Spittoon Issue 1 by Spittoon Press

Spittoon Volume One Issue One Fall 2011

Spittoon 1. 1

Fiction Editor Matt VanderMeulen

Poetry Editor Kristin Abraham

Spittoon 1. 1

Table of Contents

Wayne Lee Thomas

Fiction……………………………The

Contract…………………………......4

Ann Stewart

Fiction………………………...The

Itch ……………………………………5

Sara Pritchard

Fiction………………………A

Nate Pritts

Poetry………………………Sky

Rich Murphy

Poetry……………………….A

Amanda McGuire

Poetry………………………Glass:

Kristi Maxwell

Poetry……………………….from

R.J. Ingram

Poetry……………………….Love

Kyle Hemmings

Fiction………………………Cat

William Haas

Fiction………………………Grid

Forever Home…………………………15

Poem………………………………….27 Sky Poem………………………………..28 Sky Poem………………………………..29 Summer Reading…………………….30

A Metaphor… ………..…..31 In Fits of—…………………………...….32 On the Phone with a Father… …..33 PLAN/K…………………………...34

Sonnet to I-25……………………..39 The Siege………………………………...40

People #19…………………………..41 Cat People #17 …………………………43 Cat People #18………………………….45 City in Decline…………………….47

Arpine Konyalian Grenier Poetry……………………….Lost to Numbers……………………….48

Special Section:

Interview with Arpine Konyalian Grenier…………………………..53

William J. Fedigan

Fiction………………………A

Dana Curtis

Poetry………………………Lily

beautiful song, just beautiful ……..58

Obscure Discusses… ………..61 Schrödinger’s Dream……………….....62 Schrödinger on the Ex-Planet ……..63

Ryan Collins

Poetry……………………..Dear

Molly Brodak

Poetry………………………Long

Kirsten Beachy

Wisconsin Falls—……………….....64

Exit……………………………..……65 Nervous Spell…………….…………......66

Fiction………………………Groff’s

Haplotype………………………..67

Spittoon 1. 1

The Contract Wayne Lee Thomas

Man by the name of Peabody told Daddy he had a will to sell. He’d been knocking on doors like typewriter salesfolk used to, had gamboge sweat lining his pits. Daddy weren’t one to turn away a working man, even one retailing in shirttails. And when Daddy explained he didn’t have a pot to will someone to piss in Peabody explained how he had a sure-fire bargain, said he’d supply the inheritance if Daddy just bought the contract. Daddy inquired about what kind of inheritance exactly but, as Momma later fussed, not the contract. Peabody told him a farmhouse in the sticks and a horse named Honey, or a money-making pig shack called Juicy Butts just outside town, or the deed to the very trailer we were living in. Daddy figured he’d have the trailer paid off in a decade and, being young as he was, he weren’t about to sign a fool’s deal. He was hung up about us kids pissing on his grave for having to slop pigs. So he signed for the farm and horse in the sticks. Momma got past Daddy indebting the family $15 a month for the rest of his natural life when she realized the sheer joy his newfound legacy gave him. After a few years, she even stopped pointing out how he wouldn’t be around to brush Honey once they retired to their country estate. Everyone allowed him his fantasy of planting a small garden, enough peas and okra to store for the winter, and ambling along on Honey’s back on land he rightfully called his own. We liked Daddy big-eyed and happy. He got the trailer deed sure enough, but he never owned much else to brag on. We all thought it the end of Daddy when Peabody called about Honey. Said horses weren’t made to live the 30 years that’d come and gone since the contract. Daddy, a grown-damn man, cried a week holed up in his room over a horse he’d never seen. When he re-emerged, he started in preaching to us kids how lucky we’d find ourselves with a rural manor, how it’d be wise to start saving up for a horse. My sisters bickered over who’d get to move in that farmhouse. I said I’d supply the pony. Daddy passed in his eightieth year. Peabody drove out with the contract in hand looking about half-dead himself. Asked who’d sign for the estate. My sisters signed, every last one. Seeing as none had ever been married, they said they wouldn’t mind living communally. Fortuitous. Someone else’s daddy passed a month later, and they were joined by a son. And another son a few weeks following, then a daughter. Turns out lots of daddies had signed the contract. But after periods of adjustment, no one seemed to mind. It was a big farmhouse set on a few acres of land, roomy enough for sons and daughters to hand feed oats to a half dozen ponies named Honey.

Spittoon 1. 1

The Itch Ann Stewart

Becca Lee was itchy. She sat with her mother and father and younger sister Martha at the center-most table of the Fly Inn, an old diner next to a small airport thirty minutes from their home in Brighton, Michigan. Like she did so often late at night, waiting for car horns and her neighbors’ raucous lovemaking to lull her to sleep, Becca ran through the events of the day in her mind, imagining what could have been the outcome had she made a different choice. Today, on an unseasonably warm Sunday, she might be in Central Park, sprawled out in the middle of a patch of sun, reading. She could have spent the morning at her favorite bakery on the Upper East Side on Broadway – good, crusty scones dipped in bitter black coffee. She might have chosen to get some work done in the dark room on her new black-and-white series. But instead, she had picked this weekend to visit home, agreeing to join her parents on a trip to Ann Arbor to have brunch with Martha, who had opted to spend the summer of her freshman year at college there in town. Becca now felt like a worm on a hot sidewalk, and she wondered why she had thought it could be any different. Cocooned in the warmth of the old diner, the Lees all took turns rubbing their eyes, tired from what had turned into a long unlucky journey. Her mother and father had bickered constantly after leaving the University of Michigan campus, one blaming the other for what they had seen when they had arrived at Martha’s new home, and arguing about how to deal with her. Becca’s intention in tagging along had been, from the start, to defend her sister. They were wrong to disapprove of her not coming home. Martha needed to extricate herself, and Becca had been proud of her for trying. But now she felt angry at her, too. Martha had known they were coming, but she hadn’t even come to the door. Instead, she had allowed her roommate, a braless beauty with a tongue ring and lengthy dreadlocks, to lead them through the tiny flat, where the two of them were sharing a bedroom. If her plan had not been to stand up to them and tell them the truth, then she should have cleaned up and told this person to keep a low profile. Becca scratched, barely conscious of her nails tearing her skin. The vinyl-covered chairs of the diner, squeaking beneath them, made the only sound that could be heard aside from an occasional clinking of metal from the kitchen. Like many Michigan businesses, the Fly Inn was struggling to survive, and this afternoon the Lees were the only customers. The owner and his wife alone staffed it. At one time, the place had been a local family favorite. The walls were still covered with photographs of long-time customers, some yellowed with age. One taken over ten years ago was of the Lees, all beaming, except for Becca, aged twelve in the picture, who stared off to the side, her mother’s hand resting hot on her shoulder. It was 5

Spittoon 1. 1 Stewart, The Itch

taken the day of Becca’s confirmation. She remembered the dress – stiff and scratchy – and the stares of the hefty matrons at her father’s church. Becca’s mother dug frantically in her purse for a hand mirror and pouted. Her father took loud sips of water and slammed the glass back on the white linen tablecloth. “I’ll drive home, okay,” Becca said. “Just settle down.” “I’m not the one who needs settling down,” her mother said. Her father snorted. Becca shook her head. In fact, it was her father who had been the calm one. Becca had scalded for Martha, awaiting his rage, but this time it was her mother who had fallen to pieces. Becca remembered being surprised in her dorm room by her parents years ago. All had gone well that day, until her father had seen condom wrappers in the wastebasket. They had spent the entire brunch at Gandydancer listening to his fiery sermon her mother enrapt and Becca solid, unbending as concrete. In the end, Becca had told him that if hell was what she would get for abandoning those old ways, she would take it. They had never come to visit again. When she had graduated, Becca left for New York. No job. No family. Hell whispering from around every turn. And yet there she was still. Poor, but happy, she felt. But Martha hadn’t learned from her. It was remarkable, back in Michigan, back with the family, that so little was different. It seemed that Martha had chosen silence, as if it were the only protest of which she was capable. But Becca felt that her sister was choosing to be the final copy spit from a Xerox machine that was nearly out of ink. Faded and unreadable. Her father snapped at Martha, demanding she take her hat off at the table. The girl silently complied, head hung low, pulling off the Tigers baseball cap and stuffing it in her lap. When he looked away, Becca placed a hand on her sister’s lower back. Her t-shirt was still soaked with sweat from helping him with the car. The family minivan had suffered a blowout along a county road south of town, and they had stopped in front of an apparently abandoned, dilapidated greenhouse to change the tire. Becca had attempted to lead her mother away with her to check the place out, so that Martha and her father could have a moment to talk. But as they worked on the spare, her mother had chosen to stand over them and gripe – at Martha for her lifestyle, and at her father for not making it go away. So Becca had taken her camera and entered the old structure alone. The roof of the greenhouse had broken out, and the glass walls had been shadowed over with filth. Inside, the plants had taken over, crawling over the walls and carpeting the floor with a dark, muddy green. It had been easy to spy a flower, right Stewart, The Itch

Spittoon 1. 1 Stewart, The Itch

in the middle of the rotting jungle, which looked like the fetuses Becca had once seen in pictures held up by protesters outside a Planned Parenthood. The same lopsided shape and vomitous, shiny, purple-crimson color. Becca had stepped toward it, her feet crunching on the leaves and stalks beneath her. After taking several photographs, she had touched it, drawing a smear of pollen away on the tips of her fingers. It had been soft and cool – the exact sensation, Becca was realizing as she watched her mother glowering across their table at the diner, of her sister’s damp cotton shirt. The owner’s wife was a plump woman, nearing sixty, and wearing makeup that gave her face a copper sheen, making Becca think of the greenhouse glass that let only a few threads of light in. The woman approached the table, carrying a tray of drinks aloft, the flesh beneath her arms jiggling. “Here you go folks,” she said, too kindly. “Four lemonades and a coffee with sugar for the lady.” She held a tray in perfect balance as she plunked down each glass, and ended by gingerly placing the hot cup before Becca. “Can I get y’all more water?” she asked. Becca’s father said, “I think we’re fine for now, Joanna, thanks.” “You bet, Reverend, and remember you’ve got free refills now.”

The woman turned to go back to the kitchen, where her husband was working the grill. The sound of spatula on steel echoed against Becca’s eardrum. “Soups up, Jo-Jo,” the owner hollered. Joanna was the woman’s name, Becca recalled. Her daughter had gone to Brighton High. She had been very popular, but Becca could not remember what she had looked like. Instead, she kept seeing her own sour face in the confirmation photo, lower lip protruding just a little. Joanna was stepping up to the counter when the phone rang—the jangling tone of old rotary-dialers—and stopped her in her tracks. “Hold on baby doll, and let me get this phone,” she said. Martha nervously twirled her hair around one finger, having developed a habit of it that was slowly resulting in a bald spot near her temple. She pushed back her chair and rose, smoothing her sweatshirt over her hips, newly widened from her months

Spittoon 1. 1 Stewart, The Itch

at the dorms. Becca had tried not to notice, and had held her tongue even when she had felt the folds of flesh tumbling out of her sister’s waistband. “Where are you going?” their mother snapped, tugging at her pearl necklace. “I have to go to the bathroom,” Martha said. “You can’t say excuse me?” “Excuse me, please,” Martha said and jiggled off to the restroom. “Why can’t someone in this family act like a lady?” Becca rolled her eyes and noticed they felt sticky. They seemed bent on closing. “Wait Marth,” she said. “I’ll go with.” But when she got to the restroom door, Martha had locked her out. “Marth, come on. Let me in. Talk to me.” Through the crack in the door, Martha said, so softly Becca could hardly hear, “There’s nothing to say.” “There is something to say and you know it.” Martha just sniffled. “Why can’t you say it? To me. Just to me,” Becca said. After a moment of the same silence, Becca angrily banged her palm against the door. Keep it then, she thought. Take it to the grave. She returned to the table. Joanna had arrived with Becca’s mushroom soup and her mother’s salad with ranch dressing on the side. When Martha returned to the table, Becca made a point to meet her eyes. Her sister shook her head so slightly it was as though she had only shivered. “Can I get anything else for y’all?” Joanna asked, holding the empty tray against her thigh.

