Smoky Blue
Literary and Arts Magazine
#2 Spring and Summer, 2015
Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine issue #2
spring/summer, 2015
fiction Coyle, Susan
The Shortcut
8
Greenfield, Irving A
From Another Place
80
Hilderbrandt, James
Reverend Odum and His Wife
60
non-fiction Canale, Susan
The Irregular Daughter
103
Rowlan, Garrett
Mother, Memory, Borges
106
Silvermarie, Susa
Where Are You From?
24
Spring, Julia C
Group Therapy Replaces the Tribe
50
The Boxer
44
Walking with the Auctioneer
45
You Got Me Babe
46
Signing in Braille
48
Thresholds
74
Falling Leaves
76
Depew, Karen
Waves
36
Doreski, William
Virtual and Virginal
28
For Joanna
30
Your Flamingo Dance
32
Private Economies
34
Stoke's Astor
35
Grey, John
Waterfall
27
Hamilton, Larry L
Riptide
Jacoby, Jay
Homefires Burning
77
Soundproof
79
poetry Baker, Bobby Steve
Bucher, Steve
Johnson, Caitlin
The Hermit/L'ermite (9)
100
4
Karson, Ann Tobias
Proposal at Breakfast
38
Sun Soaked
40
Scream
42
Lindner, Reinhard W
Old Photographs
111
McBrearty, Jenean
A Brief History of Churchill's Black Dog
57
Challenge
58
Urban Quandary
59
N, Andy
Home alone shirt on the back of the 22 Bus
5
Ross, Fran Ghee
The Other River
6
Silvermarie, Susa
Your Wild Goddess Ways
23
Valvis, James
The Last American Victim
72
Maybe
70
The Monarch Visit
31
images Chambers, P Diane
DeCristofaro, Jeffrey Sandel, Sharon
Crab Nebula 2
102
Sunset Ridges
cover,110
Red-Eye Landing Shining Bright
75 7
Treasure Hunter
41
Sepia Nude
49
Peace
95
Reflections
37
Mountain Morning
78
Silvermarie, Susa
Hats Off to the Blue Ridge
73
Soule´, Michelle
Andalucia
69
Schramek, Donna
Editor's Note
New York, Florida,
New Hampshire, Texas, Washington, California and eight other states. And Puerto Rico, Spain, England. I am amazed at the far flung sources for submissions to this second issue of Smoky Blue. Amazed, and quite elated. I've discovered that facilitating a small magazine is lots of work, but that it also brings lots of rewards. Working with the dedicated, discerning and caring people on the staff (see back cover) and reading and seeing contributors' fervent efforts are gratifying enough, but when accepted contributors email me that they are "thrilled" and "can't wait to see it," I am reminded why I began this in the first place: to provide a forum for an artist, as South Carolina poet Kwame Dawes puts it, to "somehow communicate my sense of the world." I hope you'll enjoy this issue as much as I have!
The Hermit/L’ermite (9) This promontory: some call it precipice, but I call it primogeniture, my birthright. It is my outcrop, my lookout. From here I see the kaleidoscopic world unfold. When I was a novitiate, something called me here, a positron aura guiding me up the rock. My lamp and I are at home here. Fear nothing, though you fear me; I await the dangers and will face them for us all. Caitlin Johnson Caitlin Johnson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her work has appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine, Clare Literary Journal, Eternal Haunted Summer, Fortunates, Momoware, Pembroke Magazine, Vagina: The Zine, and What the Fiction, among other outlets. A Chapbook, Boomerang Girl, is forthcoming in 2015 from Tiger's Eye Press.
Home alone shirt on the back of the 22 Bus Half broken buttons Dangle off like fingernails Blowing in the slight breeze Near the mother shouting At her children And the bored grandfather Staring at the floor In utter contempt Turned inside out Like a mattress protector Sprinkled with Sugar and chocolate stains Unsure how it had got there Like a young child Accidentally left home alone. Andy N Andy N is a 42 year old writer from Manchester, UK. His first full length book of poetry is Return to Kemptown. Andy has a second, split book with Jeff Dawson, A Means to an End, and a third split book with Nick Armbister, Europa, which covers stories of how war impacts ordinary people. All are available online at lulu.com. A mini chapbook, "Mystery Story," is available from origamipoems.com. His second full length collection, The end of Summer, is due out in May 2015.
The Other River Time flows, the theory goes, in opposite directions, like twin rivers: the familiar one that reaches toward the future and the other flowing into the past. Along the other river, after being dead we come to life. We pour orange juice from glass up to pitcher and cool off pots of water for our tea. With every wearing, our clothes get cleaner. April holidays buck us up for the long winter ahead, when we ski uphill and backwards and take the chair drop to the bottom. We all come into the world with a PhD. Competition to get into first grade is fierce. In the art world, post-impressionism influences Monet who late in his career prefigures realism, shocking the critics. Olympic events include the javelin catch. Winners are announced before the race. To treat old injuries, doctors advise playing pro football. Managed care has evolved into universal house calls. Computers have become obsolete and spies steal blueprints for bows and arrows. We are smaller, hairier mammals now without portfolios or cholesterol counts Our skin cream reinforces wrinkles and keeps age spots from fading. Twelve-year-olds of means have plastic surgery for that jaunty, elderly look. Senior moments are cherished and often the subject of photographs. As we turn 21, we celebrate our last legal drink. Our children raise us well, with youth’s accumulated wisdom. They record our last tooth, last steps, last laugh. Fran Ghee Ross Fran Ghee Ross is an occasional poet who is fascinated by science as well as many other of life's mysteries. She's taught Creativity, Chaos, and Consciousness, Yoga, Moving Into Meditation, and Groove Dance at OLLI Asheville.
Shining Bright
Sharon Sandel
The Shortcut The girl protested the move and called it the boondocks, but her parents bought her a car, a three-year old Corvair, so she wouldn’t have to transfer high schools. The car almost made the move worthwhile. She drove the back roads and the state road and the new interstate extension, trying them all on for the best route. Looking to make the best time. The state road took her to high school, got her past the monotonous fields and farms, delivered her to “civilization.” Meanwhile, the suburbs continued to sprawl, and practically overnight a Mobil station was built out there in the sticks. The first time she stopped for gas she was surprised to see an unmarked lane cutting through one of the pastures. She decided to explore. It ran straight through a dairy farm and emptied out a mile away, close to the highway extension. The gravelly lane was rutted and unlit, but it would shave 10 minutes from her commute. Easy. No one seemed to care when she began to use the shortcut. The owner lived in a big brick house tucked into a far corner of the fields, away from the barns and equipment. Hired hands with families were quartered in four plain white cabins arrayed near the entrance to the lane. Shallow gullies separated the road from the lush rolling fields. Midway down the track was a small grove of old, knobby oak trees, which provided a welcome wash of shade. Further along, the lane gave over once more to empty blue skies and alien sounds of interstate traffic. It was January of the girl’s senior year, and two feet of snow had fallen off and on all week. The wind sculpted the snow into mounds. On Friday a watery sun melted a few inches of it, but the clear night turned very cold, and a thick crust formed on top of the snow. The interstate was salted and
plowed, and at ten PM, she sped to her usual exit. All that mattered was that the radio and heater were on full blast and she’d be home well before curfew. She sang along with the radio: Ticket to Ride and Wooly Bully. She wore the standard outfit of the day: mini-dress, boots, textured hose, and a slouch coat. Off the ramp, the girl turned toward the dairy farm. It flitted across her mind that the road might be impassable, but when she arrived at the bottom of the lane, tire tracks glistened in the moonlight. Other cars plainly had gone through. The unlit road, the cold night, and heaps of snow in sleepy fields held no menace. The girl snapped on her bright lights and ventured in. The car rumbled along, and when it fishtailed, she gripped the steering wheel and got it under control. She sat up with a little spurt of adrenaline and did a quick calculation: turning around wouldn’t be easy. Concentrate, that’s all she needed to do. She shut off the radio, and the world got closer. She advanced deliberately, stealing glances at the frozen fields on the sides of the road. Her car came over a small rise. The car dipped down, and then slowly, almost surreptitiously, lost traction on the ice. The girl applied the brakes— gently, gently—but the car had its own momentum. The rear of the Corvair drifted— gradually, languidly—into a gully on the left side. The girl worked the stick shift into reverse and applied the gas but could only feel the car vibrate. Hot air roared in her ears. She dialed down the heater and now she heard the back tire spin. She put the car in first gear, then tried reverse again, as dad had shown her. The car rocked a little, but she could
not get it from the furrow. Now she’d done it. She’d taken this stupid road to save a stupid 10 minutes. Well, another driver would come along and rescue her. Someone always did. She turned off the engine to wait. Moonlight spilled onto the pastures around her, and the snow shone like polished silver. The heat in the car dissipated, and she shivered. She wore no gloves, and even the steering wheel began to feel cold. Where were the other cars? She was going to be late. She stepped out and walked around the car. The gully was in shadow but didn’t look too deep. The left rear wheel hung ever so slightly in the air; that was all. Surely another driver could knock it forward easily. Another driver was bound to take this road. It was just a matter of time. She watched and waited, pressing her hands in her arm sockets. No one came over the rise. The girl returned to the Corvair. Keying the ignition, she turned on the heater and checked the gas gauge. The tank was a quarter full, but the temperature was dropping and it could be a long night. Maybe she shouldn’t wait. Maybe she should go for help. The walk could not be very long, after all. She climbed out and put her keys in a coat pocket. She stepped back onto the lane, where she looked and listened. The fields were bleached of color. She weighed whether to walk toward the interstate or toward the cabins and, beyond them, the Mobil station. Ahead of her, the grove of trees creaked in the wind. Behind her came the whine of long-distance trucks. The girl pulled her coat tightly around, dug her hands in her pockets, and walked in the
direction of the cabins. The lane was cratered with ice, and she stepped gingerly. The moon poured down, making the beautiful frozen snow glisten and wink. Soon she felt a great burst of hope when she reached the trees: she was halfway to her destination. She heard the branches stretch and rub in the wind. The living wood cast restless shadows, and she lost her footing and tipped forward. She thrust out her arms for balance, but it was too late. Her right knee crashed through the crust of the snow and hit a root. The knee split open, and an electric shock ran through her body. The girl let out a sob and suddenly retched. She lay on the ground and breathed in and out, in and out, while the pain spread in widening circles. The stinging air penetrated her coat and dress, while her tongue burned with bile. She clasped a palmful of snow and put it in her mouth. She lay still. She waited. She let self-pity and loneliness wash over her. Then she thought. An hour had elapsed since she’d first driven into the lane, and no other car had come through. She had to get up. She had to walk. The girl rubbed snow into her knee. The bleeding stopped, and she set off. Snow had slipped into her boots and melted, leaving her feet wet and stinging. She hunched against the cold and pressed on. Before long she sniffed wood smoke and saw the outline of a chimney. Her heart lifted and she shuffled on until the whole of the cabin was in view. It seemed dark inside; only a bare bulb over the door quivered and sent tongues of light into the night. Sprawled outside the cabin was a long, late-model
sedan, well cleared of snow, so someone was home. She picked her way to the front of the house. The dim light of a television screen flickered through the window, and she saw a man and a woman in tall, straight chairs. The girl knocked, and in a few moments the door was jerked open. A husky, dark-haired man stood in work clothes and socks, blocking the view. He had a bottle of beer in his hand. She asked to use the telephone; her car had gotten stuck. The man didn’t have a phone, but he waved his bottle to let her inside. Someone switched on a lamp. A large TV dominated the right side of the room. Steam rose from a crock atop a pot-bellied stove, and the air was warm, almost hot. The walls were bare. A baby slept in a playpen wedged in the far corner of the room. Next to the playpen was the woman’s tall wood chair. She wore a robe with a satin collar, her thin hair pinned up and her mouth pulled down. This was not a time for someone to come calling. The girl apologized for interrupting and explained what had happened. Since they had no phone, she would go on to the gas station—but, first, would they please let her take the chill off for a few minutes? Even if the station were closed, there’d be a pay phone and she could call her dad. The man sighed. He looked at his wife, back at the girl, and guessed he could drive her to the station. He’d already put chains on his tires. She could stay in the house while he warmed the engine. The man sat to lace on his boots, and the girl saw the gleam on his hair and felt a flush of pleasure when she realized he was handsome. His slick-backed hair was no longer in style, and maybe he was a little old for her, but still. A
solid, good-looking man. Maybe he’d sighed that way because he was tired. When he stood, he pointed to his chair, and she took it. He got a fresh beer and headed outside. His wife paid them no attention and stared into the TV. The girl settled into the wooden chair, which held the warmth from the man’s body. She rubbed color back into her fingers. In a short while, the air became stuffy. She felt her knee begin to throb. Maybe it would crack open again. She abruptly thanked the woman and left the house. Exhaust was huffing from the tailpipe of the big sedan. She climbed in and closed the door. It reeked of tobacco, and the dark interior seemed enormous; a space yawned between the dashboard and the long bench seat. She tentatively stretched her aching leg, the stocking torn at the knee. The inside of her boot was damp with melted snow. The man shifted in his seat and glanced at the girl sidelong. She explained to him that she had fallen. She pulled her knee in close and massaged it. The man clicked his tongue. “Look here,” he said. The car was still idling. “I’m thinking the gas station is closed for the night, so I might as well take a look at your car. Probably able to get it out of the ditch myself.” The man probably spent half his days with farm equipment: surely he could get her car out. But she was late and her folks would be worried and probably mad, so she said again she’d better call dad. The man slit his eyes at her and smiled. “Don’t you worry. I can handle a car.” He rested the beer bottle against his leg and shifted into drive.
