Storyman 7

ISSN 2009-2369

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The Linnet´s Wings Autumn 2015

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Published by The Linnet´s Wings 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, mail the publisher at thelinnetswings@gmail.com Ordering Information:

Single Copies available from our website: www.thelinnetswings.org

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, mail the publisher at the address above.

ISBN-13: 978-1519122643 ISBN-10:1519122640

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Other Publications by The Linnet´s Wings Classic: The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ISBN 13: 978-1480176423 Classic: Randolph Caldecott, The House that Jack Built ISBN-13: 978-1483977669 One Day Tells Its Tale to Another by Nonnie Augustine ISBN-13: 978-1480186354 About the Weather-- Spring Trending by Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick ISBN-13: 978-0993049330 This Crazy Urge to Live by Bobby Steve Baker ISBN-13: 978-0993049-0-9

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Auld Lang Syne a fairytale by Carla Martin Wood 90 Autobiography by James Graham 92 Dull day at the beach by Julie Hogg 94 False Detective by Patricia Walsh 96 Hand Travel by Dave Morehouse 97 Listening to Maria Callas by James Graham 98 Breaking Branches by Ronald E. Shields 99 People in rooms by Gemma Meek 100 Surface tension by Colin Will 101 Thunderstorm by Nora Brennan 102 Moving On by Eira Needham 103 The Owatonna Library by Ronald E. Shields 104 The Silver Birch at The Botanics by Maggie Mackay 105 How Facebook Helped a Girl To Get What She Wished For by Miki Byrne 106 A place by the fire by Bill West 108

Frontispiece Autumn by Efim Volkov ii Prologue: The Sleep-Song of Grainne Over Dermuid—When fleeing from Fionn Mac Cumhaill

By Eleanor Hull (Translated) xii Editor´s Note x Epigraphs, Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore, xv

SHORT STORIES “Once, I Had a Bunch of Thyme” by Nancy Nau Sullivan 4 Fifteen Years by Jen Corrigan 8 As Our Sun Begins To Fade by Steven Storrie 14 Rain On Me by Jeffrey Miller 18 The Fountain Toti O´Brien 26 A Well Ordered Life by Fred Miller 38 Archie Fights Pike-Eye by Bill Frank Robinson 115 FLASH FICTION Story Fairy by Oonah V Joslin 49 Talc by AKeith Walters 109 Fallout by Katharine Crawford Robey 111 It’s Like That by Catherine Power Evans 113 MICRO FICTION Aroha and the Cosmic Symphony by Shreyasi Majumdar 2 Jack After Being Up So High by Dan Plate 70 POETRY Epigraph by Oonah V Joslin 71 Vernon Watkins 1906-1967: A Bard of Bards editorial

by Oonah V Joslin 73 Pillows of Sound by alisa velaj 79 Bethlehem by alisa velaj 80 Mozart Appears on a Stage by alisa velaj 80 Thanksgiving by Carla Martin-Wood 82 The Album by Nick Bowman 83 Amma’s rotis by Anna G. Raman 87 The nine-yard sari by Anna G. Raman 88 Pipes by Barry Charman 89

SPANISH NEW WORLD POETRY César Vallejo: Poetry in Peru by Stephen Zelnick 53 Translations, by Stephen Zelnick Alla Lejos 55 Los Heraldos Negros 56 Las personas mayores 57 El traje que vestí mañana 58 Vusco Volvvver 59 Las cuatro paredes 61 Nómina de huesos 62 Señores, Y no me digan nada 63 Altura y pelos 64 Esperanza plañe entre algodones 65 ¿Qué me da? 66 CLASSIC Epigraph: Before the Queen´s Croquet Party by Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick 43 Chapter 8 - The Queen's Croquet-Ground by Lewis Carroll 41 My Fancy by Lewis Carroll 48 ILLUSTRATOR Arthur Rackham, Bio 35

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ISSUE ARTIST Cathy Giles, bio 34 Apple 72 Leaves 81 The Boat 83 Rolling Pin 85 Reading Girl 91 The Rose 95 Where you lead 101 Autumn Berries 103 COVER ART Andrea Castilla, bio 34 ART A woman and child in the driving seat, Mary Cassatt 3 Put his strange case before old Solomon Caw, Artist: Arthur Rackham 18 Two Boys, Egon Schiele 13 Musician in an Interior, Louis Marcoussis 17 A Transpontine Cockney Self Portrait by Arthur Rackham 33 Stein on the Danube, Seen from the South, Egon Schiele 37 The Queen turned angrily away from him and said to the Knave, 'Turn them over', Artist: Arthur Rackham 44 Fairies never say we feel happy they say we feel dancey, Artist, Arthur Rackham 47 And that is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Vinegar, Arthur Rackham 48 The Pool of Tears, Arthur Rackham 50 Fairies are all more or less in hiding until dusk, Artist, Arthur Rackham 51 They all crowded round it panting and asking, 'But who has won', Arthun Rackham 52 Creation of the World IX by Mikalojus Ciurlionis 79 Mock Turtle, Arthur Rackham 89 My Dancer, Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick (Following Rodin) 93 Geese in Flight before a Full Moon: Ohara Koson 97 Title: Two branches with leaves, Artist: Eugene Delacroix 99 Tango by Frantisek Kupka 101 The Fool of a Cloud, Marie Fitzpatrick, Watercolour Study, 102 Woman catching firefly by a stream by Utagawa Kuniyoshi 106 Fire, Giuseppe Arcimboldo 108 Woman, Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick 111 Corridor in the Asylum by Vincent Van Gogh 113 Boy on the Rocks by Henri Rousseau 115

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Editor's Note Harmonics are the lovely sensations that one perceives in music. Similarly within the written word, our expressions, and the way in which we use them creates our emotion. The motion that drives our day and helps to drive community--an alchemy that tortures or loves. But was language designed to allow one to depict feelings? Would you say that the caveman that grunted the first word had to feel strongly enough to want to either vent or love, or to laugh or cry in a way other than how they were used to expressing. Were they just feeling their way through their days until that moment.

I have a vision in my head of a group of animated beings, spiraling sounds, and a group of empaths drawing pictures of the sounds, with a stone, on a bit of slate, to imitate a facial expression or a mood to describe a chain of events to relate a story, and given up, and then in a moment of illumination reaching for a plume, maybe a feather from an eagle, and using it to make a wish for something more, and in that moment, there was a flash of lightning and words and alphabets fell from the sky to come into being, and this was the way that it happened: Our language was an alchemic reaction that exploded when the beauty of nature was mirrored through the soul, and in that moment we opened the door to magical expression.

And we have some lovely, magical language and expressions driving our stories and poetry for your enjoyment this quarter. 30 writers share their work with all of us. 30 voices explore and express, in a fine fashion, a perception of their world view. And we have some gorgeous art, too. Two fine artists, Cathy Giles, Dublin, and Andrea Castilla, Motril, kindly gave of their time, Cathy illustrated our poetry section and Andrea designed our web heading and cover.

Also in our 'Spanish New World Poetry' Stephen Zelnick is back with a critique and translations of the Peruvian poet, César Vallejo, it´ s a great opportunity to read his poetry translated and hear a little of his life. Steve is running a Neruda Seminar over on Facebook and it´ s well worth a visit.

And we´ re missing Bruce Harris. Bruce stepped down from our 'New Voices Section' due to health concerns. It was so lovely working with him over the last year, he is a great voice, and he has great eye for the work. A lovely, light, professional touch! We wish him a full recovery, and the best of luck also wth his new projects, he was telling me he has plans for great work as soon as he´ s back on his feet.

We had a great time here reading and editing this quarter and I want to thank you all for your time and support and for helping us write 'The Linnet´ s Wings' into our reality.

My best, Marie

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And then, the lover, sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress´eye-brow, Artist, Louis Wain Issue Artist Cathy Giles

Editors for the Issue Managing Editor Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick

Consulting Copy, Digby Beaumont Photography, Maia Cavelli

Senior Editor Bill West

Contributing Editor Martin Heavisides

Fiction Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick Bill West Yvette Managan

Web and Database Peter Gilkes

Poetry Oonah Joslin

Offices: Mullingar, Co. Westmeath and Motril, Granada, Andalusia, Online: Zoetrope Virtual Studio and The Linnet´s Wings

Spanish Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick

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Prologue

Heraldic Eagle, Artist, Victor Hugo The Sleep-Song of Grainne Over Dermuid—When fleeing from Fionn Mac Cumhaill

By Eleanor Hull (Translated)

SLEEP a little, a little little, thou needst feel no fear or dread, Youth to whom my love is given, I am watching near thy head.

Sleep a little, with my blessing, Dermuid of the lightsome eye, I will guard thee as thou dreamest, none shall harm while I am by.

Sleep, O little lamb, whose homeland, was the country of the lakes, In whose bosom torrents tremble, from whose sides the river breaks.

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Sleep, as slept the ancient poet, Dedach, minstrel of the South, When he snatched from Conall Cernach Eithne of the laughing mouth.

Sleep as slept the comely Finncha ’neath the falls of Assaroe, Who, when stately Slaine sought him, laid the Hard-head Failbe low.

Sleep in joy, as slept fair Aine, Gailan’s daughter of the west, Where, amid the flaming torches, she and Duvach found their rest.

Sleep as Degha, who in triumph, ere the sun sang o’er the land, Stole the maiden he had craved for, plucked her from fierce Deacall’s hand.

Fold of Valour, sleep a little, Glory of the Western world; I am wondering at thy beauty, marvelling how thy locks are curled.

Like the parting of two children, bred together in one home, Like the breaking of two spirits, if I did not see thee come.

Swirl the leaves before the tempest, moans the night-wind o’er the lea, Down its stony bed the streamlet hurries onward to the sea.

In the swaying boughs the linnet twitters in the darkling light, On the upland wastes of heather wings the grouse its heavy flight.

In the marshland by the river sulks the otter in his den; While the piping of the peeweet sounds across the distant fen.

On the stormy mere the wild-duck pushes outward from the brake, With her downy brood beside her seeks the centre of the lake.

In the east the restless roe-deer bellows to his frightened hind; On thy track the wolf-hounds gather, sniffing up against the wind.

Yet, O Dermuid, sleep a little, this one night our fear hath fled, Youth to whom my love is given, see, I watch beside thy bed.

The original of this beautiful poem is given in “Dunaire Finn” (The Poem Book of Finn) in the Irish Texts Society’s publications. Grainne, the affianced wife of Fionn MacCumhal, is flying with Dermuid, one of Fionn’s band. The linnet twitters, the grouse flies, the wild duck pushes out from the stream—everything around signals to Grainne that pursuers are close. The poem is wonderfully dramatic in its blend of affection and alarm, all set to the soothing measure of a lullaby.

Ref: An Anthology of Irish Verse by Padraic Colum

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Epigraph

Where The Mind Is Without Fear Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Rabindranath Tagore

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The Linnet´s Wings

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Autumn 2015

Shreyasi Majumdar

Aroha and the Cosmic Symphony by Shreyasi Majumdar

Aroha twists her dark hair into ringlets. She waits for the harshness to uncoil. To snake up, grim and remorseless into the moonlit darkness of her room. Sure enough, even as stars pierce the ebony pincushion outside, the clamor commences downstairs.

Mum’s sharp allegations quickly escalate into opinions, into screeching, regret-filled declarations. Dad’s responses are subtler. He smashes porcelain and punches the wall.

That’s when lyrical voices animate the night sky. The Pole Star beckons Aroha to listen intently as constellations and galaxies coalesce, calling to her in music. Colossal xylophones, they envelop her in pentatonic harmony.

They’ve been burning since time immemorial to keep the spartan universe bright and sprinkled with warmth.

‘It’s not about the self,’ they say, ‘it’s about the whole.’

She doesn’t understand, so they sing to her instead. They sing about red giants and supernovae, pulsars and white dwarves. They twinkle deep space secrets and unravel the mysteries of nebulous worlds that black holes yawn into existence.

Their voices becomes louder, inundating the vehemence of packed bags and slammed doors.

The cosmic orchestra is vociferous, ostentatious even. It overwhelms the engine’s roar, the resounding zip of the car racing angrily into the night.

Anguish will make way for a relentless silence tomorrow. It’ll claw into the fresh fracture and plug it in like hard concrete in a cracked sidewalk.

But for tonight, the universe is ablaze. The celestial concerto pulsates through its very fabric – and Aroha hums along. ...

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A woman and child in the driving seat, Mary Cassatt

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Autumn 2015

Nancy Nau Sullivan

“Once, I Had a Bunch of Thyme” by Nancy Nau Sullivan

nn sits at the table in her mother’s breakfast room and looks out at the oaks and silver maples. Dry thorns scratch the brick under the window, witchy and mournful, breaking the winter silence.

She sighs, goes back to sifting through her mother’s old recipes. A mug of Constant comment tea marks a pile of chicken recipes. Ann fiddles with the tag dangling from the mug. Ironic. She and her mother favor Constant Comment, but it’s difficult for them to share a single civil comment. Always, there are the interruptions, the frictions. The competition.

Ann doesn’t want to think about that now. Her marriage has fairly sprinted to an end since Christmas. She needs comfort, and so she finds it in routine. Reading recipes feels good. Nothing else is orderly. She grabs a handful of clippings and taps them into a neat stack.

A recipe for blueberry pie falls out of the binder. Her mother is good at pies, her sure fingers folding a thin sheet of pastry and dropping it neatly into the tin. When Ann was only as tall as the kitchen counter, she watched her mother make pies. Flour puffed in the light under the cabinets like lovely clouds. The wallpaper was red plaid, and her mother was beautiful, wearing a frilly apron she tied with her floury hands. Her pies are the reason Ann has candles in her birthday pie instead of cake.

Ann smoothes out the thin clipping.

She hears the stairs creak. A straightening of the spine. Sit up straight. Don’t hunch over.

Her mother appears, framed in the doorway. She’s just awake, but she hardly looks rested. She looks sick. The light falls on her silver-blond hair, clinging damply to her forehead. She’d once been a beauty queen with a dark page boy and arched brows, but the years have not been good to her.

She brushes past Ann on her way to the pantry bar.

“I feel awful,” she says. “But it’s the funniest thing. I’ll have a vodka and feel just fine.”

Ann closes the binder with a soft thump. Her mother drops ice into a crystal glass and pours Absolut. She sits down at the table littered with recipes, the old-fashion glass clutched in ringed fingers.

“That’s not funny, Mom. Vodka isn’t medicine.” She paces each word carefully, casually.

“Well, vodka is my medicine,” she snaps. “It makes me feel better.” She takes a sip and looks 4

The Linnet´s Wings

The Linnet´s Wings in the direction of the garden. An errant cardinal, lost in the gloom, flits from branch to branch. But, that’s it. Nothing has changed. It is a desolate Indiana afternoon.

Her mother leaves a message on voicemail. She sounds wistful, but she isn’t the wistful type—except when she sings “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Ann was born there, her mother a young bride waiting for the ship. Gardenias bloomed on flower carts and the fog wrapped its arms around them.

Ann thinks of her mother bending over her crib with a teaspoon of cooled, boiled water—to cure Ann’s hiccups.