Spittoon 1. 1 Stewart, The Itch

“No thank you,” Becca’s father replied. Joanna winked at Martha before returning to the kitchen. The girl smiled and reddened, looking down at her lap. Becca grinned. “Hey Marth,” she said, unable to stop herself. “I think she wants you.” “Rebecca! Please! Jeepers,” her mother gasped. Becca noted the contrived way her mother had of avoiding the Lord’s name in vain, even in a moment of profound horror, and couldn’t help but laugh. The sound of her own giggling was like a bell in her ears. Suddenly, she felt as if something was crawling on her hand. Glancing down, she noticed a swathe of red bumps peppered between her fingers all the way to the tips, and she let out a squeal. “What’s the matter now?” her father asked. “That plant I touched in the greenhouse gave me a rash,” Becca said. “Oh God, it stings.” “Don’t blaspheme. It’s nothing.” “How do you know?” Becca said. “Yeah, how do you know?” her mother added. “She might need a doctor.” “Well there’s nothing we can do about it now,” her father said. “We can call Dr. Kisky when we get home.” Her mother raised her voice. “The way you’re driving that could be ages.” “You don’t like my driving? You drive!” “I drove more than half the way already.” Becca noticed foamy flecks of spit on her mother’s lower lip. She stared angrily into her untouched soup. It looked almost clear, but stippled with clouds, like a dish of soapy bath water. She blinked hard. “I said I would drive…settle down…” The words came like coughs. “I’m not the one who needs settling down,” her mother said. Her father snorted, nose whistling. Joanna came to the table with a tray of drinks. Déjà vu, Becca thought. “I said take that stupid hat off at the table,” her father was saying. Her head hung, Martha took off the cap and stuffed it in her lap. Becca blinked again, her eyelashes 9

Spittoon 1. 1 Stewart, The Itch

clinging to each other. She felt her hand drift again to her sister’s back, despite the fact that it was the girl’s own fault for putting the hat back on. “Here you go folks,” Joanna was saying. “Four lemonades and a coffee with sugar for the lady.” She plunked down four lemonades and carefully placed coffee before Becca. The old cup was gone. So was the soup. “Can I get y’all more water?” Joanna asked. Becca stared astonished. Her father said, “I think we’re fine. For now. Joanna. Thanks.” “You bet Reverend, and remember you’ve got free refills now.” The owner hollered from the kitchen, “Soups up, Jo-Jo!” The phone rang. “Hold on baby doll, and let me get this phone.” “What the hell…” Becca said under her breath. She looked at the faces of her family, who seemed to have noticed nothing. Martha rose. “Where are you going?” their mother snapped. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “You can’t say excuse me?” “Excuse me, please,” Martha said, and went. Becca stared incredulously at her mother, as she stood to follow Martha again. “What are you doing? She just went. You just had this conversation, remember?” “Why can’t someone in this family act like a lady?” Through the restroom door, Becca asked Martha, “How many times can you go to the bathroom? You’re not bulimic are you?” Becca heard her mother’s critical words fly out of her own mouth, and wanted to smack herself in the head, possibly with her cell phone, or against the wooden “W” that was tacked to the door. But it hadn’t mattered. Martha did not respond. Becca’s words had fallen on the floor like dying leaves. Again she tried to get Martha to let her in so that they could talk. “Say it. Say it to me…” She considered kicking the door in. She could do it. It was only plywood. But she stumbled backwards to the table instead. 10

Spittoon 1. 1 Stewart, The Itch

Joanna arrived with another bowl of soup and another salad. When Martha sat at the table, Becca looked at her sister and saw the same shiver shake her body. “Can I get anything else for y’all?” Joanna was asking. “No thank you,” Becca’s father repeated, and Joanna winked at Martha before going back to the kitchen. She smiled and reddened, looking down at the floor. Becca shook her head violently. She again felt a powerful urge to make a lewd comment that would shock her mother and expose her sister. Her soup was again before her, looking now like a bubbling dish of cortisone cream. Under her busy fingernails, she felt a sudden wetness on her hand, like pus. Slowly, a violent prickle rising up her spine, Becca looked down. What looked to be a shiny, bloodcolored plant shoot had burst from one of the pustules on her knuckles, and held her fingers in a strangling grip. Screaming from deep in her throat, she slapped at it, visions of the poison ivy that had spread to her vulva when she was fourteen assaulting her memory. Her father had told her at the time that it was God’s punishment, because there would have been only one way the rash on her fingers would have ended up there. “What’s the matter now?” her father asked. “My hand,” she stammered. “I’m pretty sure that goddamn plant I touched is making me hallucinate.” But when she looked again, there were only little red bumps, like a patch of eczema, where the winding shoots had been. “Don’t blaspheme. It’s nothing.” “No see,” she said. “I’m hearing things. I feel like you said that already.” “Yeah, how do you know?” her mother added. “She might need a doctor.” “Well there’s nothing we can do about it now,” her father said. “We can call Dr. Kisky when we get home.” His face was relaxed, but a coating of sweat shone upon his forehead and neck. Becca thought she smelled insect spray. “The way you’re driving that could be ages,” her mother said. Her voice was loud and grating. She pulled at her pearls “You don’t like my driving? You drive!” “I drove more than half the way already.”

Spittoon 1. 1 Stewart, The Itch

“Stop,” Becca said. “Please, stop.” Becca had taken acid in college on winter. When a string of Christmas lights had started dancing in the windows, she had been able to will herself out of seeing it happen, as one would wake oneself from a dream. Looking down to see her soup was gone again, Becca began to suck in ragged, jolting breaths. “It’s a hallucination. Don’t panic,” she repeated to herself quietly. “I’m not the one who needs settling down,” her mother screeched. snorted and scowled, curling his lips and baring slick white canines.

Her father

Becca closed her eyes. The sound of sizzling grease and a banging spatula in the kitchen continued in a pattern, like the jackhammers that woke her in the morning in the city – so unlike the sleepy suburb in which she had grown up, where she had slept until noon, dreaming of packing a suitcase that was never filled, until her mother had kissed and shaken her awake. “I said, take that stupid hat off at the table,” Becca’s father said. Again Martha obeyed. Becca opened her eyes and followed her sister’s gaze to the floor, on which her eyes seemed transfixed. Where her sister’s sneakers should have been, a smooth woody bundle of purplish plant roots spread out, from her pant legs over the floor, heaving and stretching and wrapping around the table leg. Her eyes filling with tears, Becca reached down to touch them, but her hand rested on Martha’s back instead. “Marth? Oh Marth…” she whimpered. Her family didn’t seem to see what was happening. They continued exchanging cold glares and saying nothing at all. Joanna came to the table with a tray of drinks. Again she served them and asked if they wanted more water. Becca’s father politely refused through a leering, openmouthed grin. She reminded them they had free refills and again turned back to the kitchen. Again the owner yelled to her, and the phone rang. When Joanna picked it up, she began bashing the top of the receiver into her face. Her head shattered like glass and fell in pieces onto the floor. Becca gasped and jumped up, knocking her chair over. “Where are you going?” her mother snapped. “I have to go to the bathroom,” Martha said. “You can’t say excuse me?” Their mother’s cheeks heaved and bubbled like boiling water. 12

Spittoon 1. 1 Stewart, The Itch

“Excuse me, please!” Martha screamed. Pulling out handfuls of hair, she went to the restroom. Becca followed, nauseous. She glanced at the owner, who stood motionless behind the counter, frozen, with a spatula in his hand like a sword. Becca banged on the restroom door. “Marth, open up. It’s an emergency. Come on let me in, please!” “There’s nothing to say.” Becca moaned, feeling suddenly weak. She swallowed a sugary glob of saliva and made her way faintly back to the table. Joanna had again served the soup and salad. Becca’s bowl was filled with viscous white fluid that overflowed onto the tablecloth. She looked at her hand and saw that the skin over each knuckle joint had burst open, revealing a tangle of tendon, bone, and woody vines that were reaching hungrily toward her face as though it were the sun. “Look! At! My! Hand!” she screamed. Her parents stared blankly forward. Their lips were moving, but rather than words, a thick white ooze glurted forth, falling soundlessly into their laps. Martha was seated again, her head still hung, her shoulders slumped. Her eyes had gone white. Quivering dark red stalks of braided sinuous strands grew out of her mouth and nostrils, winding counterclockwise and attaching themselves to the table. Becca screamed again and again, tearing with her fingernails at her throat. She could feel the hideous sprigs winding around her neck like strangling hands. She did not remember leaving the greenhouse. She had no recollection of how they had gotten to the Fly Inn. Of course, this was because the Fly Inn was no longer in business. Now Becca remembered. Their daughter had gotten pregnant and had tried to douche with liquid drain opener, and the owners had sold the place and left town soon after she died. The well-worn tiles on the floor of the Fly Inn crumbled now and became a sea of leaves. The tables and booths shrunk and were nothing but shards of glass. The faces in the photos were gone, and the frames disappeared, replaced with a layer of moss and mud that let in just a few slivers of sunlight. Becca and her family stood face to face, but suspended, like flies trapped in a web. Their arms were outstretched, frozen just short of clutching one another. Only Becca had managed to reach her sister’s body. Her hand held fast to Martha’s lower back with some sticky nectar that smelled of bleach. Massive vines had pierced them all with networks of roots like veins. Their orifices ran with orange foam, as the plant strangled the systems of their bodies and held them in their grisly positions. Winding branches ran under their bones, connecting them like beads in a necklace. Martha’s neck had been replaced by an entanglement 13

Spittoon 1. 1 Stewart, The Itch

of roots that ran under her scalp and up along the wall. Thirsty shoots had made their way up her mother’s nose. Her father’s jaw had come unconnected from his face. It hung by the incisors from a thin green branch below him, like the blossoms on the Dutchman’s Breeches that her mother grew at home. Suddenly a ream of light rolled over them, and a man approached Becca from within it, wearing what looked like a spacesuit. She tried to run to him, but her legs would not move. Rhubarb-colored shoots were snaking up her jeans, up along her spine and around her neck. A cloud of flies scattered when she began to thrash about, emitting hoarse, garbled screams. Finally, she forced herself away from the circle of her family, snapping stalks and branches, tearing the barbs from her skin, spitting blobs of foam and acrid plant juices mixed with her own blood. With a vehement thrust, she threw herself forward, leaving four fingers behind her, along with most of her hair. The man in the suit caught her when she collapsed, a flap of scalp hanging down over one eye so that she couldn’t see his face through his mask. His arms wrapped tight around her, and he shouted something that Becca couldn’t quite hear, because the vines had plugged her ears on their way to her brain. Becca wanted to tell him he must leave her there on the fecund floor of the greenhouse and help her family first. They had come to help her and now they were dying. In a dream, she begged, Save them, please. She couldn’t live without them. She didn’t want to be alone. But the words were like aphids swarming in her mouth, and instead, through a cascade of orange bubbles, she gurgled, “Marth, I think she wants you.”

