ever admitted it.

210 scene 251 it was a typical response. it didn’t surprise me a bit. only the exact time & place were left to chance. a very small chance considering the undeniable close proximity within the cracker box. the numbers were rendered negligible. the only language understood was primal block lettering that made too many demands. the music was the usual commercial bombast. the backdrop was snow that sizzled all night. it was thirty years ago. or it was twenty-five years ago. or it was ten years ago. or it was four years ago. or it was suppressed memories that eluded time frames. but eventually we found ourselves planted firmly in the moment, though we did our best to avoid it. i suppose i could have swallowed those questions, or whittled them down to more ambiguous replies. but i didn’t. or i wouldn’t. or i couldn’t. & even if i knew for certain, it’s too late to explain anyway. we’ve run out of reconsideration. scene 252 she had classic features. i’m average looking. she dressed to the nines, always fashionable. i buy my clothes mostly at goodwill. i can’t recall seeing her in the same outfit twice, though i tend to overlook those sort of details. i sometimes wear the same clothes days at a time. sometimes neglecting to remove them before falling asleep. though she was forty years old she had skin as smooth as a teenager. there were no lines on her face to gave away her age. i was five years older, but declining at an alarming rate. she could have been a bit taller because i love long legs. i was over a head taller than her. she made three times as much money as i

211 did. she had a college degree. i barely made it through high school. yet she thought my speech pretentious. she drove a new car. i had two automobiles but they were both 7-8 years old. her house was carefully laid out to be aesthetically pleasing. my place was crumbling around me. filled with clutter of an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder among other diamonds. she smoked only marlboros, which i stole at every opportunity. i settled for generic brands. she had to polish off at least one bottle of chablis every time we went out to restaurants out of my price range. i preferred opiates in any form. we had absolutely nothing in common. we spent every weekend together for an entire year.

scene 253 i have a red, pint-sized swiss army knife. i had a similar one as a boy. i’ve owned many knives. but i seem to lose them easily. either that or they were confiscated by wary partners. i’m not sure why. i never used one against them. except for one time i threatened someone, but it was only a steak knife from the kitchen drawer, not from my collection, & i had no intention of using it. i wasn’t angry. i needed a prop to drive home a point. of course that’s only one side of the story, & it was so long ago, & my memory isn’t that sharp sometimes. i was given this small army knife out of the blue a couple years ago by a friend. i thought it an odd gift considering. it’s sitting atop a pile of books to my left. i have a long razor-sharp blade with wood grain handle on my bed stand, next to a black, chipped tire iron from one of the many automobiles i’ve run all the way to the bone yard.

212 scene 254 it’s a not a particularly nice place to visit & i wouldn’t want to live here. an overly familiar refrain. i can’t tell you exactly how many times i’ve said it. but i’d guess the thought has crossed my mind at least as many times as i’ve relocated to new digs. i’ve settled down in one spot only once in my life. this being of my own free will. i once lived in the same house six years as a kid. but usually we were on the run again after a year or two. this gypsy lifestyle carried over to my adult life. i’ve lived in my present apartment about 2 ½ years. i have large boxes piled atop one another, unopened, with no idea what’s in some of them. there’s no point in unpacking all these possessions since there’s no room for them anyway. there’s a path that runs from the front door through the living room, then grows tighter as i enter the bedroom. a sharp right will take me to sleep or the bathroom. straight ahead to a cramped kitchen & a back door i have to pry open. i have absolutely no desire to remember how i ended up here. but i can’t completely forget. so you might say i’m in a sort of purgatory before the fact. or you might say i’m nowhere at all. scene 255 time wouldn’t permit a satisfying finish, a hollywood ending complete with kisses that always seemed wooden to me, or a killer ending with skies lit up with explosions that tied everything together in the simplest fashion, or a sad monster with a single tear running down his disfigured cheek as fiery accusations fly. but time can’t be put off. it charges ahead regardless

213 of circumstances. you & i faded to black. there were no credits rolling behind. the distance was patient, knowing that even the straightest line could be twisted into a cruel joke. knowing i’d eventually fuck up. though you & i were knotted so tight it seemed impossible we’d ever unravel , we drifted into different priorities. time never missed an unexpected turn, a devastating crash that you & i miraculously survived, a booming threat that someone couldn’t take it any more, a soft promise that it’s over baby. scenes from frostbitten fingers (271-276) scene 271 i’m decked out as a foregone conclusion even though there are plenty of alternatives to keep my imagination snapping until the real thing creeps up on me, or knocks down the door. but i’m not sure how long it can fool death’s bright angel or those who’d like nothing better than to take me down. besides, if i did know i wouldn’t let on. i need to keep them guessing the same way they keep me in suspense. i need to cover my tracks. a loaded shot of self-preservation despite previous attempts to the contrary. i’m not saying i’m any happier than i was before. i would say i’m a bit more numb, which can pass as contented. it’s a simple disguise. dead men’s clothes & a flat reaction to anything they throw at me. i can only hope i’m unfashionably attired. that i appear so low i’m always looking up. part the pillows. count the stars. let the cold individualism cover me pure as driven snow. i will pretend not to notice. i will not move a muscle.