She calls her mother back.

“What are you doing?” Her mother rarely engages in small talk. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, it’s actually a good time,” Ann says.

Silence.

“What is it, Mom? You called.”

“I had a scan,” she says. “He put this gel on my stomach, and then he yelled, ‘OH’. I knew he shouldn’t be saying that. But he saw it. He knew right away something’s in there.”

“What’s in there?”

She clears her throat. Ann has spent a lifetime reading her tics and this throat clearing is one of them. “The Big C,” she says. “They think it’s cancer.”

“What the hell?”

“Yes. Hell.”

She chuckles, which is her way of circling an unpleasant topic. “Cancer of the gall bladder.

Whoever heard of such a thing? The gall bladder, ” she says. “It sounds so unfashionable.”

Ann can’t believe what she is hearing. Why would a gall bladder be life threatening? Who even needs a gall bladder?

“Are you there?” her mother says.

Ann hears the nails, polished in apricot crème, probably tapping the date book filled with lunches and parties, and now, doctors’ appointments.

“Yes, and no. I’m lost.”

“Me, too.”

“There must be something they can do. What about Mayo’s? Or that place in Texas? But that’s hearts, isn’t it?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my heart.” Ann hears her riffling through pages. She imagines those little white squares and her mother looking for places to write in cancer.

“Mom, what are you doing? We’re talking about your gall bladder.”

“No, we aren’t. You were talking about my heart. It’s perfectly fine, which is too bad because it will keep ticking away while this thing has a fling.” The tapping stops.

“Get another opinion. They put baboon hearts in babies. So why can’t they do something about your gall bladder?”

“They tell me there’s nothing they can do. I could go to the moon.”

Her mother’s skin is so translucent Ann can see to her bones. She is starving at night but can hardly eat a cracker. Ann finds small treats to tempt her—a thumbnail of cheddar, a sliver of ham. It becomes a game. She tells Ann, “The fairies came. That potato chip got me all the way to morning.”

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Autumn 2015

Nancy Nau Sullivan Ann helps her mother to a chair in the bedroom. She puts a cold, wet washcloth to her mother’s forehead. She is having a “poor spell.” Ann waits until she is feeling well enough to coax her into a clean gown. Ann looks at the carpet. It is stained, and suddenly she wants to gouge it and scream. Ann tells herself to be calm. None of this is a bother; it is a blessing. It is all that is left to do, and finally there is so little anyone can do.

Their days unwind in the sunroom with glass walls where it’s warm even on cold days, with Oriental rugs, an old armoire and brass lamps. Two loveseats in black chintz with peach lilies and ivy bring the garden inside. Ann wouldn’t have thought of that. But her mother did.

Ann thinks about that sunroom. It’s where they come apart and they pull together.

One night the clouds touch the earth with the humid promise of spring, but Ann feels the unmistakable approach of death. Her mother hardly moves, the valium calming her anxiety and the morphine sedating her. Ann walks around like a robot.

Her mother sits on one of the loveseats with a throw over her legs, a blue gingham bed jacket pulled up around her pale cheeks. Ann hates that bed jacket. She’d given her mother one years ago, and she had lent it to a friend with cancer. “I never got it back,” she told Ann, who went out and bought another. She is sorry she did. It is just another reminder.

Suddenly her mother wakes up.

“Oh, shit,” she says.

“Mom.” “They said maybe six months. It’s been more than a year.”

Something cold whirls around Ann. Her mother struggles to sit up. The oxygen claps faintly. “I was afraid. I don’t know exactly why, but isn’t that just fear for you. The not knowing.” Her eyes are startling blue. “But I’m not afraid anymore. I’ve had so much here, with you.”

Her voice is strong. Ann thinks of a candle, burning, pooling out in a final luminescent white glow. Her mother waves her over, and she comes and sits on a hassock. She takes her mother’s hands, silky and loose, and this is different. Ann has rarely been comfortable around her mother. Even in the decline: There was no small talk along the way, no bantering down the stairs to hell. All of a sudden they are here.

Her mother says: “How can I ever thank you? I want to tell you something. I know being the eldest makes you feel responsibility very seriously. You’re different because you’re you, and you’re the first born. You know how I go on. There are so many good things about that; you’re strong, independent, smart and a great achiever. That’s a lot of good stuff. Besides, God made you beautiful. Isn’t that nice?

And you’re blessed with good health….”

Ann doesn’t move. Her mother says: “Seems like you’re going through a giant rough spot now.

Please. Try not to look back. And try to forgive. I know that’s hard but it’s the only way you’ll have peace. Peace is what we need. You don’t have to say or act out forgiveness. Just know that you do…”

Ann leans over her mother, careful not to disturb the pillow under her and the air around them.

She kisses her cheek. They sit like that, together, with cold rain dinging the patio stones.

Ann goes over her mother’s words that fill the room to bursting. She locks them in. That is all she has. She thinks of this last time she talked with her mother and her mother talked with her. ... (“Once I Had a Bunch of Thyme,” the title from an old Irish ballad, won honorable mention in the Harriett Rose Legacies writing contest at the Carnegie Center, Lexington, KY, in April, 2015.)

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The lady with the balloons, who sits just outside, Arthur Rackham (Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens) 7

Autumn 2015

Jen Corrigan

Fifteen Years by Jen Corrigan

ifteen years. Wow. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, does it?”

“Nope, it doesn’t.”

“And my parents were just so sure that we wouldn’t last a month. I guess we showed them, didn’t we?”

“Yep, we sure did.”

The countryside swept by the car in a green blur, the sunlight flickering across both of their faces. Doug had worn sunglasses, but Tracy had forgotten hers at home. She lowered the visor and closed her eyes, feeling the warmth against her lids.

“Can you turn down the air? I’m freezing,” Tracy said, rubbing her hands up and down over her arms, smattered with goose bumps.

“You’re always cold. Why didn’t you bring a sweater like I told you to?”

“Because it’s summer, Doug! I shouldn’t need a sweater.”

“Yes, but you could have brought it for the ride up.”

“Can’t you just turn down the air? I’m asking nicely.”

Doug pulled into the grass of the big open field, being careful to avoid any holes or mounds. The hot air balloon was tied down in the distance, its dusky pink color contrasted against the shrill blue of the sky.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Tracy breathed, sliding out of the car and slamming the door behind her.

Doug followed suit, locking the car with a click on his key fob. He looked down into Tracy’s expectant face.

He had once found her attractive. God, that was so many years ago. He had once been drawn to her curiously vibrant violet eyes, set deep and wide into her small, heart shaped face. As she grew The Linnet´s Wings 8

The Linnet´s Wings older, she looked more and more like an aging extraterrestrial, one from one of those classic black and white science fiction films.

“Well?” Tracy prompted.

“Well, what?”

“I asked you a question.”

Doug rolled his eyes behind his dark glasses. Even though he knew she couldn’t see his impatience, he was certain she could sense it with her invisible antennae.

“What was the question?”

“I asked, ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’”

“I thought that was a rhetorical question.”

Doug began walking towards the hot air balloon, taking deliberately big strides so Tracy had to take twice as many of her mincing steps to keep up.

“No.” “Then, yes. It is beautiful.”

Doug’s loping gait had put him several feet ahead of his wife. In college, they used to take walks in the woods behind Doug’s fraternity, their hands laced together. The air was heavy on their walks and almost sleepy with the perfume of wildflowers opening their buds to be pollinated by fat, indolent bees. Tracy would frequently stop to pick and arrange a small bouquet to carry with her, held demurely at her waist as if practicing for the aisle. Sometimes Doug would weave flowers into Tracy’s auburn hair.

“Slow down, Doug!” Tracy snapped.

Tracy struggled to pull her heel free from the soft earth, her flimsy arms flailing madly. Doug smirked.

“Don’t laugh at me! Help me.”

“What do you want me to do? Carry you?”

“No! Just, I don’t know, give me your arm and don’t walk so damn fast.”

With just a millisecond of reluctance, Doug offered the crook of his elbow to his wife who grasped it a bit too tightly.

“Why did you think it would be a good idea to wear heels to a hot air balloon ride, anyway?”

“Because I wanted to feel pretty on our anniversary, that’s why! God. Why do you have to pick apart everything I do?”

The attention to her appearance had once driven Doug wild. He’d show up at her door to pick her up for a date. She would open the door, looking absolutely perfect. Her hair was curled softly around her face and her makeup was exquisite. Her cheeks were rosy and flushed as if she was feeling just as much passion and yearning as he was beneath her otherwise porcelain exterior. She framed her luminous eyes with crisp liner and mascara. Her lashes seemed to stretch for miles.

Now her attention to her appearance seemed frivolous and vain, or perhaps it just seemed that way because she was older. Doug would try not to look at her too closely when he’d catch her seated at her vanity putting on her face. It was grotesque and clinical, now, a doctor preparing a hunk of flesh for surgery or a mortician painstakingly primping a corpse for the ground.

“I guess we just wait here for the guide,” Doug said more to himself as they both came up on the balloon. It was much more massive than Doug had expected, its girth casting a large shadow across the rippling grass. The balloon strained against its ropes like a caught animal.

“Wow, look at it!” Tracy breathed, circling the balloon. “It looks even bigger up close.”

“Yup, it sure does.”

“You don’t sound that enthusiastic.”

Tracy crossed her arms in front of her chest and continued on with her perimeter of the balloon.

“Tracy, it was my idea to come here. I’m plenty enthusiastic.”

It was hard for Doug to remember the last time he’d felt excited around Tracy. Two years ago?

Autumn 2015 9

Jen Corrigan Five years ago? Their honeymoon? Their wedding day?

Tracy gave her husband a hard look.

“You’ve changed, Doug.”

“Jesus. Let’s not do this here, Tracy.”

Doug came home one evening months prior to find his wife with an empty wine bottle, her mascara running down her face and her cheeks splotchy. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with a slow and disjointed gesture, her eyes following Doug as he hung up his coat at the door and set his briefcase down.

“What’s wrong with me, Doug?” she asked, slipping on her words.

“You’re going to have to be more specific, dear,” Doug spat.

He stalked into the kitchen and threw open the freezer door so he could extract a frozen meal.

Grabbing a fork, he stabbed the prescribed holes into the film.

“Why don’t you love me anymore?” Tracy clarified, pushing her chair back and grasping the table with quaking hands.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you do this shit all the time? I come home from working a ten-hour day to find that you’ve done nothing but sit around and get sloshed. I know this isn’t the fifties anymore, Tracy, but, goddamn it, is it too much to ask for you to cook dinner? You don’t even have a job! You do nothing.”

Doug didn’t have to look at Tracy to see her scrunching up her face, her eyes welling up with more hot tears. He’d seen that so many times before. Anyone who’s ever told a woman she didn’t look ugly when she cried was a liar, he thought.

It was hard to articulate why he no longer loved his wife. He supposed it was running out of both conversations and sex positions at the same time so that there was nothing to fall back on. When they did spend time together, Tracy wasted it by relaying the drama and gossip of the neighboring apartments to Doug.

That was why he liked Tina, he had decided. Tina was a shy girl at the office, just out of college and trying to get her bearings in the working world. She did her work quickly and near silently, pausing now and then to offer Doug a slight smile, her fully red lips parting to reveal young, white teeth in a pristine row.

First they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still.

At night, when he made reluctant love to his wife, Doug pictured himself bending Tina over her own desk and doing unspeakable things to her as she cried out in ecstasy, something Tracy never did.

During the daytime, he told himself he’d never do those things even if he had the chance to do them.

At night, though, he knew he would.

“You never want to talk about us,” Tracy said, reaching out to touch the basket they’d be riding in.

“I just don’t want to talk about it when we’re supposed to be celebrating our anniversary. This is supposed to be a good day.”

“Oh, and talking about us as a couple would make it a bad day?”

Tracy pressed down on the basket and watched as the balloon sagged and then lifted again, straining against the ropes.

“Tracy, don’t mess around with the balloon.”

She tipped back her head and let out a mirthless laugh. He could see her veins bulging out slightly in her neck.

“I forgot. No fun allowed when Doug’s around.”

She smiled at her own rhyme. Her husband narrowed his eyes and then looked away.

They had met what felt like ages ago on a sleeting winter night in the city outside a little Italian restaurant where they had both been on dates with other people.

The Linnet´s Wings 10

The Linnet´s Wings Her hair was down in gentle waves and steam furled out of her red mouth as she reached into her jacket for her pack of cigarettes.

“Got a light?” she said to the man next to her, looking up at him through a fan of thick dark lashes.

Doug reached into his pocket and took out his lighter, flicking it until a successful flame rose up against the wind. She leaned into the flame, the yellow light casting shadows across her delicate face. She pulled back and took a drag, blowing the smoke up into the black sky.

“Thanks.”

It was silly now, Doug thought, that he had thought he had fell in love with her at first sight. He should have just let her go, he thought now, let her be the perfect girl who got away. Instead, he had taken her and watched her morph into what she was now. Old and sad.

“Give me a lift,” Tracy said.

“What?”

“Into the basket. Give me a lift.”

“Ok, stop screw around, Tracy.”

“Ha! Fifteen years ago, you would have been in the basket with me, fingering me. But now you’re boring.”

Doug let out an exaggerated sigh and grabbed his wife around the waist. Without ceremony, he dumped her into the basket.

“Jesus, Doug!”

Doug didn’t respond. He folded his arms and leaned his back against the basket, feeling it sway slightly from the weight of his body.

His face hot, he focused on the series of intricate knots tethering the balloon in place. Tentatively, Doug reached out and followed the ins and outs of the rope with his finger.

It would really only take a couple seconds to untie them. He could have them undone before she even noticed what he was doing. By then, she’d be flying high above the ground, too high to jump down.

Doug leaned his head back and looked up into the great blue abyss above. He imagined the balloon taking his wife far, far away, so far away that he couldn’t even hear her when she screamed down at him. He imagined her floating up and over the countryside. Eventually she’d grow hungry and dehydrated, curling up on the floor of the basket to die quietly. Or maybe she’d get caught in a storm and come crashing down to the earth or into the sea where the waves would swallow her up.

On earth, Doug would wander back to his car and call the police, doing his best to sound breathless with fear. He’d appear on local news channels pleading with the public to keep an eye open for his poor, frightened wife. When they finally found her broken body weeks, months, or years later, he’d shed a tear and arrange a touching memorial service. He’d go home afterward and rail Tina until they were both sweaty and sore.

Shaking his head, Doug returned to reality, to Tracy’s jabbering as she bobbed up and down in the balloon. He supposed he should feel the sharp sting of guilt for fantasizing about such a horrible thing. But he didn’t. The idea itself was intoxicating, freeing, filling his chest up with a prickly excitement.

He stroked the knots more vigorously, the rough fibers scraping against his callouses.

“Oh!” Tracy exclaimed. She paused their one-sided conversation, whatever it was about, to wave frantically to a figure approaching from across the field. “That must be the instructor.”

Doug dropped his hand from the knots. With the other, he slowly raised it in greeting.

...