She watched as he nosed the sedan onto the graveled lane. After their brief exchange, silence hung between them. She listened to the chains thump along the road. Music rose faintly from the car radio, a keening country song. They drove by the trees where the girl had fallen through the ice. She peered out the side window to see where she had lain, but the moon had risen higher, and the branches threw gloomy shadows. She was surprised to hear the man’s voice. “Looking for something?” “Not really.” “Not really?” He chuckled at that and said, “You look like somebody who lost something.” “No. I’m fine. I really appreciate you doing this.” She felt awkward with the handsome stranger. Finally they reached the Corvair. The man brought his sedan to a stop and let out an exaggerated sigh. “Aw, hell, why didn’t you tell me it was sideways?” he said. “This ain’t going to be easy.” “I’m sorry.” The girl felt a flurry of distress but wasn’t sure why. She looked at her car: it sat a little off kilter, but it wasn’t sideways. Why should she apologize? They just needed to get that back wheel up on the road. “Look,” she said, “if it’s a problem, we can go to the station and I’ll call my dad.” The man took a swig of beer and laughed. “Aw, I’m just pulling your leg. Come on, we’ll give it a try.”
He directed the girl to start her car and move the steering wheel to the right. She hated to leave the warmth of the sedan, but she was beginning to think the man had an odd sense of humor. She smiled to be back in her own little car. She’d be out of there in a jiffy. Easy. She arranged herself in the seat while the man wheeled his car behind hers. She thought about how she would tell her parents and her friends about getting stuck in the middle of nowhere. It would end up as a funny story. She breathed free when she felt the sedan slide up against her bumper and give it a tap. That was strange. She peered at the rear view mirror, but headlights made it impossible to see the man’s face. She used her hand to signal him to push. He began to rock her car with a series of staccato bumps, but the Corvair didn’t move forward. She hoped the man wasn’t joshing her again. A good, firm push was all that was needed. The next thing she knew, the man was standing next to her car. She rolled down the window. “Is something wrong?” The pomade on his hair caught the moonlight, but his eyes were sunk in shadow. “I can’t get a good angle on your bumper.” “You can hit it harder. I don’t care about a dent. Just a solid push ought to do it.” “Not going to happen. The road’s too slick and I can’t get at it right.” He tilted back his head and now she couldn’t see his eyes at all. His jaw looked wide and unyielding.
“Get back in my car and I’ll take you to the station.” “I thought you said it was closed.” “You can use the phone.” That’s what she’d been saying all along, for Pete’s sake. And now why did he say the road was too slick if he had chains? She studied the frozen acres on either side of the lane. Nothing moved. All this time, no one else had driven through. There wasn’t a choice. She returned to the sedan. “Hop in, that’s right.” He smiled, a crooked but friendly-stranger smile. The engine idled but the man seemed in no hurry to shift into gear. Instead, he slowly slanted across the girl, as if reaching for the glove box. She turned her head and gazed out the side window, waiting for him to find what he was rummaging for. “So, what're you looking at out there?” the man asked her. He’d stopped his movements and now hung partway over the girl. He gawked out her window. “See something interesting?” He leaned further. The girl felt his body brush against hers. She caught a stale smell of hair wax. The man rolled his eyes downward and said, “Well, my, my, what do you call those?” She looked down at her legs and shifted her coat. “I told you, I fell.” She’d been ignoring the pain in her knee, and now she rubbed it. “It really hurts.”
“No, I meant those things.” He pointed. “Are they fishnet stockings?” The hard moon lit the interior of the car. A black-and-white movie began to roll. The man’s fingers traced the hem of her dress, the action spooling out in slow motion. Light flooded behind his head, and she couldn’t see his face. This could not be happening. She slid her hands down the dress and tried to brush his away, coolly, as if his touch had been accidental. “I just want a look at those fishnet stockings.” “No.” The girl’s chest felt crowded. “They’re not fishnets. They’re textured.” Stop the film. The man chuckled. “I think you want me to look at them, girlie. I think that’s why you’re wearing them.” “No, I’m wearing them because they’re warm. Look, I hurt my knee. Please leave me alone.” The man swung back to his side of the car and snickered. “Maybe I just got a good imagination.” He switched off the ignition, casually, and lit a cigarette. The flame from the match briefly illuminated his broad face, stubbled with a day’s growth of beard. The girl rearranged her coat and dress. “Please don’t turn off the engine,” she said. “I’m late and my parents are going to kill me.” She suddenly wished she hadn’t said “kill.” Her breath shortened.
“I’m just thinking.” He drew in a lungful of smoke, exhaled it, and finished his beer. He tapped lightly on the dashboard. The girl watched his fingers drumming. His wife must wonder what was taking so long. She looked at the empty pastures. Now her knee really throbbed, and she felt a new wave of nausea. “Could we please go now?” she said. “Awful cold out.” The man turned his face to look at her. The whiskers around his mouth and under his nose were thick and black. “I bet I know a way to keep us both warm.” He snuffed out his cigarette. “I want to go now,” she said. Her voice sounded tinny. Someone else’s voice. A soundtrack. “I’d like to know what they feel like.” The man twisted back over the girl’s body and put his hand on the stocking of her good leg. He brought his face close to hers and she smelled his breath, a sepia breath stained by tobacco and beer. “Don’t.” Rooted at the spot. “Now, don’t you want me to keep you warm?” he said. He pressed his moist mouth to hers. The pressure jolted her, and she struggled. He drew back and fixed glassy eyes at hers. “Aw, give me a little kiss and then we can go.” “You don’t want a kiss. I’ve just been sick.”
He laughed at that. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind a bit.” He caught her face roughly in his hands and plunged his thick tongue in her mouth. His tongue was oddly cold but moved like it had a life of its own. Like a snake. She pushed against the man but he pinned her arms. She felt she was choking. She worked an arm free and forced a hand up between their mouths. She began to babble. “I was sick. I hurt myself. You have a wife at home.” That snigger again. “But you, you’re right here, girlie. And you got those fishnets on.” “A baby. You have a wife and a baby.” His hand began to hunt along her hemline again, quickly now but more firmly. “No!” She flailed at the car door and he struck her. Her face crumpled and she moaned, though his blow had been more of a shock than anything else. She felt a short spurt of urine and huddled into herself. “Now just relax and enjoy yourself. We’re going to have us a little party.” Outside, everything looked hollow. Bare fields. An indifferent moon. Wind soughing through the trees. No, wait: it couldn’t be the trees. They were too far away. But she’d heard something. The man was busy with his belt when headlights dipped over the little rise in the road. She saw them and shoved open the door. She ignored the man’s
yelp and the ice on the lane and the pain in her knee and rushed forward. She waved her arms. The car came to a stop. A little Volkswagen Beetle. It would have to do. She clambered to the driver’s side, and a young man cranked open the window. He was alone. “You’ve got to help me,” she said. Her voice came out as a squeak. The newcomer grimaced at her and then at the road ahead. The big man had gotten out of the sedan and straightened his clothes. The girl watched as he slid over the snow toward them. “Well, we got us a situation here,” the man said to the newcomer. “Her Corvair’s stuck in the ditch, but I got it under control. I’ll move my car and you can get around it.” “No,” the girl said. “My car’s not really stuck. It’s just one wheel.” The newcomer blinked at them and then through the windshield where his headlamps lit the road. The girl knew he was thinking that his car might just make it around the sedan. She leaned down and grasped the cold chrome at the windowsill. “He’s messing with me.” The newcomer flicked his eyes at her, then back at his steering wheel. After a few beats, he leaned against his door and nudged it open. He got out slowly and stood beside his car. He was tall but narrow-shouldered, almost spindly. He wore a dark pea coat. “Please come look,” she said. “If both of you push my car, it’ll come out easily.” She took her keys from her pocket. They jangled in her hand.
The newcomer scuffed to the edge of the lane and peered at the Corvair. His face was blank, and she reached out to touch his arm. “I’ll pay you,” she whispered. “Just get me out of here, and don’t let that guy follow me.” The big man stepped closer. In the headlights, his eyes glittered like coal. “Hey, I got this,” he said. “I got this.” “Please,” she said again. “Get between us.” She gripped the sleeve of the pea coat. She could feel the hard bone of the newcomer’s arm, and her stomach dropped. He looked at the girl, and she ducked her head. He leaned close to her ear. “This is your lucky day,” he hissed. He raised his voice to the man and said, “Don’t push from behind. We’ll move her car backward, get some traction under the wheels.” The big man squinted at the moon and didn’t reply. The newcomer drew himself up. “Now listen, Buddy, we just don’t know who’ll be here next.” He walked to the front of the girl’s car. “Let’s go.” The girl scrambled into the Corvair. The engine was off, but her ears were filled with a loud whooshing sound as if the heater were blowing hard. Then she heard someone count, “One, two, three, push!” A few grunts, and the car slid backwards into the gully. Trembling, she started the car, and the engine came to life. She nudged the car forward and onto the lane. The girl passed the men and looked at them in her rearview mirror and moved to second gear. She knew better than to stop. She would not thank
them, not even the young one. She would get down that road. She would get down that road and go home. Home. The moon was bright upon the fields. Her car scraped over the snow and neared the grove of trees where the branches moaned and cleaved the air. She passed the place where she had fallen and had a memory of snow in her mouth. Her car rolled on, and the cabin came into view. The light at the door shimmied and she had a memory of the man’s tongue. She slipped the car into third gear. Her tires crunched, and snow flew under the wheels. She thought of the newcomer. We don’t know who’ll be here next. She forced her wet eyes to watch the lane ahead. She reached the entrance to the state road. It was salted and clear. The Mobil station was dark save for Pegasus, etched in red neon, climbing for the stars. It’s time to climb hard, she thought; no shortcuts. Susan Coyle Susan Coyle is a sociologist with a special interest in health-related behaviors. She was a study director at the National Research Council and later a branch chief at the National Institute of Drug Abuse. In 2000, she married and moved from Bethesda to Philadelphia, where she became a medical writer. She and her husband retired to Asheville in 2011.
Your Wild Goddess Ways Okay you nun you, go ahead and pray but while your monastic routine calms you to neutral, don’t forget I’m waiting to pounce on any passion scrap I see on your street. I’m the heroic delinquent you pray for, sister, so unbolt your door to me or you will blow! Throwing it wide feels good— not your goody good but the kind of chaos that makes the stars! Where do you think you come from anyway, sister? Dare to give up pleasing the rest. Who gives a hoot? Only do have the stuff to risk and gambol, to please your unruly Queen. Delight in your wild Goddess ways! Let pandemonium make you ditzy, turn you glitzy, burn you true. Give me, your Rowdy, center page. Let me open your life! I’ll turn you into a poem. I’ll blur the boundaries and launch you past your limits— all the way back to the size of stars. Susa Silvermarie Susa Silvermarie is grateful to live her third trimester as a spoken-word artist in Asheville, NC, writing poetry and young adult fiction, and blogging at susasilvermarie.com. Her e-book, Tales from My Teachers on the Alzheimer’s Unit, is available on all platforms.
Where Are You From? Where am I from? I’m from the middle. The middle of the United States, the middle of the family, the middle of the celestial picture. I balance on the fulcrum as child number four with five more following. I hold the Gemini aerialist’s pole as I cross the sky, easy now in a way I never was in that small town where Daddy was a big cheese and I was tumbling lost. The early years of being in the middle are behind on the stretched wire of my life adventure. Sixty-seven now, thirteen when I got out of Dodge and found wider sky and the great Lake Michigan to expand my vista. I stayed in the middle of two best friends at boarding school, friends I never learned until later were not friends with one another. At the cusp of adulthood I fell through fever and checked out of life, but I came back. My miraculous recovery from encephalitis felt like a fall from the wire with a reverse boost back up from the Great Mother’s gravity. After that, I stopped trying to be normal and began to embrace my middle origins. I’m from the middle. I got on a bus to change cultures for two college summers and found myself in a village in the middle of Mexico. Then I catapulted all the way to an adulthood of sorts by taking off for Brazil, and a one night stand that brought a precious starchild onto my tightrope for the next twenty years. This sweet boy positioned me between, on the one hand, all cultural and family expectations, and on the other, what was demanded by my fierce mothering love. I wavered and bounced on the wire and constantly rebalanced during all the amazing and utterly life-changing years of raising him. I’m from the middle. It seemed natural for me to be devoted to my boy and at the same time devote myself to a stunning procession of wonderful women partners, with whom I made a middle way between mothering and
adventuring in the world. I worked at more jobs than I can count, but the one that most fed my growing boy was the one in the middle, the mail carrier job. Each morning I endured indoor harassment as a pioneer in the former male domain, and each afternoon when ‘casing’ the mail was complete, I enjoyed the outdoor freedom of mail delivery. Though the middle way may sound moderate, I experience its excitement. To survive and thrive as a middle girl has demanded from me continuous course correction. Can you see me teetering as I nevertheless move forward? Teeter, wobble, waver, sway— I embrace the middle way. Totter, wobble waver, sway— I step forward every day! Two marriages so far, one to a priest and one to a woman. The second lasted thirteen years and put me right in the middle of the most beautiful place on the planet, a farm in western Wisconsin with a dearly crooked river running through the very middle of it. Today I’m solo on the wire, my badge of middle courage sticking out of my shirt pocket. I have dreams for a lasting marriage to my current sweetheart because that feels like the next right braiding of middle girl choices. From the middle I can see in all directions. Now that my hair is grey—well, currently purple—I’m thoroughly enjoying my spiritual dance—in the middle of the Twelve-Stepping path, the path of Buddhist practice, and the pagan path that has always anchored my wires. The artist in me magnetizes things to the middle, too. It pulls in forms and tries on genres, attracts unconventional friends and draws in far-flung interests. After decades of exuberantly performing and publishing my poetry, and then years of quietly
completing four young adult novels, I’m back in balance on the wire, blogging my fool head off. And I have taken up running and lifting weights to counterbalance the current explosion of poetry setting my brain on fire. Just maybe, I’m more graceful now in the middle, my hands more steady on my long aerialist’s pole. Where am I from? I’m from the middle, a free spirit surprised to find temperance to my taste! When Death comes to tap me on the shoulder, I intend to grin and go along with intense curiosity and jubilant elation. After all, the earth plane itself is in the middle—between where I really come from, and where I am going. Susa Silvermarie
Waterfall It pours through rock and spruce, gathers from gravity, cascades silver cached in white foam from craggy heights down the rutted black face of sheer cliff, the descent of the absolute into its own hissing mist, dividing itself with more of itself, as from out of its battering, depths cry out to distant thunder. Really, it can do no more. John Grey John Grey is an Australian born poet recently published in Paterson Literary Review, Southern California Review and Natural Bridge with work upcoming in the Kerf, Leading Edge and Louisiana Literature.