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scene 272 i grew up in spite of everything, in spite of myself. i grew taller than all the others. than those i once feared. their shrill voices. their indecisive natures. their wild, unpredictable behavior that kept me bobbing & weaving. i grew up. at the time i thought it to be a painfully slow process. but in retrospect i can see that i shot up like a bottle rocket, a bad weed, a drive-by altercation. i grew up. now i’m past my prime. the process has reversed itself. there’s no denying the law of entropy. i’m told i’ve lost half an inch of tall. i’ve lost much more than that of course. & i’ve gained experience. it doesn’t seem like a fair tradeoff to me. i’ve developed in less obvious ways. so much seems unnecessary now. i haven’t learned my lesson though. in truth, now i know less than ever.

scene 273 i remember you completely spent but smiling while lying back in a hospital bed on an unseasonably warm spring day, with the sun filling the room despite the antiseptic surroundings. you’re smiling because i slipped in quietly with flowers & a kiss. i said i’d try to round up a vase, or maybe we could use one of those blue plastic urinals, & you laughed at my stupid joke. you were the only one that ever appreciated my strange sense of humor. & you never swallowed your emotions. that was one of the things which initially drew me to you. later it would become too much for me

215 to handle. but i’m not remembering that now. my memory skips like scratched up vinyl. i even have memories to ease the pain of remembering, when we were connected by so much love that i can barely stand word for word. scene 274 when the refrigerator or dehumidifier or even small appliances kick on or change frequencies, i feel a current run down my arms into my chest. a light dose of shock treatment. it began around two years ago. i can’t recall it ever happening before then. if it happened occasionally i wouldn’t find it so strange. i might chalk it up to coincidence. i wonder if it’s something in the air, or a change in my ever-changing body chemistry. a biological reaction originating outside the body then penetrating it, or within my central nervous system. last week my kitchen & bedroom were flooded when the frozen water pipes upstairs broke. as i was doing damage control i lifted an extension cord & got a jolt that threw my arm involuntarily upward. now i wonder if this will eliminate the problem, or only make me a better conductor.

scene 275 of course it’s all in my head—where else would it be? i’m not about to leave it out where anyone can pick through it, where those who want to change my mind can steal my thoughts, or scramble them so it feels as if they don’t belong to me anymore,

216 where it can be infused with trivial pop & snapping gossip. where those who want to reconstruct the past can pry my memories out, then commence to slicing out scenes lost on the cutting room floor, which throw all the others out of context, which leaves me bewildered, irrational, possibly uncontrollable & ripe for judgment. where those who wish to push me further away can blur my dreams & reality, & my constant nightmares snag on the corners of awareness & hang there like dead ghosts or legal documents that i don’t quite understand, but know they’re not good news, & i want to make certain but they’re just out of my reach, just enough to drive me directly to the madhouse. scene 276 you can imagine my complete surprise. or maybe a slice of it anyway. or perhaps you’re unaware of the effect this has on me. i was going to write ‘the effect you have on me,’ but reconsidered, thinking it best to keep my emotions in check because i’m afraid of giving it all away, though it might be a little late for that. you can imagine how it caught me off guard, the way it cut my legs out from under me. or maybe you didn’t notice. or maybe you knew it was coming. so why didn’t you warn me? why did you fail to mention it to me? did you think i would ignore information like that? you can imagine how angry i became when i found out. or maybe you had no idea. or maybe you never understood me at all. or maybe you didn’t think i was really that angry. or i was overreacting. or maybe you never had to imagine anything. maybe you were there the entire time.

217 Carter Monroe interviews Mark Hartenbach Mark Hartenbach, affectionately known as "Marko" both on and off the Pressure Press Board, is someone I've known personally for about three years. In that period of time he has become one of the most widely published authors in the small press. His output of both words and music is staggering and the seeming freshness of his work is even more amazing. It's a privilege to have the opportunity for this interview.

1. Mark, we all have our stories about when we first began writing and why. They tend to be a bit paradoxical in that there is a certain sameness, but at the same time there is always the unique quirk of sorts. When did you first realize that the quality of what you were creating might be suitable for publication? i can’t say there was any realization/epiphany/revelatory whack on the head that told me the time was right to begin slapping on stamps & letting them fly. i seldom publish these days unless work is requested—except for my books/chapbooks of course, which are published by jennifer bosveld’s “pudding house press,” and occasionally my own “non compos mentis press.” i elucidate further in following questions.

2. Tell me about your background. Where were you born and brought up? Do you come from a literary family? no literary background at all to my knowledge. my brother is a musician. my great-grandfather was a painter. i was thrown into this world, to quote heidegger, in a small town along the ohio river. i’ve lived on both sides of the river—

218 ohio & west virginia. with the exception of several years in my 20’s, i’ve maintained this connection with sleepy little burghs, rust belt appalachian poverty & fatalism. i lived for awhile in a larger city—cleveland, OH but quickly discovered i wasn’t wired for city life. living in poor surroundings, with reactionary politics & no culture to speak of, has naturally left me frustrated. so i’ve found it necessary to create my own culture outside the frames of this dark, dubious reality. i grow bored with people easily who don’t possess creative minds. i hope this doesn’t sound snobbish. it can be exclusionary i realize, not a trait one should be proud of. all my close friends are artists— writers, musicians, painters, etc. i have great difficulty relating to the “rest of the world.” i find it healthy to reinvent myself on a consistent basis. my first form of artistic expression as a child was drawing. then as a teenager i discovered guitars & girls, which will always be connected in my mind. I started writing songs as soon as i could put a few chords together. i wrote hundreds of songs. most lost/forgotten. except for the occasional heartbreak of love, angst-filled no-one-will-ever-understand-me or testosterone high octane poems to teenage crushes, i didn’t begin attacking the page until my 30’s. so i came to poetry late. it’s been full throttle wild angels with heads on fire since.