Spittoon 1. 1

A Forever Home Sara Pritchard

“Oh, Sean, look at this one!” the girl cooed. “Just look at him, Sean. Look how tiny and old he is. He looks like a little old man. Ohmygawd, he’s sooooo cute,” she cooed again. “Poor, dear little thing. We could call him Rumplestiltskin or Uncle Wiggly or Jiminy Cricket.” The girl had long, matted hair the color of chicken gravy, twisted into wooly dreadlocks and gathered up into a squirrel’s nest on top of her head. She wore combat boots and pilled tights and a little fuzzy pink rag of a skirt no bigger than a hand towel, an old Harley Davidson motorcycle jacket many sizes too big, and huge round glasses. Sparkly rhinestones riveted the auricle of her left ear like a bejeweled bass clef. From the right ear, many tiny gold bells jingled. “Cora,” the young man said sternly. “No! Come on! We agreed to get a puppy. Not some decrepit old thing on its last leg. You said you wanted a puppy. That’s what we agreed on.” The boy, too, had dreadlocks, but his were stuffed into an oversized knit cap that made his head cast a shadow like an enormous light bulb. His pants hung low on his hips, cinched by a wide, studded belt. Plaid boxer shorts poofed out above what was supposed to be the waistband of the pants. “But, Sean, just look at him. We can’t just leave him here. He looks so sad. He’s sooooo dear.” “Corrrrrrrrrrrrr-a!” the young man sighed, exasperated. He hiked up his pants and jutted out a hip to give gravity something to think about. He grabbed the girl by the arm and pulled her around the corner and down another cinderblock and cement corridor lined with steel kennels stacked three high.

Everyone was barking and whining and meowing. It hurt Ponce de León’s ears. He huddled in the back of his crate and put his head under his blankey. He wished he could go home. He liked the girl with the big glasses and pierced ears. He liked her voice, which had a little squeak to it like Nina’s, but he was afraid. Earlier that day, someone had taken his picture, nearly blinding him with the flash, and someone else had written his bio in a stupid persona that was supposed to be him talking.

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

“Arf! Arf!” his bio said. “Aren’t I cute? My name is Ponce de León, and I’m an 18pound, male Wire-Haired Fox Terrier. I am around ten years old, and I am very smart, affectionate, and gentle. It goes without saying that I am housebroken and well-behaved. I was found sleeping at the foot of the Gibson-Brown angel in East Oak Grove Cemetery. I was very tired and lonely and hungry. I whimpered and rolled over on my back, exposing my tender belly, when the Animal Friends volunteer approached me, and I raised my paw politely when offered a pepperoni treat. My mistress has died, and I ran away from home. I am very healthy. All my medical records are on file at Paw Prints Veterinary Clinic where I have visited regularly for the past eight years. At Paw Prints, they all know me and love me because I am such a charming, good boy. One time I won a Halloween contest at Mountaineer Mall, dressed as the Lone Ranger. Please make me yours and give me a forever home. Arf! Arf!” It was so embarrassing, that Pet-of-the-Week dog voice. And this was not Ponce de León’s first encounter with THE VOICE. He’d been here before, in fact, in the very same shelter—eight years ago, but he really couldn’t complain. THE VOICE (and a similar photo) had brought Nina to his rescue that time. “Here,” the boy said. “This one.” He was squatting in front of a little Black Labbish puppy with paws the size of MoonPies. The inside of the puppy’s crate was a mass of shredded fabric and globs of polyester stuffing, the remains of a dog bed and numerous eviscerated toys. “Just look at him!” the boy said, sticking his hand sideways between the bars of the crate. The puppy licked and gnawed at the boy’s fingers and wagged its tail full circle like a propeller. “Just look at him!” the boy said again. Gravity had won the pants contest. The pants now appeared as a sling, the red plaid boxer shorts in full view. The girl, however, was nowhere in sight.

Out in the car—a rusty 1989 Subaru sedan—the girl tried to hold on to the squirming puppy, who had already managed to turn on the hazard lights, chew the knob off of the gear shifter, swallow one of her bell earrings, and piddle on her skirt while the boy drove down the windy dirt road from the Animal Friends shelter. Ponce de León hunkered down between the girl’s combat boots, half under the seat, shaking. He would have preferred the back seat where he could see out, but that was taken up by a cat carrier with two cats—Helvetica and Times—who had been living for 16

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

years outside an old print shop along the railroad tracks. The print shop had been demolished to make way for an urban renewal project that included townhouses, shops, restaurants, and a theater. Not cats. Somehow, Helvetica and Times had found their way out of the Animal Friends shelter and into the boy and girl’s car, too. Truth was, Helvetica was relieved to have been caught and spayed. She’d had more litters than she could count, and she didn’t even enjoy her estrus anymore. She’d been faking her cat call for years and was looking forward to retirement as a pampered indoor cat, sleeping in a sunny, southern exposure widow, birdwatching out of one eye; eating tasty Nine Lives tuna day in and day out; batting about a catnip mouse every now and then to entertain the humans; or, on special occasions when company was present, making a spectacular, Nijinksy-worthy leap at a stupid feather dangling on a strand of elastic suspended from a doorjamb. Times, however, was livid about the neutering. He’d put up a struggle when he was trapped and tore right through the animal control officer’s padded gloves, inciting a case of cat-scratch fever that had hospitalized the officer for three days. Times would never give up fighting and catting around, balls or no. Even in the shelter, he sprayed ceaselessly and strutted about their cage, proudly displaying his left profile, which showcased a cauliflower ear bitten down to a lumpy stub by a Manx. Times had won that fight, though, paws down; he’d put out the Manx’s eye. All four Animal Friends adoptees were absolutely free and came with dry and tinned food, flea medicine, treats and catnip, all of which had been donated to the shelter, and they all had health certificates verifying that their shots were up to date, and all Cora and Sean had to do was sign adoption contracts saying that if they could not keep any of their new pets—for any reason—they promised to return them, no questions asked, to the Animal Friends shelter. Moose—what Sean named the Black Lab-Great Dane-mix puppy—was exuberant to be adopted; Ponce de León was nervous and apprehensive; and Helvetica and Times were not entirely pleased—to put it mildly—with the adoption arrangements. Helvetica would have preferred a canine-free environment, but she agreed with Times that the puppy was no challenge whatsoever: a few swats on the nose, maybe a little bull ride on its back, and they’d have it under control. “Besides,” Helvetica pointed out, “Labs are more interested in the litter box than the cat.” Times was angry about the whole situation and disgruntled about the prospect of living with a Wire-Haired Fox Terrier. His ideal situation would have been barn cat. Lord of the Cows, rat catcher, snake charmer.

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

“They’re full of piss and vinegar,” he said, referring to Ponce de León’s breed. “Crafty little demons,” he said, spraying the back seat of the Subaru through the mesh window of the cat carrier. “And stubborn. They never back down or give up a fight.” “Yeah, but look how old and feeble he is,” Helvetica consoled him. “Piece o’ cake. “Besides,” she added, raising a back leg behind her head and licking her butt, “I thought you said you were going to run away as soon as they opened the door.” Which he did.

The Subaru rattled down River Road and then down another dirt road, this one with potholes the size of washtubs. The descent was steep. Cora and Sean lived outside of town, along the river and the railroad tracks, in a mobile home on a remote, abandoned homestead designated in the property tax books in the Monongalia County courthouse as Lock Eleven, but most people called the place the Drowned Man’s House. The job of lockmaster had once been a respected position, one held by a civil engineer, a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lockmasters were responsible for overseeing the maintenance of the locks and dams, which controlled flooding and ensured year-round navigation on the Monongahela River. The lockmasters’ houses were built by the Corps with no expenses barred, meant to serve as an attractive compensation for the lockmasters and their families who had to live in these remote houses outside the city limits, along the river’s locks and dams and adjacent to the railroad tracks that followed the river. The house at Lock Eleven was built and first occupied in 1902. It was a grand, sprawling Victorian, painted the pale yellow of French vanilla ice cream, with maroon and spruce trim, and with all the standard Victorian features and embellishments: turrets and gables, gingerbread and transoms and stained glass, front and back staircases, and a big sweep of a wraparound porch that entertained the breeze from the river. Six slender and ornate yellow brick chimneys decorated the slate roof, and a stand of cottonwoods marched down the lush lawn to the cement dock. “The Cottonwoods,” the house at Lock Eleven was called. At the turn of the twentieth century and up until mid-century, The Cottonwoods was a showpiece along the river, a landmark known to rail and riverboat travelers alike, something to be pointed to and admired. But within fifty years, the original stone and timber locks of Lock Eleven were failing, and construction on a large, 18

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

comprehensive lock and dam system that would eliminate many of the original locks, including Lock Eleven, was begun. That Army Corps of Engineers project was completed in 1950. The original lockmaster was a man named Homer Martin, who came to live at The Cottonwoods when he was a young civil engineer. After the demise of Lock Eleven, he remained in the house alone for many years. His children were grown—there had been many—and moved away, and his wife had died on April 12, 1945, the same day as FDR. Homer Martin was an old man in 1956, when he was down on his dock, puttering about, and he spotted a woman and a child in a row boat about twenty feet from shore. He waved. The woman was rowing, and the child was dipping a can into the river, ladling up water and pouring it back, and then suddenly the child toppled over the edge of the boat, and the woman sitting in the stern began to scream and the boat began to rock. Homer Martin kicked off his shoes and dove off the dock and swam out and dove down again and again and saved the child. He grabbed her by her hair. Homer Martin was still a strong swimmer in spite of his years, but as he handed the small girl up to the woman in the boat, the old lockmaster’s heart gave out, and he went under one last time. A large grapevine wreath hung on the dock of Lock Eleven for many years, and rather rapidly, the house fell into disrepair. First came the teenagers, carloads of them, driving down the dirt road in their Chevys and DeSotos with their beer bottles and Camel cigarettes, and behind them came the thieves and pillagers with their crowbars, and years later, the vandals with their cans of spray paint. The windows of the Drowned Man’s House—as The Cottonwoods then came to be known—were broken, and the stained glass stolen, as well as the leaded glass builtins, the crown moldings, the newel post and banisters, the chandeliers, the doors, the oak floorboards. But because what was left of the house at Lock Eleven was easily accessible from the railroad tracks, yet remote and difficult to reach by land, the road having not been kept up, The Cottonwoods became a shelter for drifters, and a homeless camp grew up around it, and eventually the clapboards were ripped off the house and fed to bonfires and then the lathing strips and studs. Broken bottles and sardine and tuna fish tins and cigarette butts and syringes and cardboard Tampax tubes and condoms littered the grounds. In no time, there was just a pile of slate roof tiles and the foundation: a field stone grave, home to snakes and spiders, vermin and such. The twenty-three-acre stretch of property along the railroad tracks known as Lock Eleven was sold at public auction in 1985, because Uncle Sam wanted to offload the liability. The developer who bought The Cottonwoods? The girl’s father. And Cora was just a baby then. Now Cora’s father was happy to have her out of his house, Cora and her dreadlocks and piercings and tattoos.