Virtual and Virginal Half-toppled, broken ten feet up, a maple claws at the sky. Still leafing, it doesn’t yet know how to die. A windless day, yet the smooth weight of drizzle tipped the balance. Nothing so trite as a falling tree. Caught in the boughs of its neighbors, it could maintain that helpless posture for years. Too late to get out the chainsaw and help it fall in one clean chunk. I stare up into writhing branches and will myself into empathy. Although too old to instruct the cell phone generation I stand upright through hour-long lectures, insist on respectful decorum, and question the digital sublime at its binary root. School opens Monday, after a rainy summer of lost virginities and vomit splotches on beachfront sidewalks. Unlike my dazzled students my view of the sea is so distant it’s hardly a note in the eye. Still, the scything hiss of breakers fills one ear, while the other catches snatches of conversation as people chat on their cell phones in languages I don’t understand. Maybe those half-heard conversations tangled in this maple and broke it. Maybe the rain is digital,
virtual, and maybe confusion of virtual and virginal toppled young women into wet sand and claimed places in their lives to which no one is entitled. William Doreski William Doreski, who lives in Peterborough, NH, has been published in various online and print journals and in several collections, most recently City of Palms (AA Press, 2012).
For Joanne Ten years old that afternoon in the dingle, you kissed me so hard my teeth hurt. We knew more about nuclear fusion in stars than about the bodies we tried to mesh. The brook sighed those elegant little water sighs many mistake for human sighs. This was long before parental deaths left holes in the summer sky through which entire galaxies fell in a shower of nuclear sparks. The vanilla flavor of your kisses has lingered now for sixty years although I wouldn’t know you if I passed you in the local mall. The dingle still fumes this August with deer flies bunching like fists. Familiar rocks sport top hats of moss. The two-inch depth of the brook seems too fragile to have flowed so long without drowning itself. I find the grassy bank we lay on with the imprint of our bodies still visible. That raw Sunday afternoon taught us nothing. Stripping naked revealed no secrets for overwrought fantasies to gnaw. We rolled around for awhile then splashed in the brook and dried each other with our underwear. Clammy and glad we dashed back to the dead-end street you lived on. The geometry of the houses rebuked us, but we didn’t care— the gargling of the dingle brook riper than the skins we bared with primal if pointless resolve. William Doreski
The Monarch Visit
P Diane Chambers
Your Flamingo Dance In the new hotel in Hartford in the most private of suites you perform your flamingo dance so adroitly that I explode in a thousand shades of vermillion. You learned flamingo in Florida, where the creatures flock en masse. Because their pink excites the roots of your red hair you choreographed steps no woman has ever stepped before, tallowing long strides across a Wagnerian stage set in a mental Everglades you enflame with naked style. The hotel quivers with delight, cheap artworks tumbling face-down in homage, the beds quivering with ghostly orgasm, the lobby sofas crawling to the street to howl at the flamingo-pink dawn. The old hotel couldn’t withstand this muscular dance. The walls would have bowed outward, nails would spring from the studs, and souls would perish in the sudden collapse. I’m so glad you phoned me after many years of erasure to enact this primal display. I’m to picture you feathered
and snake-necked, a beak probing for manna, strut-legs bracing against the threat of hurricane. But naked and shining like metal you still brazen entire worlds in which actual flamingoes have yet to evolve, the depth of the marshlands still unplumbed and the human parts of you too smooth for others to grasp. William Doreski
Private Economies Modest little slugs of pottery hand-painted by stainless robots classified by system too subtle for the human mind. Sixty-foot dirt piles, highway construction site. The faked-up pottery costs more than the dirt piles. The robots that paint with delicate strokes delft blue calligraphy cost more than the Caterpillar bulldozers that pile up the dirt. My own economies are simpler. An iced mocha with skim milk. A used copy of Eliot’s poems lacking dust jacket. The mocha costs more than the book. Slumped at an outdoor table while drizzle sifts through the shrubbery I count the construction trucks passing with gravel for the highway site. I also count the tourists packing shopping bags from the gallery where those pottery slugs reside. I slurp my cup of mocha dry and relish Eliot’s Sweeney ogling “withered roots of knots of hair.” He allows a glimpse of steamy flesh to affix his primate musing when he should be considering political, sexual, domestic economies: balancing the books and ignoring those hysterias that mistake an open sepulcher for a flirtatious but harmless smile. William Doreski
Stoke’s Aster At Morningstar in August potted perennials have strewn roots beyond their containers and clutch at burlap, other plants, or the weedy ground below. I browse among trees grown so tall still in their large plastic pots you’d need a crane to move them. Honeybees simper in flowers, wallowing in sweets. Their lives, compromised by pesticides, fungus, and long dull winters, seem useful but too monastic to excite me into fits of figurative language. They’re working only a few yards from their hives, white cubes propped on legs above the reach of dogs— three goldens and an aging mutt— that follow me step by step through the aisles of straining flowers. Stoke’s aster stops me. Its flowers attain a shimmering deep blue that locks my gaze and stuns me. I could grow old watching these blossoms bask in their private glory, but the dogs nudge me along to the orchard where brown pears ripen like swollen leather knuckles. Away from the mess of flowers with the dogs gaggled around me I inhale the simplified light and resolve to remember the blue of Stoke’s aster if I should need blue rich enough to comfort me in some cold dimension of dark. William Doreski
Waves In the darkness, I lie in summer’s embrace. Cool breezes ripple through the open windows To wash away the heat of the night From my damp body. A wave of summer pleasure. A lone cicada starts his love-lorn song. Stops, as if waiting for her response, Starts again. His song ebbs and flows through the currents of air. Another wave of summer pleasure. Is that honey-suckle riding the crest of the wind? The air engulfed with its heavy sweetness. A pink trumpet plucked and suckled fifty years ago Is again on my tongue. Another wave of summer pleasure. With the moon’s light swallowed by clouds, Blackness floods the room. With sight submerged, Other senses swell, spill over and surge. Waves and waves of summer pleasure. Karen Depew Karen Depew moved to Asheville in 2013. Now that she's enjoying life as a retiree, she's returning to her roots as an English major. She is active in OLLI's Poetry Special Interest Group and was honored to be included in the debut issue of the Smoky Blue Review.
Reflections
Donna Schramek
Proposal at Breakfast He proposed when they sat down to breakfast: not an elegant plan, that, of course, but a practical man is a practical man knowing how to put cart after horse. For heads are much clearer at breakfast than when full of a full day’s events, and a practical man is a practical man wanting answers derived from good sense. He said romance can’t happen at breakfast, when the moon’s a pale blob in the sky. And a practical man is a practical man who’s not prone to seduce on the sly. He said if she’ll take him at breakfast then romance can occur in good time for this practical man, though a practical man, to the heights of good loving can climb. But first he must know that at breakfast a marriage can look good to her, that a practical man, such a practical man, will be welcome and will not deter. So he’ll know day by day that at breakfast and at other mundane times of day, that a practical man, yes this practical man, will be wanted and not wished away. And so, having proved that at breakfast, at night he can open his arms, and the practical man, oh so practical man, can reveal that he has other charms. She knows his proposal at breakfast is timed for these reasons, and so, since the practical man is her practical man
she accepts him. Her face is aglow. So romance can’t happen at breakfast? She soon proved him wrong on that score! For her practical man was no practical man when she looked in his eyes. So he swore that he always would love her at breakfast, and on through the rest of his life. Even though he would live as a practical man, he would dream all the while of his wife. And at night time as much as at breakfast he would love her and show her his love, and, as practical man, not be practical man and they’d need no bright moon up above. So let it be known that a breakfast can be used for proposals and such if a practical man’s not practical man when she seeks a response to her touch. Ann Tobias Karson Ann Tobias Karson came to this country in 1975, having grown up in Southern Africa and having lived briefly in England. A Clinical Social Worker in Psychiatry, she addressed the crossroads between the social and psychological ills of human living. In apartheid South Africa she was active politically, which led to exile. Ann took up creative writing after taking a College for Seniors course at OLLI Asheville in 1995 and published some poems in literary journals. Later she joined a small poetry-writing group and began thinking again about publication.
Sun Soaked The only place you relaxed, so I could relax too. Seaside sounds: gulls screeched, kids laughed, surf rolled noisily in; salty smell of seaweed. Sun soaking deeply into my flesh—dangerous, but I didn’t know: how can I regret what didn’t harm me after all? Now it’s my visual mantra, my special mental place, my way to relax, my aid to sleeping. Sun sinks into bikini-clad prone body, warm wave spreads under my skin. Eyes closed, hearing muted, luxury of nothingness, life impressionistic, unreal, undemanding. Like dreaming. Towel beneath me on soft shore sand melding to my shape. You’re reading in your comfy beach chair: you’ll wake me before I burn. I can sleep if I like. Ann Tobias Karson
Treasure Hunter
Sharon Sandel
Scream inside me a silent shriek a scream suspended light in my lane metal crashing jarring traveling back through air windows opaque blinded it had to happen can’t be happening trembling body inner scream isolated from me from the moment time suspended like the car itself balanced against a tree on the ravine edge o god we’re going to roll we settle back and don’t door jammed precarious exit passenger side consciousness wavers foot hurts siren suddenly sounds hospital
safe but later sleepless limbs tremble Munch painting enters mind dissolves disconnected voiceless sound disjointed colors screaming Ann Tobias Karson
The Boxer head hanging massive in the corner sits a boxer silent still stood up and took a thousand rounds of snap back blows hulking helpless here for me to touch his brain pronounce it pounded past repair now to face the lone opponent he cannot swing at cannot defeat cannot even throw the fight lost Mr Lucky punched his way out of the ghetto once a heavy-weight contender he whispers as his handler reads then says put your X here on the bottom line then when I say count backwards from 100 by sevens he breaks a sweat the handler says not now doc no not now on a prayer and really doc not never not in this life Bobby Steve Baker Bobby Steve Baker is a retired plastic surgeon who lives in Lexington, Kentucky, having grown up on the Canadian side of Lake Huron. He has published in Camroc Press Review, Grey Sparrow, Bop Dead City, Avocet, The Ann Arbor Review, and many others. He has two chapbooks of poetry, Numbered Bones from Accents Publishing Chapbook contest and The Taste of Summer Lightning from Finishing Line Press. His first full length book of poetry, with original ekphrastic photography and art, is This Crazy Urge To Live by Linnet’s Wings press.