3.When did you start writing? What were the books/events that most influenced your beginning as a writer? a fortuitous find while rooting through boxes of books that belonged to my then live-in girlfriend. i wasn’t well-read. had never been to college. my education for all intents & purposes ended around 8th grade. a few of the books

219 were kerouac’s “on the road” & “the dharma bums,” in addition to kesey’s “one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” there were other diamonds but these three stand out as having a tremendous influence on me. i was 22-23 at the time. my life was aimless. i was sober for the first time in eight years (unfortunately i would fall back under the wheels many times after). kerouac’s poetic prose moved me as no other writer had before. this introduced me to the rest of the beat canon. one book leading to the next. their work turned me on to writers such as artaud, genet, kafka, borges, rimbaud, etc. in my mid-20’s i discovered william blake, whose poetry, especially his longer prophetic books, opened up my mind to another perspective—one that made no distinction between the sacred & the profane. i believe my illnesses (manicdepression among many others—yep, i’m a fucked up individual) have fueled much of my work. unfortunately, there’s an evil flipside to that white-hot, feverish, enlightening mania, which must be battled most days, lest it will devour me.

4. How did the way you made a living influence your writing? i’ve done blue collar mule work my entire life. initially because of an immediate need to make money. i had a family at young age. later i realized i could never do any sort of work that would require sitting at a desk in an office. i never wanted employment that would require i take my job home with me. my own time has always been more important than economic considerations. i have no doubt it would have driven me over the edge. the act of creation is essential to my precarious “sanity.” however, it may have also been detrimental to my relationships with

220 women in my life. most, if not all, needed more of my time than i was willing or able to give them.

5. Can you describe your most effective working method? Do you wait for inspiration, or sit down every day with the intention of writing? i’m not adverse to any means that might jumpstart the creative process. i am lucky in that i seldom have to wait for inspiration. it waits for me. i’m blessed with a muse that can keep up with my insatiable desire/need. i’ve never had an extended period of the dreaded “writer’s block.” this is fortunate since i can become irritable, to put it lightly, when not laying it down. i can experience terrible feelings of worthlessness also. art has given me a somewhat positive focus, another persona so to speak. without any hyperbole or mystical hoodoo. i can honestly say art has been my saving grace. when i’m in a groove, recklessly wielding my black pen (i write everything in longhand in loose-leaf notebooks initially), i lose time, am completely unaware of my surroundings, or of myself— which is beyond beautiful. this can be a pleasant little vacation or a tremendous release. i don’t believe the art experience can be forced. jerzy kosinski had a great quote—telling yourself to write is like commanding your dick to get hard.

6. Name and discuss some contemporary writers who you enjoy and/or are influenced by. the names are always changing—thank god. contemporary poets would be ron androla, who taught me more about poetry than any living writer. john bennett & larry tomoyasu—who i consider to be friends as well as well as influences. jim brodey, who died in ’93, i’ve been

221 reading a lot of recently, david berman who also fronts the band silver jews, ivan arguelles, robert head, charles bukowski, wanda coleman, jesse bernstein, many “beats” including lew welch, allen ginsberg, amiri baraka, philip whalen. also many of the poets in this anthology. tough question. ask me tomorrow & i’d come up with dozens more. as far as fiction—i dig sam shepard, william vollmann, denis johnson, chuck palahniuk, sesshu foster, amy hempel, paul auster. songwriters like the masters—bob dylan, tom waits, elvis costello, joe strummer from the clash, going back woody guthrie, leadbelly. the list goes on. many jazz musicians—monk, mingus, ornette, trane. also many classical composers. i’m also moved to write by painting—much of it termed “outsider art,” but also the abstract expressionists, van gogh of course. a friend, mikey welsh, who consistently reminds me of art’s possibilities.

7. what are you working on at the moment? i’ve been writing some poems “inspired” by yet another bad relationship. i was convinced this was “the one.” i was wrong as usual. i should say that it’s always their fault. (joking). i’m also working on two novels, which i’ll probably wind up whittling down to novella size. i’d like to explore the short story form too. maybe plays. i find too much unnecessary language, both descriptive & dialogue in most novels. i work best in prose poems. i could be mistaken. but if it’s good, it’s all poetry, isn’t it? i want to move people. almost anything can make us simply think, after all.

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collage by mark hartenbach

223 the words of ron androla by mark hartenbach i’ve learned more about poetry from ron androla than any other poet—living or deceased. whether ron would want to take credit for this influence is debatable of course. androla taught me the possibilities of the poem. & they are endless. i’ve known ron personally & have read his work for many years, going back to the days of the stapled underground. i’ve read thousands of his poems. i went through three thousand archived poems for this anthology alone. when i learned of this project, & the way it would be presented i knew immediately i wanted to take on androla, though i realized the time & work that would be involved in such an endeavor. initially sifting through the aforementioned multitudes i found i’d chosen over two hundred pieces. i believe my criterion going in was tough, if not cut-throat. some poets have a nice flow with words. some poets are prolific. some poets possess a certain technique that seems to work much of the time, though predictable. androla is prolific. his lines flow with a certainty few poets even approach. i’ve never connected ron’s poetry with technique. this seems to insinuate a style mined again & again. androla’s poetry never lacks variety. his prolific output would mean nothing if his words didn’t shake the page, though in this case i suppose the monitor would do the shaking. i think of a flock of starlings, a wild black cloud moving in what first appears chaos until they form a funnel & seem to be sucked into a chimney with an overwhelming precision. i think of an army of ants taking individual, crooked paths to get to their destination, often stopping in