11

Autumn 2015

Arthur Rackham

Put his strange case before old Solomon Caw, Artist: Arthur Rackham 12

The Linnet´s Wings

The Linnet´s Wings

Two Boys, Egon Schiele 13

Autumn 2015

Steven Storrie

As Our Sun Begins To Fade by Steven Storrie

er house had been knocked down a few years ago, of course. He knew that.

Every time he came home it seemed something else had gone. He stood now looking at the brown, muddy fields with patches of green grass still dotted here and there, the huge expanse of space that had once been where she lived. What once had been her bedroom, the most sacred, alluring, magical place he had ever imagined, the room that held her hopes, her desires, her dreams, where she slept and rose and got dressed and cried, where she confessed everything to her diary and wrote about boys, was now turned loose to the skies, nothing but air where once her life had been.

Standing there now, with the cold November winds whipping about his face and the sound of a bird in the grey skies overhead, it was as though it had never existed at all.

But it had. And now he was back here. He was back here because the huge, misshapen stone sculpture that sat on a small, raised grassy area across from her street, was due to be pulled up and moved across town. It had been here for as long as he could remember. How many hours, days, had he spent there? All summer that year, the year of his 17th birthday, he had hung around waiting. He would leave the nearby library with books on Dante and Coppola, Miller and Mishima, and sit with his back to the stone, reading in his combat fatigues under a heavy sun, hoping for a glimpse of her. Maybe she would see him and come out to say 'hi'. It wasn't as if they didn't know each other, after all. They had mutual friends and had spoken many times. But he was shy back then, different to the others, while she was feisty and outgoing. He had fallen in love with her almost immediately, detecting a tenderness under a tough exterior, a fragility that only he could see. She was, he had written rather flowerily back then, like one of Tennessee Williams' moths. He had never told her that, though. He had never told anybody anything.

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On that last tour one of the younger guys had asked a question to the group while they were drinking and horsing around. They did these kinds of things. They did anything they could think of to take their minds off of the day, try and kill some time.

'If you could telephone your 15 year old self and speak for only 15 seconds, what would you say?'

The guys all started cracking jokes.

'I'd say 'Your mom is coming, hide the magazine!' or 'don't join the Marines. Walk right by that recruiter. Get a real job.''

Everybody had laughed. Of course, he knew what he would have said. 'Be bolder, do more, live courageously.' It had taken him a long time to learn to do that. Too long, he felt now. Many were the nights back then when he would lay awake in the dark, looking at the huge cream moon from his window, and imagine climbing up to her bedroom with a rose in his mouth, making a grand gesture, living courageously.

Maybe he'd get the wrong room, knock on her mother’s window by mistake, and cause a disturbance. He'd have to scamper back down the ladder or play it off coolly with some insouciant joke or witty remark and she would laugh and fall in love with his bravado and wild, reckless spirit as he fled grinning into the night.

He never did that, though, had never done anything, and now he was back. He was back because of that rock and he was almost twice as old as back then and there was no longer any house to climb. He looked to the heavens for an answer, even though he had never gotten one yet.

Despite the fact he had rested against it more times than he could remember, he had been ignorant in his youth, never really knowing what the rock was actually for. He was sure he must have read the plaque on it many times but had either forgotten it or else never properly taken it in. It was only much later, after he had left home and missed the place, then missed it terribly, that he had researched the town's history and found the rock in the pages of a textbook. It had been dedicated to one of the areas early philanthropists and sometime soldier.

Soldier. It was funny how things worked out.

The story of its being moved had been on the local news two nights ago. They needed the space to build a new supermarket, and people had protested the plans. Today, though, there was nobody here. He was standing all alone. It reminded him of a time when he was just a kid, a time way back even before her, before the rock. There had been a wall that ran the length of the street he had grown up on. It was for the school on the other side of the road, across from his house. He, his brother, cousin and their friends had used it for almost everything. They used it for children’s games when they were very small. A little later, when they were older, they used it as goal posts for football games or a backstop for stray baseballs. They threw water bombs at it and wrote the name of girls they liked in coloured chalk or stone, painstakingly carving them onto the brick in faint, jagged lines that would be washed off in the rain. In those long, hot, never-ending summers of their youth they would climb it, hide behind it, sit on it and talk until the sun went down. They would laugh at Mike Appel as, unable to run and spring onto it as they all did, he instead arduously tried to scale it, throwing first one leg over, then the other, lying flat for safety and holding on for dear life. It was probably only a six foot drop, and they would double over in hysterical laughter at his frightened expression each and every time.

One day it was announced that the school would be knocking down the wall, to be replaced with a green metal fence. It would have spikes on the top of it, clearly meant as a deterrent against their sitting on it and clambering onto the field. Outraged they had gathered the gang together and swore to defend the wall at all costs.

That day, when the diggers finally came, they sat in a line along the wall, even Appel managing to sit upright for the protest, as the men went to work at the other end, the far end, swinging hammers and drilling away. It was summer and hot and it seemed to take the workers forever to move down to where 15

Autumn 2015

Steven Storrie

they were sat. Eventually some of the kids grew bored and went to find something else to do. Some, bowing to the inevitability of it all as children often must, went off to seek ice creams and mischief somewhere else. Others, intrigued by the noise and destruction up the street, went to join the workers in the smashing of the bricks, some even helping by kicking at the wall, chipping it, and breaking off any rubble that they could. That struck him as some sort of heinous, deep betrayal, and he had never forgotten it. He and hi younger brother had stayed there until the end, the only ones still left, silently sitting and waiting. Eventually the men reached them, most of the wall already gone. They too now had to bow to the inevitable.

The man with the hammer and protective goggles looked at them almost apologetically.

'I'm sorry, guys' he said kindly, 'it's time to get down.'

They did, reluctantly, and he felt a grave injustice strike his heart. He was proud they had stayed, though, and put an arm around his brother, who had only stayed because he had, too young to know the reasons why, as they finally headed inside for dinner while the men swung their hammers at what remained.

The wind picked up now and once again he was alone. The loud truck pulled up more or less where her house would have been, ready to move the commemorative stone to its new home.

He was proud it had stood, unharmed and unmoved, for so long. The girl, she would be 30 now.

He had heard from friends that she had 5 kids and no job. It is hard to have ambition and drive in this world. It seemed far easier to give up and look for reasons instead as to why you never achieved anything. Many people he had met used having a family as a crutch for not pursuing their dreams.

In some cases people were trapped before they knew it, never to get out. She had always seemed capable of so much more, and he always regretted not telling her that. Sometimes people don't know a thing like that unless someone tells them. It was a mistake he hoped he never made again.

He began to move back a little. A man emerged from the truck, an older man with silver hair and thick grey stubble. He was wearing a bright orange safety jacket and helmet and gave a solemn nod as he moved. There was something familiar about him, something dignified and respectful. He returned the nod and gave the huge stone one last look before chains were secured to it and he turned around, started slowly walking away.

The traffic was beginning to build up on the nearby road. He had three days of leave left and family to visit. After that he would not see any more of the old haunts. On Sunday he would pack up his things.

Then he would return to the war. ...

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The Linnet´s Wings

Musician in an Interior - Louis Marcoussis

17

Autumn 2015

Jeffrey Miller

Rain On Me by Jeffrey Miller

or the past eight years, I’ve been the drummer of the band Post Nasal Drip until this morning when Duane, the lead singer, called to tell me I had been replaced by a drum machine.

“Sorry, Mate,” Duane said, having recently acquired a British accent. “We had to make some changes.”

“You can’t fire me. I founded the band.”

I fumbled for my crumpled pack of smokes on the nightstand and stuck a crooked Marlboro in my mouth.

“That’s another thing. We’re no longer Post Nasal Drip. We’re now Kris Bermuda and the Triangles.”

“I take it your Chris.”

“With a ‘K’.”

I rolled my eyes as I took a long drag off the cigarette and started coughing. I grabbed a glass of what I hoped was warm Coke and swigged enough to put out the fire in my throat.

“No hard feelings, right?”

“Fuck you, Duane.”

“That’s Kris. With a ‘K’.”

“Fuck you, Kris with a ‘K’.”

Click.

A cold shower and three cups of coffee later, I was ready to get to the bottom of my firing. There was no way in hell or Chicago that this was going to stand. Name change, drum machine or not, it was still my band.

Post Nasal Drip, or PND as our fans preferred to call us, rose from ashes of the post punk new wave apocalyptic musical wasteland, years before grunge became the wave and everyone wanted to be the next Nirvana, Pearl Jam, or Alice in Chains. Formed in Rockford back in the winter of 1979, we cut our teeth on the local bar, college circuit in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin (trying very hard not to come across as

18

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The Linnet´s Wings another Cheap Trick wannabe) until we won a battle of the bands contest in Chicago (where we actually beat a Cheap Trick wannabe). Our synthesis of country, bluegrass and blues, (we were huge CBGB fans after we took a road trip to the Big Apple to visit the holiest of the holy rock and roll shrines of our generation) was well received by fans and critics alike and thanks to a write up in the Chicago Reader, we got a gig at Chicagofest on Navy Pier in the summer of 1981 and the kind of notoriety that bands would sell their souls to get.

That notoriety was the result of an appearance on Good Morning Chicago when Vince Vinyl our bassist and accordionist dropped the “F” word during our interview with GMC host Suzy Vickson. Although none of our fans would have been up that early in the morning to catch the interview, the “F” Bomb and the debut of our new song, “Just a Dope from the Burbs,” some mothers from M.A.L.L. (Mothers Against Lewd Lyrics) were definitely watching and soon, to our best interests, we were on their radar screens.

Once they started boycotting our shows, every punk within a 75-mile radius of the city started showing up at our concerts. We made the big time “Chet, what the fuck’s going on?”

I had cornered Chet Wills, PND’s lead guitarist, in the booth of the parking garage he worked at on on North Welles, just down the street from the Up-Down Tobacco Shop. We were the two original members of PND, back when we were still calling ourselves Prairie Fire in high school before we decided on something more punk. Soft-spoken and laid back—he was an excellent guitarist. He could hear a song one time and play it back note for note—jazz, blues, country, rock, folk, bluegrass—nothing was out of his musical reach.

“Honestly, I had no idea what Kris had in mind when he asked me to go to Danny Balducci’s Music World and buy a used Roland TR 808 drum machine,” Chet said, taking some money from a driver leaving the garage. “He just handed me an envelope with money and told me to buy it. None of us knew that he was going to kick you out of the band.”

I knew Chet wasn’t in on it, but I just wanted to see what he knew or didn’t know. I never trusted Vince and as for the rhythm guitarist Dirk McCready, he had only been with the band for a year and he certainly wasn’t going to make any trouble. It was a coup, plain and simple. Chet sat down across from me on a stool and stuck a clove cigarette in his mouth. He offered me one but I refused. I noticed that Chet had recently shaved his eyebrows which now complimented his shaved head. He now looked like a cross between Lurch and Uncle Fester on The Addams Family.

“How could you let Duane do this to our band?”

“You know me, Tyler. I just show up and play what I’m asked to play. The money’s still the same at the end of the night.”

I thought about that scene in The Blue Brothers after Jake got out of prison and tried to put the band back together. Some of the band members formed a new band and were playing at a Holiday Inn. That’s where I now saw Chet in a few years.

“And what’s with the shaved eyebrow look?” I asked.

“Come to the Metro tonight and you’ll find out.”

“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to miss it in the world.”

The day went from bad to worse when I broke the news to my girlfriend Cassandra later that afternoon. Like me, Cassandra was another Chicago transplant. She studied clothing and textile design at Southern Illinois University before she moved to the city to pursue her dreams. One night, she wandered in the club where we were playing and into my life. If there was anyone who could make sense out of what was happening it was Cassandra.

She worked at a punk rock clothing store on Clark Avenue next to this club where we played a few times. When I walked in, she was sitting on a stool behind the cash register doing her nails. She had on a white t-shirt, black leather mini-skirt with fishnet stockings, and her usual assortment of chains and spiked Autumn 2015 19

Jeffrey Miller bracelets, standard issue for her job and lifestyle. She looked up as I walked in, blowing on her freshly painted nails.

“Babe, you’ll never believe what happened this morning,” I said, leaning across the counter and kissing her on her pale cheek, careful not to smudge the splotch of purple blush. She backed away as soon as she felt my lips touch her skin as though I had leprosy.

“Rough day, huh?” she said with an air of disinterestedness as she inspected her nails for any flaws.

“And that’s why you didn’t go into Tommy Jackson’s again.”

Tommy Jackson’s was a music store in Evanston and my regular source of income the two-three days a week I worked there persuading rich parents from the suburbs that buying a drum kit for their kids was in their best interests.

“Oh, shit. Today’s Monday, isn’t it?”

“I’m not calling and lying for you again.”

“I got kicked out of the band.”

Cassandra opened a small silver clutch purse and retrieved a tube of lipstick. “Is that so?”

“It was that weasel, Duane.”

“This is probably not a good time but you know things haven’t been, you know, the way they used to be,” she said opening the lipstick and twisting the bottom.

“This is only a temporary setback,” I said, having already thought about what I would tell Cassandra on my way to the shop. With Cassandra, I had to choose my words carefully. She read a lot of existential literature and was always trying to out Camus me. “I’ve been looking for a reason to get out and get back to my roots. Play the kind of music that defined me. I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Duane and I have been sleeping together,” she said, applying another coat of black lipstick.

There it was: the one-two-three combination and knock out. “Excuse me?”

“We wanted to wait and make it official. I had no idea that Duane and the guys were going to replace you. Duane wants me to manage the band.”

“Don’t you mean Kris with a ‘K’?”

“In bed he’s still Duane,” she said closing the lipstick and putting it back in her purse.

“Of course he is.”

“Oh and can I come over and get my stuff?”

What stuff? All she had in the apartment was her toothbrush and tampons.

Well, that turned out well, I thought as I headed north on Clark. Needing something to take my mind off things and to satisfy my hunger pangs—I hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon—I stopped in at Ahmed’s Fantastic Falafel Factory for a falafel sandwich. While I waited for my food, I played back the morning in my mind. From the moment Duane called, it had all been orchestrated so well. He knew that I would go and see Chet first after he called followed by Cassandra. Duane had it all tied up so neatly.

With Chet and Cassandra out of the way, the coup was complete.

I was so distracted trying to make sense out of what was happening, I hadn’t paid much attention to the two Asian women seated at a table across from me. However, they had my attention now as they kept on stealing glances at me as I slowly chewed my sandwich.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” one of the women, the taller and the cuter of the two, finally asked.

“Excuse me?” I said, wiping away a splotch of salad dressing from the corner of my mouth.

“You’re him. You’re the drummer from Post Nasal Drip,” she said, looking at me and then turning to her friend. “See, I told you that it was him.”

Finally, there was one bright spot in my shitty day. Fortunately for me they hadn’t heard the news.

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The Linnet´s Wings That’s when it suddenly dawned on me that there was no way Duane was going to pull this off. There were a lot of people who wanted to see PND and not whatever evolution or metamorphosis Kris Bermuda and the Triangles had in store later that evening. Drum machines and a catchy new name did not a band make.

News of my demise had been greatly exaggerated.

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said, sitting up in my chair and tapping the edge of the table with my fingers. It was my signature gesture when someone recognized me as a drummer. It worked better in a Chinese restaurant with chopsticks, but my fingers worked just as well.