Walking With the Auctioneer roses no longer vine up this arching trestle a mess of honeysuckle soaks up their sun rose vines no longer thick on this trestled corner of the yard just a gap toothed fence a rotting bench and shards of a toy teacup no roses grow from either side between a yard of rusted swings and fields where nothing runs or laughs not one single rose grows on this trestle once kept white as chalk with roses red as blood blooming in the fullness of a life children grown and gone nothing to hold them on this family farm neighbors all sold out to developers this little patch surrounded by what city people call a neighborhood my hands gnarled with age but grown too soft and weak for even garden work there is no money to be made only so many ways to spend it on the house alone and so I walk along with this strange man who tells me when I apologize that disrepair is no concern it will all be torn down soon Bobby Steve Baker
You Got Me Babe what lasts is the ash and sack cloth of sorrow mourning my Madonna gallantly swooped up from a messed up family into a messed up fantasy more throbbing than aching more truant than gone words only keep it vague for friends and analysts but hey do you remember the vintage cork-pop shock and rock-on sprayed from a shaken bottle of champagne celebrating nothing but our saving of the world lances tilted at the warhead windmills roses in the rifle barrels I want that back but can’t never once since you were the girl on the half shell and the railroad lady and the barroom child black-clad bow behind first chair stoned crazy gifted Sweet Sir Galahad and Guinevere the fairy tale felt good for a while feral and carnal then one day the pipe dream carpet ride was gone the all or nothing turned leaving a capricious fragrance chased through long reckless nights in reminiscences of wives and lovers with old friends glory days someone puts on your recording of the Shostakovich eighth ripped with brilliance and we tip our glasses of expensive Cabernet and still I cannot smell with the poet’s nose but left on its own from nowhere it smacks back surreal a synaptic simultaneity of sensual memory
alone sipping cappuccino in Paris fresh concrete poured nearby voilà— for a français demitasse then everything is as it was a memory the pathetic fallacy of young love skins that I wore then leaves that you put on took off after years of marriages continents and oceans sightings in some opera hall somewhere until one day serendipity found us concurrently free a reverie to be relived free of imagination same wine same coast same time of year the breeze shifting to off shore you demur your cellist fingers still caressing lipstick traces on a cigarette the conversation sexy sub-rosa but I’m waiting waiting for the fragrance to gather up the candled shadows on the wall into a choreography of passion but that nameless beast won’t dance but when we are alone eyes close time begins to bend stretches until form occupies an altered space memory of the future kissing with a freshly minted tongue making love in the outer bonding shell the old brain letting go grabbing hold covalent fluctuation with someone becoming someone else in the next dimension over Bobby Steve Baker
Signing In Braille Some times I see the static hiss of light so loud I cannot speak. You, the beautiful deaf mute, come uneasy to my mind. I was thinking how long I’d been blind how that must have bothered you, frustrating that I couldn’t see you sign your unmet needs, your secret passions, and for me, always ignored when I asked why you never said you loved me. Words like water droplets off a turtle shell. From our top floor apartment in Toronto we could see many nations cloistered in the city, speaking their languages, making their native food. We loved real Chinese food. Searching Chinatown for a restaurant with no Caucasians in it, walking arm in arm, kids in college desperately in love, grasping each other, constantly drowning. Afterward on our futon, we were metaphysical, incomparable. I loved the way your breasts swayed when you straddled me, sometimes you whispered, sometimes you screamed, passionate, obscene. Incense and dripping candle wax, the original vagabonds, beach tar on our feet, I could drink a case of you. The candle wax pooled out, the carpet a monumental ruin. As time passed love was not enough, communicating was more difficult. I became suspicious of your signing friends, you didn’t like the way the blind girls touched me. You sounded hurt, and desperate, like a wounded deer. You took my hand and put it on your heart, so I tried harder to explain. I wrote a long letter doing my best to sign in braille. In the end we could never touch the skin within the skin, eat through the ordinary senses to the fundament that has no words no form. The candle wax beside the bed though, that was special, spilling like a lake to swim in forever. But how would I know, I was blind, as you were deaf and dumb. Bobby Steve Baker
Sepia Nude
Sharon Sandel
Group Therapy Replaces the Tribe It was January, 1969. We women, nine of us, were in a small whitewashed room on the female admissions ward of Butabika, Uganda’s national psychiatric hospital. Sitting in a U of rough benches, we waited for Dr. David to join us. Our clothing showed our different positions: the head nurse in her starched white dress, shoes and cap; six barefoot patients wearing dingy beige uniforms, half traditional dress and half nightgown; a young translator, Najuma, with her green orderly’s uniform and blue plastic BATA sandals; and me, a 23 year old volunteer social worker wearing a sleeveless brown and cream dress I had made of African fabric. We exchanged greetings in the gentle Luganda way, starting low: First woman: ‘Oseebyotano, nnyabo.’ (‘How are you today, ma’am?’) Second: ‘Bulungi, nnyabo.’ (‘Very well, ma’am.’) A high musical ‘mmm’ would emerge from the first speaker, a polite placeholder while the initiative passed to the second to ask how the first was, have her answer ‘well’ and then take a turn to say “mmm.” The exchange would get higher and higher until one of the women would shift abruptly to a low register and start the ascent again. The next round was a part I always liked: ‘Weebale mirimu.’ (‘Thank you for your daily tasks.’) ‘Awo.’ (Acknowledging the thanks.) ‘Mmm.’
That was the minimum—hellos and thanks, pauses and soft sounds—but the nine of us took a long time at them. I enjoyed the greetings and had become adept at them after seven months in Uganda; I knew people appreciated it (‘Weebale kuyiga Luganda—‘thank you for learning Luganda’). Sometimes an old-timer would test me by seeing how long I could continue the exchange without making a mistake. The ritual equalized people; when a passerby thanked a street cleaner for his daily tasks the respect between them was mutual. Today I was glad the greetings were slow because Dr. David still hadn’t shown up. He was an Eastern European psychiatrist, at Butabika for a year or two, who wanted to start a therapy group. He had asked me to participate; flattered, I agreed, telling him I knew nothing about group therapy. This was to be the first meeting. But where was he? If he didn’t show up would I be expected to start the group because I was the only ‘muzungu’ (foreigner, white person) there? More to the point, would I expect it of myself? And how would I do it? There must be magic words to start something so serious. I was about to panic when Dr. David walked in and sat down. He was a stocky man with a shaggy grey fringe around his bald head and a pleasant face over the short-sleeved shirt and tie he always wore. He said ‘Jambo’ (‘Hello’ in Swahili), which is what people said to servants and shopkeepers. The women began to greet him in Luganda but trailed off because he didn’t respond. Then he said ‘Shall we begin?’ and looked to Najuma to translate. He had been, if not rude, at least peremptory. When I went onto a ward and asked an abrupt question, a staff member would answer me and then start the formal greetings, a reminder that this ritual made for smooth social functioning of ward, event, or tribe. Dr. David asked a question of the patient directly across from him, a young woman who seemed depressed, her shoulders and head sunk low. I was
startled by what he asked, ‘how do you get along with your parents?’ This was not something a Ugandan would ask of another, certainly not without having some prior close relationship; even then it would be asked indirectly. The woman listened to Najuma translate and raised her eyes from her lap, looking not at Dr. David, but at the head nurse in her starched uniform and determinedly blank face. I was sure the patient was stuck between being polite to this muzungu doctor and feeling as though she shouldn’t say a thing. Najuma helped by skewing his question into one that was part of the extended greetings—‘Balibatyaa abeeka? (‘How are they at home?’)—so she gave a ritual response, ‘Weebale obandabire’ (‘Thank you for asking and I send greetings to them’). The psychiatrist didn’t seem aware she hadn’t really answered; he nodded, turned his head toward the next patient and asked the same question. Seeing that the first patient had gotten away with it, the second responded identically. Around the room he went, getting the same response. I wondered if he were going to ask the nurse, Najuma, and me the same thing; I anyway would have given a different answer just to see what would happen. But he didn’t and I was glad he didn’t treat me like a patient, though I felt more in tune with them than with him. After all six had responded he started over with a new question—‘How do you get along with your children?’—and went around the U of benches again. I hoped he was just getting started; maybe he had something up his sleeve to further the therapeutic process after this pathetic warm-up. But in half an hour everyone returned to silence and he said we were done for the day. It never got any better. Only one or two of the same patients came each week; my impression was that the head nurse dragged them in almost randomly. The format was always the same, at least when Dr. David was there. I had to suppress my urge to cringe with embarrassment when he did
his serial quizzing. I felt as I had when my Girl Scout troop came to my church and my father, the minister, referred to us as Brownies, even though it was he who had done the religious parts of the ceremony that turned us from Brownies into Scouts. I was really as stuck as the patients were. I knew Dr. David lacked tact and empathy but I was far his junior and a group therapy novice so I didn’t initiate anything. I just sat there and tried not to squirm. When Dr. David wasn’t there, which was often, I was angry at him for effectively dumping the group on me; the head nurse managed to act as detached as I wanted to be, but I felt responsible. I was better than he at getting the women talking, even occasionally to each other. I focused on ward happenings and only talked about families if a patient mentioned hers. I was polite, indirect and appreciative. I rolled my eyes at my own Luganda errors, knowing enough words to circumlocute almost anything, although Najuma usually had to translate what others said because their vocabularies were a lot bigger than mine. She knew the women and me well enough to translate briefly and clearly. Najuma had a light manner—she and I laughed together and that helped others relax. I knew they felt motherly toward her, a gawky nineteen-year-old; looking back, I’m sure they felt the same toward me. Still, it was difficult particularly because I felt abandoned and angry. At least I had no illusion this was group therapy. I sought out Dr. David to talk about it. He was sitting at his massive wood desk, arranging and re-arranging watercolors spread over it. They looked like what patients painted in Occupational Therapy and I asked him if they were. He said yes, that he was making choices for an exhibit of psychotic art. He seemed really interested in this, unlike how he was in the group. He made no eye contact with me. I asked him as politely as I could why he was missing many meetings and he said there had been a medical emergency each time; one time a patient had a seizure, but he couldn’t be specific about the others.
Then I asked him how groups were run in his home country, reminding him that I had no experience in this area and would like to learn. Like the patients, he didn’t really answer, just said something vague about the importance of interaction. I began to wonder if this was his first experience with group therapy too. Maybe he assumed discussion would occur spontaneously, as it might have if everyone had a shared knowledge of the western psychiatric tradition or a shared language, like Luganda, English, or his native tongue. Another possibility, that he just didn’t care, didn’t occur to me at the time. I left our meeting as angry as ever. The fiasco of the group made me feel good about what we American volunteers had done: organize activities on the Butabika wards, each in its own fenced compound, using orderlies as group leaders, in an elementary form of milieu therapy. We had arranged for donated equipment—a daily newspaper and a radio for each ward, cards, board games, soccer balls, drums. I had my doubts that most of the equipment would survive our departure; the newspapers and radios would disappear into the ward offices, the games would lose pieces, the balls deflate. But I was sure the drums—the tall ‘ngalabi’ played standing up, the short ‘ngoma’ with drummer squatting— would be kept in shape. Butabika patients and staff were proprietary of a ward’s drums, keeping them dry, oiled, tuned by adjusting the cowhide thongs. Drums were central to every tribe in Uganda. When tourists went to the National Museum and asked to hear the musical instruments on display, a group of security guards would gather and drum for as long as possible. At Butabika the drums’ sharp sounds, accompanied by high voices, often rang out from the open compounds of each ward. Late every Wednesday afternoon, ward staff and patients would gather to drum and dance in the grassy area between the male and female sides of the hospital. Usually it was the men who played but everyone sang and danced. One day a student
psychiatric nurse, Nansamba, always demure in her pink uniform, started to dance in the traditional way—face serious and upper body riding motionless atop her lower half which was shimmying to a blur. The clapping made me realize Nansamba was more than just demure. I got applause and praise when I tried to dance (‘Weebale okusera’), even though I was lousy at it. Sometimes Dr. David and the other psychiatrists stood on the sidelines watching, but they never joined in. He came to the group less and less often; after several months, the head nurse and I decided to end it. Everyone was relieved. Then, a few weeks later, Dr. David appeared at my office with the carbon copy of a typed document that he wanted me to look over, because I was listed as a coauthor. I don’t remember the title but it might as well have been “Group Therapy Replaces the Tribe,” because he said so in the opening paragraph. Later he opined that emotional catharsis was particularly important for Africans. It was not a very long paper, maybe six pages, but it bore absolutely no relation to what had gone on in that whitewashed room. My definite impression was that Dr. David had written it—or at least decided that group therapy replaced the tribe—before he arrived at Butabika. Kingdom, tribe and clan as the centers of identity were so important to every Ugandan that his assertion seemed arrogant in the extreme. And catharsis being especially important to Africans: how racist and colonialist was that?! I couldn’t just laugh the paper off. It really upset me, partly because I’d never been published and wanted to be, but not this embarrassing, fraudulent thing. I told Dr. David he couldn’t send it out with my name, hardly a threat because he wanted it edited, or even re-written. I sat at the big black typewriter in the office at lunchtime for a week, banging at the sticky keys as though each one could put a nail in his head. I was tempted to
write the paper from scratch, telling what had really gone on, but that seemed like shooting myself in the foot because I wanted it to be published. Instead, I made what had happened in the sessions at least plausible, and I eliminated the racist and colonialist statements. I was the one who hoped for catharsis from this process, but I didn’t get any because I didn’t exactly do a principled re-write. I searched a few years ago and the paper was nowhere to be found. I was both glad that it never saw the light of day beyond Butabika, and sorry not to re-read it from a distance of forty years. I did, however, discover an article which quoted Dr. David as claiming he had personally treated Idi Amin for three years and found his mental state to be consistent with advanced syphilis. I had my doubts.
Julia C Spring
Julia C Spring is a semi-retired lawyer and social worker with a practice in mental health and adult guardianship law, as well as many years of teaching students in both fields. When her professional writing started becoming more personal, she began to compose short memoir pieces, two of which have been published in Blood and Thunder and, recently, in Hospital Drive (available at news.med.virginia.edu/hospitaldrive).
A Brief History of Churchill’s Black Dog The black dog snarled when he smelled weakness, and whined when he was threatened. He was always skulking, hanging about like the aroma of bean farts. Sure, Winston could walk away, fan his hands to woosh it out the window, but the black dog was always lurking testing defenses, testing the fences Winston built to keep the dog at bay. The man stayed strong. Watchful. Distracted by painting his way out of a corner. By all means he kept busy, lest he be torn apart and bleed his wretched self over his oiled landscapes while the chorus chanted, “Too late!” “Too old, I’ll be too old,” he cried as his premonitions played out. But Englanders repented their pacific ways, and begged the bulldog return. “We cannot stand alone!” they cried. And Winston reveled in their remorse, navigating fearful fields easily, as though a decade of depression was merely a planning session, and saving one’s country was nothing but a way to kill the black dog. Jenean McBrearty Jenean McBrearty graduated from San Diego State University and formerly taught Political Science and Sociology. Her fiction, poetry, and photographs have been published in over eighty print and online journals including Defenestrationism, Down in the Dirt, and The MOON magazine (fiction); Lyrical Passion, Three and a Half Point 9, and Page & Spine (poetry); Foliate Oak Literary Journal and Off the Coast (photography). Her novel, The 9th Circle, was published by Barbarian Books; serials Raphael Redcloak and Retrolands can be found online at Jukepop.