224 the same area more than once, before going about their work, & their work is absolutely necessary. androla’s fingers are wild-ass starlings. his words always feel necessary. i’ve decided to refrain from quoting from androla’s body of work. you can read for yourself here. you don’t need me or anyone else pointing out diamonds embedded in coal. besides, it would be too easy since nearly every poem contains something i could lean on. androla’s poetry screams at injustice, while lamenting the futility of one man’s desire to make things right. there are tender portraits of family, scenes that in a lesser poet’s hands might come dangerously close to norman rockwell homespun corn, or simply redundant. these poems are working class surrealist pokes in the eye that get your attention. taking your mind somewhere it’s never been. & pointing out so many ways of seeing one situation, or describing a single image. as i said, endless combinations that are juicy sweet passionate, cynically sour & on the mark observations on where the amerikan dream went wrong, if we ever believed what they pounded into our schoolboy heads in the 60s. anarchic leaps into the path of authority & asking questions—no, demanding answers. grotesque, contorted machinery that will eat you alive if you’re not careful. & becoming just another nut or bolt. androla’s poetry is unquestionably masculine. but never sinks to the false bravado, & forced cockiness of so many poets who have read a few volumes of bukowski & nothing else. third-rate hacks falling back on selfmythologizing because they lack the chops to write their way onto another page.

225 androla’s poems let us see a multifaceted man. he gets in & gets out. never asks permission. never apologizes. androla’s words have a power that defies, with jutted-out chin, even while speaking softly & making sense in a mostly senseless world. androla’s poetry jumps unpredictably. philip whalen had the best description of this as any i’ve read—poetry is a graph of the mind moving. ron’s words can be slippery & concrete, cautionary & confrontational. whether meditative notions plastered to the vortex, or existential profanity slapped on solemn institution walls—though profanity is a misnomer here because it’s just too fucking pure for such a definition. androla’s lines unfold naturally, yet they can turn on you like a wounded animal, cut & scratch & holler & sing. androla’s words are allusive, slip right through the small minds of those with expectations of what poetry should be. poetry is everywhere & anywhere. read androla & let him show you.

Ron Androla lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. slight menthol it has been nearly a week to the hour dentist wrestled roots out of my top jaw. his pessimism bothering me, his uncertainty & truthfulness, no easy extraction he explains before i say do it, i don't have an option. i close my eyes after seeing him snap a latex glove on a

226 hand, & he shoots me with so much novocain i can't feel my nose. this WILL BE sore after he finally announces done. i bite bloody gauze. ann is picking my pain pill prescription up after her eye doctor appointment, & the novocain is wearing off & fuck yes it hurts, increasingly, but the magic of vicodin is quick & i'm minus a top front tooth, swollen under my moustache. a week has passed, nearer to the hour, & i don't think it's blood i taste. it's air. wake think behind me it's as if aluminum hums death of a black train dawn begins to blow gray dust cars & stegosaurus grapes on my coffee darling baby powder apples hang from my nostril hair

227 shotgun guts war, wars, religions, ethics, masses of humans hungry, dying infants with flies on dry cracked lips, prisons, wal-marts, pissed off terrorists without hope who only believe in black eternity, pop-tart poets, congress like a dead gland, technological wonderment toys, sadness as a base of self intentional depression poem it isn't difficult, look, sweep the curtains away where multiple movies of my life light & roll; make cigarette butt sculpture, & what sense is there slapping at words, fat fish suddenly gulping air. without a poem hours fly behind me, bits in gray sky which blend with mist & the rounding darkness. one morning accomplishment when i was fresh with half-sleep brain, but since then, hell. two sandwiches. chips & apple juice, face in our downstairs tv. we cld turn north korea into black glass, a retired amerikan general proclaims. a banner runs under chipper, alert, zombie newscasters: amerikan spy satellites are thinking north korea is preparing for a second underground nuclear test. dog on the floor grums in his sleep. i decide to be prone, too. no, mass of mankind ain't gonna survive much longer, i think, which isn't such a

228 loss to the universe. let it all explode, let rain be poisonous, let the weak die above like burnt cattle & the very, very wealthy are happy & active in their deep underground bunkers, they breed down there.

idealism amerika is the human force of peace, negotiation, compassion, empathy. we have changed all paradigms into goals of happiness, acceptance, generosity, love -- great roll of earth shift. whatever one wants one receives without the chasm of money, only the fulfilling of dream in this life without obstacles, without nightmares, without judgment. all things currently on the surface of the planet are enough for everyone to share. we believe in magic & mystery & concentrate on space travel. we flower & bloom in the universe.

229 in vain a civil war plate photograph dead on a grainy copper black white field the invisible maggots conviction finality or were there boys dying with half a body gone but conscious & still connected to time weeping blood slaughtered by politics & idea who forgave their killer who pitied their nightmares who thought heaven was coming who drifted into ghost who lost

230 life wearing gray kids cut from future moments & we all come together we're a nation beyond the civil war we have tvs we have interstate highways don't worry north korea is a nice place. there's a poet there who writes in a notebook nobody will ever read -- real, true, savage poems. he doesn't care about the government, or any government anywhere. secrecy is very normal, & the more secretive he is the happier. cutting little symbols with a sharp knife across paper his dream is peacefulness.