“You guys suck,” the woman said as they both got up and walked past my table with a swish of mini-skirt.

I smiled, and considering how lousy my day had been up to this point, took it as a compliment.

Of course, there was one thing I still had to do. I had to see for myself what Duane had done to my band. I wanted to be there when they got laughed or booed off stage. I wanted to walk up to Duane, a.k.a.

Kris with a fucking “K” and tell him what a fucking idiot he was. I was in no mood to go back to my apartment, so after I finished my falafel sandwich in peace, I continued my trek up Clark until fate stepped in again.

This time fate threw a white Subaru with five skinheads from the suburbs judging from the community college parking sticker on the windshield in my path. The car nearly ran me over as I prepared to cross the street. Skinheads from the suburbs, I thought; reminded me of that Camper van Beethoven song, “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” The driver shot me a dirty look, doing his best Johnny Rotten snarled lip impersonation, but it looked more like the cold pursed lips of a fish. On the rear bumper I spotted a faded Post Nasal Drip bumper sticker next to another one that read “Bush/Quayle ‘88.”

As I neared 1060 West Addison and Wrigley Field, the traffic got heavy and sidewalks crowded with pedestrians, mostly Cubs’ fans on their way to famous ballpark for the first night game. After years of debate and outrage from baseball purists who still believed that baseball at Wrigley should be played during the day as God had intended (though in the early 1940s the owner of the Cubs P.K. Wrigley was going to install lights, but donated the lights and stands to the war effort after Pearl Harbor), the owners finally caved in after they were threatened that the team would have to play postseason games at their arch rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals’ ballpark, Busch Stadium.

All the major and local networks were covering this historic event as well CNN and ESPN; however, Chicago’s WGN was calling the shots, but everyone wanted to get on history in the making. I could never understand why the Cubs were so popular when the only thing they were good at was losing and making fans wait until next year. Well, now could they break their fans’ hearts at night, too.

The irony of the date of the first night game was not lost on me either—now that I could add getting fired and getting dumped by my girlfriend, and most likely canned from Tommy Jackson’s. If you added up the numbers, 8/8/88, they came to thirty-two which aside from the temperature that water freezes, the number of teeth in a full set of adult human teeth (I just read about that in Reader’s Digest the other day) and my age (I turned 32 in May), was also the year that Jesus was supposedly crucified, which pretty much summed up my day so far.

And as it turned out Duane’s new band was the headline act at The Metro, just up the street from Wrigley. Back when we booked the gig, August 8, was just another day, until we learned a few weeks later, to our chagrin, that the Cubs would be having their first night game on the same date. Great, we all thought, now we would have to compete with history and a bunch of lovable losers. Our fans wouldn’t be allowed within a ten-block radius of the park. We had talked about cancelling, but the when owner threatened us, telling us that when he was through suing our asses, we’d be lucky getting a gig as street musicians, we decided not to back out. Looking at the chaos and the madness that had descended upon Wrigleyville, I wondered how many people would come out to hear Kris Bermuda and the Triangles. Fate could very well come to my rescue.

Autumn 2015 21

Jeffrey Miller The Cubby Bear, a popular watering hole catty-corner from Wrigley was a full-blown party headquarters as was every other bar and restaurant in the neighborhood. I fought my way through the crowd which had engulfed the area and spread out like an amoeba swallowing everything in its path. The heat and humidity were unbearable. My t-shirt clung to my body and sweat dripped off my brow. Most of the Midwest had been in a drought all summer with temperatures soaring into the high eighties and nineties daily. Sweaty fans and tourists decked out in an assortment of Cubs’ gear, men without shirts and women in bikini tops, precariously balancing and gripping super sized paper cups filled with beer in outstretched arms, weaved and staggered their way through the crowd.

Police officers barked warnings and announcements through bullhorns and loud speakers. A string of firecrackers exploded inside a metal trash can. The air reeked of coconut sun tan butter, beer and cigarette smoke. High overhead, the Goodyear Blimp silently hovered above the spectacle unfolding around the ballpark.

I spotted the same white Subaru with the five skinheads inside being rocked by three beefy Cubs’ fans who thought anyone in this vicinity ought to be decked out in Cubby blue and driving a Chevrolet from Celozzi-Ettleson.

Good. I hated Illinois skinheads.

With or without me there was a good turnout at the Metro. Obviously they had been planning this move for weeks. Probably fearing the promoter would find another act, or worse, cancel the show, they waited until the day of the show. Bastards. They had it all figured out. I had bought a baseball cap from a vendor outside to avoid being recognized, pulled it down over my blonde hair, and slipped in surreptitiously through a side door. Once inside, I bought a drink, and stood off to one side as the ballroom filled up.

When Duane a.k.a. Kris Bermuda and the retooled Post Nasal Drip, a.k.a. the Triangles, took to the stage, it started out slow. They took minimalism to new heights. The stage was dark and barren except for a projection screen at the front of the stage. The house lights went down and the countdown for the beginning of the movie was projected on the screen. It went down as far as the number two before the screen went to black for a few seconds before the film faded in to a white room bathed in light with a Ludwig drum kit in the middle of the room: my drum kit with PND in red letters stenciled on the bass drum head. The film ran for a few seconds with the camera stationary and focused on the drum kit when all of a sudden the drum kit exploded in a flash of pyrotechnics—sparks, flames, smoke and pieces of the drum flew in the air.

The crowd around me erupted into a frenzied applause.

Those bastards, I thought. Those fucking bastards blew up my drum kit!

That’s when the stage went dark again when the film stopped. Then, as the screen was raised, a single Fresnel spotlight illuminated the drum machine on a stand at the back of the stage. Somewhere off stage, someone switched it on with a remote. The sound started low, a kick drum, which grew louder and louder until it boomed and reverberated. This was followed by a keyboard sampling of the first chorus of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” with plenty of echo and reverb.

When the lights finally came up on the stage, eight Fresnel spotlights hung overhead shone on Duane, Chet, Vince and Dirk with four more flood lights on the stage shining upwards. There was one more surprise: Dirk and Vince had traded in their axes for synthesizers. Only Chet still had his guitar, but he stood behind a Roland synthesizer. They looked more like Kraftwerk wannabes and I liked those guys. Fun, fun, fun on the Autobahn. Well, I knew Kraftwerk (I partied with the band after a show at the Aragon Ballroom) and they were no Kraftwerk. The crowd didn’t seem to think so. No one around me seemed the least bit fazed that Post Nasal Drip was not playing.

As soon as they launched into some New Order sounding-like version of “Pretty Woman” a young girl dressed in red and black standing next to me said they were orgasmic and if she were wearing any panties she would throw them on stage.

I wanted to throw up.

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The Linnet´s Wings The band played just one thirty-minute set of ten songs, but I didn’t recognize any of the material.

Duane thanked everyone for coming out and supporting them, even the wayward Cub fans who came in out of the rain that had been falling for over an hour, and announced that they would be back again in a month. I could just see the headline in the concert review section of the next Chicago Reader: Post Nasal Dropped.

I had seen and heard enough. At the bar in the back of the room, I recognized a familiar face standing off to one side. Even with a Cubs’ cap pulled down on his head and sunglasses, it was hard not to miss Vic Sneed, who at six-feet five, towered over the other patrons. Vic was PND’s original bassist, but citing artistic integrity and differences, he quit right before our Chicagofest debut. Now he was waiting on tables at Ed Debevic’s, and as he put it, “having the time of his life.”

I bought myself a drink and joined Vic at the end of the bar. On a television set above the bar WGN was showing highlights of the first few innings of the game before Mother Nature had her way with the Cubs and the first night game at Wrigley was rained out. Talk about your irony, I thought.

“I had to see if it was true,” Vic said.

“Love the disguise,” I said, pointing to his cap and jersey. “You’re lucky the bouncer didn’t kick you out for impersonating a Cubs’ fan.”

“You’re not far off yourself. You’re lucky you weren’t kicked out for impersonating a drummer,” Vic laughed.

“Very funny,” I said jabbing him in the ribs.

“Really sorry, man,” Vic said. “Who was it, Duane?”

I nodded.

“I never liked that poseur. Remember that time we played at Mabel’s in Champaign and one of the guys from REO Speedwagon came in? I’ve never seen anyone kiss ass faster in my life than Duane did that night,” Vic said, looking over his sunglasses at two mini-skirted girls hanging out at the bar near us.

“Cassandra dumped me, too.”

“Damn, Tyler, when it rains it pours,” Vic said grinning when he realized the pun he had made.

“I’ve been looking for a reason to get out if this racket once and for all. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise; maybe it’s a sign like night games at Wrigley. It’s time to cash in what dreams I have left and move on.”

“And you came to this conclusion only after your band fired you and your girlfriend dumped you?”

Vic said, tossing back his drink. “Just last month you were going on how life had never been sweeter.”

“Call it an epiphany.”

“You know what your problem is Tyler? You still believe in all this but the fact is you’re a dinosaur.”

On a TV behind the bar, famed Cubs’ announcer Harry Caray broke the tragic news that the first night game at Wrigley Field had been called on account of rain and that the first night game would have to be played tomorrow. The station showed the same footage of a couple of Cubs players sliding on the blue tarp that covered the infield. If they only showed that much enthusiasm when they were playing maybe the team would have a winning season. On the other hand, the team was just as popular having one losing season after another. I wouldn’t be surprised in the grand scheme of all things controversial and conspiratorial that was what the Cubs management wanted all along.

After a recap of the first three innings, including a homerun by Ryne Sandberg, the coverage cut to a live remote on the street outside the ball park with the reporter interviewing people on the street.

“Although the rain might have ended tonight’s historic moment at Wrigley Field, it didn’t dampen the spirits of these diehard Cubs’ fans,” the reporter said as the camera panned past a crowd of people yelling and hamming it up for the camera.

In the background, wearing matching black vinyl raincoats and sharing a red umbrella, there was 23

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Jeffrey Miller mistaking Duane and Cassandra walking briskly down the street as though they were fleeing the scene of an accident.

Next time, Duane, I thought. Next time.

After I parted with Vic, promising to stop in at Ed Debevic’s sometime, because that’s what dinosaurs do, I started my trek down Clark. Outside it was a mess as rain drenched fans sought shelter in bars already overflowing with patrons or headed to the Addison El station or bus stops. The streets and sidewalks were littered with the flotsam of the day’s festivities and rainy debacle at the end. Most of the TV crews had already left; those that stayed behind were treated to drunken renditions of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and for some bizarre but not unrelated reason, “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” from fans who refused to go home.

As I walked down Clark, I could see the Sears Tower rising up from the mist. It was a sight I never grew tired of in all the years I lived in the city. There was nothing more romantic than Chicago at night, unless of course, you were kicked out your band and dumped by your girlfriend on the same day.

Further on down, I passed one of the skinheads from the white Subaru. His day hadn’t gone so well for him, either. He was sitting on the curb, holding the steering wheel of his car, watching what was left of it towed away. From the looks of the debris on the street and sidewalk he had lost control, driven up on the sidewalk and tried to take out a concrete bench and utility pole. The bench and pole won. Standing off to one side, a police officer scribbled out an accident report. The skinhead’s four cohorts who had abandoned their friend, now waited for a bus across the street.

The skinhead looked up at me with tear filled eyes; mascara ran down his cheeks. He tilted his head in a quizzical manner as if to say that he recognized me. However, when he did speak, all that he could manage was, “my father’s going to kill me.”

“Shit happens, pal,” I said.

In a sewer opening overflowing with water not far from where this blubbering skinhead sat, I saw a flyer for Kris Bermuda and the Triangles. It spun around in a tiny whirlpool before it was dragged under with all the other debris and flotsam, and like this night, gone forever. ...

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Pencils, Mikhail Vrubel

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The Fountain by Toti O´ Brien

s long as they don’t murder you,” he said under his breath. His gaze turning away from me while his gestures grew faster, more rhythmic and cadenced.

His gestures took the lead: they took hold of him, sucked him in. Then his eyes went from the bundle of twigs he just tied (fascinating how he managed such an expert knot while still talking, paying attention to me I believed) to the cabin door.

I shivered faintly for no reason. He must be about to head inside, store that wood somewhere. Maybe on a pile close to the fireplace.

Was there a fireplace? Was it just a hole in the middle of the floor? What was the floor made of?

Dirt? I thought so. The fireplace must have been a dirt hole inside a dirt hole, so to speak, since what else was the cabin? A grotto, a cavern would have been better definitions, though it wasn’t literally dug into the mountain. But the mound against which the door was barely silhouetted, in the penumbra, was so indefinitely shaped. Was it mud? Were rocks mixed with mud, gravel, branches? I couldn’t say. * My attention had been magnetized by his body, his face and his voice. And less consciously by the things he said ... things I had listened to but they’d surface later. For they didn’t strike me at the moment like their owner did. Their owner? Their porter I guess.

If I had listened with some partiality, more absorbed by his presence than by his words, the surroundings had registered even less.

Yes, I knew the cabin was there, as the place where he would disappear at some point. Now, though, it jumped to the foreground as if my mind were a camera switching focus. It became imposing and dooming … his quick stare caused it to swell, to come forwards in an Alice in Wonderland reenactment, with reality whimsically changing sizes. I was Alice. Who was he? It didn’t matter, the metaphor didn’t matter: it was just a distraction.

He would pass through that door now and vanish. Chances to see him again were practically inexistent. * 26

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Why did I worry? After all I had known him for less than an hour. I had no time to fall in love and how could I have? I mean, he had to be as old as my grandpa. Older probably.

Yes, I knew he was astonishingly kept. I couldn’t tell his body that much: it was bunched up in rags, too large and too many. But I could feel the ease, the aplomb. After all he had chopped wood during the entire conversation without losing breath. He could manage chopping and talking. Smiling too … He sure had good lungs, especially since the air was thin up there.

He moved with coordination and grace, his center of gravity exactly where it should be … still supported by tight tonic muscles, still not twisted by arthritic, brittle, displaced bones. The parts of him that were visible—hands, neck, feet clad in sandals—looked healthy. His knotted, crumpled flesh was firm, so tanned it looked like polished leather.

Strangely his hair was short. He had a whitish crew cut: wasn’t it weird?

How did he manage it? Did he have a mirror? A ponytail dangling all the way to his calves would have made more sense. But the short cut looked clean. * Very clean. Can you picture a fellow in rags looking neat as an athlete before the race?

And his eyes were of the handsomest blue. That didn’t surprise me. Stuck into the folds of his skin like pieces of glass from a broken bottle. Fake, unnaturally blue, mismatched with the earthy tones of his rags. With the dirt, woods, rocks and mountains …

I forgot the sky. But you see, the sky was far and unreachable, that justified its independence in taste.

Also its expanse diluted its shade, made it pale.

Nothing justified those eyes. Nothing diluted them. * I had found him, now that I think about it, by a series of mistakes.

First of all the assumption—due to youthful inexperience—I could hike in the mountains of a foreign land (more precisely a region I knew nothing about) with no maps.