Challenge The electronic canvass with a blinking black line commands, “Assume the positions of all verbal acrobats and paint rusty red, dusty brown, and lusty purple on my virtual pages.” Anger, age, amour, we’ll plead art imitating life, brilliance distorting folly. We’ll lay claim to self-expression, a virtuous contorting confession of Freudian internal combustion. How angry the academes will be when they see their mistakes in print. They demand instant obedience, but their students rebel, excel, while their pictures all sound the same. Put a name to your method but draw first blood. Call it murder, mayhem, maul them (But most of all enthrall them!) with new, new poetry posted on social media. Jenean McBrearty
Urban Quandary A man walks down the street, hears a woman cry, but passes by. He’s on a mission to save the world from itself by selling marijuana. He wears 3-D glasses and a cape, showing off his super-hero muscles covered with winter-induced goose bumps. Wonders why no one looks at him. Wonders why he has no fan club. Wonders why he’s never met Stan Lee. A stranger once offered him a white coat, but he refused because he was confused. Now he walks down the street. Wonders why no one follows. Wonders if he should buy a gun, get a conceal and carry permit, and rob a homeless man of his blanket or exchange it for some rocks he found in the park. A stranger told him marijuana was sold in stores, and he’d never turn a profit in his chosen profession. In his last confession, he tells God he’s sorry he failed to turn a profit; he was late to the bandwagon. He dies in a doorway, naked, bludgeoned by the homeless man who walks down the street with the word “Jesus” on his lips. Jenean McBrearty
Reverend Odum and His Wife
Driving through the ancient mountains of western North Carolina, I came upon a sleepy village called Barnardsville. I stopped at a restaurant that once was a farmhouse. A small sign of peeling red letters promising “home-cooking” made me stop. A flower garden in front fluttered delicate, pastel Cosmos, while behind them stood proud pink Hollyhocks that reached up to the white porch railing.
I remembered those same flowers in my grandmother's garden. Then
I heard a sound from my childhood. It was the lazy tinkle of a glass wind chime. It hung from the porch ceiling, transporting me back in time. I breathed in the air, which had the sweet smell of grass and honeysuckle. I bathed in the late afternoon sun as I slowly climbed the stairs, and opened the beveled glass front door. Inside an elderly woman welcomed me, and I asked if I could sit at the table by the window.
“No I’m sorry, that’s Reverend Odum’s favorite table. He’ll be coming in soon,
but you’re welcome to sit at the next table. It’s not far from the window,” she said trying to be accommodating. “Fine, that'll be fine.” I smiled at her politeness.
I ordered the special: chicken and dumplings with fried okra and a salad. I had hoped to order a beer but was told this was a dry county. Several other customers came in to eat but they too were steered away from the front table by the window. Now a party of four arrived. First through the front door was a matronly woman in a dark purple dress with a frilly white collar. Her hair was swept up high on her head in what looked like a tight beige turban. Behind her walked a slender blonde woman in her thirties, in a flowery summer dress, followed by two portly men both dressed in dark suits. “Hello Reverend Odum, Mrs. Odum.” The waitress bowed slightly.
“Good evening, Bonnie,” the heaviest man said surveying the other customers
and smiling broadly. He clutched his black Bible against his chest. He reminded me of an actor who is overly aware of his audience. “You remember my new assistant—Reverend Ledford and his wife, Ruth.” “Oh yes, I do.” Bonnie the waitress smiled and bowed again. “Welcome!” She
quickly pulled a fifth chair over to the table, and Reverend Odum placed his Bible on it. “I trust you are rejoicing in the Lord.” “Well, I’m trying my best.” Bonnie sighed. “That is all He asks.” He paused. “Where is everyone tonight?” “Well, the new Shoney’s Restaurant opened up at Forks of Ivy Plaza, and the
last three days we hardly had any customers. Pete and Rose are concerned. If this keeps up—” “I didn’t hear about no opening,” Reverend Odum interrupted. “Yes, they’ve been hiring people, well, young people and I—“ “That’s the all you-can-eat-buffet restaurant?” “Yes, all you can eat. Don’t seem like they’d need waitresses since everyone
just helps themselves, like one big potluck dinner, but I guess—” “Isn’t it strange, last week I read in the newspaper that a new bar for
sodomites is opening in Asheville, but the paper can’t print nothing about a new restaurant opening up. Is that exit 11?” “Yes, Exit 11, Forks of Ivy.”
“No one told me it opened.” Reverend Odum seemed quite perturbed, but he
quickly smiled again. “And how is your husband?” “Well, he’s not doing all that well, Reverend Odum. We had hoped Lester
would be back to work by now, but he just don’t have the strength and it don’t look like I got much in tips this week. I don’t know what we’re going to do, we may—” “Now Bonnie, the Lord only gives us a burden we can bear. He tests us daily to
make us grow stronger in our faith to Him. The Lord will provide. We’ll all say a special prayer for you and Lester.” The entire group nodded in agreement. “Oh, thank you Reverend Odum.” “Remember though, God’s will be done.” “Yes.” Bonnie sighed. “I just hope His will ain’t to have us homeless. Now
what can I bring you?” While they ordered, I studied this party of four. Reverend Odum looked to be in his fifties, with hair that matched the blackness of his Bible. He looked like he had bought his suit about thirty pounds ago and now erupted from it. He could not button his shirt collar, and his black tie was loosened away from his floppy neck. He wore thick bifocals and was clean-shaven. His hands looked immaculate and manicured, and he wore a thick gold wedding band on his left hand and a ring with a gold cross imbedded in black onyx on his right hand. He smiled constantly. His assistant pastor was a younger man in his thirties, stocky but with a suit that fit him well. He and his blonde wife focused their entire attention on the older couple, while Reverend Odum constantly scanned the restaurant. “Sounds like old Lester is too comfortable in his sick bed,” Reverend Odum
smirked once Bonnie was out of earshot. “Well, I have some news,” Mrs. Odum announced. “Darcy Metcalf is moving
away, thank the Lord.” “Oh, where is she moving to?” Mrs. Ledford wanted to know. “Back to Tennessee to be with her parents. I’m so happy, because she was a
handful for me, God love her. You know she’s not married—and very pregnant. And to top that off, the father is black.” “How do you know that?” asked Reverend Odum. “She confided in me. That’s why she’s moving back. Everyone will know when
the baby comes out. You know she wanted to volunteer to teach Sunday school. I had to have a long talk with her and told her she wasn’t experienced enough to teach Sunday school. As if we could have an unmarried pregnant woman teaching Sunday school carrying a black baby.” “The blacks are God’s children too,” Reverend Odum reminded her. “Of course they are, but I haven’t told you everything. This black man has
been in jail for burglary. Darcy told me and then said since she couldn’t teach Sunday school maybe she should volunteer to be assistant Treasurer. Now imagine that. Just what we need, her handling the church’s money and her with a black lover convicted of stealing.” “What did you tell her?” asked Mrs. Ledford. “I told her that since our Treasurer is a married man, we couldn’t have a single
woman being his assistant. In our church, it don’t look right, I told her.” Mrs. Odum laughed and seemed pleased with herself. “Running a church ain’t an easy job, Tom,” Reverend Odum told his assistant.
“You’ve got to use diplomacy to keep everyone happy and avoid problems before they happen. You’ll find ten percent of the congregation uses up ninety percent of your time. I let my wife handle the single women, because single women around men can become the tool of the devil.” "I see I’ve got a lot to learn.” “Lord, I feel like celebrating. I won’t have to deal with Darcy Metcalf
anymore.” Mrs. Odum beamed. “You know, I was thinking maybe we should give her a baby shower. She’s
going to need all kinds of clothes for the baby. Maybe it could be a going-away shower.” Mrs. Ledford suggested. “Darcy Metcalf? Do you know where she lives? She rents one of those
converted motel rooms. That place is infested with drug dealers.” Mrs. Odum’s face now reflected her disgust. “Sounds like it’s better if she does move back in with her parents. But even so,
we could give her a shower at the church. We don’t have to have it where she lives.” “No one from our church would go to where she lives. But that’s a sweet idea,
Ruth. You got a good heart.” Mrs. Odum smiled at Mrs. Ledford. “You’re going to be a wonderful asset to our church, but I think Darcy is leaving soon so there won’t be enough time to plan any shower.” “Did she say when she’s leaving?” “Soon. She said very soon. She might even be gone now, so just forget it.”
Mrs. Odum smiled firmly closing the subject. “Perhaps we need a standing committee, so we can automatically give
expectant mothers in the church a shower. I’d be willing to start a
committee.” Mrs. Ledford smiled. “Oh, Lord love you. You got more energy than I do. You’re just full of energy.
I thank God you came to us, so fresh and full of ideas. Of course you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. When you’re new you think everything is simple. Just start a committee and that will solve everything. Wait until you find out the fighting and grief that a committee goes through. Wait until you find some women don’t want a shower and some women are jealous of the pregnant ones, and some women want the power of being the chairman and they fight and drag everyone down.” “I guess I have a lot to learn too.” Mrs. Ledford sighed. “Yet I can’t learn
anything until I jump in.” “Look before you leap, otherwise you end up drowning.” Mrs. Odum raised her
voice. “It will be difficult for Darcy’s parents, I suspect.” Mrs. Ledford tried to
change the subject. “Well, you can’t blame the parents for the sins of their children,” said a very
unhappy Mrs. Odum. “I was sorry to hear your sons had passed away,” Mrs. Ledford sympathized. “They might as well have passed away.” “Oh, I misunderstood. I thought Reverend Odum had said—” “Yes, I said our sons are dead.” Reverend Odum paused dramatically. “Dead to
the Church. They have lost their way. Drugs—the Devil’s handiwork. I was so busy working day and night for the church, tending to the weak in my flock, I came home drained. I was too exhausted to see Satan in my own house.”
“I’d rather not talk about it if you don’t mind,” sighed Mrs. Odum. “That's why I need you, Tom and Ruth. I’m getting older and I don’t have the
energy I use to. I made it look too simple. The Church never realized the amount of work I do. They think I give a sermon each week and then lay around the rest of the week, but I’m to blame for that. I never wanted my flock to see the stress and strain they caused me.” “Well, Ruth and I are eager to help relieve you,” Reverend Ledford interjected,
“and once we have apprenticed under you, and well, know what we’re doing, then perhaps you can retire.” “Shh—please never bring up my retirement. That’s a secret between the four of
us. I don’t want to scare my flock.” Reverend Odum now whispered. “I’ll retire when the time is right, but let’s talk about tonight’s business meeting. It’s an important one. Now I got to tell you something. Some of our members don’t think we can afford an assistant pastor. In fact they didn’t even want you at this meeting, but I insisted you be there.” “Gee, I had no idea. We certainly don’t want to be where we aren't welcome.” “Only a tiny minority don’t want you, so it’s important you be there so the
majority sees you’re willing to stand up for them. Church politics ain't fun, but necessary. Now we certainly can afford you, and I need you. Now you’ll both get a vote at tonight’s meeting because I made you official members of our church, but I think it would be wise if you don’t speak at this meeting. We don’t want to offend any long-term members. “We shouldn’t speak?” Reverend Ledford asked. “No, only speak if I ask you a direct question. It’s better that way. But you
vote my way, and let me explain. We got to make some cuts in the church budget. We can’t afford to continue to bleed our coffers for the missionaries and local charities. Their work is important but the bigger churches need to
pitch in more. And the local stuff, the government needs to step up and help our citizens. The churches need to be more concerned with saving a man’s soul than caring for his physical needs.” “Yes, but these are hard times for the poor.” “It’s always hard times for the poor. Like our Lord and Savior said, we will
always have the poor. But I need you to support me on this, and vote my way. Otherwise the minority is right, we can’t afford you. What we need is more fundraisers. Ruth, instead of the committee you’re thinking of starting, we got to get an active fundraising committee. I’ve seen hundreds of Darcy Metcalfs come and go and contribute nothing to our church. We don’t need baby showers. We need more events that bring in money. We need new ways instead of the same old rummage sales!” “I could try to think up some original ways to raise money. Maybe we could
have a dessert auction, or a craft fair? Something that’s fun!” Mrs. Ledford said enthusiastically. Mrs. Odum frowned, but Reverend Odum smiled and said, “Lord love ya. I knew I could count on you two. You’re like a tonic to me.” Bonnie now emerged from the kitchen, struggling with a heavy tray of food. She put the heaping plates before them and then Reverend Odum asked Bonnie to join them in prayer. They all held hands in a ring around the table. “Oh Lord, please bless this food and the hands that have prepared it,”
Reverend Odum said in a loud voice. “May this food strengthen us physically as we pray Thy spirit will strengthen us spiritually to do Thy will. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.” “Bonnie,” Mrs. Odum snapped, “you forgot Reverend Odum’s french fries, and
of course there’s no ketchup. I bet they don’t forget the ketchup at Shoney’s.”
“I’m sorry, coming right up.” Bonnie sighed.
Reverend Odum smiled broadly, and scanned the restaurant. I paid my bill and gave Bonnie a generous tip. As I left the restaurant Reverend Odum gave me a friendly nod. I climbed back down those front stairs and again looked at the flowers and the mountains and the beauty all around me. James Hilderbrandt
James Hilderbrandt has written a ten-minute play, Heather’s Legacy, that was staged in Sarasota, Fl, by Theatre Odyssey. He also has two comic, microshort films to his credit: Online U, which he wrote, produced, and directed, and Love What You Do, which he co-wrote and coproduced. Both films were shown in 2014 in the Manheimer Room of OLLI Asheville.