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independence because george washington says fuck thee no to being king which drives a wedge splitting 230 years from history i'm drinking tim horton coffee, smoking internet cigarettes & writing while free-falling from the rest of the world a mind atlantis, an empire of sand crumbs across nitrogen sky ant-eater tongues butterfly straws drink deep fossil fuel

232 blank pain in a tree-circled field edged with wolves, walnut trees, webs, nets of bugs, sit down in the grasses. fold open the process of thought by biology. you have cigarettes? smoke them. either way continue holding yr hands inside the fire, hot-dog char burn of fingers; no screaming. no absolute denial, one certainty. life is long alone in the field, thus our ritual, what's maintained for the sake of time in a head, to sear life

233 alive. & the world spills down the tulip of space/time fabric. we stretch forever. this is how to die. father's day my son & baby trish will be here soon. she's babbling now with that bright light eye of human intelligence & joyfulness. her sparkle energy -- she wants to walk. this is doug's first father's day as a father, & i feel the puke of guilt overflow up my throat; shld have got him at least a card, dummy, half-assed dad. my daughter works all day, & tho i'd love to see my grandsons, it's ok. pyramids rise from squares of

234 calendar days, some grander than others in this relativity paradox. 1988 my own father died, a long, goddamn time ago -- i can hear him on a wet phone: you're a fuck-up, son, but a good fuck-up, relax. because it's father's day & our cupboards are very, very bare, ann is shopping for groceries. she's a doll. wants me to relax today. ok. taboo self-imposed subjects a portion of a poem is admission, in some manner at least, to proclaim against secrets their existence. to open an oven in an eye heat gloves & crawls up yr arm. can a poem be a scar, a wound, an unintentional accident like a pee-sneeze, of course. guilt

235 girls us all. guilt is a snap in the brain. guilt fountains firework spray in hell. a poet works with pain like finger-paint on splintery wood -the wood of the real world. things. i have that option i can let it fly, what to do about supper task sprouts feathered arms of alternatives we may have rain soon, light of afternoon looks & feels, tastes of rain, shadow over the trees air cape of mystery magic water from low sky, yes, i hear thunder,

236 thunder! thru wide-open upstairs windows. facially sweating, shirtless, involved with reticulation, what i always mean. i see a raindrop thru the screen, or bird shit, comet down, how cld there be just one raindrop in all these minutes passing, ah, more thunder.

237 we need we need good news, luck, money, something pulling adrenaline from our glands. summer ends like a thrown switch, sudden like light then black. i don't know if i'm ready for more drama when i used to embrace autumn theatrics, toughen against the thought of blizzards. "if we cld move anywhere, where wld you want to go?" ann asks me, softly, but point-blank. anywhere? i'm stumped. i say half-heartedly amsterdam. it's such a thin dream. i really do not know where i want us to live. here? as if here is a place we'll die in, end. where wld we flower with new happiness? to dream is dreamier than ever, distant, a decaying echo. escape? how about just a lot of money -- we'll always be poor. to be poor on easter island. to be poor in the farmlands of france. former infatuation i don't know what courtney love is doing these days. last i heard she'd been busted for drugs again but has straightened up. hard to say. she's rich. she's really a fine actress, too. i've maybe written 10 poems in the past decade for or about

238 courtney love, but it's been a long time since the last one. maybe if i read entertainment magazines i'd know what she's doing, what she's saying. with all those pain-pills & flung bottles of scotch she must have been a pain in the ass, say she phones you, fucked up like that. plastered, on the offense, yelling & groaning & admitting the strangest things you partially absorb & hang up on her ranting. what? she calls back angrier, louder, she's a shotgun pressing on yr ear. in the path of a train wreck i sit down and think (for filipski) hours ribbon from our eyes like manes of heatwaves blur watercolor earth blue blackens

239 with bob of space fabric weight chopping of september wood & what winter will do hurricane ferocity swallows florida tit california crackles in fire chicago is a bottomless hole on the dark side of the moon vaults of d.c. video surveillance it isn't something's going to hit us we'll hit something orbital eventuality we're sunk skunk ink blot stink in a flash

240 on the sweeping hand-like sky of time stingray barb thru the heart & ghosts pour out stingray barb thru the heart & ghosts pour out flashes of flesh moments blur as you ice little shattered cat-eye god marble moon rolling around earth the dead spin the world with wispy cloud feet as they fly from water & oxygen into atoms of dark matter secrecy where nothing is an

241 animal where layers of mind leaf upon black rock & quarks of things are crazy without sensory whirling biology of time no packages of light no creature instinct is involved to forget pieces of brain, shattered window glass, catch light at sharp triangular edges. there is always a floor & a sky, but between, sun dust & confusion. an infusion feeds us fragile molecules, sweet water, a little future. time twists a tongue like a watermelon licorice stick. years yellow our eyes -- our seeing things. words are soft, round, sound syllables without the structure of meaning. let us assume the bush administration will nuke the great pyramids, & that's ok. we'll have pictures & not remember what they are. bandwagons break like ice & melt, then freeze again in another world, a world where clouds kill all clowns & clownish attitudes. we'll forget what futility is.

242 hope i don't care about verbal gymnastics, tho i enjoy the swing of words & craftsmanship of accomplished poets; fuck it all. let them prosper, let them thrive, may they be gleeful with grants & awards. may their poetry shift language in new ways of awakening -- so what. amerika is a rude, ruthless, chaotic, decaying country. i say it's hopeless, that my grandchildren will be utterly fucked in the future is absolutely certain. sure, there will be poets but they will be useless, ineffective, numbed by time. i give up. silence is more relevant than a poem's noise. we shld all shut

243 our heads in shame. the misunderstood they stare down when they walk as if that's all the future they really see & know, a few feet from their shoes. they scurry around corners with little girl tiptoe feet. they are embarrassed when slender flames tongue from their throats, they keep quiet more often than normal. they are as warped as a spine of self under heavy years. they deny everything but gradually agree to a few observations. they play games in their minds, change colors of objects around them, make a lamp talk. they sit straight. they fade & fuzz to ghosts, dust in a swirl of sunlight, silence intensified by death & strange phenomenon. they are not prone to a natural smile, but stiff, chiseled by certainty nothing's funny.