If I look at my attitude from a distance (namely from the age I’ve reached now) I’m appalled at the degree of carelessness I displayed. I recall (accurately I’m sure) starting on the trails more than once with no plan at all, just leaving my tent or the room where I spent the night, as soon as I woke up. Out we go.

I travelled often. I hit the road whenever I had saved enough money through whatever odd job I had found. Then I travelled my way to the next, so to speak. That went on for years in a row. * To the point. I had a sort of breakfast, I’m sure, my young appetite would require it. The nature of it would be bread: you always can find some and it fills you up.

Yes, that plain but substantial meal kept me going for the day. You got it: I didn’t bring lunch or snacks, I simply did not think about it. At some point I would be hungry. That point was called ‘return’.

At my return I’d be hungry, very hungry or incredibly hungry, depending how long my wandering had been. None of those nuances worried me.

No, I didn’t bring water! Of course not, why should I bother? What’s so strange at being thirsty or very thirsty? When you get back you drink.

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*

My shoes for the hike were those I was wearing. I had one pair of shoes until they fell apart and I could fix them no more. Then I’d buy another pair.

I didn’t worry about appropriate clothing: I wore what felt good at the moment. Later, when the sun would be burning, I would knot my sweater or jacket around my waist.

I was cold many times, not having thought of sun setting, winds, possible rain, altitude. I remember being unbearably cold—but I bore it in the dumbest of way, just enduring. Then, whenever I’d get to a shower or simply to bed, I’d savor a delightful relief.

I never fell sick … don’t ask why. As a result I didn’t learn from experience. I imperviously avoided it, to be true. For decades I learned nothing. Neither carefulness nor the need for planning. Neither caution nor fear. * As for orientation: how naively did I tackle those strolls, often lasting until late night! Time to find my way back, wasn’t it? I always assumed I’d figured it or it would figure itself. Someone would help me, there would always be someone: I didn’t prospect the existence of true wilderness. Things would make sense, I would remember clues, by instinct I’d retrace my steps, at least find a place for the night.

What a blank slate I was! No vision of evil apparently stained my imagination. Is that true? Maybe I had wiped it off. * If the insouciance I displayed—venturing in the mountains, that morning, entranced by the colors of autumn leaves—was one of the aforementioned mistakes, the other was related to language. Fresh as I was in my practice of the local tongue (I had resided in the country for a year by then, time for an employment or two) I still didn’t master the ambiguity of nouns and verbs sounding the same.

I am talking about the term ‘falls’ that for me was just the third person of a present tense. I had no idea it could also be a noun’s plural. I’d refer to waterfalls, for example, still as cascades. I would call a snowfall an avalanche. That works, does it?

Down, where the trail …

Truly I had called it ‘road’ in my ignorance, giving it the same sturdiness, same stability of a paved roman avenue. Roads don’t get blurred, fishtail or simply vanish: they are mighty reliable.

Where the road started I’d seen an old wooden sign, quite unreadable and still ... it said: ‘Hermit Falls’. I laughed. To me it sounded like a pun. Like a jocular version of ‘Deer Crossing’, although it used the present instead of the gerundive (I wasn’t yet capable of appreciating the difference).

Who on earth would have written it, since that wasn't a theme park (they didn’t exist)? I didn’t ponder.

First of all, that’s the very essence of traveling: you accept to not understand the mentality. Second, we already discussed my general casualness. * I didn’t expect hermits. (what exactly is a hermit by the way? I had never seen one, only heard about them in stories. Did hermits still exist? Had they ever existed or were they purely fictional? Purely symbolic?)

I didn’t think hermits would tumble down the slopes for my amusement. Maybe, though, I expected 28

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something as a cave painting … yes, some hermit themed historical landmark. That would have stirred my curiosity.

Or not. After all I was enraptured by the autumn leaves covering the trees surrounding me. Trees of breathtaking beauty. Of amazing majesty. Trees that almost possessed something human. Superhuman I mean.

While I walked the woods became thicker. And the valley grew distant, then remote. The silence embraced me—but silence, as you know, is never such in a wood.

I walked for hours and hours. Unexpectedly the trail started descending. * I heard the thumps behind me but they didn’t startle me. I turned back with the elation of risen curiosity: I was ready for a bear cub, maybe a mother bear. Something heavy and solid by the nature of the noise.

I immediately saw him. Although his colors melted with those of nature around, his fast progress quickly defined him. He marched downwards as you do it in the mountains: rapidly, to keep balance and use momentum. He seemed concentrated in his walk, a bundle of twigs under his arm, an axe hanging from a rope tied around his waist.

You think you should be scared to see a man with an axe when nobody else is around. A tall man, well built. Not when he’s been patently cutting wood, of course.

I moved over to let him pass. I looked into his eyes and he smiled. His teeth weren’t in the best of conditions. I followed at my pace.

When I got to the clearing (a minuscule one) I saw the hut first, then him chopping close by. He had put down his bundle, he was busying himself around a pile of logs. Cutting them into smaller pieces. I don’t know what it took me, but I sat on a stump a few feet away and I watched him.

He must have been aware of it but he didn’t say a word.

That didn’t trouble me. I was resting. * Then he suddenly put the axe down and he wiped his forehead with its sleeve. Very slowly.

Something in that motion struck me. I held my breath for a second. I was expecting something. As if a change of status had occurred (how I didn’t know), as if he had wiped away something else than sweat.

He turned toward me and said hi. “Hi,” I said and I smiled. He introduced himself. Now to save my life I couldn’t remember his name. Do not think I haven’t tried. I’ve tried a million of times for all these years. There’s no way.

I must have given him mine but I don’t recall either. That of course doesn't matter at all. * He asked me about myself. What I was doing there, where I came from and such. Small talk it could be defined, then I didn’t know of such expression. That I would have taken for a pun anyway.

I’m sure that I candidly answered whatever he asked, though I recall nothing. Soon he was quiet again, as if that basic collection of data satisfied him.

Thus I asked about him. First his name, of course.

Oh God, why can’t I possibly recall it? Could someone help? What wouldn't I give to recall his name! * What was he doing there?

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He laughed. What a question. He lived there of course. He was getting ready for winter because it was fall. Duh. Lived there all year around? Of course.

Did he always live there? No. He had become a hermit at some point, he wasn’t born one.

Although the explanation seemed obvious I knew little, as I said, about hermits. Yes, I guessed that wasn’t a thing you inherit like money or a genetic trait. But how did you become one?

Well, you choose at some point, he reiterated.

Out of the blue? (Why did I use an idiom I still didn’t master? Must have been his eye color.) * He laughed more, as if I was asking the obvious. No, he first was a monk in a monastery with plenty others.

Oh! Didn’t he like it there? Yes, but he knew he would like it better up here.

Didn’t he miss people?

His smile widened. Not like that of the Cheshire cat, not that kind of smile.

His smile widened and it was like a secret garden. Like something I desperately wanted to get in, a kid grasping at a gate.

He smiled large and he didn’t answer. He looked down and he chopped harder. He did that a few times, whenever he liked. Just looked away, chopped harder. * “Don’t you like people?” I insisted.

Again he didn’t answer. I was at loss for a second, not knowing what I should do with the conversation, if to drop it would have been best. But I had no wish to go.

Then the delayed answer came: “course I do.” As banal as that.

Did he lie? Something strongly suggested he never did. Maybe he was forbidden. That is why he took time answering: because he didn’t lie.

“Do you see many people?” I asked. Once again he smiled. “No one wanders around here.” How come?

I just got there following a wooden sign …

“It’s not much of a traveled trail.”

He focused back on his task. I said nothing. * Later: “There’s a monk who visits periodically. He comes checking on me, my health mostly ... And he brings a few things I need.”

“Food?” escaped from my mouth.

“I don’t need food! I can find and I can grow food. I have a little patch I cultivate. Not much grows here but some things do. He brings things I can’t fabricate out of thin air: candles, soap ...”

Candles, soap then what else? He didn’t say. Maybe candles and soap.

As for clothing, what he wore seemed extremely seasoned. Did he have that stuff on him when he first moved? I didn't ask. I mentally enlarged the checklist without need to confirm it: needles, thread.

Maybe just one needle. I was sure he’d take care of it. I was sure he wouldn’t lose it. By the way you can fix clothes and shoes without needles. You can manage. * 30

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How often did his fellow monk come and visit? What did periodical mean? Now my question was worried. I had grown alarmed for reasons I couldn't detect.

Probably I didn’t even know I was alarmed.

“Oh” he said, “when the season changes … every three months or so. Sometimes the weather doesn’t permit. He didn’t come last time. August storms have been bad.”

What did he do if the monk didn’t show up? My worry was kind of swelling. Why? He only smiled. I sensed he didn’t want to reply. I felt my questions were not just stupid but too stupid.

“You know …” he said. No, he couldn’t have said ‘you know’, he couldn't have possibly. “That’s mostly for them,” he said. “To make sure I’m fine. Not for me but for them.”

“They must know when they have to replace me,” he added after a pause. Replace him?

“Don't you miss talking with people?” I asked.

I was feeling a creeping sadness. The subtlest thing. Creeping, subtle: like one of those little snakes my grandfather showed me when I was very young. Those small snakes he pointed at to teach me what a snake was, to make me acquainted with them and not afraid. Those small snakes qualified to be called so, but barely longer and wider than a worm. Snakes you didn’t want to touch or take in your hand (they won't let you anyway) but you couldn’t truly be scared of.

Sadness (a blade of it, no more) crept on me like a little snake. So irrelevant it could be called domestic… a pet almost. * Now he wiped his face, again, with the back of his hand. He had put his axe down, not as if he was tired. He certainly wasn’t. I think he had decided I deserved a bit of attention.

Did he? Maybe to get rid of me at last.

He looked at me. That weird sensation reoccurred, as if I was a four-year-old. What am I saying?

Younger. No more than three. No, just two and I can’t go further back since that’s when memory starts, they say.

Two or maximum three-year-old grabbing at that gate, those black iron bars, clutching them with my fists. With such strength I could shake them. Maybe pull them apart, I’m quite sure.

I have such strength in my arms, yes, my palms, my ten fingers: I can feel it ... I have all that is needed but it just doesn’t work. Then what? In fact I don't have to pull on those bars. I’m so small I could slip through. But it doesn’t come to mind. * Yes, I was my young self, stuck outside the gate, drooling for the place I wanted to be let in. Maybe I was in and the place was outside. Would it matter?

“I can talk one hour per day,” he said calmly. “I have a whole hour.”

Every twenty-four? Sure that is what he meant.

That was an awful lot I thought (such awareness must have come from him telepathically). That seemed lavish and uselessly so. Kind of a waste. Especially if nobody wandered in the area.

What did he do when nobody came around? He didn’t care answering.

Obviously the talking hour wasn’t a hygienic routine of sort, something he had to perform in order to maintain sanity. One would think so, but no. He didn’t have to talk to the elements, to the birds or squirrels or mice just to keep his mouth busy.

No. The rule simply meant that in case of visitors all he was allowed was an hour. The rule set a limit, a boundary.

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As if, I guess, with more exposure he could get contagion. He could get infected: his immune defenses must have dramatically dropped.

What was I thinking? Defenses from what? * But I had started understanding. Maybe just empathizing, with no reasoning involved. I was feeling how he must feel.

Sure, one hour could be dangerously overwhelming once you lost the habit. All that communicating could be inebriating and not in a good way. Listening to the nonsense could be sickening, nauseating.

Since now it was quite obvious I—for instance—had just talked nonsense …

All my questions—what was he doing here, did he live here, why, did he miss people—weren´ t they all perfectly obvious? Self-explanatory and evident?

Why did I ask things I myself could answer? Small talk: I didn't yet know the definition. That does not justify me. * It was sadness now that made me talk, pushing up the next dumb question.

Because sadness had widened a bit. No, not to the size of a dangerous snake. Not yet.

(By the way there weren’t many dangerous snakes, grandpa said. Almost none of them. Size didn’t matter. Even those so long they spread all the way across, like a wavering bridge I had to overcome, were pacific. Even those thick as a shovel handle should not preoccupy me. They lived their life. They were loners. They didn’t want to meet me, they hated interacting. They were scared of me believe it or not. I should stay put, let them pass, be quiet, make no noise. They wouldn’t harm me if they didn’t feel threatened.

No! I could befriend snakes if I kept proper distances. The only ones I should fear where vipers, those short fellows with bifurcated tongues. Very easy to spot. Even they were okay though, if I left them alone.)

But enough of snakes! * Sadness had grown thicker, it spoke through my tongue. Didn’t he like people at all? Did he hate people?

As if his previous statement a propos had not made it through … As if I were in dire need of reassurance.

Desperate need.

He might have guessed, for he answered with the largest of smiles. The most handsome I’d be graced with that afternoon, but I didn't know yet.

“I love people,” he said. “I pray for them daily.”

Did he pray an hour a day? I asked almost thoughtlessly. He laughed.

“I pray as many hours as I have left when I’m finished working. I don’t count them,” he said. * Then I asked about his work—another set of banalities that he answered more and more courteously.

More convivially I could say if such word made sense in that context.

Now I was conscious—if vaguely (my awareness, I mean, was a matter of feelings more than a clear analysis) ... Now I sensed my interjections were tautological. I asked things that could be derived from one 32

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The Linnet´s Wings another or by mere observation. I kept asking, too, someone who didn’t like talking.

And it dawned on me that the clock was ticking. Since he had started replying (did his first nod count?) time had been running.

Did the hour begin whenever he wished? Or had I by mere chance arrived in the canonic one, the same always, just before sunset? Both a classic (because kind of obvious) and a romantic choice (the forest in twilight.)

Time in any case was going by. Though I couldn’t tell how long the conversation had lasted, like an animal I sensed it would end soon.

* And that terrified me. Why? Was I falling in love? Don’t ask it again, please.

Of course not. How could I have? But it never had happened before—fearing to be cut out, be refused an answer because my interlocutor was done, finished for the day.

I dreaded such moment, I suspected it would be awful, just because it was new to me ...

Or perhaps because I was naïve: I forgot it had happened before and a number of times. People rarely give you an hour of attention. Well, way less. People often shut up on you without notice, close the door and leave you outside without explanations.

Didn’t I know? Didn’t it register just because it wasn’t expressly quantified? * I only knew I didn’t want that hour to end. Or, since it would, I didn't want to waste any of it. I wanted to ask questions so that I would get answers. Mostly I would hear him talk: I just needed it.

I had him describe what his work was …

Simply keeping alive! Yes he hunted a bit. Small rodents and birds he could roast. He said not much meat was needed: less and less when you get old. He gathered berries, even larger fruit like wild apples, wild loquats. Nuts of various kinds. That took more time than I could imagine. He also grew, he told me, a few veggies and herbs.

Then he gathered firewood: winters were long. He kept things in running order: the house, his clothing and shoes …

Not that I could tell, but what did I know? All these tasks took time, he said. Just enough though, plenty was left for prayer.

Now, he said, the moment was coming. * What moment?

Oh, that was my dumbest one. In fact he didn’t answer.

That is when he mumbled something to himself:“if only they wouldn’t kill you, if you only, if you could,” something like that. I can’t reproduce the exact wording.