Andalucia
acrylic on canvas – Michelle Soulé
Maybe After, my wife told me it was my fault, if I would’ve struck her, if I let one fly, we might have made it. If I would’ve shown I cared enough to give her one good slap, maybe she wouldn’t have left with him. If I would have shown her I was a man, willing to fight for her, willing to show passion and a right cross, maybe. Maybe if I didn’t watch her pack her clothes, my furniture, while he waited downstairs, pounding the horn. If I would have punched her face, like he did, she could have carried the black eye with her like a wedding ring she couldn’t take off, couldn’t sell for thirty dollars and a joint, and every time she looked in a mirror she would remember how much I cared. Instead, like a chump, I handed her my rent. She couldn’t respect a man like that. If at least I had gotten drunk and slit her tires, it would have been passive aggressive, but it would have been something. Instead I changed her oil, filled the tank, and for an hour begged her to return. Maybe if I had done heroin like him
or didn’t throw up when she miscarried. Maybe if I had been a man, not a lovesick boy, she might have stayed. Of course, she said, maybe not. James Valvis James Valvis is the author of How to Say Goodbye (Aortic Books). His poems and stories have appeared in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Natural Bridge, Rattle, River Styx, The Sun, and others. His poetry has been featured online in Verse Daily and Best American Poetry. His fiction was chosen for the 2013 Sundress Best of the Net. In 2014 he was awarded a King County 4Culture Grant for the Arts. A former US Army soldier, he lives near Seattle.
The Last American Victim Finally we’re easily foreign. Finally we’re easily non-family even to ourselves. Finally we’ve felt such compassion for others we have none for the familial. Finally we’re the victims of our victimizing and our victimhood, estranged from anything but the strange. Finally we’re easily flippant of our singular phenomenology, history hated with the hermetic, blame boated in by the bushel. America wearies of America like a thin broth better left as a bowl of boiling water, though its sins are less singular than singled out. Finally foreign, we form a line sea to shining sea and pass back bucket after bucket to flood the inland, drown the last American victim: America. James Valvis
Hats Off to the Blue Ridge
Susa Silvermarie
Thresholds Deep and quiet the calm Drawing me toward September A moment August rich With final ripening Just before the firm Yet gentle pluck from stem Fawns forage between trees grown dry Even as their leaves glisten Wet-like in the keening clarity Of this late summer light Then scatter sharp As a young buck steps from beneath the trees Turning to me an onyx stare A different path this time And the fawns are running And the fawns are running And the fawns are running Like a cloud I am disappearing at the edges Changing shape with the wind There is no time for turning back Nor onward step that does not grieve And my eyes open to you at last Like yellow daisies to the sun Steve Bucher Steven Bucher is a new poet living on a small farm in the Virginia Piedmont and is an active member of the Poetry Society of Virginia. Steven's poetry has recently been published in the summer 2014 and winter 2015 issues of Blue Heron Review, and in the November and December 2014 issues of Calliope Magazine.
Red-Eye Landing
Jeffrey DeCristofaro
Falling Leaves October leaves fall fast Even as the sun sustains Sweet summer’s aftertaste The air grows crisp with change Songbirds take their leave As crows now call the tune Still the watercolors of the day Wash over me Like soothing ripples On hibiscus-scented seas Mindful of the crows And their earthen call I too seek new heading Yet the stars are foreign to me My coordinates unknown Squirrels busy themselves with nesting Provisioning for withdrawal As if beckoning me the same For the leaves are falling fast And I must navigate The hibiscus seas of autumn Deafened to their siren song With my bearings set to winter Steve Bucher
Homefires Burning (for my mother)
In your whole life and mine, you had only one story to tell. About winter. About freezing. About how, before dawn, you and brother Sammy went down Fourth St. to steal a pail of coal. About how from out of the blueblack alley sprang the police dog, half-Irish, half German shepherd, how it clamped its yellow teeth into Sammy’s head; half an inch lower and an eye would be lost. About dumping the filled bucket, and the empty blows on the dog’s back. About a near-blind Sammy screaming. “Pick up the coal! Pick up the coal!” About fumbling through pitch-black ice, then home to more blows and screams. You had only this one story to tell. There was never cause for another. Jay Jacoby Jay Jacoby is a retired professor of English who spent most of his career at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. He has been adjunct at UNC Asheville and taught at OLLI. His poems have appeared in The Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Light, Cold Mountain Review, and Savannah Literary Journal.
Mountain Morning
Donna Schramek
Soundproof In our dreams we have heard There’s music in these woods: A chanting in the canopy, A skirling under bark. How would it be to listen To the spruce in silence, To feel, underfoot, the push Of root, and stone, and bone? For years we have learned how To swim without getting wet, To dowse ourselves in chatter To drown out every song. So now we stand like cattle, Oblivious, in a driving rain. Jay Jacoby
From Another Place Hot and sticky, the late August day promised thunderstorms by early evening. Maybe before. Already, Thomas Muldoon could see the dark clouds pile up to the northwest, in the direction of Newark Airport. And be damned if he didn’t spot a streak of lightning -– or at least one of those wavy flashes that look like someone is shaking a piece of sheet metal with the spotlight on it. The way it’s sometimes done on the stage. After he saw the flickering light, he started to count and reached seven before he heard the hard coughing sound of thunder. But since it was coming from the direction of Newark airport, he couldn’t be sure it was thunder or a jet revving up before its race down the runway and takeoff. Muldoon made his way up New Dorp Lane to Jimmy Max, one of his two favorite watering holes on Staten Island. The other, Gilhooly’s, was closer to Mariners Harbor, where he used to work on the dry docks after the war. But he was too old to work now, with his seventy-fourth birthday coming up fast the way everything did now. You’d snap your fingers in December and you’d find yourself in the middle of June. Besides, all the guys he worked with died or moved down to Florida, which in his book was the same as dying. Sweating profusely, Muldoon lifted his faded Yankee baseball cap and brushed his left forearm across his brow. Muldoon could have driven to Jimmy Max from where he lived in Tyson’s Lane. But the previous week his doctor, Doctor Goldstein, told him he had to lose thirty pounds or he’d run the risk of having a heart attack or a stroke. “And lay off the booze. The hard stuff,” Goldstein said. “A couple of brews?” Muldoon asked.
Goldstein, probably half his age, looked at him through his bifocals or trifocals. “You’re too old to kid yourself.” Muldoon slipped on his T-shirt. “Too old to care one way or another. I’ve seen it all. You know: been there, done that,” Goldstein nodded. “Except that you’ve never been dead. From there you don’t come back and boast, ‘been there, done that.’” Muldoon raised his right eyebrow; something he did when the occasion demanded it, either because of a question or because something amused him. Goldstein’s answer amused him beyond the lifting of his eyebrow and into a hearty guffaw. “For a Jew-boy, you almost sounded like an Irishman,” Muldoon said. “For an Irishman, you’re almost as ‘stiff necked’ as a Jew.” “That about makes it even,” Muldoon said. Goldstein shook his hand. “Take better care of yourself. Not too many like you around anymore.” “Is that good or bad?” Muldoon asked, still holding the doctor’s hand in his huge one. “I’ll let you decide,” Goldstein said. “Now get the hell out of here and let me work with patients who will listen to me.” # Muldoon liked and respected Doctor Morton Goldstein. He was one of the “good ones.” He would have called him Morty, but that would have been pushing their relationship too far. If Muldoon knew anything, he knew his place. Jews made good doctors. There wasn’t any bullshit about that.
Other than Irishmen, a few Italians and a couple of Spics, Muldoon didn’t know anyone who wasn’t Catholic, except Harvey Levine. He was a Jew, an undertaker who came into Jimmy Max at four o’clock for two Stolis on ice, a handful of peanuts and sometimes a few pretzels. Never saw him eat anything else, though there was a Spic in the back who made a damn good pizza and some other Italian dishes better than most wops. But Harvey stuck to the peanuts and pretzels. Probably because they were free. Not that Harvey was tight with the buck the way some of his race usually were. He stood him and some of the other guys for a couple of beers many times over the years. He just kept to himself mostly, like there was an invisible wall around him. The place could be wild with noise, four different TVs going and each tuned to a different channel. But there was Harvey right in the middle of it, so to speak, and he’d quietly sip his vodka. # Several times Muldoon thought about asking Harvey to join him for a day of fishing on the Kate, a twenty–two foot sloop that with his own hands he’d practically built from the keel up. But each time the thought occurred to him, it stopped. Like they say, “dead in its tracks.” He couldn’t imagine Harvey wearing anything but a black suit, white shirt and black tie, the uniform of his trade. And what would they have talked about? Muldoon probably never heard him say more than a dozen words or so. # Muldoon stopped for another light. There was something about the man -- well, unspoken it was. But it was there: wisdom and strength. The wisdom was in the face: the bushy gray eyebrows, the press of his lips and the way the lines came out from the corners of his nose. Deep, deep lines, cut by the sharpest of all knives -- life, living. Not a big man the way he himself was or some of the other regulars. But he wasn’t someone you’d think about raising your voice to or, if you were more foolish, fight. If you were smart, you’d know just by looking at him he
was deadly. You didn’t know how he’d kill you, but you knew he could, and if you pushed hard enough, would. That was why everyone left him alone. Years before, Muldoon decided it was the mournfulness of his business that made him the way he was. After all, burying people day after day and listening to all the carrying on that goes with putting someone six feet down wouldn’t leave a man jolly at the end of the day or put a smile on his face. # All of these thoughts pushed their way in and out of Muldoon’s consciousness as he walked up New Dorp Lane and stopped at the various corners for the traffic lights to give him the right of way. He really didn’t give a rat’s ass about Goldstein other than he happened to be his doctor and even less about Harvey, who was not much more than someone he nodded to. After all, their worlds were so different. His could be seen in the scars on his hands and arms from the work he’d done. Even at seventy-four, he was big broad-shouldered man, who could dance a jig or still make love to a woman, though he hadn’t done that in a while even to Mary. Somewhere along the way, after six kids, she lost the feeling for it. But he hadn’t, and when he saw those young broads during the summer with hardly any clothes on, he just about went nuts. A couple of times he picked up one in a bar just on the other side of the Outer Bridge Crossing, in Jersey. Screwed the hell out of her and then worried that he picked up more than a cunt. # Having a few brews -- not enough to get tanked up but enough to make him feel mellow -- was all Muldoon wanted. If the weatherman on the weather channel hadn’t predicted severe thundershowers and heavy downpours, he’d have bought a six-pack and gone out on the Kate alone and maybe sailed over to Sandy Hook. The Kate gave him something he didn’t get anywhere else. Not even in Jimmy Max or any of the gin mills he’d ever visited.
It was peace, only him and the thrumming of the wind against the lines and the swish of the hull slicing through the water. When he was younger, he’d heave-to and fish. Now, he seldom did that. Mary wouldn’t fry or broil fish any more. Complained it smelled up the house. The truth be known he didn’t much like the idea of catching, killing and filleting the fish anymore, felt there was something dirty about it. Wrong. No. That wasn’t his way anymore. A six-pack was enough to satisfy him. He’d be out there in the sun under a blue sky with small puffs of clouds moving across it, and he’d feel as if his brain was being washed clean. A kind of magic would take place between the sea, the sky, and the sun. Not that he believed in magic the way some nuts did. No. He wasn’t even sure he believed in God. He didn’t, more than he did. But before he stopped going to Mass with Mary, Muldoon decided he liked it better in Latin than in English. Latin gave it something that was different. The Priest could have been saying it’s all right to fuck and enjoy it, and Muldoon and everyone else in the church wouldn’t have known. But it would be the way it was said; something like a Frenchman or an Italian telling you to kiss their ass, it just sounded better. The Mass in English was like eating something without salt or pepper. Those were the things Muldoon thought about when he was out on the Kate. He also thought about Harvey; that was why he wanted to invite him out for a day sail. All these years, since the first time he saw Harvey in Jimmy Max and that was thirty years ago, Muldoon had the peculiar feeling he knew him, had seen him somewhere else. Thirty years ago Jews didn’t go into bars, especially Irish bars. But Harvey had staked out his place at the far end of the bar. A couple wise guys tried to hassle him, make him leave. They didn’t like the idea that a “Yid” was on their turf.
Muldoon wasn’t sure he liked it either. You know the old saying, “Let one of them in and soon you’ll have every kike from miles around coming in.” Muldoon remembered the names of the two guys who tried to get Harvey to move. One was Sean O’Brien, the other, Peter MacAvoy. Sean, when he was in high school played right guard for Monsignor Farrell until he broke his shoulder. Pete was almost as big as his friend. Sean pulled to Harvey’s right and Pete to the left. Harvey took a slow sip of the vodka. The barkeep, John Devlin, kept his distance from the three of them, ready to use the baseball bat he had under the bar should he have to. Sean said, “This could be hard or easy. It’s your call.” Harvey nodded. “Everyone wants easy,” he said softly, in his Jew accent. Muldoon caught sight of his face in the mirror behind the bar. It was expressionless, showed nothing. “Then why the fuck don’t you pay for your fuckin’ drink an’ fuckin’ leave,” Pete said. His words were ice picks, each driving hard and deep into the cold silence of the room. Harvey put his glass down and said, “Easy is what you said you wanted, isn’t it?” “Yeah! Just get the fuck out of here. We don’t want no dead meat-handlers here spoilin’ our afternoon,” Sean said. Harvey nodded. “Soon all of us become ‘dead meat.’”