244 love poem redux 23 years hacked us with age wounds, other marriages. we'd surely been fucked by the twisting amerikan dildo of the decades. slit from belly up so many times our guts were black halved wriggling worms, no vital organs remained. in a way, love, we were immaculate, so diseased, beyond our pain. hollowed, but haloed by rings of simple existence. that's the thing. somehow we were still alive. all the shit in the world smeared our hearts, but baby, we fell in love again. we healed each other, nursing the fears of regrowth with compassion. we healed ourselves with gallons of bourbon & the internet. when you stepped from the greyhound bus you were dressed in black. has it been 8 years later & still most all the clothes you own are black. i liked that then & i like it now. neither of us want to ballroom dance. neither of us wants to damage our miracle. i will say i am not especially as graceful as i used to be, but that's me as a fuck-up -- a fault. i recognize my lack of tenderness

245 lately, i really do. i cld make excuses, give reasons, but my mind is a large gong-show gong & i'm mister stupid tap-dancing, badly, in all my glory. you know you have to laugh.

excuse the ashes before i know it 5 o'clock is black. it's winter, after all, & earth is shunning the sun, pulling away from its fire & light, pulling back into a further, cold, darkness. the season is sadness edged by disgust. i feel entirely appropriate. daylight ends early as it always shld, but earth won't allow that for too long. i'm mostly an awkward man.

way down here i'm typing this poem with cold fingers. the past gas & electric bills are monsters eating our food, quick as that, lower the thermostat, don't turn on the space-heaters. i'm wearing 4 layers of clothes. we're a little above

246 the line for energy assistance. i'm both shocked & pissed national fuel is getting another rate-hike after a 41% price increase last month. it's a little insane, citizens, & we've all been programmed to deal with a little insanity thru media coverage & consumerism. but wait, i'm typing this poem with old, middle-aged, cold fingers that spent the past 30 years in cut-throat factories -i stand before you, without a job. i stand before you as a poet. i stand before you as a father, grandfather, son, uncle, cousin, friend, husband, owner of a big black dog & two cats. the cost it requires to show one scene in a film is more money than we have. i don't believe you realize how lopsided we are. morning rhapsody from the cracked granite lips of god blowing clouds into bursting mushroom flowers angels slide into my ears thin translucent molecules of their ghosts thru hourglass ear canals it's martian sand moving behind my eyes swirling dust devils slow

247 rolling into angels inside my head levitate over their luminous toes in dark, unclear mindscape room like i need alien angels fuckers with spotlights & microscopes & telescopes & the knowledge to warp physics their soft faces anger me but i can't make a move they fly with smiles down twisting caves of blackness they seed deepest, forgotten secrets alien angel eggs by the trillions nest in things i don't want to remember it's a plain invasion of my privacy fuckers a change of mind blown from the lips of god ha! impervious recklessly terrestrial i crack my neck

charlie parker in winter evening fast far fingers slip slim carbon monoxide exhalations from lung thru a hollow gold hook like a curled up florida fetus horn ass of human head snows miserable shit night with stand-up bass strings twining between a spilled piano & bottles of bourbon gleam xmas lights being coins lost & loss & lostness floats slow sadness eats us like cats

248 & carrots eat us like cats carrot amerika eats us one piano key at a time & calls it commerce charlie beat meat charlie black death deals less than music you knew we'd be this fucked alone insane & shattered charlie shut up slide syringe & love what amerika isn't what amerika won't ever be be dead be gone be silent

world is wet at the end of august, trees drip & streets are water, strings of rainfall wrap daylight gray, & look, ann

249 declares as she lifts our paper landing curtain, those dark clouds south of erie, gray blacks blue coffee skies which rolled over us from the lake most of the morning as i napped on our living room couch, a day off work, beer in my blood from last night & ann's wonderful pre-sleep pancakes: i use way too much syrup. making more sense we didn't get cluster-fucked by two feet of snow. national weather service mistake against 100% certainty. they sure warned us, & there were hours

250 blizzards cut distance down to a few yards, but in the end, today, a few inches of white fat bulge on top of the hedges, that's all. tomorrow sun will burn everything to water & mud again according to latest forecasts. birds shake off their hoods of snow, fly up & across gray morning sky with the gracefulness of indestructible vampires wired on meth & eternity. bullets of bird vampires under 9 a.m. cloud-cover tightened nerves of erie & our pale skin drain excessive amounts of coffee down our mouths not to quickly do things to write above the base of exhaustion anemia madness caffeine drags chains thru moist caves caffeine

251 glitter in our brains words are birds with fangs & fucks in black capes over our heads the national weather service turns into false poetry because i don't actually believe in vampires inside a bird's eyes a pea for a mind the snowstorm didn't happen, that's all. we saw it & felt it, dreamed it, but an alberta clipper never fully materialized, & it's more my poem's fault. in a poet's hands sky is clay.

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from earth to moon lakewater weather licked by canada rusts old paint wood. in moments the sun paints angles of water, dark sand sense in shadows below our toes, blood red slashes of fish flutter over hard lake horizon line like brushes drip motion. i imagine all those eyes under the surface of subreal oxygen molecules, under a surface of bloody wine, cold eye stares thru another side of a mirror split by space & mammals -- muted, throatless. a worm floats into a dying open sunfish mouth at the bottom of breakwater rocks, a last swallow in slow gravity. we walk like bounding muffins on the moon. we shoot eyesight back into human information vessels, archeology to any point in recent past.