Then he pushed the almost invisible door—that contour barely drawn on the wall. My chest fluttered while I expected him to be swallowed into his cave.

Then the impossible happened. He said I could come in. A few minutes were left, he could show me something.

Now you think the situation feels fishy. Finally creepy.

But no.

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* I don’t remember much of the interior. It was very dark.

I was scanning the obscurity, prey of a morbid curiosity. Was it? Maybe something else I can’t define.

I looked for a fireplace. A stove. He didn’t have one. A table. I think so, in a corner. With nothing on it but a wooden cross.

I was looking for his bed but I couldn’t find it. A blanket, an army one probably, was laid along a wall. On the right, almost out of sight, another one hung across a rope like a curtain. He pulled it and he gestured me in: I should go first. * I was struck by the luminosity.

Where was I? This wasn’t a room. A closet maybe. An alcove? A niche squeezed against the mountainside, partially roofless, so the sky was visible.

A source trickled from the stone wall. From the mountain. It came down vertically, skinny as a snake and wavering likewise.

So the Hermit Falls existed after all. The water had its typical trickling sound, fragile but chime like.

And a flickering: as a sparkle of sequins. Weird, incongruously festive. Maybe that was responsible for the luminosity, like a vapor, a halo.

Where the trickling hit the soil it formed a sort of puddle. Tiny and with a verdant reflex. Close by there was a cup with no handle. Or a mug, or a bowl. I can’t tell: it was shapeless and the color of soil. But the firmness of its silhouette struck me.

For a second the fountain (should I call it so?) took me away, took me in. Its sight and sound recollected me. Just as if that famous iron gate opened for me, without noise or resistance. Sliding smoothly it welcomed me in.

Then I turned toward him. God, he had already kneeled down, his head bent forward, his torso still erected. I panicked: he would talk no more. *

But he did.

“Here I pray,” then a pause.

I was eager to hear him say I should go now, I should get on the trail before dark. Actually I just wanted him to say goodbye. I wanted it desperately. But I felt I had vanished from sight.

He remained still. His lips moved without sound as if he was murmuring again things incomprehensible, as he did when he put his axe down. Things I maybe wasn’t supposed to remember. Was I? Things I never asked for (did I ask for anything meaningful, did I?) His eyes had rolled inward, though he kept them open and they still looked amazingly blue. * When I stepped out I realized darkness had reached everywhere, and so fast.

That’s a common surprise in the woods. How rapidly everything fades away when the sun sets.

As I said I wasn’t the fearful type. The strange apprehension I felt during the conversation (mostly while I waited for the conversation to end) left me as soon as I started walking. A great calm came in its place.

Obviously the road unwound under my feet as it always did, bringing me back to where I had started in the morning. I was hungry and thirsty but I wasn't cold. My mood was quite excellent.

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...

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ILLUSTRATOR

A Transpontine Cockney Self Portrait by Arthur Rackham

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CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Cathy Giles, Issue Artist Cathy works between her studio on the Dingle Peninsula in Castlemaine, Co. Kerry, and Dublin beside the Phoenix Park. She is self taught with over twenty years of practice. She works using a variety of mediums but mostly paints with oils. She is currently working on a series of portraits which document intimate expressions of family life. Cathy teach a variety of workshops and she is currently undertaking a Masters in Art and Design Education. For more information please visit www.cathygiles.com or email catsgiles@gmail.com

Andrea Castilla (Cover Designer) Andrea Castilla is from San Juan in Argentina. After receiving her degree in Visual Arts from the University of San Juan, in 1993, she married and moved to Andalusia, in Spain, with her new husband. Here she continued her education at the University of Granada and received a degree in child psychologh and education. She worked in the area for a short while before returning to her first love. Andrea opened an art shop and studion, in Motril and now from here,she paints, illustrates, teaches and creates wonderul art and craft.

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Stein on the Danube, Seen from the South, Egon Schiele

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Fred Miller

A Well Ordered Life by Fred Miller

T

he government has always been filled with positions that required precision, and according to the department manuals covering the performance and duties of official bookkeepers, he was considered a paragon ofexactitude in his field. He, in this case, was one Bartholomew Thacker, Bookkeeper V, General Services Administration, United States Government, Midwest Division, Kansas City, Missouri, office.

And though Bartholomew Thacker worked alone, slept alone, and dined alone, it would have been less than fair to say he lived a life ofcomplete solitude.

According to the regulations, his work demanded occasional interaction with others in the department. And he interfaced daily with his landlady, Mrs. Bradley, as well as a waitress named Bea at the Way-Fair Diner where he took breakfast each morning.

Further, he would never have considered his life devoid ofcolor and interest.

For quite some time he'd maintained a collection ofbonsai trees and he enjoyed an adoring relationship with Olivia, the cat owned by Mrs. Bradley, who'd rented him a room since he'd come to Kansas City some twenty-nine years ago.

Yet one might say his daily routines were as predictable as his attention to detail. He arose at 7 AM each morning, not a minute before or after, and following his ablutions, he'd don a charcoal black suit with a vest displaying a gold fob attached to a pocket watch and black laced shoes buffed the night before. Why he carried the watch no one could say. He could tell anyone the time day or night without so much as a cursory glance at the watch.

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At 7:30 AM, he'd make a final check ofhis bonsai trees to assure himselfthat they were positioned for just the right amount ofsunlight during the day. Then, with umbrella in hand, he'd descend the stairs, bid Mrs. Bradley a good day and take a moment to dote on Olivia the cat, who'd meet him on the front steps daily unless, ofcourse, there appeared to be a chance ofrain.

Sixteen minutes later Bartholomew Thacker would turn into the doorway ofthe Way-Fair Diner as he had every day since he had reported to the Midwest office ofthe GSA in Kansas City years ago. Bea, the sole waitress in the café, would greet him as he made his way to the last booth in the back, his chosen spot for breakfast. And unless the Way-Fair was unusually busy, Bea would follow him to his table, order pad in hand. This was never necessary since he placed the same order each day: two hard-boiled eggs, two strips ofbacon, two slices oftoast-unbuttered, and a cup ofblack coffee. Yet Bea never asked, "The usual?" nor did he suggest such himself. The specifics ofthe exchange suited him, and the waitress understood and respected his routine.

Most days Bea would have a copy ofthe morning newspaper left by an earlier diner. She'd save it behind the counter for his arrival and, while she'd place the order with the cook, Bartholomew Thacker would scan the front page ofthe paper. Today's headline read: KILLERS LOOSE IN THE CITY. He gave the article scant attention other than to note that two inmates had escaped from a Kansas prison and had been seen in the Kansas City area the day before. The two, the story said, were armed and dangerous.

By the time the check had come, he'd have consumed the coffee, one egg, one slice ofbacon and placed the remaining bacon between two slices oftoast and wrapped the same in a napkin. This, along with the other hard-boiled egg, would suffice for his midday meal in the park where he'd read more of the newspaper he'd taken with him. At 8:15 AM each day he'd shuffle to the register, pay exact change and hand Bea a quarter for service.

The office was abuzz with the news ofthe killers in the city that day, but Bartholomew Thacker could not be bothered with such small talk. He had work to do and a reputation to uphold: precise data to deliver in a timely manner. This had been his mantra for twenty-nine years. What was different, and still unknown to anyone else in the office, was his plan to retire in six months and three days. And on Monday he'd submit the completed forms that sat in his desk.

Today was Friday and payday, and a paper check would be hand-delivered to Bartholomew Thacker, the lone holdout who'd never opted for direct deposit. As always, this afternoon he'd deposit the check at his bank on the route home, withholding enough cash to pay his rent and to provide for other needs until the next payday arrived.

His retirement strategy was simple; he planned to move to Florida. He'd give Mrs. Bradley one month's notice, pack his meager belongings, and take a bus to Tampa. Bartholomew Thacker had never been to Florida, but he'd read about it extensively in the local library. And upon arrival he'd planned on staying at the local YMCA until he could find a situation that would suit his needs.

He'd also read about the sport offishing, including articles on fish indigenous to the Tampa Bay area as well as the proper tackle and lures to catch them. This endeavor, he'd decided, would become his new retirement pastime. The only challenge that remained was the disposition ofhis bonsai trees. He knew he could give them to the local arboretum where they'd receive proper care, but he really wanted to gift them to Mrs. Bradley for her many kindnesses to him. Still, he wasn't sure she'd want or fully appreciate them. He was troubled with what to do, yet he knew he had time to ponder this dilemma.

On his way home after completing his bank transactions, he began to muse over what he might select at the deli for his evening meal in his room. Though the day remained overcast with a threat ofrain, he felt a skip in his step. This was a special day, the last day at the office before everyone there would know he planned to retire. Today, he decided he'd have dinner at the Way-Fair Diner, a unique experience for him.

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Fred Miller

When he walked into the cafe, the eyes ofthe waitress widened, her mouth in a perfect O. Bartholomew Thacker smiled, nodded, and took a seat at his favorite booth. The menu she proffered looked different, the choices overwhelming, but after a briefgive-and-take with Bea, he settled in and opened his newspaper to peruse the articles he'd neglected earlier in the day.

A gentle rain fell over the dark streets when two ruddy-faced fellows entered the diner, shook rain from their arms and made their way to the counter stools. The bookkeeper took no notice ofthem as he continued to scan the paper.

"What's good here, sister?" one said to the waitress as she approached the two.

"Tonight's special is meatloaf. Comes with peas and potatoes, bread and a drink," she said.

"Ya hear that, Jed? Meatloaf. You think we come here for meatloaf?" Both ofthe men broke into fits ofderisive laughter.

Hearing the commotion Bartholomew Thacker glanced up over his newspaper to see who was making this stir. At the same time, the first ofthe two newcomers to speak saw him and said, "What're you looking at, bonehead?"

The bookkeeper lowered his eyes behind the newspaper and pretended not to have heard the question.

"You hear me, bonehead?" His voice carried across the room and the face ofthe cook appeared in the window separating the kitchen from the counter. Bartholomew Thacker remained still behind his paper.

The inquisitor rose from his seat and turned in the direction ofthe bookkeeper, but before he could move, the waitress scurried around the counter to confront him. "He don't mean no harm, sir; he's just curious."

"Curious, huh?" he said, pushed the waitress aside and started back toward the booth where Bartholomew Thacker sat, his newspaper still hiding his face. By now the cook had come out ofthe kitchen, his arms akimbo.

"You get back in that kitchen," the man said. "Jed, take care ofhim."

"Right, Mike." The cook hurried back into the kitchen, but the second interloper paused to watch the upcoming encounter with the man in the booth.

"Ya hear me, bonehead?"

"Yes, sir," he said, sotto voce.

"Then why'nt you answer me?"

"Like she said, sir, I meant no harm. I'm just here for my dinner."

"Yeah, what're you having?"

"The meatloafspecial."

"Hey, Jed, ya hear that? Bonehead here's having the meatloafspecial." Turning, he barked, "Jed, didn't I tell you to keep an eye on that cook?"

The other man hurried through the swinging door to the kitchen. Shouts were heard and two gunshots echoed across the diner. Bea screamed. And when Bartholomew Thacker attempted to rise, he found a gun barrel inches away from his forehead.

"Sit, bonehead. You too, sister, across from your boyfriend here. And don't neither ofyou move."

The other fellow emerged from the kitchen and started in the direction ofthe occupied booth.

"What the hell happened, Jed?" "Old man was on the phone calling the cops. Had to take care ofhim."

"Served the bastard right," the other said and looked down at the two seated in the booth. "Don't neither ofyou screw with us or you'll get the same. Got that?"

Two ashen faces nodded in unison.

"What now, Mike?"

"We gotta get outta here, Jed. See ifthere's a back door."

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Sirens could be heard in the distance as the killer raced through the kitchen door and quickly returned. "Alley's dark, can't see where it goes, but we best duck out that way."

"You go ahead, take the girl. I'll handle bonehead here and be right behind you."

"Don't hurt him," Bea said, "he don't mean no harm."

Jed yanked the waitress by the arm and through the kitchen door and the other turned toward the bookkeeper.

"I know the neighborhood and I can get you past the cops, she can't, take me" said Bartholomew Thacker.

The headlines the next day read, ESCAPED CONVICTS KILLED IN SHOOTOUT. The article noted that the two, along with an unnamed accomplice, had been downed in a hail ofbullets from the police a block away from the diner. A cook had been killed in the cafe and a waitress there remained the lone survivor. The paper noted that the woman was too shaken to be interviewed at the scene.

The investigators found a government ID, a money clip with cash, a watch with a gold fob, and three postcards ofFlorida in the coat pocket ofthe deceased bookkeeper. And once it was determined he had no next ofkin, his personal effects were turned over to the landlady who'd found an envelope marked "In the Event ofMy Demise" in a chest ofdrawers in his room.

In the letter written by Bartholomew Thacker he instructed the reader to retrieve an extra charcoal black suit from his small closet to be used for his funeral. Also, he wanted his watch fob in his vest pocket in full view. He left his prized bonsai trees to Mrs. Thomas Bradley, his landlady. All other assets were to be to split equally between Mrs. Bradley and Ms. Beatrice Blackwell, an employee ofthe Way-Fair Diner.

Mrs. Bradley and Ms. Blackwell were the only two to attend the funeral. The department where he'd worked had designated a representative to attend , but a problem with the GSA office in Washington, D.C. had caused an untimely delay. Thus, no one from the office was present.

As it turned out, Mrs. Bradley was thrilled to receive the bonsai trees and word has it that the plants continue to thrive. Also, a photograph ofBartholomew Thacker, enlarged from his GSA ID card hangs over his favorite booth at the Way-Fair Diner. Few who frequent the café today seem to notice the picture, fewer still seem to care.

...

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Epigraph

Before the Queen´s Croquet Party

Mistakes were made, a rose bush was mislaid: the wrong one was planted, in the garden, in the enchanted glade.

An instruction had come down from the queen, but sure not all gardners are as they seem.

For when suits take a hand it´ s never as grand, and work may not happen as planned.

Steamed shouts wafted out of the room, and poor cook fell down in a swoon.

Then the king had no dinner, and the queen had to wind her, so she shook her and gave her a spoon, and said—to take the bulbs out—she might prune.

So the cook was happy again.

The king ate dinner in his den.

The white rose bush should´ ve been red.

But the queen still fummed, Fact was, the queen might take off a head. for someone had assumed So the green fingered boys, between them, devised: that she´ d not spot the difference A plan to confuse the queen´ s dread. in the colour of the red and green veg.

So they bought a bucket of paint.

And down to the garden they went.

And one held the bucket, and one held the rose, and the other took up painter´ s pose.

Then all hell broke loose in the glade.

When one boy realised he´ d been played.

Sure his head was a goner, for he did a dishonour of confusing cooks' onions with old tulip bullion, that he found, in the shed, in the glade.

For she´ d not seen the tulip at all. but had ordered green veg when she´ d called— twas two green veg, and two fruits de la jus de la moon—to see cook, in the cellar, at noon.

But cook had served carrots and mushrooms and bread.

So confusion reigned in the glade.

As the lads painted over mistakes, and rumours abounded and nonsense astounded, as Alice watched the parade ...

And not known the difference herself.

Cook added the roots with the veg.