Sean’s face twisted like a piece of misshapen dough. “You tryin’ to make me look dumb or somethin’?” Harvey pursed his lips before he said, “Only stating a fact. It happens to all of us. It will happen to me, to you, to everyone here. It’s nothing to be ashamed of or frightened about.” For several moments, Sean and Pete said nothing. They seemed to be thinking about -- weighing -- what Harvey said. “That don’t make no fuckin’ difference,” Pete said. “We don’t want no kike undertakers here.” The lines around Harvey’s lips tightened. His eyes seemed suddenly darker. Devlin must have seen the change too because he offered everyone a “drink on the house.” Not too many moved up to the bar to claim theirs. Most had their attention focused on what was taking place -- was about to take place -- between Harvey, Sean and Pete who flanked him. Not much was said by anyone, but whatever was said, was whispered so that only the person close by could hear. Impatiently Sean said, trying to put a laugh into his words, “You ain’t stupid, are you?” Pete added, “There’s nothin’ worse than a dumb kike.” Harvey drank the last bit of vodka from the glass; then, he pushed the empty glass across the bar to Devlin. “I’ll have another one,” he said.
Sean’s face turned beet red. “You ain’t goin’ serve this Yid, are you?” he shouted at Devlin. The pressure went up a couple of notches. Devlin was on the spot. Everyone knew he was a good man, contributed to the Cause whenever he was asked. Put money in the plate on Sunday. Even did something for the orphans in the Goodhue House for Christmas. But he loved money, and Harvey could become -and did become -- a good customer. A steady, five days a week customer, and he charged him a quarter more than he charged anyone else for a glass of vodka. It was easy to see the wheels turning behind Devlin’s pale blue eyes. Muldoon wasn’t sure where those wheels would stop, and he didn’t much like the two galoots who were hassling Harvey. Besides, something fucking strange happened. Maybe because he was on his second or third boilermaker there was something about Harvey he seemed to know. He didn’t remember ever seeing Harvey before that evening. Not a small man himself, but scarecrow thin. Those two apes could tear him apart. Then Muldoon saw it. Harvey’s face changed. The way it happens on TV when they show how a person’s face looked when it was young, then old. He saw his young face, more of a fucking skull than a face. Goose bumps raced down his back. He gulped down the rest of his boilermaker, and in a loud voice so there’d be no mistaking what he meant, he said, “Give him a fuckin’ drink, Devlin.” Sean glared at him. Pete looked as if he were catching flies with his open mouth. Devlin poured vodka into a fresh frosted, put it on the bar in front of Harvey, and said, “On the house.” Sean and Pete eased away from Harvey, kind of dissolved . . . Alone in the Kate, Muldoon often thought about that evening. But he could never figure why he did what he did. Harvey didn’t mean a damn thing to him, and he
was sure he didn’t mean a damn thing to Harvey. But he was old enough now to know time and meaning get all fucked up, the older he became. He’d remember something that happened when was six years old -- at least it seemed so -- better than something that happened two days ago. He stopped for another red light. He was sure he knew Harvey from somewhere, but he never brought the subject up and neither did Harvey. They let “the sleeping dog lie.” Besides, they weren’t really friends. # The rain began just as Muldoon came up to the corner and waited for the light to change. Small drops hardly felt, then larger ones. A moment before the light changed to green, a small slightly bent man came alongside of Muldoon. The man, older than he, smiled at him and looked as if he were about to speak. Perhaps say something about the rain? But the next moment he stepped off the curb. At the same instant a car turned into the street. Probably when the light was yellow or just went to red. The old man was hit -- flung into the air the way a child flings a doll. He came down hard, about fifteen feet away from Muldoon. His head splattered against the wet curb. Suddenly people were screaming. The car that hit him stopped. More cars stopped. Muldoon bent down and felt for a pulse in the man’s neck. “Fucking shit!” he exploded. “Fucking shit! Dead. The poor bastard is dead. Just like that!” A crowd gathered. Police cars wailed to a sudden stop, with their red and blue lights flashing. A cop, young enough to be Muldoon’s grandson, asked him for a statement.
Muldoon was anxious to get away, to get to Jimmy Max and have a few. Not just brews, whisky, strong Irish whiskey. He needed something to blur what he had just seen. Not that he hadn’t witnessed death before; his mother, father, a sister, and a couple of uncles, one or the other of them dying from cancer or heart disease. Some went horribly, in terrible pain. And, yes, he’d killed during the war. Killed, like most men, out of the fear of being killed. But not all the time, once he’d killed out of rage. He was with a forward unit that entered Dachau and what he and the other men saw made the strongest of them vomit and then go crazy. Their officers couldn’t hold the men. They lost control. He found three guards who hadn’t been able to run or blend with the inmates the way some of the guards tried to do. But it was easy to tell who they were because they didn’t look like living skeletons. The three Krauts surrendered to him. One smiled just like the little old man had a few minutes before. Muldoon squeezed off one round. The man’s face came apart. His head split open. He shot the other two without thinking about it. Just pointed his piece at them and squeezed the trigger . . . It was only later that it began to bother him and had never stopped bothering him. He thought a lot about it when he was alone in the Kate. # Most of the regulars were in Jimmy Max when Muldoon finally got there, including Father O’Tool who dropped in every few days for a brew or two. He was on a stool between him and Harvey, at the end of the bar. Muldoon bellied up to the bar and said, “A double shot of Glenlivit.” “You must have hit the numbers today,” Devlin commented. “Numbers? Shit. I just saw an old geezer get whacked by a car a couple blocks from here.”
“Whose fault was it?” Devlin asked, setting the shot glass down in front of Muldoon. He downed the shot and asked for another before he said, “Fault? Fault? Fuckin’ God’s fault. That’s whose fault.” Father O’Tool said, “That’s the booze talking, Muldoon. You know that.” Muldoon squinted at the priest, a paunchy man, maybe ten years younger than him with a round baby face and a bass voice that boomed out during mass, though Muldoon didn’t hear it much because he seldom went to mass. “God’s ways are unknowable,” O’Tool said. “Bullshit,” Muldoon answered. His exchange with the priest had every one’s attention. “You want to know why it’s ‘bullshit,’ Father, or do you want to shut your eyes and ears too?” “Hey, Muldoon, you’re speakin’ to Father O’Tool,” someone yelled. “Show some respect. After all, you’re a fuckin’ Catholic, aren’t you?” Muldoon ignored the question. “Tell me, Father, who was God’s father? Even Jesus had a father, a mother, a family.” O’Tool said, “God is, was and will be.” “Yeah, that’s what the brothers taught us in Catholic School,” he said.
“Because it’s true.” Muldoon gulped his drink down and pushed his glass forward. “Another double shot.” Devlin held up his right hand. “You had -- ” “I know what I had,” Muldoon said. “And give the Father whatever he’s drinkin’.” O’Tool tried to reject the offer. “You won’t go to the Devil if you lift a few with an old fart like me,” Muldoon laughed. “It’s not my soul I’m afraid of going to the Devil; it’s yours,” O Tool answered. Devlin put the two drinks down. A double shot of Glenlivit for Muldoon and a brew for the Father. “See, God gets off easy,” Muldoon said. “We let Him off the hook and we let ourselves off the hook . . . That’s the big trade off.” “You see an old man get whacked -– an accident -– and you get bent all out of shape. For Christ sakes, didn’t you ever see anyone die before?” one of the guys asked. “Sure I did, and I did my share of killing. Killing I had to do and killed when my blood was up and I was crazy to kill. So don’t talk to me about being bent out of shape.” Muldoon took a swallow of his drink. “You know the Jews put God on trial for -- ” “That was blasphemous!” O’Tool exclaimed. “God’s ways -- ”
“I was with the Division’s forward unit when we rolled into Dachau.” “C’mon, Muldoon, don’t tell us how you won the war,” Devlin said. “Most of us were there too.” “Just fuckin’ listen. That’s all a dumb Mick like you has got to do. Listen.” Devlin backed off. “All of you have seen pictures of the survivors, of the dead Jews. Of those who were dying. Well -- we saw them. We smelled the stink of the dead and the smell of the crematoriums. I never forgot that smell. Never . . . We killed every fucking Kraut we could find. Then we fanned out and looked for more. I found three. They came toward me with their hands up, blabbering in German. One was smiling. I killed him first. Then I shot the other two.” Muldoon stopped. “Those were special circumstances,” O’Tool said softly. “Very special circumstances.” Muldoon laughed. “‘Special circumstances,’ eh. That they were. But who made them, Father? Who made them?” O’Tool said, “God is forgiving. He will forgive you.” “I don’t want His fucking forgiveness. I want His answers. I want -- what those Jews wanted when they put Him on trial.” “No one puts God on trial,” another man said. “It’s He who judges us.” As if he’d been running and needed to fill his lungs with air, Muldoon took a deep breath; then slowly, very slowly, exhaled. Before he continued, he glanced down to Harvey at the far end of the bar. He almost thought he saw him nod.
“Not fifty yards from where I offed the Krauts,” Muldoon said, “I walked into this wooden barracks. A guy named Schwartz was with me. Samuel Schwartz from Chicago was with me.” “What the hell difference does it make where the guy came from?” Devlin asked. “It made a difference,” Muldoon answered belligerently. “He was a Jew. What he saw and did made him cry. Made me cry.” “It’s amazin’ we won the fuckin’ war with soldiers who cried every time they killed,” someone called out. “We cried because we were men. No. Not yet men. I was all of twenty-one, and Sammy wasn’t even twenty yet.” Father O’Tool became restless. “What’s all of that got to do with putting God on trial?" “In this building we went into there were maybe two hundred men. Stacked together the way slaves were stacked in ships. When we came in they looked at us, silent looks. Eyes . . . eyes so wide and sunk deep in their skulls. “We lowered our pieces, pointing the muzzles toward the floor. That was Sam’s idea, to show that we meant them no harm. We walked the length of the building. The boards creaked under our weight. “At the far end something was going on, a heated argument. We moved closer. There were thirteen men there. Each of them seemed to be talking at the same time. I asked Sam if he understood what was happening. I thought they were praying, but I wasn’t sure.”
Muldoon, who didn’t usually smoke, bummed a cigarette from Devlin, lit up and asked for another drink. He took two strong drags on the cigarette. And more than a sip of the scotch before he said, “In Yiddish, Sam asked one of the onlookers what was happening. The man looked surprised that Sam could speak the language. Sam asked again. The man said it was a trial. That God was being put on trial. He didn’t use the word God. Religious Jews use some other word to mean God.” Father O’Tool said, “They do.” “I remember looking at Sam -- you know. Like are you pulling my chain? But Sam was serious. ‘God,’ he said, ‘was responsible for everything that happened. Everything. He had to be held accountable.’” “But he gave us free will with which to make our choices,” Father O’Tool said. “That he did, Father,” Muldoon said. “But the Jews, the Gypsies, and the homosexuals didn’t make the choice to die. The Nazis made the choice for them and God permitted it. That’s why He was on trial.” Muldoon paused again for a couple of puffs on the cigarette and more scotch before he said, “They found Him guilty on every count. But the most important count was that He broke his covenant with them. They expected -- No. They demanded He give them answers.” “But God doesn’t do that,” Father O’Tool said. “He lets you find the answers for yourself.” Muldoon bowed slightly. “With all due respect Father, that place wasn’t a classroom and those men weren’t giving a quiz.”
Peace
Sharon Sandel
“So God was guilty, so what?” a guy in a booth called out. “What the hell happened?” “After He was found guilty, one of the men -- ” Muldoon stopped and looked toward Harvey. The skeletal face came into sharp focus. “Well damn, what the hell happened?” Devlin asked. “A young man stood up and said, ‘We found Him guilty. He knows our feelings. He has broken His covenant with us.’ The others agreed. There was a long pause before that same young man said,‘Now it’s time for us to go and pray.’” “Ah shit!” someone exclaimed. I thought something was going to happen. Like bolts of lightning. The burning bush all over again.” By now Muldoon’s eyes were fiery. He looked at the hecklers and stared them into silence. "Imagine,” he said, “you just found God guilty, and then you say, ‘It’s time to pray.’ The other members of the court didn’t like it. One of them said, ‘If He is guilty, He is not worth our prayers.’ Many of the men agreed with him. “But then that young man said, ‘He is because we are. If we do not acknowledge Him, we are nothing. He broke faith with us. But if we fail Him, we fail ourselves. We pray not because He has broken faith with us, but because we have kept ours with him.’ “Though Sam translated, he sobbed. And even though I didn’t understand a word of what the young man said, I was crying too. I had, just a few minutes before, killed -- No. Murdered is a better word for it, three men. And there I was in the presence of men who had just put God on trial and were told God needed them as much as they needed God. It didn’t make much sense to me and yet it did.”
“Muldoon,” someone called, “that’s the biggest bullshit story I ever heard.” And he started to laugh. Soon everyone in the room laughed, except Harvey. Muldoon held up his hands for quiet. When he got it, he turned to Harvey. “You’re the only Jew here. Tell them. Bullshit or no bullshit?” Harvey stood, pushed the sleeve of his jacket up, unbuttoned his shirtsleeve and pushed it up. The tattooed numbers were clearly visible. “I was there,” he said quietly. “I was the young man who told the others it was time to pray.” # A profound silence filled the room. Slowly each man paid his bill and left. “I’ll see you in church,” Father O’Tool said. “I don’t think so,” Muldoon said looking down at the bar, as if the cigarette burns on it held some awesome secret. “That was a long time to remember,” Harvey said, going to where Muldoon stood and putting his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you say something before?” “There wasn’t any need to,” Harvey answered. “Besides, I always had the feeling that you knew.” “Maybe I did . . . Maybe I did,” Muldoon said, and he began to sob softly. “Everything came back when I saw the old man get killed. It was pow, right in the kisser for old Muldoon.”