253 the hour my heart stopped we were not dancing there wasn't any music just tv noise of evening local news with nothing seeming especially relevant we were wearing rags & eating leftover donations the hour my heart stopped we were trying to unlisten but eat fork prongs circled around our eyes we were missing our mouths we cldn't hear how sloppy we sounded outside our vampire-hunching rosebush swayed with dead flowers in gray twilight the hour my heart stopped strips of bark curled off the maple trees every bird in the world appeared blind neighborhood dogs grew into elephants crushing any fences with stampede decision the hour my heart stopped you took the skin off yr hand like a glove & i kissed yr bones between gorging & senseless television & i know you smiled softly when i rose for beer the point of poetry the point of poetry is to induce revelation for the poet & the reader the point of poetry must be as sharp as possible, or impossibly so the point of poetry is to change brains in a very chemical way

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the point of poetry fucks the holes we are the point of poetry is a ghost cock penetrating a dispersing ghost cunt the point of poetry is unending echo -- sound of life where we go it's jack kerouac's birthday today, poor jack kerouac who just wants to be dead. a few random molecules collect thousands of yards up thru thick snowclouds, form into a piece of kerouac's saddest eye. black sad balloon size of pencil dot & thru it he sees atmosphere for a moment. it's a gone place he imagines a beat smile with parking-meters & snow with fat people & no death with miles davis like a liquid drug sound

255 rivers of wine ice cops with hatchets that human buddha madness & glee that thinking things are cool even if nobody makes it out with more thought than minds bulge with & gene krupa kicks ass embedding into arrays of arms & legs he's the coolest cat in heaven who digs being dead really dead kerouac is not maintaining sanity goats in the machine chew & kick at wiring albino goats with pink fire eyes

256 are hammered to my nose black goats are shadow smoke across ether snowfields ether night sky in daylight mute goats echo glass smashing thru treetops & terrestrial molecules goats with glands of everything available sweat it in a cage behind my eyes goddamn goats ghost us with streams of re-uptake inhibitors

257 realizing inertia went down to the woods & creek & ballfield, new castle to sitto's, charlaroi (axing the word) outside pittsburgh where little grandma & great-grandpa lived, but for most of my first 18 years i stayed wedged in ellport, ellwood city, beaver falls, koppel, pennsylvania. next thing i know i'm on a jet flying across the atlantic ocean to paris then to zurn switzerland where i catch like a 6-hour train to lugano, second semester at point park college pittsburgh. 1972, 1973, i was ripped good from the womb of my hometown life, & then there was new hampshire & boston & new england, the island of corsica insane for 3 & a half months there with a manual typewriter & hundreds of love-letters to ann. she wrote me back four times. i felt like a piece of lost shit reading pound & olson & aristotle, neitzsche, swinburne, old issues of national lampoon. it cost my parents one hundred & sixty-eight dollars for me to board the jet with all the books

258 i had with me -- i remember my mother being a little frantic writing a check at the check-in counter with my insistence i needed all these books. what a crass asshole i was. i didn't know the meaning of money until i was down to eating oranges & bread for a week generously given to me by the hotel's manager in ajaccio, corsica. hotel spunta di mare if i remember it right. bathroom down a hall, 5 francs for a bathtub bath. there was a sink in my room, i mostly used that. i think i remember taking one bath in those 3 & a half months. i had cigarettes, very cheap, a room paid for a month, my typewriter & a ream of paper, & a floor scattered with a hundred books. ann had burned a full-skull tattoo in my brain. & she didn't give a flying fuck about me. she was pissed since she was supposed to come to corsica too but the last week before the trip i sd listen i think i have

259 to do this thing alone (writing). i thought she sd she'd wait for me, but obviously not. i begged her to pick me up at the boston airport because there was no alternative plan. she obliged, not like she actually wanted to, & i was a full-blown madman away from most of civilization for three & a half months with a hundred love-letters & thousands of throw-away poems. i ripped up a few paper bags full of those love-letters in ann's closet at franconia college -there was a party, & she didn't think i'd really enjoy it she'll be back by midnight, bullshit, i sat inside her closet at 3 a.m. tearing those pages to shreds. later she mentioned someone named mark, & i knew i was out of the picture. you'll always be my poet lover, i recall her saying. i ended up back in ellport living with my parents, working three jobs

260 but spending everything on drinking & drugs & girls. with even a particle of foresight i shld be wealthy, oh i've traveled a little, cross-country in '79, buffalo, chicago, kent ohio, northern virginia where ann's hometown is over the recent years, but after 9-11 we dream of antarctica or easter island. it's like that corsica dream tho this time we'll both go nowhere together. fifty words count them if you want i can wait smoking my last self-rolled cigarette in a hazy daze saturday evening head triple-sweatered

261 at the upstairs laptop urge to piss just starting but let's think about you & yr vampiric craving for a good blood-filled poem shivering whiff of madness tingles hunger saturday rain saturday rain drizzles afternoon november mist peach street is exceptionally loud with all the water & traffic as i smoke a cigarette outside jiffy lube in a ball-cap anti-freeze flush oil-change smell of new coffee in tiny waiting area i read today's erie paper back home ann's working on her book & when i finally return there's hot soup too & she has the dog inside really wiped his muddy paws & he's all jumpy to see me

262 before i can get my jacket off & our black cat is bela lugosi half-way changing from one creature into another i picture the cat with raven wings i imagine ann with sheer-white wings origins of selflessness it's always karma i don't care what you believe i care what you believe gnats S from the horn of a golden saxophone unplayed for decades gnats squashed by 4 drumsticks double drummer complexity jazz space screeches like a dry eternal gear everyone is deaf we hear ourselves die