And when the queen went for dinner, begad there was a prize winner red tullip growing out of the bread.

Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick, Oct. 2015

OFF WITH HER HEAD OFF WITH HER HEAD— Illustration: The next witness was the Duchess's cook, Artist: Arthur Rackham 43

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Chapter 8 - The Queen's Croquet-Ground

A

by Lewis Carroll

off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, large rose-tree stood near the entrance afore she comes, to--' At this moment Five, who had of the garden: the roses growing on it been anxiously looking across the garden, called out `The Queen! The Queen!' and the three gardeners were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red. instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There Alice thought this a very curious thing, was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked and she went nearer to watch them, and round, eager to see the Queen.

First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these were just as she came up to them she heard one of them say, `Look out now, Five! all shaped like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, Don't go splashing paint over me like with their hands and feet at the corners: next the ten courtiers; these were ornamented all over with that!' `I couldn't help it,' said Five, in a sulky tone; diamonds, and walked two and two, as the soldiers did. After these came the royal children; there were `Seven jogged my elbow.'

On which Seven looked up and said, `That's ten of them, and the little dears came jumping merrily along hand in hand, in couples: they were all right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!' `YOU'D better not talk!' said Five. `I heard the ornamented with hearts. Next came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and among them Alice recognised Queen say only yesterday you deserved to be the White Rabbit: it was talking in a hurried nervous beheaded!' `What for?' said the one who had spoken first. manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went `That's none of YOUR business, Two!' said Seven. by without noticing her. Then followed the Knave of `Yes, it IS his business!' said Five, `and I'll tell Hearts, carrying the King's crown on a crimson velvet him--it was for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead cushion; and, last of all this grand procession, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS. of onions.'

Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun `Well, of all the unjust things--' when his eye chanced to lie down on her face like the three gardeners, but to fall upon Alice, as she stood watching them, and she could not remember every having heard of such he checked himself suddenly: the others looked round a rule at processions; `and besides, what would be the use of a procession,' thought she, `if people had also, and all of them bowed low. `Would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, all to lie down upon their faces, so that they couldn't see it?' So she stood still where she was, and waited. `why you are painting those roses?'

When the procession came opposite to Alice, Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, `Why the fact is, you see, they all stopped and looked at her, and the Queen Miss, this here ought to have been a RED rose-tree, said severely `Who is this?' She said it to the Knave and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply. `Idiot!' said the Queen, tossing her head was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut impatiently; and, turning to Alice, she went on, `What's

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Lewis Carroll The Queen turned angrily away from him and said to the Knave, 'Turn them over', Artist: Arthur Rackham

your name, child?' `My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,' said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, `Why, they're only a pack of cards, after all. I needn't be afraid of them!' `And who are THESE?' said the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners who were lying round the rosetree; for, you see, as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers, or three of her own children. `How should I know?' said Alice, surprised at her own courage. `It's no business of MINE.' The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, screamed `Off with her head! Off--' `Nonsense!' said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent.

The King laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said `Consider, my dear: she is only a child!'

The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said to the Knave `Turn them over!'

The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot. `Get up!' said the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the three gardeners instantly jumped up, and began bowing to the King, the Queen, the royal children, and everybody else. `Leave off that!' screamed the Queen. `You make me giddy.' And then, turning to the rose-tree, she went on, `What HAVE you been doing here?' `May it please your Majesty,' said Two, in a very humble tone, going down on one knee as he spoke, `we were trying--' `I see!' said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the roses. `Off with their heads!' and the procession moved on, three of the soldiers remaining behind to execute the unfortunate gardeners, who ran to Alice for protection. `You shan't be beheaded!' said Alice, and she put them into a large flower-pot that stood near. The three soldiers wandered about for a minute or two, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the others. `Are their heads off?' shouted the Queen. `Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty!' the soldiers shouted in reply. `That's right!' shouted the Queen. `Can you play croquet?'

The soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice, as the question was evidently meant for her. `Yes!' shouted Alice. `Come on, then!' roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession, wondering very much what would happen next. `It's--it's a very fine day!' said a timid voice at her side. She was walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping anxiously into her face. `Very,' said Alice: `Where's the Duchess?' `Hush! Hush!' said the Rabbit in a low, hurried tone. He looked anxiously over his shoulder as he 45

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The Linnet´s Wings Classic spoke, and then raised himself upon tiptoe, put his mouth close to her ear, and whispered `She's under sentence of execution.' `What for?' said Alice. `Did you say "What a pity!"?' the Rabbit asked. `No, I didn't,' said Alice: `I don't think it's at all a pity. I said "What for?" ' `She boxed the Queen's ears--' the Rabbit began. Alice gave a little scream of laughter. `Oh, hush!' the Rabbit whispered in a frightened tone. `The Queen will hear you! You see, she came rather late, and the Queen said--' `Get to your places!' shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began. Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.

The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it WOULD twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.

The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!' or `Off with her head!' about once in a minute.

Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, `and then,' thought she, `what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there's any one left alive!'

She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself `It's the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.' `How are you getting on?' said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with.

Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. `It's no use speaking to it,' she thought, `till its ears have come, or at least one of them.' In another minute the whole head appeared, and then Alice put down her flamingo, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared. `I don't think they play at all fairly,' Alice began, in rather a complaining tone, `and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak--and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them--and you've no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there's the arch I've got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground--and I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine coming!' `How do you like the Queen?' said the Cat in a low voice. `Not at all,' said Alice: `she's so extremely--' Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on, `--likely to win, that it's hardly worth while finishing the game.'

The Queen smiled and passed on. `Who ARE you talking to?' said the King, going up to Alice, and looking at the Autumn Cat's head with great 2015 curiosity.

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Lewis Carroll `It's a friend of mine--a Cheshire Cat,' said Alice: `allow me to introduce it.' `I don't like the look of it at all,' said the King: `however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.' `I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked. `Don't be impertinent,' said the King, `and don't look at me like that!' He got behind Alice as he spoke. `A cat may look at a king,' said Alice. `I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where.' `Well, it must be removed,' said the King very decidedly, and he called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, `My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!'

The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. `Off with his head!' she said, without even looking round. `I'll fetch the executioner myself,' said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.

Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game was going on, as she heard the Queen's voice in the distance, screaming with passion. She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her hedgehog.

The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.

By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: `but it doesn't matter much,' thought Alice, `as all the arches are gone from this side of the ground.' So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend.

When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.

The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said.

The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn't going to begin at HIS time of life.

The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense.

The Queen's argument was, that if something wasn't done about it in less than no time she'd have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)

Alice could think of nothing else to say but `It belongs to the Duchess: you'd better ask HER about it.' `She's in prison,' the Queen said to the executioner: `fetch her here.' And the executioner went off like an arrow.

The Cat's head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had come back with the Dutchess, it had entirely disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game. ...

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And that is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Vinegar

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My Fancy by Lewis Carroll I painted her a gushing thing, With years perhaps a score; A little thought to find they were At least a dozen more; My fancy gave her eyes of blue, A curly, auburn head; I came to find the blue a green The auburn turned to red.

She boxed my ears this morning-They tingled very much; I own that I could wish her A somewhat lighter touch; And if you were to ask me how Her charms might be improved, I would not have them added to, But just a few removed!

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She has the bear's ethereal grace, The bland hyena's laugh, The footstep of the elephant, The neck of the giraffe.

I love her still, believe me, Though my heart its passion hides; "She is all my fancy painted her," But, oh, how much besides!

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StorybyFairy

W

Oonah V Joslin

inifred’s mother was a Bluebell Queen and her father a Leaf Lord. Her siblings were Forest Folk but Winifred was restless. She wanted to be different and so she took off, seeking adventure. Now her wings felt as if they were about to drop off, like she’d been flying forever.

At last the terrain beneath her feet was changing. Gone the soft tussocks, woodland roots and little streams she knew: gone the bracken and the fresh breath of pine. Beneath her lay a landscape of trimmed hedges and suburban gardens, dogs with well trained noses, cats with fat tummies and noisy children. Winifred had heard of such places in child-stories but seeing is believing. She loved those child-stories. There was always a fairy and children and animals and a happy ever after ending. A curl of fragrant smoke wafted in the air and she just knew this was the place, so she made a light landing on a leafy stem. She was ready for adventure.

Almost at once, a disturbing sound caught her attention -- a child crying. Winfred looked round the garden and there indeed, kneeling on a manicured lawn was a girl child emitting signs of the utmost distress. Winifred was about to speak when a little boy came running out from the large, white house and approached the girl.

“Hey snot-face! What’re you bawlin’ for this time, eh?”

“Go away!”

“Just like a girl crying ‘cos I wouldn’t play stupid dolls house.”

The girl controlled herself. “I’ll tell Mum you had your mitts in the pavlova.”

“You little fink! You do, and I’ll give you something to bawl for.”

“Beast!” The girl recovered her emotional equilibrium rather quickly and stood up and began pounding the boy with both fists clenched. “Brute. I hate you.”

“Hate you back.” Dickie, that was the boy’s name, pulled his sister Linda’s hair but she stuck her foot out and tripped him. Now she was sitting on him and twisting his ears.

“Mum! She killing me. Linda’s killing me!”

At this point both children rolled together until they were right under Winifred’s leaf and both looked up wide eyed.

“Oh! What’s this?” said Dickie. He grabbed Winifred very roughly so that her wings were firmly in his grip.

It hurt. “I’m a fairy,” said Winifred, struggling.

“I think it’s some kind of weird moth,” Linda said. She hated insects.

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Oonah V Joslin

The Pool of Tears, Arthur Rackham

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Fairies are all more or less in hiding until dusk, Artist, Arthur Rackham 51

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Oonah V Joslin “Whatever it is, it’s buzzing like a bee,” said Dickie and he held it up to Linda’s ear.

“I am a FAIRY,” yelled Winifred at the top of her voice.

“Take the horrid thing away!” Linda said. “Do you think it’s stingy?”

“Dunno.”

“Let’s tear off its wings and put it on the barbeque,” said Linda.

“Nice one sis! And then we can feed it to Mitsycat.”

Winifred was terrified. She wriggled and squirmed and screeched that she was a fairy. “I’ll give you a wish,” she tried. They couldn’t hear her. This never happened in the stories.

Three things now happened very fast. The first was that a voice from the house called, “Twins, your tea is ready.”

The second was that Winifred bit the boy’s hand as hard as she could. And the third was that a flight of fairies appeared from out of nowhere and made straight for the hullabaloo.

“Ow! Damned thing stung me,” yowled Dickie but he let go his grip enough for Winifred to fly free and then the fairy flight attacked, and both children ran indoors calling for their mother.

Half the forest had turned out to search for her and Winifred recognised her family at the forefront.

They surrounded her and hugged her.

“Oh Winifred,” said her mother as she gave her a nice draft of flower nectar and raindrops, “What if we hadn’t got there on time?” She stroked Winifred’s tired little wings. “Promise me never to fly off like that again.”

“Promise, Mum.” “Well,” said her father, “I hope you’ve learned. Real life isn’t like child stories. It’s a human jungle out there. Still, I’m quite proud of you for being so brave and if you really want to be a Story Fairy, that’s how you earn your wings.” ...

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César Vallejo: Poetry in Peru By

Stephen Zelnick César Vallejo was born in the remote mountain village of Santiago de Chuco in 1892. He was the youngest of twelve children. He received a degree in Literature in 1915 from the University of Trujillo. In 1921, he was imprisoned, and wrote his masterpiece, Trilce (1922) while incarcerated. Soon after his release, Vallejo left Peru never to return. He died in Paris in 1938.

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Stephen Zelnick Before Peru was a nation with territorial boundaries, it was a Spanish dream of wealth and plunder.

The Andean region, with its picturesque mountains, people, and creatures was a maze of mines (silver, salt, guano, nitrates) and a few gleaming cities. At one time in Europe, something splendid was called “the real Peru.” By the time César Vallejo was born in 1892 that golden age was gone, along with Simon Bolivar’s quest for independence (1808-1830). What remained was squalor, political terror, and the violence of mines draining the life from its people.

César Vallejo would seem unlikely to become a notable innovator in the history of Spanish poetry and later a member of the Paris art scene. His grandfathers were Catholic priests, his grandmothers, Chimu “indians”. The youngest of twelve children, César was raised in a strict Catholic family. Vallejo was culturally adrift, a child of Europe in education, Chimu in appearance, and Peruvian. A talented student, he was constantly leaving school for lack of funds. He studied Literature and European philosophy, but also medicine. Brilliant and broke, Vallejo worked briefly as an accountant at the mines, a witness to the harshness of miners’ lives and the cruelty of the owners’ peonage system. Tutoring the pampered children of the wealthy was humiliating. Vallejo fell in love in the wrong places, with the daugters of families who could see only his Chimu features. When his beloved Otilia’s pregnancy became evident, she was whisked off to safety by her family.

[Pre-modern Peru included regions now located in Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile. That Andean world was a rich find for Europeans who enslaved indigenous people to the tasks of rugged and poisonous mining. The central city of the Chimu kingdom had been the city of Chan-Chan, whose ruins are located near Trujillo, where Vallejo attended university and later was briefly imprisoned.]

In 1921 life turned full against him. His mother had died, as had several of his dearest siblings. His poetry was hooted off the stage in a local theater. And then, he was arrested as a political terrorist and tossed into prison, without formal charge or sentence. In that grim setting, Vallejo translated the alienated and deranged voice of modernity into Spanish. Vallejo’s masterpiece, Trilce (1922), is one of those eruptions of new style and sensibility that go unnoticed and then change everything. Vallejo fled Peru forever in1923, and found his way to Madrid and Paris where he joined such luminaries as Lorca, Dali, Buñuel, Neruda, and Picasso. His caricature -- that sad fellow, chin propped on palm -- has become an image of pain of the mid-1930’s, the defeat of culture and dignity in the Spanish Civil War. The Linnet´s Wings 54

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[The quote reads “I was born on a day God was sick”.]

Vallejo has been compared with Charlie Chaplin this famous pose of existential gloom To understand what is special about Vallejo’s work, it may help to start with a poem by Nicaraguan Ruben Dario, himself an innovator and inspiration for Neruda and Vallejo.

Alla Lejos Buey que vi en mi niñez echando vaho un día bajo el nicaragüense sol de encendidos oros, en la hacienda fecunda, plena de la armonía del trópico; paloma de los bosques sonoros del viento, de las hachas, de pájaros y toros salvajes, yo os saludo, pues sois la vida mía.

Far Away Ox of my childhood, steaming in the burning gold of Nicaragua’s sun, on rich plantation fields of tropical harmony; dove of woods, with sounds of the breeze, of axes, of birds, and wild bulls, I salute you both, you are my life.

Pesado buey, tú evocas la dulce madrugada Great ox, you evoke the sweet morn que llamaba a la ordeña de la vaca lechera, that calls the cows for milking, cuando era mi existencia toda blanca y rosada; when all my life was white and rose; y tú, paloma arrulladora y montañera, and you, cooing mountain dove, significas en mi primavera pasada mark in the springtime of my past todo lo que hay en la divina Primavera. all that is of the divine Springtime.