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

When the rusty Subaru turned off the River Road and began the steep, winding descent down the crumbling road to Lock Eleven, Cora rolled down the window, and Ponce de León could smell the river and the river mud and the staghorn sumacs and the onion grass and wild carrot and the road dust tainted with creosote from old railroad ties, and the lingering smell of campfires and burnt garbage and piss. Ponce de León pricked his ears and sat up between Cora’s boots. He’d been here before. It was many years ago. Another life. A life before Nina, a life with Prophet Zero in the homeless camp. Ponce de León jumped out of the car and sniffed about, Moose bounding after him. They went down to the river’s edge near the old iron bridge where Ponce de León had often seen the ghost of Homer Martin walking about at night in the shadows of the cottonwood trees. Sometimes he saw Homer Martin sitting on the big cornerstone of the old foundation. He smelled like sweet cherry pipe tobacco. Some of the drifters who camped at The Cottonwoods nearby had seen the old lockmaster, too, and they were frightened of him, but Ponce de León knew there was no reason to fear ghosts and that the ghost of Homer Martin lingered only because he was not ready to leave this place he had loved and cared for so well. Homer Martin still longed for human things, the sounds and smells of the river and the land: the toll of the tugboat bells and the moan of the barges and the music of the freight trains and the first Jack-in-the-Pulpits and Dutchman’s Breeches peeping out from under the dead leaves in the woodlands come spring. And after Prophet Zero died, Ponce de León saw him, too, sitting with the old lockmaster, watching the trains, and sometimes Ponce de León sat with them. He, too, loved the river and the barges and the trains. Moose jumped in the river and paddled about, and Ponce de León scampered down the railroad tracks toward the hobo camp, hoping to see his old pals, Jamie and Angel and Car Wash and Q-Tip. But when Ponce de León came to where the camp used to be, there was no one there. The area was closed off with a high chain link fence along the bank as far as Ponce de León could see, and warning signs on stout posts had been erected. KEEP OUT, the signs said. PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING. NO CAMPING. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. —Lock 11-Cottonwoods Upgrade, Phase I, WV Permit #W7682-B-26501

Ponce de León was happy living with Cora and Sean and Moose and Helvetica at Lock Eleven. Soon it was summer, and Ponce de León spent most of the day in the 20

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

garden with Cora. Moose was not allowed in the garden because he was unruly and dug things up as fast as Cora planted them. Moose was big now and clumsy. ‘Goofy’, Cora called him. The days were long and the ground was warm and Ponce de León spent many hours exploring, walking along the railroad tracks toward town, the way he used to walk with Prophet Zero. Moose had to be tied up most of the time because he ran off and he chased deer and one time dragged home the carcass of a fawn. He rolled in mud and anything putrid or dead, too. ‘Mudpie’ Cora sometimes called him, too, or just plain ‘Stinky’. Early on Saturday mornings, Cora and Sean and Ponce de León drove into the town square and set up a tent at the farmer’s market where they sold vegetables and flowers and ground cherry jam. The evenings were cool and sprinkled with lightning bugs and meteor showers. Ponce de León slept at the bottom of the bed on Cora’s side just how he used to sleep with Nina. Sometimes Helvetica slept there, too. Moose had to sleep on the back porch because he was so big and so stinky. Times had fallen in with a band of feral cats, kittens that had been dumped off on the River Road and left to fend for themselves. Sometimes, late at night, Helvetica heard him screaming outside the bedroom window. “Old love,” she hummed to herself, “leave me alone,” and rolled over. Fall came and brought wind and leaf rain, chevrons of honking geese in the sky, bonfires, and a great production of canning salsa in the kitchen. ‘Old Man’, the boy called Ponce de León. ‘Old Man’ or ‘Methuselah.’ “How goes it, Methuselah?” the boy would say to Ponce de León each morning as he sat in one of the captain’s chairs lacing up his combat boots. The boy was a tattoo artist at Wild Ink, and the girl—Cora—was his canvas. Ponce de León was amazed and intrigued by the pictures and text on Cora’s body: Popeye the Sailor Man with a can of spinach on one bicep; a smiling Sarah Palin with the inscription I CAN SEE RUSSIA FROM MY HOUSE on the other; Edgar Allen Poe with a raven on his head on one forearm. Staring out from the back of Cora’s neck was a small eye in a triangle, like the one forming the tip of the pyramid on the Great Seal, underneath it the motto, Novus Ordo Seclorum. A colorfully illustrated map of the Appalachian Trail decorated Cora’s back, from Georgia on her left hip to Maine on her right shoulder, complete with representative flora and fauna: a Wake Robin trillium and a Mountain Laurel, a serviceberry tree; a porcupine, a moose, a beaver, a copperhead, a bald eagle, and 21

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

a scarlet tanager. The seven deadly sins formed a bracelet on her right wrist: LUST, GLUTTONY, WRATH, ENVY, PRIDE, SLOTH, GREED; a Salvador Dali clock melted around her left wrist like a watch. The seven heavenly virtues—FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY, PRUDENCE, JUSTICE, TEMPERANCE, and COURAGE—encircled her right ankle, while Max Ehrman’s “Desiderada” adorned her chest, and the Beatitudes in lovely Zapfino script traversed the outside of her right thigh and calf. Blessed are the poor . . . Blessed are the meek . . . Blessed are the merciful . . . Blessed or they who mourn for they shall be comforted . . .

One afternoon Cora asked Ponce de León if he would like to go for a ride, go into town with her to visit a friend. Ponce de León scampered to the back door. It was not going to be a fun visit, Cora told him (she talked to him all the time, like he was a person, like Nina had talked to him), but it was something they had to do. They were in the Subaru, rattling into town. Ponce de León had given up barking at everything that moved. It was too much effort. Besides, it was futile; everything kept on moving. It wasn’t like the mailman at Nina’s, who always left the porch after a furious, successful barking reprimand to Get away! Go! Go! They drove perhaps twenty minutes, up the dirt road from Lock Eleven, down the River Road, across the railroad tracks and over a bridge, down the boulevard and through many traffic lights and then across another bridge and into a neighborhood Ponce de León immediately recognized. It was his old home place, the neighborhood where he had lived most of his life with Nina before Nina died. He stuck his head out the window. He saw the funeral home and the car wash he had walked by every day, the brick house where the Scotty dog, Sweetie, lived and the house up the street with the picket fence where the English Cocker Spaniel, Nellie, lived; and behind there, he knew, down the alley, Sally, the mongrel was always up for a little fence fight; and farther down the alley lived Buddy the Beagle/German Shepherd mix, and Molly the Standard Poodle, and Missy the Pomeranian and Bella Donna the toy Yorkie no bigger than a guinea pig. He watched everything go by. And then there was his house. The burning bushes were a fiery red. The cat bird meowed from the yews. Cora parked in the alley, and Ponce de León got out and sniffed about. Another dog had been there recently. A big dog. “Come on, Cricket,” Cora said. “This way.” ‘Cricket’ is what Cora called him most of the time, ‘My little Jiminy Cricket’.

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

They went to the back door of the house directly across the alley from Nina’s. A young woman with red-rimmed eyes and a puffy face let them in. Her name was Ramona, and she and Cora embraced. “I’m so sorry, Ramona,” Cora said. “I’m sorry I’ve not been in to see you. I’ve just been so busy with the garden and all—” “Oh, Cora, I know. I know how it is. We have such different lives now that we’re married. I’ve been meaning to bring Billy out to your place, too.” They went into the living room, which was dark and cluttered with books and toys. Raggae music was playing. Ramona dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose and thanked Cora for coming. “I know it will be O.K.,” she said, and cried a little more. “It’s just such a disappointment. But thank god we have Billy. There won’t be any more children, the doctor said.” And Ramona started to cry again. No woman no cry, Bob Marley was singing, No woman no cry. And Ramona cried some more. Ponce de León hated it when women cried. It upset him. He started to quiver, and Cora reached down and patted him. “It’s O.K., Little Man,” she said. That’s what Nina had called him, too, sometimes, ‘Little Man’. “He’s so sensitive,” Cora said to Ramona. “He’s my little canine mood ring. Aren’t you, Cricket?” “The lady who used to live behind us had a little dog who looked a lot like him. I wonder what happened to him after she died,” Ramona said. “Oh, he is cute, Cora. Maybe we’ll get a dog like him for Billy when he’s a little older,” Ramona said and stroked Ponce de León’s back. “I love him, but I don’t know whether we can keep him,” Cora said and hesitated. “Why?” “We’re thinking about traveling. Maybe to Australia and New Zealand. Maybe staying there. Sean says there are lots of opportunities in New Zealand. Land is cheap, and the economy is good. I don’t know. I don’t know whether I really want to leave. It’s Sean. But I just can’t leave Cricket.” Cora lit a cigarette, waiting. 23

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

“I asked Sean if we couldn’t wait a couple of years,” Cora continued, “I mean, Cricket is so old. He’s not going to live that long.” “What did he say?” Ramona asked. “He said you can’t plan your life around a dog.” “I don’t know,” Ramona said. “I mean, you wouldn’t abandon a child. It’s the same commitment. I don’t know. Is a dog any different?” “I don’t know,” Cora said. “It’s an ethical question I can’t come to grips with. But just saying, ‘Well, let’s wait until Cricket dies’ seems so . . . I don’t know so . . . so . . . crass, somehow, so inhuman. “I don’t know,” Cora continued, “Sean says we can take Cricket and Helvetica back to the Animal Friends shelter, and someone else will give them a good home—it’s a no-kill shelter—but it just doesn’t seem right to me.” “What about the other dog, the big goofy one? What’s his name?” “Moose. Sean’s friend Arlo says he’ll take Moose. They live out, too, and Moose is so happy and gregarious, he’d be happy anywhere, especially somewhere where he can run. And Helvetica. Well, she’s no trouble at all. It’s just not the same with Cricket. Nobody wants an old dog.” “Well, it sounds like you’re going. I mean, it sounds like Sean is making arrangements. You’ll go with him, Cora, won’t you? You’re not thinking about splitting up, are you?” Ramona asked. “But we made a commitment to them,” Cora said, stroking Ponce de León’s ears. We promised them a forever home. You just can’t abandon your animal friends because you want a different life and they don’t fit in. I’m just afraid it might be a decision I’d regret—on principle—for the rest of my life. And it makes me question the kind of person Sean really is. I mean . . . if he’d leave MoonPie and Cricket and Helvetica, would he leave me? We had a big fight about it.” “I’m sorry,” Ramona said and took a drink from a tall, sweating glass. Ponce de León heard every word Cora said, and he trembled. Lots of people think that dogs don’t understand human languages, but they’re wrong. Ponce de León understood every word of English. English was easy. He lay by Cora’s feet and pretended to be asleep. He didn’t want to go back to the shelter. He loved Cora and

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

her bells and tattoos. He’d only lived with her for seven months, but he loved her just like he’d loved Nina and before her, Prophet Zero. He would never leave Cora, no matter what opportunity came his way. “An old dog can be a big expense,” Ramona said. “I mean, veterinarians cost as much as, if not more than, people doctors, and of course, insurance doesn’t cover dogs. And Noah has two more years of school and then his dissertation. I mean—” Cora knew what Ramona was implying: they couldn’t afford the financial burden of an old dog—and so she changed the subject. As the young women talked, Ponce de León got up and stretched and explored the downstairs. That’s what he was: an explorer. That’s what Nina said. He was quite shaken by the conversation he’d overheard between Cora and Ramona, but he was also excited to be back in his old neighborhood. He’d seen the outside of Ramona’s house many times from the kitchen window of Nina’s house across the alley, but he’d never been inside. He remembered the woman Ramona pushing a baby stroller down the alley. Sometimes a young man with a ponytail and a slight limp walked beside her. Ponce de León had enjoyed barking at them. When no one was looking, Ponce de León tiptoed up the stairs. He had a good sense of spatial relations, and he knew that from the back of this house, he’d be able to look out and see his old house, see his favorite watching spot in the kitchen window. In a small bedroom at the top of the stairs, the shades were drawn and a musical mobile was playing, painted ponies going round and round. In a corner of the room, by the window, a little boy lay in a tiny bed with a short railing, clutching a blanket and sniffling. The little boy sat up. “Dog,” he said and laughed his little boy laugh. Ponce de León jumped up on the bed. The little boy giggled and patted Ponce de León’s head. “Dog,” the little boy Billy said again. Ponce de León licked his face, and Billy squealed and petted him some more. From the bedroom window, Ponce de León could look down and see the kitchen window from where he used to watch for Nina. He felt strange and sad, looking at his old house and remembering his old life, himself looking out the window he was now looking in. In Nina’s house, a different dog—a Boxer—was looking out from his old favorite barking place. It was hard to comprehend, this Boxer looking back at him from his spot. Ponce de León’s life came rushing back to him. He remembered how 25