263 saturday ashes writing thru when the disaster of life slaughtered my possibility of living on easy street -- after college, before that i was a constant dreamer whose dreams were nearly actual being. i was all eyes freshly growing i was all cock & cum & the sweetness of kleenex i was in step with the youth of amerika i was all ears tull, hendrix, dylan, crosby stills nash & young -- after college, driving a jitney, high, drinking at oak grove inn with the ellport gang, shooting a lot of pool, a few more jobs, bartending but i was a drunk bartender, then a cross-country fleeing with a pregnant girlfriend, then returning, then the need to support 3 of us, unemployment lines, etc.... -- that's when i entered

264 the fire & still haven't escaped, never will. this is all there is as i near fifty-one years on earth: days burn away.

spidery reverie instinct to reach for heavy metal buddha to smash a small spider richocet-running on a white wall in front of me ann stops me warns me she'll be very angry if i kill it it's one of those quick tiny spiders of summer probably bounding inside thru the air-conditioner gaps over our old garage roof those are good spiders ann declares

265 the process of a poem i'm sitting in a small 2nd floor room & i'm listening to morning rain pelt this house & things outside i have been reading the hunter s. thompson rolling stone issue it's in our bathroom it's this rain like old winter god slobber with hunter s. thompson muttering, laughing at what he's sd, which nobody else hears, i'm lighting a cigarette like an explanation there's a hell of a lot of steady fast rain & oh yes shadows mist i must write it i must retain whatever

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moment i am able

teleportation i'm wrong about so many details, so forgive my myriad factual mistakes, but i think british scientists have successfully teleported 2 particles across 5 miles of lake. quantum stuff, physics, strange experimentations: i can be here & there at the same time too, right behind you, standing or hovering.

267 blue moon morning we wake in bed under an open window -- it's a sloshy, steady rain as gray dawn light wraps us together, naked, warm. i mumble some of my dreams as i spoon ann, she chuckles, & we're amazed the animals haven't already been trying to get us up. cat's in the doorway, dog's on the floor at the end of the bed, asleep. we have a big day: chores, waiting on the last dell shipment, grocery-shopping which i have already performed. beat by it. ann is cleaning our kitchen floor after scrubbing out the fridge to a newer, cleaner condition while i did quality market duty. before i left she made us eggs & toast & coffee. rain splatters over our house, over everything outside. nice, we love this kind of weather. there's a second full moon of the month tonight, & that's good too. there's HELLBOY dvd to watch again since

268 we fell to sleep before probably the middle of the movie last night. it's a fun film. it's a fun life. funny i see life as fun. i have to run the vacuum today, & that's not fun, tho it is, it is. the days behind your head an otter v's calm dawn lake-water pocket, a secret fishing spot. algae skeins wrap sunken muddy branches. mosquitoes, gnats, & dragonflies fly over the shallow inlet, headed, necked, brain of soft green water. fog like a fat fish ghost: a misty mind. dozen ducks across shore where an ear wld be, dippings, circles, squawks, peacefulness, plenty of morning minnows, words to swallow. i cast. i see the bobber immediately disappear, so i yank my pole with its nearly invisible line up hard, & something heavy tugs on the end. reeling, pulling my catch in, i remember fishing here with

269 doug when he was twelve. he's more man now. it's just a stupid sun-fish. i curl sharp hook back thru fish gristle jaw, rip it out, & underhand that slow sun-fish back home. talking to bukowski old fuck language leaps lark-like from a back yard vine oatmeal fills our mailboxes steady rain ruins the horse race muddy miracles win broken-ankled long shots litter the brown soupy track 1:1 odds always lose sure winning is entire hallucination meantime we're strapped to a hospital bed in the land of the partially free hallucinating

270 poems are running wild across this globe we call a belly a fatty in space a place where luck is & isn't to not know love to not know love at this precise moment in a poem, to not be loved by a twin of emotion, to have no lover to call sweetheart, to never yell up the stairs at her, or him, BRING SOME SHOT GLASSES DOWN & she, or he, does what i intend what i intend to do is cellularly connect this string of english language mumbo-jumbo like a bloody umbilical

271 cord stabbed into yr eyeball squished & pushed so flesh fleshes with flesh living in nepal open back door, leaving our warm, dog-hair'd house, wearing my big old snow boots since there's big old, & new, snow outside. we're muffled under a white, thick goose comforter, under a gray wool sky blanket, & in single-digit air our screams are shrill, less echo, more silence of eternal weather. i start the jeep, brush off snow & piles of white wool lint; encircling our red jeep wiping off windows it occurs to me i write the same poem over & over every day every year. the poem is very much like a mountain, & it's winter in erie. how i managed

272 being an erie citizen without 4-wheel drive for 20 years is a disturbing shortcoming of insight, finances, & common sense. all my life i always take the hard way. i'm stupid. dense. broke. that's never changed.

A PRESSURE PRESS COLLECTION EDITED BY RON ANDROLA featuring: Ann Androla Ron Androla Bud Backen Bill Beaver Tom Blessing Mike Boyle Pris Campbell Jim Chandler Joyce Chelmo Cait Collins Glenn Cooper D.B. Cox Jeff Filipski Mark Hartenbach Donna Hill John Korn Didi Menendez Carter Monroe Nicholas R. Morgan Kurt Nimmo Daryl Rogers Luc Simonic Bart Solarczyk Cheryl Townsend