“It takes but a moment in the present to look into years of the past. I’ve had it happen often enough to me.” Still looking at the scarred bar, Muldoon said, “I don’t believe in God.” Then forced his head up and moved his eyes to Harvey. “Do you?” “No,” Harvey answered. Muldoon squinted at him. “But then you did?” “No. Not even then,” Harvey said. “But we needed something to hold on to. We had nothing, absolutely nothing.” “Then you lied?” “Yes. But it was a necessary lie. And for tens of millions of people it still is.” “So, what do you honestly believe in?” “That we are alone. Each of us gropes to find our way.” Muldoon nodded. “Maybe I saw that when that old guy got killed.” “Maybe,” Harvey said. But if there is a heaven, you’ll wind up there. You’re a good man, Muldoon.” “With blood on my hands?” “Even with that.” “Where will you wind up?”
“If there is such a place, Sheol. A place of peace and quiet.” A smile spread across Muldoon’s lips. “We’re not alone as you think.” “C’mon, I’ll drive you home, and you’ll tell me about the Kate.” “Sure. Sure,” Muldoon said. “Sure, I’ll tell you about the Kate.” Irving A Greenfield Irving A Greenfield’s work has been published in Amarillo Bay, Runaway Parade, Writing Tomorrow, eFiction Magazine, The Stone Hobo, Prime Mincer, The Note, Cooweescoowee, and Stone Canoe. Now living in Manhattan with his wife, he has been a sailor, soldier, college professor, playwright, and novelist. The most recent production of his work was The Schemer, performed at the Short Play Lab at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York.
Riptide At first I was scared when the Atlantic closed over my head, the thought flashed that I might drown. And then “scared” got worse and worse with no limit apparent when I felt the power of the rip and I tried to swim back up to the top and I regretted that I didn’t get a full breath before I went under and my arms and legs were flailing from panic and out of my control and I felt oxygen debt pain in my chest and had to grit my teeth to keep my submerged mouth from opening to gasp and now I was being propelled through the grass on the bottom along with silt from the marsh creek bed that somehow I could taste and smell even under the water racing pell-mell feeling small cuts from solidly anchored mollusks and my terror of sharks surfacing suddenly even as I recognized I was drowning by riptide and the terror from no more oxygen was subsiding into a daze from total depletion and memories in snapshot form flashed here and there from my past and perhaps from my future and my stomach tried to vomit back the invading brackish fluid with its silky silt left over from eons ago when great whites the size of modern whales were common and I thought briefly how strange that even now my shark terror invades when I guessed I was already dead or so very close there was no turning back and it suddenly was all black everywhere and I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open in the silty salty riptide or not because the pain in my chest and head were overpowering other senses even though I had begun to feel I had shrunk to molecule size and was able to maneuver slowly knowing that now I had become part of an eternal process and mildly surprised and pleased to find that consciousness was part of me still, or otherwise put that I was still I, but then the pain, the terrible pain of it all overwhelmed and the consciousness that was I evaporated and there was nothing I guess because that was the end unless something else happened that I was not granted authority to bring back to the living with me.
Did I die? If I didn’t I surely came about as close as one possibly can and come back with some recall. I will say that I know, I truly know, that once I lived and moved as a molecule in a sea made up itself of uncountable other kinds of molecules of which I was only one. And I am fairly sure, but can’t be totally certain of course, that I will know that experience again some day, and so will you. Larry L Hamilton Larry L Hamilton, 71, was born in Deep South Ga, but raised around the world as an "Army Brat." A Viet-era vet, he rec'd a Ph.D. in Political Science and International Studies from U. of South Carolina. He writes a monthly column on running for The State newspaper in Columbia. He is married with two grown sons.
Crab Nebula 2
P Diane Chambers
The Irregular Daughter Our reflections appeared ghostly as the afternoon sun shined weakly through the plate glass windows on a cold grey day. Outside the windows little brown sparrows and a few annoying black grackles flocked around a bird feeder in the enclosed courtyard. Behind us in the corridor medical carts and harried staff whizzed by as my mom and I peered out the window, killing time while boxes were being packed in her room. Pulling her attention away from the birds, mom whipped her head around, looking up and down the corridor. "Where's my daughter?" she demanded. I was standing right there, next to her wheel chair, surprised by her question. "Which daughter?" "My regular daughter. I know she was here this morning." I didn't think I was her regular daughter. Her nursing home was a plane-ride away so I managed to visit only about once a year. And my sister, who lived in the same town as the nursing home and managed to visit when it was convenient, was away for the month, so I know she hadn't been there that morning. I bent down and faced her at eye level. "I'm your daughter," I said, expecting recognition, or at least hoping. But I got none, only a blank stare and silence, so I straightened up and continued gazing at the birds.
Mom looked down at the floor next to her chair, the blue and grey vinyl flooring reflecting the greyness outside. "Did you hurt yourself? Come here, show me where it hurts." She motioned to the floor, imploring it to draw closer. I let out a big sigh. I hadn't known that it had gotten to this point. "Just give me two off the top." She was talking to no one. "There was a time when I climbed up into the tube and then the dogs came and I went under the chrome and the patch and then I went back." The packing seemed to be taking a long time but I shouldn't have been surprised. Mom's roommate had been living there for over 15 years. Her attention left the floor and returned to me. "Who were they?" she asked. "I think there were two of them, and they were carrying something." "Who were who?" I responded, wondering what imaginary friends she was talking about now. "Those people, they were carrying something." Her brow was pinched with concentration. "Boxes? Were they carrying boxes?" I offered, suddenly realizing that maybe the arrival of Anita's daughter and grandson had actually registered. "Yes, boxes, they were carrying boxes. What were they doing?"
"They came to clear out Anita's things." "Oh." She looked lost in thought, but I had no idea where she was. I knew no one had told her yet. When I had arrived the night before, Anita's lights were dimmed, her breathing shallow; no greetings were exchanged between us. When I returned from the hotel that morning, her bed was empty, even the mattress was gone, the metal framework clearly visible. I went into the hallway to ask an aide about Anita. "Does mom know?" I had asked, after she had hesitated to give me the news. "No, she was in the dining room at breakfast," she had explained. Mom started talking again. "There, up under the trees; I went there and she went and I looked and looked. She had a stroke; I guess I'm next." Susan Canale Susan Canale spent most of her adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to Asheville, NC, after retiring in 2012. Earning her living through numbers but always expressing her passion through art, Canale now finds endless creative possibilities in crafting words.
Mother, Memory, Borges My memory is akin to oblivion. ―Jorge Luis Borges.
My mother is now one hundred years old, and lives in the past. From her room down the hall, I hear a voice that wanders in ancient times, describing houses she has not lived in for four score and ten years and landscapes long vanished, paved over, yet vibrant still in her selective memory, recollections dredged up from the idylls of childhood. The voice drones away in a farrago of remembrance. . . . “When I lived in Tampa, the cars had just replaced the wagon and I used to watch them come around the corner. . . .” “I remember my mother telling me how she rode a horse to the school where she taught. . . .” “I remember coming to California and seeing the orange groves. . . .” “There was no television or radio then, and if we wanted music we had to make it ourselves. . . .” I’m half-listening from my room that is around the elbow-crook of the hall. These are regular morning recollections, announced by the mnemonic tap of her fingernails against the cup of coffee I bring her. Her words oddly bring to mind things I have read lately: Mother and Jorge Luis Borges, an unlikely pairing. Her mental wanderings recall to me the virtual geography in Borges’s stories and poems. When Mother takes herself down old hallways I seem to follow a
twist through unknown corridors that recall Borges’s conceptions, walking through imaginary libraries and labyrinths and the outskirts of Buenos Aires, which he did incessantly as a young man. Mother used to walk quite a bit herself, but in recent years that activity has stopped. Neither her energy nor her balance is that good. Nor does she read much beside the morning paper. “I have traveled in my youth,” Borges writes, “I have wandered in search of a book.” I have come to believe that this sentence is metaphorical, meaning that Borges has searched through as much as for a book, or books. Mother’s recollections have the same restless meandering but lack their intentionality. She is not trying to remember any particular thing. Her recollections are not set in motion by curiosity or a search for knowledge but by association, something she sees, like old pictures on the walls, or hears on the radio. In the last few years she has begun to alter these memories. She confuses reality with imagination. Now she has met my father not on a blind date. Instead, he was a security guard at the college she attended. She dropped a book and he picked it up. (A nice touch, that, and I wonder what movie or book she got that from.) Girlfriends had whispered to her, “You know he likes you.” These embellishments were not present when she first began devoting her mornings to reminiscences, around the age of ninety or so, and certainly not in the years when she was a mother, housewife, teacher, and in his later years de facto caretaker herself for my father, who had been weakened by chronic alcoholism. The flourishes that she brought to the memory of their courtship (and marriage: she seems to downplay the bad parts) are consistent with a book I recently read, Rodrigo Quian Quiroga’s Borges and Memory. Quiroga’s book uses as its touchstone a story by Borges, “Funes the Memorious,” to examine how memory is part of brain function, how its oddities can manifest in the
behavior and capabilities in people, and how memory is integrated into our psyche. It’s that last part that made me think of Mother. “When we bring back a memory,” Quiroga writes, “we do not just watch it like a film; every time we relive a past memory we generate a reconstruction that differs from the original. . . . We even enrich and modify these reconstructions based on other information we process as we recall.” Thus I suspect Mother spruces up the memory of their brief courtship in the way she almost sanctifies the recall of her own mother. She tends to put a Hallmark card spin on the past, and even on recent events. Thus the sixteen-year-old, sickly cat we had euthanized at the pound has now died in a more poignant manner, while lying outside and looking up at the tree she loved to climb. Reading Quiroga taught me that these embellishments are more than the onset of dementia, they are just an intensification of the normal process of memory. I wonder how this applies to myself, for I am sixty-six years old now, and when I mentally reconstruct my own past, I wonder if my own feelings of nostalgia—for school days, for old friends and lovers, for the traveling that my caretaker status currently prevents me from doing—obey a similar process of reconstructive improvement. When I look back at my own life— though it is, I hope, far from being over—and see the direction it has taken, and sense the directions it hasn’t, I have a different consolation. Call it fate or a deterministic chain of circumstance, the sense that, given who I am, certain limits were already imposed by the time I got out of high school. Tapping her fingernails against the inevitable coffee—instant, always— Mother thinks about her mother or my father or her sisters or her house in Tampa, Florida, Ruskin, Florida, or Rialto, California, all some ninety years ago. She returns to the same subjects in a random rotation: her mother, her
sisters, the places she has lived. The “inexhaustible stairways” of Borges’s library are, with her, verbal. They form their own labyrinth. On the occasion of her one-hundredth birthday, my girlfriend made a collage of her life from old photographs, pasting them on a flat board with identifying captions. Standing in front of the collage, which is now inside our house, awaiting its possible resurrection for her funeral, I think that a labyrinth is less a function of space than of time, time for its conception and time for its construction, just like it has taken one hundred years of memories (and solitude) and their reconstruction to build the labyrinth she wanders in every morning. I wonder if I will be the same way in a few years. Will I recline on my back, the way she does in her room, and think about my past? It’s something I do already, though I alloy these cogitations with the planning of articles, essays, and stories that I plan to write. We all fight the dying of the light—to use the phrase by Dylan Thomas—and my particular fight is fought through exercise (though I often wake up aching on the next day), reading, writing, and doing what social activities that are permitted within the constraints of being a caregiver. And while I am fascinated to read Borges’s stories, many of which have to do with the labyrinth of memory, I do not forget that they are basically prisons with many corridors—Mother often reminds me of a prisoner gabbing from her allotted bunk—and I wish to avoid them as long as possible. Thus the writing of this essay, which will push back the dark for a little while longer. Garrett Rowlan Garrett Rowlan worked for 26 years as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles. Previously, he worked in the aerospace industry, in a hospital, and at a newspaper. Along the way, he obtained a Master's Degree in English, writing his dissertation on William Gaddis. He has published some 60 or so essays and stories, some viewable at garrettrowlan.com. A few novels are completed and due for publication.
Sunset Ridges
P Diane Chambers
Old Photographs Don't ask me to explain, I am no longer certain Of the reasons for my choosingI simply found you beautiful, Your laughter irresistible, Your touch electrical; These seemed reasons enoughAs for the rest: Like falling leaves They gently drift Through the mist That shrouds my memory. Today is what it is; The shadow cast by days precedingWhat is left, Of forces, times and choices, Grown beyond our reach or trading, Beyond our smart repliesSo I do not ask you for assurance, Nor seek for lovely lies, I only need to see you seeing me, In the silence meeting. . . The mirror of our eyes. In the end, my love, That's all there is to knowing; That's all we ever get, Of truth and reassurance From the structures we erect. . . We hope, we work, we weave The dream we dream together, In the shadow of the storm, As our hands grow slowly older 'Till our time at last is done, And we become but photographs For the curious and young. Reinhard W Lindner Reinhard Lindner is a retired academic (professor and department chair) now living in Hendersonville, NC. Although his career was in cognitive science, he has written poetry throughout his adult life.
Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine staff
ART/PHOTOGRAPHY Jim Neuner Jacquelyn Schechter FICTION Susan Coyle Jim Hilderbrandt Gail Hipkins Pat Moeller NON-FICTION Larry Hamilton Marjorie Klein Pete Solet Steve Wechselblatt POETRY Perien Gray John Himmelheber Pete Solet PUBLICITY Jim Neuner Steve Wechselblatt EDITOR John Himmelheber