Spittoon 1. 1 Pritchard, AForever Home

he’d ridden in a boxcar with Prophet Zero and lived at The Cottonwoods and how he used to walk with Prophet Zero into town and wait outside the soup kitchens and how all the homeless people coddled him and the soup kitchen staff gave him scraps and bones and how Zero used to preach on High Street and all the college kids knew them and made a fuss over Ponce de León, too. His name was Lucky then. This is what Ponce de León knew: 1) at any minute, your life could change, even your name; 2) at any minute you could end up back where you started; 3) at any minute you might have to leave home; 4) at any minute, someone you loved might leave you. Billy lay down and put his thumb in his mouth, one arm around Ponce de León, and fell asleep. Ponce de León closed his eyes. He slept, too, lightly, and he dreamed he saw Nina out in his old back yard by the burning bushes, hanging up laundry. He saw so clearly her kind face, and he remembered with sadness how sick and weak she had been and how just before she died, she looked like an angel to him. Here is another thing Ponce de León knew: The dead never really leave us. Billy sighed in his sleep, and Ponce de León curled up against him. He liked it here with Billy in his little bed by the window with the view of his old house, but he loved Cora, too, and The Cottonwoods. He felt old and tired. “Where’s my little Cricket?” he heard Cora call. “Cricket!” Cora was at the bottom of the stairs. Ponce de León knew that if he pretended to be asleep, she’d come upstairs and find him and tiptoe back down and get Ramona, and they’d both tiptoe back up and see him sleeping there with Billy, and his fate would be sealed. Cora would be free to go to New Zealand, and he would be Billy’s dog. And then some day, he’d cross over and he’d be Nina’s and Zero’s dog again, too. And he’d see Cora again, too, sooner or later, in what Nina called The Sweet Bye and Bye, and Little Billy would meet him there, too, someday, he knew. And if he ran down the stairs? Then Cora would have to choose between him and Sean and maybe Regret would follow her all the days of her life. The catbird mewed again, Meow, Meow, from its nest deep inside the tangled branches of the overgrown yew, and as he had seen Asta the Wire-Haired Fox Terrier do in the old Thin Man movies that he and Nina had loved to watch again and again, Ponce de León covered his eyes with his paws and feigned sleep.

Spittoon 1. 1

SKY POEM Nate Pritts

morning voice hushed

& heavy against your neck

caught up tangled & tired in branches or this sky

in these low clouds

in green

promising rain or whatever feeling is in reach

Spittoon 1. 1

SKY POEM Nate Pritts

how quickly this sky falls into this new sky yesterday it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t here & now all these clouds held loosely together in the grip of this field of breeze I see the rain the rain & the hours & it all burns off & lightens there is a moment that happens & there is the pure burst of change

Spittoon 1. 1

SKY POEM Nate Pritts

running out of blues so I’m lifting my pen off the page, remembering the shock of those green leaves in last night’s sunset so alive looking so much like themselves in that relentless but welcome glow

trying to read my future in the shade & all these leaves are moving so erratically while the sun just blasts through whenever it gets a chance & sometimes the light hits my eye just right & I don’t even know what I’m looking at it’s just bright bright so many reasons to look away I’m learning something about lightness how to say a name for a thing say it & watch it happen

Spittoon 1. 1

A Summer Reading Rich Murphy

Moby Dick beaches itself in the laps of Americans, the Artic and Antarctic snow opening to eat its own. An Ahab feels a leviathan in his pants and elects to become a politician. Parishioners of a puppeteer believe they have their god on a leash. The cool receptions of people and climates aren’t omen enough for a species only able to focus. Poking at a doubloon with harpoons the citizens on the U. S. of Pequod have no reason to expect they unravel the navel into Jonah’s whirlpool. Melville can’t go much further than this: Someone else clings to a coffin. The draft is becoming long winded, our waves unnaturally white.

Spittoon 1. 1

Glass: A Metaphor for Muscles: A Quote from Louise Bourgeois in Two Variations Amanda McGuire

I. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The challenge involves stacking all that glass without breaking any, (

overcoming the conscious desire to smash everything.â&#x20AC;?

II. Your body is a tall, blue shelf lined with bowls, mirrors, vases. My room is full of sharp objects. My body is a small, blue shelf lined with bowls, mirrors, vases. Your room is full of blunt objects. We never hang up without saying I love you.)

Spittoon 1. 1

In Fits Of— Amanda McGuire

Considering: an octopus’ width, his (or her) “Eight Arms to Hold You”; each tentacle an adverb: greedily, jealously, lovingly, all of the above. * Vacillating: am I or am I not a ________ person? Are adjectives hereditary? On the phone, my mother gossips about her neighbors, people I hardly know. * Reflection tomorrow: yesterday I wouldn’t get out of bed; today I’m “just being honest. That wasn’t your best.” * Two expressions: tight-lipped, a line or an o as in “open-mouthed”: “so and so didn’t deserve…” * Little decorative pillows litter the floor, the china cabinet feeds the fuse, beckons me. * When I wake up to him whispering pet names into my ear I can hardly remember the porcelain or glass, my little ego.

Spittoon 1. 1

On the Phone with a Father, After an Accident Amanda McGuire

His mouth full of hurt: his voice breaks. While pacing outside, I hear a train. The rabbit in my yard stares at me. I recall photographs: her first birthday, little cake, little hands. I think train. “It’s like feeling everything all the time at once.” I feel guilt in my backyard among the bloomed daffodils. There are other sounds it makes: clack and whistle. I held her once—awkwardly—before passing her back to her father. His silence on the other end is my yard in winter with snow. I approach the rabbit, phone in hand. “We’re taking one day at a time.” His resignation is a sigh in the form of clichés. I move closer, and the rabbit hops away. He found her hanging from a fan cord. “It should have been me. I keep thinking.” The faint echo of the train fades until it’s as if it never existed. I imagine the x of cord around her neck, the o of her little mouth.

Spittoon 1. 1

from PLAN/K Kristi Maxwell

“And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down— And hit a World, at every plunge,” (no. 280) Emily Dickinson

Shave me from myself (“Chip away, chip away”) Razor good, as in “razor to be a good girl”

Foam as snow if sea as season (salt assaults an eye with the [fist / frost(ing)] of itself seasoning seizing not ceasing to sting) (the bee of itself it be) Crest as a knee coming up as under a sheet if postured so it will [if willed so] [I’m in-crest, so in-crest (increased) indeed]

“Snow provided by SNOW BUSINESS, INC.” [s n o w-b r i n g e r] Snows, you know, are types of boats [blotted typos against the sea as seen from above (aerial—not Ariel not a tempest’s musterer, but a typist err’r) (the sail an apostrophe sets in a word sending it out to eye) (aye)]

What is the icing on What ties a singing to an ear a siren (a siren song in the seai very different from sirens singing through the city: but no not in that both portend [both tend to some future or present unpleasantness]) 34

Spittoon 1. 1 Maxwell, From PLAN/K

“a told tray sure” (Gertrude Stein)

Shank-sunk Shank-as-hunk Milkshake (chic) Milking it Milk the lemon a Main Squeeze a Main Sail a Sale on Main Street of chicks I’m li[c]king Heimlich for what’s stuck in a throat [the road to stomaching—some aching there, there]

Food comes up because the boat boasts little or comes up as upchuck poor landlubber [the sea a lube and not one’s own secretion— the sea other to the self no sailf] [fails to barnacle the self to sea] [no shack culled from sea for to live in]

Toucan incant uncanny two can insist in utero to end it To Row Row Row Your to throw overboard A boar to bear out attack needs a touch of wildness a wilderNess a Loch Ness to Latch onto

Spittoon 1. 1 Maxwell, From PLAN/K

Punishing itching to pun pun issued pus-like from “Sun-dried [tomatoes / two men go] hang’d like dogs” unable to dodge what calls dirge forth gibbet here hand it over the bandit sez [se(i)z(es)] Death-traps Death-tarps: shroudsii

to re-route or short circuit the circus of gazes Shroud: “any one of the supporting ropes or wires that extend down from the top of a mast” Death-ship in the sense of lordship in the same scene as an apprenticeship ’s ending Earth contorting Death coercing its “d” with an Arg!—a Wreath adds to Earth,

agreed? A deed indeed did done a dead deed indeed passed moved past pissed on by a stream of doing not by dung What deed leads to dungeon to man made dung Abject Jettisoned to Aid the getting away from or the Chase, jet-speed Flotsam: flopped sons, no Sam or Abe, [Un]Just[ly] Waste

Spittoon 1. 1 Maxwell, From PLAN/K

“a mental world […] its boundary the skull” (Hugh Kenner)

Sequence Sequins Penguins’ Sea-Fins a defense against sinking

“Pirates aren’t Santa” [skull and cross] Bones Season 1 “Pirates aren’t San -itary” Aren’t sending enough C to the sea inside themselves (them cells there where C should sail) Mal(-ice / -nutrition) mal: bad (“she’s as cold as ice”)

There is a mythod to the[ir] Madness Err Grrr Arrg guile beguiled socked by a sucker punch patched up by rum punch a face registering a bruise as error whether [weather for] cruising for or not

A sentence without sentiment Thrown off the scent (it’s so over, bored) Dense sin leads to intense sentencing depending on how dense the sentencer is (a dunce with a hunch—a hench -man who will not give [an inch / a shit]) A sentence towards no sentience (a penalty, pen-halting)iii

Spittoon 1. 1 Maxwell, From PLAN/K

A gore leads to a sling not grotesque (tisk tisk)

the grow task: to grow back a nerve-shot arm all loosey-goosey

Nerve-shaw, as in rickshaw, message carter, impulse carrier Make a career of it [outfit that career with Clarks (nerve-shod) with Cartier (yippee ti yi yay) (hee-haw, pshaw, carry on [get carried away!])]

Tie the knot Sailor’s Knot Carrick Bend [charac -ter, undeterred by the bind one’s got oneself in (one’s got oneself, after all, to depend on, no matter how deep the end fallen into)] Anchor’s Bend Anchor up man the hatch Tie one on then tidy up sir dine with me on sardines (it is not sardonically that I ask)

“Say hello to pirate pants, bottom right [if your bottom is right] […] the style works when worn” Glamo[o]r-ed April 2010 Maroon as the color of the Season Maroon as Ruin as Room of [for] One’s Own in the Worst Way Way out from all else with no way back but waiting (pirate pants sit at one’s calf [pull a chair up at the calf-table with mandible ready for more than nibbling] thus are perfect for wading) Will someone come, Will them, “Come”

emergent sea / emergency Death harps on in ghost-form. iii Penultimate! Ultimate Pen! Pinned in an untimely way, many a mate, many a Paper Mate whose ink’s run dry ii

Spittoon 1. 1

Love Sonnet to Route 25 R.J. Ingram

my boyfriend and I drive northbound the passenger window slid halfway and his head emerges this time there are streaks of Ohio grazing in the rain and pay no attention to Michael as he moos and counts them while they eat and sing as school children just before recess begins the most noble tar smell and salt seeps inside of my Toyota and swims as I drive suddenly Michael forgets acres of loam grabs my arm and points at my side of the road where a numinous sign assures a prosthetic knee can fit like an old friend

Spittoon 1. 1

The Siege R.J. Ingram

spring draws its yellow crayon around everything Brenda Hillman

and winter flicks a stolid blue around the traffic cones policemen settle down route twenty five slip southbound so i too can draw my own blue circle around their flashers at fifteen degrees a second another car hits sprouts up and i sail between goddamnits and yessirs all of us in unpredicted ice storms find ourselves surrounded by diasporas remembering to brake or not to but above us and our billboards a wave of heron sings

Spittoon 1. 1

Cat People #19: Girls Born in Tunnels Kyle Hemmings

As a child catching hairs with his tongue, Pixie-Bob warned the adults of earthquakes, of large spaces below the ground where wishes formed. The adults laughed at him or told him that earthquakes never happen in this city and on this coast. Anyway, they were too busy attending barbecues in the sunny suburbs, drinking water from silver spigots, or tossing left overs to the anonymous hands reaching up through the ground.

After moving to the edge of the East Village, where Pixie-Bob makes a living photographing B-girls in the last hours of their swan dance, he discovers the existence of tunnels. He recalls as a child the underground hands that groped and swayed at barbecues. How many of those starving hands, he wonders, got their wish? Sometimes, Pixie-Bob visits the tunnels, which can be entered through manholes, subway station shafts, the cracks in your mother's existance, or at times, by just dropping a wish. He discovers girls living there called the Undercats. Because of the poor quality of air, they can't French kiss properly and their dialect is Poor Kitten. You can always tell an Undercat because they tend to sit alone in the last car of the subway with soot on their faces which some might mistake as make-up. They often sit pixie-faced with one eye lifted up and at an angle, listening to a stolen I-pod. They prefer Progressive Jazz with hard direction or Tokyopop. Pixie-Bob falls in love with an Undercat. Her name is Mango Soff and she tells him stories of how her family survived the 4th Ave. Wars by the handouts of rich CoverUps at barbecues. She tells him that at times it's hard to breathe in a bubble, but she would rather dream of light rather than being one of The Cover-Ups, who have no sense of tempo. They mate to an illegally downloaded i-Tune, but shortly after, she dies because either she forgot to breathe or thought the moment was too beautiful to ruin by living on. Every day after work, Pixie-Bob visits the exact spot in the same tunnel where he met Mango Soff. Over time, her body decomposes into dust and in its place is a large bubble with a tiny tear. Breathless, Pixie-Bob takes the bubble above ground and places it in a warm spot of his bedroom, near the wall that shows old photos of his family in various positions of happy denials and gross cover-ups. Pixie-Bob always gets sentimental at the memory of artificial grass. 41

Spittoon 1. 1 Hemmings, Cat People #19

Eventually, a girl breaks through the bubble. She grows up sickly, anemic and she tells Pixie-Bob that she has fuzzy memories of a woman's voice and a strange addiction to mangoes which Pixie-Bob gets from the farmer's market on 6th Ave. He never lets her out of the apartment for fear the light of day might destroy her. He names her Peach-Purr. One day, while Pixie-Bob is at work, calculating how many Cover-Up models in photos would benefit from natural settings, an earthquake devastates the city. The building where Pixie Bobie works, collapses. He is taken to a hospital where he lies half-conscious, sometimes waking up and asking Where is his daughter. She won't last long in a world without him or mangoes. One night, Pixie-Bob escapes from the hospital in nothing but a green striped gown and slippers. He growls at people passing by, giving him strange looks. Meanwhile, Peach-Purr escapes from the rubble of her building, and as if by Undercat instinct, finds the exact tunnel she was bubbled in. She hears footsteps approaching. She counts the stranger's breaths. "It's me," says Pixie-Bob, "your father." She smiles, but no one ever told her she was blind. Together, they hold hands and pretend they're listening to light jazz. They stop breathing.

Spittoon 1. 1

Cat People #17: Feline Eye, Feline You Kyle Hemmings

Kat is walking down the street, sidestepping monarch butterflies or painted ladies with one leg, grounded, perhaps crushed by childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands. It's hot in the city, sneaker rubbing against talus and hungry spider vein, flashbacks of the night before: two sweaty bodies in solitude, post-coital despair by windows, kitchen sink drip drip, cats of the night, unlicensed and turncoat, screeching by dumpsters. The heaven-eyed boy whose profile lingers against moon clones. Kat smiles, recalls the hookers below her window, on night guard for pure love against fragile corners. Kat keeps bopping and the sun keeps ticking. She looks up: blue falsetto of sky, some straggling birds in retro-glide, a small piece of paper floating down maybe 10 stories, maybe a letter, maybe she shush shush shouldn't because curiosity killed the . . . But Kat does because the vessels of her heart are networked to a thousand tiny hands pushing up under the streets. The letter is a suicide note. It reads: . . . by the time you have read this oh beautiful stranger, I will be dead, a jump headfirst through a broken roof, through another ceiling, and I will land on the floor of my favorite Dunkin' Donuts, which itself is a ceiling to the truly decaffeinated. But I will live through you. This letter is a magical letter, and whoever reads it will become me. Through you, accidental reader, I will love again what spits and kicks back. I can only imagine your blue hang-glide eyes, your sulphur and copper tongue. Our memory trace will mingle and breed, but don't burn your fingers in my coffee. The letter is signed by the poetess, Low-ki, the famous subway rapper, diva of side street Slam.

Kat folds the letter, sticks it in a pocket next to an unused condom given to her by a boy of bad weather forecasts. She approaches the downtown fair. She smiles she cries she peeps in windows she mellows over deadlined lovers in coffee shops she's light on her feet she's all sugar and anarchy. Scents of hot sausage, chestnuts, red peppers, coppertoned flesh melting into the street. She spots the heaven-eyed boy, calling himself OddHat, entertaining the crowd high on health fizzes; he's pulling cats out of his baseball cap, stopping at number 9. He turns and stares hard at Kat. What's in the back of her throat feels like goo and sludge, her tongue as if stapled to the floor of her mouth. "Low-ki," the boy yells out. The cats jump and disappear into the air. Kat runs, dodging bodies and food carts. "It was all a mistake," OddHat yells," you misunderstood me! I love you, not her, not Kat!." 43

Spittoon 1. 1 Hemmings, Cat People #17

But Kat is running down narrow streets that lead back to each other. She runs towards the last scrape of the island. She runs, closing her eyes, tasting her own salt on her lips. She takes the letter from her jeans and tosses it into the air. She imagines it flying over traffic, gliding into the hands of another soft-eyed girl. I can't be the one, thinks Kat, panting hard. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s me who needs saving.

As she jumps through the sun's last halo in the air, something that is invisible to the city's sanitation workers and flesh peddlers behind closed shops, Kat hopes that both she and Low-ki will land on all fours, such carefree Siamese twins.

Spittoon 1. 1

Cat People #18: Thick-skinned Cats Can't Hurry Love Kyle Hemmings

Kat is looking for a boy with green pumpkin eyes, the kind that glow in the afterglow. Darkness may be his sister who died at a young age, falling from a tenement window. Nobody heard the sound. Nobody can confirm the progress of their own deaths. It's just another unspoken lie, the consistency of peanut butter eaten from fingers. Kat thinks she met this boy one night at the Soho club, Detritus from Stars. She was too drunk to laugh at the number of krazy girls falling on their asses or pretending to be suicidal cherry blossoms. It was obvious that nobody on the dance floor had any kind of glue. The boy with green after-glow eyes was saying something about sole or soul, then he whispered into Kat's ear that they could both have type XX blood. He disappeared and Kat went home with a stranger who had an arthritic mother still living with him. On an old army cot, a real collector's item from the 4th Ave. Wars, they were quiet, palm against each other's mouth, dancing without the need for amphibious feet. In the morning, Kat slipped past the snores and goat-sounds of the arthritic mother, who slept with her shoes on. At home, Kat had the sensation of green fur falling from her life, which she associated with the boy she never got to know. She thought about him throughout her day at the paralegal office, among the Tupperware parties and the bosses banging shadows against walls, among the men who had given up on speaking and those who had become high-tech walkie talkies without the need for charging. Kat visits the old magician, Octosullus, on the second floor above an antique lamp shop in Chinatown. She tells him about the boy who had whispered code into her ear, about the dream-type they might both share. Octosullus listens patiently; he has miniature fir trees in his eyes. The boy who will love you, he says in a voice of spark and red leaf, has a double X cut into his heart. But be careful at night. This is a city of serial killers who work slow and without electric drills. The old man says that he needs to see Kat's heart. Kat stands and pulls off her Tee shirt, the one with The DeathRock Mutants design. Octosullus reaches inside the body cage and pulls out the heart with the ease of pulling rabbit tails from under the streets. Yes, says the old man, inspecting the tortuous vessels, it has a double X near the coronary. He must have touched you in some way. You will find him on the outskirts of the city. Only at night. He canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t 45

Spittoon 1. 1 Hemmings, Cat People #18

sleep. He collects the edges of all sorts of things. He is bleeding from your wireless love. He might return to you when you feel love is impossible. I never thought love was impossible, says Kat in a soft, wiry tone. I always thought it was improbable. But then again there are pigeons in the air. Yes, says the old man, nodding, there are pigeons in the air. Kat twists her head and torso through the Tee shirt. She sits down and stares pensively at the old man. His eyes are tired, the peace of rivers, of old mothers who survived their own 4th Ave. Wars.

Spittoon 1. 1

Grid City in Decline William Haas

The grid city’s street map shows no ailanthus sprouting through rafters. The perpendicular lines, cut with rulers and inked by steady hands, indicate no bunchgrass splitting cracked asphalt and no spiny black locust stalks slicing grey sunlight. Residential is marked by red; industrial, by blue; commercial, by yellow. No key colors rotted roofs, abandoned cars, sacked Victorian houses. At twilight the boy returns from the landfill. A strip of lichen lines a road overgrown in buckhorn and spurge. The landfill’s stink clings to his clothes. He’d found no precious metals today, only some plastic bags, newspapers headlined with dead events, concrete from which to carve arrowheads. He’d also found the street map. It will come in handy as did the plastic bags he’d wrapped around his hatchet head. In a world of thistles and thorns, he likes the smooth touch of plastic. He finds it at the bottoms of holes, beneath moss, bobbing in hypoxic creeks. It feeds the birds you don’t want to eat. Back at camp, he burns the map for warmth. The geometric streets curl into carbon and billow into the black. He throws a plastic bag into the fire and watches it shrink into filaments. Smoke burns his eyes. Tomorrow the daylight will be shorter; the shadows, longer. The road will disappear beneath the weeds. He senses that death is just getting colder, like thawed seeds sewn on frozen dirt.

Spittoon 1. 1

Lost to numbers Arpine Konyalian Grenier

It may be worthwhile to have undone a people or system or tell me at what cost does one consider such undulator withstanding insertion devices the freak has undone the freak has undone the freaky in us burqa only in the mind of the non-burqic just some one person or thought or lost kingdoms a layer of graphite managing itself a zero energy state of electricity some nano carbon I come from graphene obscene using the virtual to share narrative a camoufleur in violation longing capillary and cell size are the same for the shrew and the blue whale minimal neural substrates chosen for maximal output fractal dimensions more than one but less than two maximize exchange minimizing distance here and there wild undertakings no way back to how we were lost to numbers I am devoured whether I speak or not constraints for metabolic reasons walk the call dispossessed the disclosed in and of me the concealed

Spittoon 1. 1 Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers

narrative temporalizes lost kingdoms geometric over topologic and yet continuous to discontinuous self regulating systems a void brimming with possibilities inside and outside put away begettings the same differently for which reason either or came about perception milking away perspective begetting nauseates access as you infer but also when the virtual detonates one fills in the blanks so as to literally wander convene to intervene said the master loving is a field the energy differential sings supervenes time everywhere among the living and the dead because we are an irreducible black facing an irreducible white bottomless flurry at the sky and numbers some subject some object some verb the tug and twist neither reflexive nor hedonistic a personal so what of face value intensely inane blocked and illuminated blank aperture leap for paradis veracity

Spittoon 1. 1 Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers

structural emotionality after structural unavailability sanitized and romanticized promise beauty is truth it says do I lament Turkish uses a Western alphabet now? does it hurt to read Turkish in Armenian? your exemplar for torture is Byzantine mine is Ottoman fear and love remain all else is frost do we pray with it or for it? what I use as filler for lack accentuates my lack memes are in the way and on the way things that do not correspond may coincide I will use all that comes my way fake solutions too meaning hides behind them applauds noise threatens quit being Armenian for a day lawless sequence of events have made the impossible possible one reaches for an algorithm to restore normalcy to thread narrative or capture sequence comfort formless taste in rapture loveless cinnamon stick subtracted lives lie gaze is equivocal the tear in the order of things feeds my sanity pulls code 50

Spittoon 1. 1 Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers

log in plug in tune in for a moment over time one curves as the linear allows fantasy but not fullness potash salivating after suspects spherical and labile I resist numbers resist eyes scraps of feeling or thought I scrape narrative off thought culture feeding nature feeding culture every hour greets 15 degrees of earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s circumference forgery furthers code-breakers musician to writer unlike writer to musician remember collapse created noise heat followed neutral currents exchanging charge neutrino to muon sterile neutrinos too and Q balls accretion of matter perhaps always neutral milk straight from the cow not yet lost to its taste spherical octagon what else a dying star still visible hoping the asymptotic carries gravity and strings looking for beauty toying with charge after parity violations not standards not relativity that is how we feel matter among the awry non-matter we come from that is where hope and love have perched and violations 51

Spittoon 1. 1 Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers

fact check dot org screams at me embarrassment too I choose the latter because I want to touch you.

Spittoon 1. 1

Special Section: Interview with Arpine Konyalian Grenier

Spittoon 1. 1 Interview with Konyalian Grenier

Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Arpine Konyalian Grenier did not take residence in the United States until after graduate school in “the sciences” (a nebulous label she applies to her education). Grenier has never been someone to accept or use labels, especially not those for degrees and honors, so she is often very quiet about her educational background. Knowing her and reading her work, however, make it easy to see that Grenier is widely educated, both academically and experientially. One of her many post-secondary degrees is an MFA from Bard; she has also ardently studied and performed music, especially piano, for most of her life. Grenier is fluent in many languages, although she says “[I] more and more try not to speak any other than English (and if I can help it not to speak that either)” because she is “interested in what is behind language.” Her poetry embodies that interest both towards language and identity. Here, Konyalian Grenier talks with Kristin Abraham about writing and her new book, The Concession Stand: Exaptation at the Margins (Otoliths, 2011). This is her fourth published manuscript.

Spittoon: Do you see yourself as a science or art person—you left the constriction of scientific research for poetry? What about science is unsatisfying? Grenier: Perhaps I see myself as both or neither. Often I have problems with both. The other day someone said to me, “I hear you are an author.” I almost fell as my body twisted emphatically (we were dancing). A few months ago a notable poet (friend) said my writing was “orphic.” A while back an editor said, “You write like your ass chews gum.” I responded by, “At least I have an ass that can chew.” Then there is music you know. But what I really want to say is that science, music and poetry and all seem to come from the same place – experience – they actually validate each other. There will always be poetry out there even if there were no life in the Universe. Poetry is path or passage to knowing and not about knowledge as in data, more as in wisdom and life and self acceptance. In The Concession Stand there is a line about my father who worked and prayed all his life; in a way that is what I do. I did not decide [to become a poet], I had to give in to the doing of poetry. Spittoon: And what does that mean “the doing of poetry”? Grenier: That has to do with lifestyle and a continuing need for self knowledge which one never fully gets and yet one is always after. Writing a poem is similar to that I think, and I feel I will never write the perfect poem but will continue to spend a lifetime trying to do just that. Spittoon: Some poets have said that writing poetry is their “calling.” Do you believe it is yours? Is it your “destiny” to write poetry?

Spittoon 1. 1 Interview with Konyalian Grenier

Grenier: I feel uncomfortable with words like “calling” and “destiny.” I started doing poetry for practical reasons. Spittoon: Practical reasons—interesting choice of words. Many people would say “there’s nothing practical about poetry.” Could you elaborate? Grenier: Life was difficult as a single parent. I would be doing research during the day and music at night when studios were less expensive or free (in those days there were no computers). But i always felt uncomfortable about leaving my child at day care and with baby sitters for such lengths of time. One day I saw a poetry workshop notice in the paper and decided to attend it thinking poetry would be a less labor-intensive venue for creative expression. In retrospect, was I ever wrong about that. But that is how I started doing poetry, and for several years thereafter I felt guilty having abandoned music to poetry, until I read Maritain and Heidegger and Celan and and, you know. Spittoon: Which other poets have influenced you? Grenier: Often non poets or those who have passed on. I had a poor relationship with my father until he passed. Then he was a light in the sky, shining – energy I cull from every so often. Spittoon: Could you explain what you mean when you say “non-poets or those who have passed on” are ones who have influenced you? It sounds like you’re calling non-poets “poets,” which intrigues me. Grenier: For me, there is poetry in living and non-living systems. Often I reach out to Simone Weil (“in time her weaknesses became her strengths”) or Derrida or Kafka or Mahler or my great grandmother with whom I used to have pretend conversations in Kessab – an idyllic place in Syria where we spent our summers. I used to pretend I had come to visit her from the USA where her daughter, my grandmother, lived. Spittoon: I would love to hear more about Kessab, also about your manuscripts. I suspect you have several. How have their theme and style evolved over time? Grenier: Below are sections from The Concession Stand: Why do I write you then? Oh but it is, how do I write you. No, why is first, the cellospastic chain pertaining de sire. De who? An earth spot longing for a frame. L’arbre et la glycine (Celine Zins). Closure. I have no frames for you but the room is ready. Because I saw space flutter by, charmed but also charming. Anomie created anomaly, I am not indifferent to you. On the other hand, Aghd. I read you as I, dirt stained and twined of light, write you, with no capital. For so and lo, for Mama. Where is Mama? I can survive identity but not language. Hear me spread for St. Gregory's Daughter; Whores From Samarkand; After The Trading; The Cables Set, The Light; Silk, Paper, 55

Spittoon 1. 1 Interview with Konyalian Grenier

Gunpowder; The Concession Stand; if it weren’t for; Part, Part Euphrates;Yeva Girk; The Silent G. Manuscripts, inside out or outside in like measures of land bark at me for the space between death and the dying. I crouch by, sleep, push, taper, pull. The document. Because it is all a matter of scale, one, Yeva (Eve) related, conflagrates. Another bridges or insures, random phase. How respectful we may seem next to the aged, how generous. Still, the shores of Beirut would grab a ship named after Champollion, the scholar who bared its hieroglyphs hundred some years ago. Bare. Not in years but arpines.

The titles of some of the manuscripts are listed above. I continue to revise them. Often revision creates diminishing returns. I have several versions of some. Spittoon: How do you know when to stop? Or, when do you know a piece is “done,” ready for print? It takes a while, months, to come up with the first draft of a poem. At some point after I have read the draft, I feel orgasmic, at the same time humbled and powerful inside. I feel I have somehow conquered death. The poem is done. Now and then over the next few months I return to it and adjust stuff here and there, nothing major. After the poem is published, I seem to totally be disinterested in it. Spittoon: In The Concession Stand, you write: We are discussing yapmak (to make) versus etmek (to do). Nefret emtek (to hate) has been interesting for me because in Turkish, nefret (hate) becomes a verb only with the auxiliary, etmek. For the verb “to hate”, I prefer to utilize the auxiliary yapmak (have a poem titled, nefret yapmak) because I feel hate does not come from a natural action, that it takes effort to hate. So, “making” hate makes more sense than “doing” hate, I say.

I’ve noticed that you don’t often speak of poetry as “writing,” but as “doing.” Is this a choice you’ve made because of the effort it takes to write poetry? Grenier: I say “I do poetry” instead of “I am a poet” because the latter nauseates me for some reason. Doing poetry is a lifestyle for me. The word “doing” feels mundane and everyday. I like that. It comes from passion but also choice, feels less static and polished than being a poet. Spittoon: In The Concession Stand, you say mart in Armenian is the human and tram (its antigram) is money…Tell us more about that. Grenier: The human is the only capital we truly possess. It would be wonderful if we could teach that in early education, teach that true power is only power over one’s self, that hierarchy is not related to human interaction nor to pleasure. Spittoon: Of course, this makes me think of the English words “mart” (market) and “tram” (streetcar or trolley). At times, while reading The Concession Stand, I get the impression that you

Spittoon 1. 1 Interview with Konyalian Grenier

subscribe to a Jungian type of “collective language/memory/unconscious,” from whence all words can trace their origins. Is this so? Grenier: Yes, yes. You have a point there. [In The Concession Stand, I mention] a connection between the Celtic and the Armenian. No wonder my first name – Arpine – is a land measure in Celtic, and ray of the sun, in Armenian. Spittoon: On a related note, it seems you would say that poetry is the ultimate representation of this collective unconscious; however, you also say “facing backward is the death of death, no living survives it.” How do those seemingly contradictory ideals work together? Or, can they? Grenier: One faces all directions, including those unknown. So, being inclusive and nonhierarchical towards any and all directions keeps one fresh and open to experiencing the now – all is vibration anyway – and direction is relative, so is stance. Spittoon: What do you intend for your readers to experience when they read your work? Grenier: When I write I feel I am both alone and with all of humanity. I do not think I have an agenda. Perhaps intention develops as the work is developing. All in all, however, I write because I am dumbfounded by life. Spittoon: Do you find this ever hinders your ability to communicate in other media (conversation, email, etc.)? Or do you consider poetry to be its own sphere of communication? Grenier: I just completed a manuscript titled Tango Reel Territorial which comes from a long standing desire for connection. So, to answer your question, I love all forms of communication because that is about me and the “other”. The (singular and plural) “other” complete my world, that altogether fascinating but silly world, silly only because of what we expect from it that it does not (cannot) deliver.

Spittoon 1. 1

A beautiful song, just beautiful… J.. Fedigan William J

Michael says he sings to cancer, says cancer sings to him. Michael says cancer is a woman. Michael says she loves him, says he loves her. Michael says cancer will kill him. He tells Jimmy: -I sing to her, Jimmy. I sing a beautiful song, Jimmy, just beautiful… -OK. -She sings to me, Jimmy. She sings a beautiful song, Jimmy, just beautiful… Can you hear the song? -Sure. -We love each other, Jimmy. -OK. -She will kill me, Jimmy. -OK. Michael and Jimmy on Ward B, basement. Michael on Ward because he sings to cancer, hears cancer sing to him. Jimmy on Ward because he wants to kill self. Jimmy tells ER doc he wants to kill self. Jimmy gets 14 days on Ward B. Jimmy likes Michael’s song. Beautiful song. -My mother sang a beautiful song, Jimmy, just beautiful…I wish you could have heard her…beautiful song, just beautiful… -Delusional, doc says. Doc puts Michael on different meds, heavy meds. Meds don’t work. Michael sings beautiful song. 58

Spittoon 1. 1 Fedigan, A beautiful song…

-Tell him to shut the fuck up! Mouse says to Jimmy. Anger issues. -He’s just singing to himself, Jimmy tells Mouse. -Fuck you and fuck him! Mouse says. Anger issues. Assault with intent to kill. -Any thoughts of suicide, Jimmy? doc asks. -No. Feel good. -Any thoughts of hurting yourself, Jimmy? doc asks. -No. Feel good, Jimmy says. Jimmy discharged. Jimmy out. Week later Mouse out. Jimmy sees Mouse in park. Mouse looks for clean butts on ground. Finds clean butt with good tread left. Mouse cleans it off, fires it up. Jimmy asks about Michael. -How’s Michael doing? Jimmy asks Mouse. -The asshole’s dead, Mouse says. -What? -He’s dead. -Cancer? Was it cancer? -He hung himself with a bed sheet. -What? -He says over and over he hears his mother. She sings to me, he says, it’s a beautiful song, he says, just beautiful… next thing doc and nurses running around. Code Blue, crash cart…dead. -Shit. Jimmy walks away.

Spittoon 1. 1 Fedigan, A beautiful songâ&#x20AC;Ś

Jimmy listens. Jimmy listens for her voice. Jimmy listens for her song. Beautiful song, just beautifulâ&#x20AC;Ś

Spittoon 1. 1

Lilly Obscure Discusses Documentary Film Dana Curtis

Triple bill: Café Flesh, Baghdad Café, Atomic Café -and later, everyone will meet -- where else? -at the café-- the new triangulation of cinema food, cinema lights. Meanwhile, Lilly eats roast chicken stuffed with wild rice, rosemary and dates. Provencal potatoes, asparagus swimming in hollandaise. Later, she's bent over a pink toilet in front of a camera saying cinéma vérité-- someone else can patch this into an award-winning documentary, some other director can give this meaning, give this a truth beyond disease, beyond the obvious influence of Buñuel, the American Independents, her favorite screenwriter, and now these worn velvet chairs, architecture only seen in old theaters. And it's not so much hunger as fatigue, not so much art as hunger.

Spittoon 1. 1

Schrödinger’s Dream Dana Curtis

the cats have come for you, want to know why, want a terminal explication de texte you cannot find the equation to quantify their journeys, cannot and will not determine sound and fur they do not appreciate eternity x+y=∞ in this lead box, cyanide is god (cyanide is always god, invisible standing on the sun) toss them in oxygen they fall like stars on the carpet marbles on the lawn dust in the nucleus jewels in the blades they write your name

Spittoon 1. 1

Schrรถdinger on the Ex-planet Dana Curtis

We've found snakes where there should be cats, but meanwhile, the children play on the train tracks. Deaf and inevitable, it grinds them into bullets and rings. I always knew, always entrenched the savory noise, dreamt of jumping boxcars, seeing the light in my eyes become some sort of meaning. All children die on train tracks; ever fascinating the invisible life. Far be it for me to unleash the sky--this time--entrapped and who's on the floor. Do I, does anyone remember the knives we used? Think: we carved them to artifacts-hear the whistle and don't feel well. Everything is to excess. Who doesn't matter so long as bodies hit the ground, all that's left. Someone has triangulated my location. I'll do anything now: bury the bodies, skin the snakes. The desert is so astonishing at night. Let's talk about this. Let's figure it out, entangle mathematics; What shall we do without meaning? The cusp ruined the prophecies. I walked barefoot into a burning night.

Spittoon 1. 1

Dear Wisconsin Fallsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ryan Collins

I hear itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s easy to trip over the golden cobblestones of your serpentine roads, lined with poppies & mending fences built by red-headed strangers w/ calloused hands. Consult the tea leaves. Still the telegram fog hovers between hills, bridges appear from thin air & we drive off because how could we not. What I know & you do not could fill a thousand earthenware jars with papyrus scrolls, secrets hermetically sealed & buried beneath the holy prison, the one no one soul ever escaped. Maybe the people who look down to catch themselves are the tourists, the Philistines come to remove the words from your throat, to collapse your house of tarot cards. Light no candle for strangers, less they start a blaze. Mind the gaps, Quad Cities

Spittoon 1. 1

Long Exit Molly Brodak

A house is a house wrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s counterfeit life. Chains woo. Made in a bivouac of smoke. We sat down in that weird city, with our treats. The fetters were comfortable. The chains made pretty noises, hoops whistled near our ears. Pale greens forgot themselves all night. Greenness like the nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s organs. Chains enact love instantly. Bodies are revolting without them. All of this looks slow from afar, so we crept up to the fence.

Spittoon 1. 1

Nervous Spell Molly Brodak

Empty air does not make a picture. The space could be dotted, it wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t change. What is the opposite of nostalgia, my sister asked, polka dots? The flatness of survival? Its guilt? Or a field recording, fresh off the bus? Paranoia is the instrument and director, then, reminding me I only see myself through one part of myself, and my nerves are often completely wrong about the world. A nerve can be pulled from a cadaverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arm like no problem. It says something has happened out there, look alive

Spittoon 1. 1

Groff’s Haplotype Kirsten Beachy

Groff wished he had a leather folder with brass corners instead of the creased pages he unfolded from his pocket. The mortician who spoke last month to the Ruritans had carried a portfolio that matched his polished shoes. Groff wiped his palms on his Dockers and tried to smooth his papers out against the podium. It was his first time. His father and grandfather had never stood up like this to speak, in front of folding chairs full of neighbors and strangers. Probably no one in his whole line of fathers, stretching back to Switzerland and, much earlier, to a corner of Egypt, had ever tried this before. They’d rather lean on their shovels, gaze at the sky, and watch birds, profoundly silent. Why had he agreed to speak?

He had gotten carried away at the annual Ham and Turkey and Oyster dinner. Betty Harlowe sat at his table, watching him cut triangles of ham and fork them into his mouth. “The trouble with sitting near Groff,” she said, “is that you can hardly get a word in edgewise.” She dug him in the ribs to let him know he was included in the joke. He smiled and went on forking, but later, when she mentioned that her brother had Parkinson’s disease, Groff ventured, “You know they’re doing a genetic study on that?” Betty nodded encouragingly, so he continued. “They want 10,000 samples. Your brother could send in a cheek swab. And here’s the best part…” Study participants could get their Y-haplotypes analyzed for free, which meant that Betty’s brother could learn the path that his ancestors took across the globe, using data encoded in his genes to plot the map of their ancient travels. Groff got his own Y-haplotype traced, but it had cost seventy-five dollars, plus postage to send the kit in… Groff realized that Betty was staring, amused. He gulped down his whole glass of water to wash the salt and embarrassment from his tongue.

Spittoon 1. 1 Beachy, Groff’s Haplotype

“You ought to give a talk on that,” Betty had said. Betty was on the board. Betty was the board. From her perch on a folding chair in the fourth row, Betty Harlowe watched Groff clear his throat, his eyes dilating under his new haircut. After a long pause, he started. “You and your father and your father’s father, all share the same Y chromosome. Tonight, I’m going to talk about how—how researchers use tiny differences on that chromosome to see where your forefathers came from.” Betty nodded approvingly. He’d only stumbled once. “For instance, the fathers of men with the L variation come from a male ancestor who lived in the Indus Valley, which today we call Afghanistan.” In the front row, Lana Reese thrust her hand into the air, but Groff’s eyes were locked to his papers. His fingers were trembling. “And men with the E variant—” Lana waved her hand and then interrupted. “What about the mothers?” Groff jumped, stared into the crowd, vibrating. And then he fled. His papers sloughed off the podium like sycamore bark. Betty sighed and hefted herself to her feet. “We’ll have the coffee ready in five minutes. Meanwhile, are there any announcements?” * Down by the bridge, Groff leaned his forehead against the railing, filling his lungs with cool night air. A honeysuckle breeze soothed his newly-shorn neck. Soon he would go back and get his car. Soon, before everyone came out to the parking lot. But for now he stared gratefully down into the moonlit water, communing with his silent ancestors.

Spittoon 1. 1

Contributors

Spittoon 1. 1

Wayne Lee Thomas teaches creative writing at a small college in northeast Tennessee. He is editor of The Tusculum Review. Ann Stewart is currently a PhD candidate in creative writing with a specialty in fiction at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, where she also teaches creative writing and introductory literature. She is the newly appointed editor-in-chief at UWM’s literary journal, Cream City Review, and has published both fiction and poetry in Ellipsis, Untamed Ink, At Length, and other journals. Nate Pritts is the author of four books of poems - most recently Big Bright Sun (BlazeVOX) & The Wonderfull Yeare (Cooper Dillon Books). His fifth, Sweet Nothing, is forthcoming from Lowbrow Press in late 2011. He is the founder & principal editor of H_NGM_N & H_NGM_N BKS. Find him online at www.natepritts.com. Sara Pritchard is the author of Crackpots (a novel in stories), which was a NY Times Notable Book of the Year, and the linked-story collection, Lately. Her new collection of stories, Help Wanted: Female, is forthcoming from Etruscan Press in 2012. Rich Murphy’s credits include the 2008 Gival Press Poetry Award for Voyeur; a first book, The Apple in the Monkey Tree. His website is http://richink.wordpress.com/about/. Apart from obsessing over food and wine as editor of Connotation Press’ From Plate to Palate and on her blog The Everyday Palate, Amanda McGuire’s poems and reviews have appeared in such places as Noon: Journal of the Short Poem, The Cream City Review, Fifth Wednesday, Literary Magazine Review and So To Speak. She teaches at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Kristi Maxwell is the author of Realm Sixty-four and Hush Sessions, and her next book, Re-, will be brought into the world by Ahsahta Press in 2012. She lives in Tucson with a poet and two cats.

Spittoon 1. 1

RJ Ingram is a BFA from Bowling Green State University. He works on the poetry staff of Mid American Review and is a co-editor in chief of Prairie Margins. Kyle Hemmings is the author of three chapbooks of poetry/prose: Avenue C (Scars Publications), Fuzzy Logic (Punkin Press), and Amsterdam & Other Broken Love Songs (Flutter Press). He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/. William Haas lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches writing at Western Oregon University. His work has appeared in River Teeth, Dark Mountain, Appalachian Heritage, and elsewhere. Arpine Konyalian Grenierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poetry and translations have appeared in numerous publications including How2, Columbia Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Fence, Verse and Big Bridge. Her latest is a collection of hybrid text titled, The Concession Stand: Exaptation at the Margins (Otoliths). William J Fedigan writes about who he is, who he knows, what he knows, and where heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been. He can be contacted at Wfedigan@aol.com. Dana Curtis is the author of Camera Stellata (CW Books) and The Body's Response to Famine (Pavement Saw Press). She has also published several chapbooks: the most recent of which is Antiviole (Pudding House Press). She is the Editor-in-Chief of Elixir Press . Ryan Collins is the author of a chapbook, Complicated Weather. Recent work has appeared in Third Coast, Sentence and Greatcoat. He lives in Rock Island, Illinois. Email: ryancollins3@yahoo.com Molly Brodak is from Michigan and currently lives in Georgia. Her poems have appeared recently in the Collagist, Field, Kenyon Review, Bateau, and she is the author of the chapbook Instructions for a Painting (Greentower, 2007) and the book A Little Middle of the Night (U of Iowa Press, 2010). Kirsten Eve Beachy is an assistant professor of English at Eastern Mennonite University. She is editor of an anthology of Mennonite writing and contributing editor to The Tusculum Review.