[All translations by Stephen Zelnick] [pic] [Rubén Darío (January 18, 1867 – February 6, 1916) was a Nicaraguan poet and journalist and champion of the Modernist Movement in Spanish poetry. Neruda and Vallejo recognized him as a key influence on their early work. Darío remains especially beloved among readers of Spanish poetry.]

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Here’s what most poetry readers expect – rhyme, easy hexameters, and poetic words. Organized by contrasting weighty ox and mercurial dove, “Far Away” is a masterpiece of compression and craft. The song notes the loss of our “white and rose” life to a sour world of experience and assures us that childhood’s blessings are preserved in memory and heaven’s prospect. Memory and hope enhance what seems lost, an old theme, gracefully realized. Vallejo’s “Black Heralds” is otherwise: Los Heraldos Negros

Black Heralds

Hay golpes en la vida tan fuertes . . . ¡Yo no se!

Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos; la resaca de todo lo sufrido se empozara en el alma ¡Yo no se!

There are blows in life so fierce … I don’t know!

Blows as if from God’s hatred; and even before; from suffering’s undertow imposed on the soul I don’t know!

Son pocos; pero son . . . abren zanjas oscuras en el rostro mas fiero y en el lomo mas fuerte Serán talvez los potros de bárbaros atilas; o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte

They are rare, but real … carving dark trenches, frightful in our faces and deep in our loins, sort of like the torture racks of barbarous Atillas or the black heralds Death sends us.

Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma, de alguna adorable que el Destino Blasfema, Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema

They are the sheer Christ cliffs of the soul, the adorable one whom destiny blasphemes, These bloody blows, sizzling bits of bread stuck burning to the oven’s door.

Y el hombre....pobre...¡pobre!

Vuelve los ojos, como cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada; vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido se empoza, como charco de culpa, en la mirada.

And man! … that poor fellow! turns to look as when a touch on the shoulder gets our attention; he turns his crazy eyes, and sees it all vividly, a pool of condemnation, in one single glance.

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes . . . ¡Yo no se!

These fierce blows in life … I don’t know!

[pic] [The Black Heralds (1919) and Trilce (1922) are the only collections of poetry published during Vallejo’s lifetime. All the rest has been gathered posthumously, with the help of Georgette Vallejo, the poet’s widow.]

“Black Heralds” is a harrowing poem. The images are photographically specific and erupt without structural permission – that bit of bread left smoking on the oven’s door; or the casual tap on the shoulder The Linnet´s Wings 56

The Linnet´s Wings to remind us of our guilt. It lacks rhyme, and has no cohering reason. Most shocking, the poem frustrates our wish for consolation. It is supposed to sum up neatly, like those honored sonnets, with a sestet’s worth of problem and an octet’s of solution. Vallejo’s “I don’t know” is a blank, urban gesture, an offhand shrug. This is a speech from a Beckett play – irregular, built on erupting thoughts and grim reflections.

Vallejo’s urban immediacy rejects sonorous poetry for its urgent voice.

[pic] [It is unlikely that Vallejo was acquainted with the writings of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), but the Peruvian’s work bears some striking resemblance to this master of anxiety and absurdity.]

“The Grown-ups” is autobiographical, naming Vallejo’s lost siblings and depicting his mother’s death as abandonment. The poem resembles a Kafka monologue, where the speaker knows the truth but chatters on to evade his fears. The line “obedient, and without a choice” sums up the absurdity. Instead of lyric lament, Vallejo gives us neurotic narrative, dark warnings peeking out from behind the child’s sweet imaginings: lollipop ships eclipsed by the horror image of passers-by doubled over in pain and “twanging” their terror along the darkened streets. The odd word “gangueando” haunts us.

Las personas mayores

The grown-ups

¿a qué hora volverán?

Da las seis el ciego Santiago, y ya está muy oscuro.

When will they come back?

Blind Santiago, the church bell, already tolls six and it’s very dark.

Madre dijo que no demoraría.

Mother said she would not be late.

Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel, cuidado con ir por ahí, por donde acaban de pasar gangueando sus memorias dobladoras penas, hacia el silencioso corral, y por donde las gallinas que se están acostando todavía, se han espantado tanto.

Mejor estemos aquí no más.

Madre dijo que no demoraría.

Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel, take care where you go, along where people pass twanging their memories doubled over in pain, towards the silent coops, where the hens, still settling down, have been rudely startled.

Better we left, but mother said she would not be long.

Ya no tengamos pena. Vamos viendo los barcos ¡el mío es más bonito de todos! con los cuales jugamos todo el santo día, sin pelearnos, como debe de ser: han quedado en el pozo de agua, listos,

Still, we shouldn’t worry. We’re going to launch the boats -- And mine the prettiest! with which we play all the blessed day, without quarreling, just as it should be: they have sat still in the pond, ready, Autumn 2015

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fletados de dulces para mañana.

to transport candy for tomorrow.

Aguardemos así, obedientes y sin más remedio, la vuelta, el desagravio de los mayores siempre delanteros dejándonos en casa a los pequeños, como si también nosotros no pudiésemos partir.

We await the grown-ups’ return, obedient and without a choice, their apology always settling all, leaving us little ones at home as if we also could not leave.

Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel?

Llamo, busco al tanteo en la oscuridad.

No me vayan a haber dejado solo, y el único recluso sea yo.

Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel?

I call, groping about in the dark.

They wouldn’t have left me here alone, for then the only prisoner would be me.

(Trilce, III)

“The suit I wore tomorrow” continues this drama of maternal abandonment and of hope fragmented in pain. Time disorganizes, mother becomes lover becomes god, everyday acts and objects acquire existential significance, and sentiment dislodges from context. In place of a poem shaped into consequent meaning, we have a deranged dream, where Vallejo’s beloved Otilia Villanueva merges with the caring mother before acquiring the force of a protective god, clung to with dwindling faith.

El traje que vestí mañana no lo ha lavado mi lavandera: lo lavaba en sus venas otilinas, en el chorro de su corazón, y hoy no he de preguntarme si yo dejaba el traje turbio de injusticia.

The suit I wore tomorrow my laundress has not washed: She was washing it in her Otilian veins, under the faucet of her heart, and today I have not wondered whether I left my suit muddy with injustice.

Ahora que no hay quien vaya a las aguas, en mis falsillas encañona el lienzo para emplumar, y todas las cosas del velador de tánto qué será de mí,

Now that no one might come to the streams, to ornament my linen with fancy piping and all those many things looked after by the caretaker of all, what will become of me,

todas no están mías mi lado.

Quedaron de su propiedad, fratesadas, selladas con su trigueña bondad.

all these things at my side are not mine.

They remain her property, pressed, sealed with her wheat-brown goodness.

Y si supiera si ha de volver; y si supiera qué mañana entrará a entregarme las ropas lavadas, mi aquella

And if I knew she had returned; and if I knew that tomorrow she would enter and bring me my laundered clothes,

lavandera del alma.

Que mañana entrará satisfecha, capulí de obrería, dichosa

that laundress of the soul That tomorow she would enter satisfied, brown-berry worker, happy 58

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de probar que sí sabe, que sí puede ¡ CÓMO NO VA A PODER! azular y planchar todos los caos.

to prove that she knows, that she can HOW CAN SHE NOT! Whiten with bluing and iron out all the chaoses.

(Trilce, VI) [pic] [Vallejo was devoted to his mother, a figure of protection and care in several of his poems. Her death in 1918 was a severe blow. His mother’s features display the poet’s Chimu heritage.]

The logic of time breaks down from the opening lines, as do the identities in this Freudian dream. The laundress is a sustaining source of life itself, washing his clothes pure with her blood; but she is also his beloved Otilia and Christ, who alone washes away injustices with His blood. And all this is figured, as in a mad dream out of Oliver Sacks, as a suit of clothes, a public display that hides and exposes our psychic drama.

The second stanza is clotted with the close specifics of tailoring, the speaker’s wandering consciousness unable to resist distraction. In place of the anxiety faced directly, we have the technical detail of finishing work applied to a linen handkerchief. My translation, simplifies terms like “falsillas encañona” (with the idea of “false or deceptive detail added from underneath”) and “emplumar” (literally “to feather”), terms a tailor would grasp readily. This distraction cannot, however, stave off the plaint of misery “qué será de mí” (what will become of me), the fear that the caretaker has abandoned him, a terror he cannot suppressed.

The “laundress of my soul” is the source of care and abundance, the “wheat-brown goodness” of grain and the “brown-berry” fruitfulness he hopes will feed his life. The poem concludes in shrill self-assurance, not only that she is capable of “ironing out all the chaoses” but that she is ever near and ready to tend his needs. The wish, however, is bound by qualification – if she comes, he is sure she can accomplish utterly impossible things, tasks that would challenge the gods, let alone a mother armed only with iron and bleach.

For Vallejo, our inner life is devilled by uncertainty and tests our faith. We are tossed into life without cause or purpose and tormented by drives and emotions that overwhelm our efforts at rational ordering.

At the heart of this cruel joke is the sexual act and the inability of men to make sense of it. Like death, any way we choose to look at it leaves us baffled. In “Vusco Volvvver” language dissolves, enacting the absurdity of mind chasing nature and stumbling about in the effort to voice the unthinkable.

Vusco volvvver de golpe el golpe.

Sus dos hojas anchas, su válvula que se abre en suculenta recepción de multiplicando a multiplicador, su condición excelente para el placer, todo avía verdad.

I vant to rreturn blow for blow.

Her two wide-folded leaves, her vavulva that opens up in succulent reception from multiplied to multiplier, her condition excellent for pleasure, all fully prepared.

Busco volvver de golpe el golpe.

A su halago, enveto bolivarianas fragosidades

I wann to rreturn blow for blow.

At her caress, to tempt bolivarian risks Autumn 2015

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a treintidós cables y sus múltiples, se arrequintan pelo por pelo soberanos belfos, los dos tomos de la Obra, y no vivo entonces ausencia, ni al tacto.

at thirty-two tow-lines and their multiples, arranged thread by thread about superb lips, two tomes of the collected Works, and live, then, neither absent to thought nor to touch.

Fallo bolver de golpe el golpe.

No ensillaremos jamás el toroso Vaveo de egoísmo y de aquel ludir mortal de sábana, desque la mujer esta ¡cuánto pesa de general!

Phallung to tretun blow for blow. we never mount the bullish Drooel of egoism and that mortal chafe of the bed-sheet, from what woman is … goodness, how much she weighs!

Y hembra es el alma de la ausente.

Y hembra es el alma mía.

And female is the soul of absence.

And female is my soul.

(Trilce, IX)

This phantasmagoria of explosive puns recalls James Joyce. The bent word unleashes possibilities hidden in the supposed reality to which language sentences us. In the opening two lines, we have three words that do not exist – “vusco”, “volvvver”, and “válvula”. While Spanish is meticulous with vowel sounds, its consonants vary. The b/ v distinction lands somewhere between. So “busco” becomes “vusco”, a joke played throughout the poem. “Volver” means to return, or “turn again”, so “volvvver” becomes a visual pun. “Válvula collapses “valve” and “vulva”, an example of the poem’s strategy of confusing intimate bodily structures with machine parts. Later “Fallo” (I fail) implicates “falo” (phallus) in a stanza imaging the adventures of that slavering bullish apparatus in the “mortal chafe of the bed-sheet” – sábana (sheet) is also the savannah where “toro” is more at home and at ease.

The poem employs the language of engineering and mathematics, of mechanisms and machines, yet the terms are salacious and confusing – does that say what I think it says? We are accustomed to clinical and clowning mentions of vaginas, but imagine the shock in a reticent Spanish community, churchridden and unfamiliar with our smutty frankness. Vallejo had been a medical student, and his poems reflect his technical account of the body, but this poem goes further. Here the mind stumbles in figuring the force of the sexual body and the body’s shocking reality. This struggle culminates in the speaker’s surprise at the weight of the female body. This is not a comment about hefty women but about the dislocation of the pornographic imagination, where bodies become parts and sex becomes idealized and weightless, from the luxuriant fact of the female body. [pic] [We associate Peru with images of colorful clothing, strikingly odd hats, brilliant mountain ranges, and llamas.

A complete picture would include salt mining (pictured here) and poisonous work in the silver and nitrate mines.

Vallejo grew up in the midst of all of this. Yet his poems, unlike those of Neruda, only rarely mention any of this and hardly depict nature at all. Despite his origins, Vallejo 60

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was an urban writer with little nostalgia for a lost paradise.]

Vallejo’s arrest and imprisonment shocked him. Although he later became an active Communist, in 1921 he was not political. He enjoyed the intellectual-artist crowd of the towns, but his bohemian appearance made him a subject of suspicion among the mine-owners, who targeted the long-haired fellow with dark features as an outside agitator. When a department store in Trujillo burned down, Vallejo was arrested.

His imprisonment in a dank prison, among criminals and madmen, without trial or sentence terrified him.

The world seemed accidental and deadly and himself frail and powerless. “The Four Walls” tells his story of despair. [pic] [Young Vallejo traveled in a crowd of writers and intellectuals in the city of Trujillo. A figure encouraging suspicion, Vallejo was imprisoned for 105 days, a shock that changed him forever. In the late 1920s in the struggle for the Spanish Republic, Vallejo became a Communist, traveled to Moscow, and wrote a primer on the emergence of the Soviet state.]

Oh las cuatro paredes de la celda.

Ah las cuatro paredes albicantes que sin remedio dan al mismo número.

Oh the four walls of the cell.

Ah the four whitened walls that remorselessly number the same.

Criadero de nervios, mala brecha, por sus cuatro rincones cómo arranca las diarias aherrojadas extremidades.

Nursery of nerves, evil arrangement, along its four corners as it rips at my daily fettered limbs.

Amorosa llavera de innumerables llaves, si estuvieras aquí, si vieras hasta qué hora son cuatro estas paredes.

Contra ellas seríamos contigo, los dos, más dos que nunca. Y ni lloraras, di, libertadora!

Loving jaileress of the countless keys, if only you were here, here to watch hour after hour these four walls.

We would both oppose them, more than ever. And would you not shed tears, Speak, my liberator!

Ah las paredes de la celda.

De ellas me duele entretanto, más las dos largas que tienen esta noche algo de madres que ya muertas llevan por bromurados declives, a un niño de la mano cada una.

Ah, the walls of the cell.

They bring me constant pain, even more the two long walls that tonight seem ghostly mothers who lead a child by each hand, along bromidic cliffs. Autumn 2015

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Y sólo yo me voy quedando, con la diestra, que hace por ambas manos, en alto, en busca de terciario brazo que ha de pupilar, entre mi dónde y mi cuándo,

And only I am left behind with my right hand, that does for both hands, raised aloft, in search of that third arm that has tutored me, between my where and when,

esta mayoría inválida de hombre.

into this crippled manhood (Trilce, XVIII)

These themes are familiar – abandonment, the appeal to a rescuing mother, the sense of impending madness, loneliness, and the claim of being reduced to a “crippled manhood”. Several other poems in Trilce and after, dramatize this helplessness, and recall Kafka’s theme of interrogation that was becoming more than a literary trope as the century devolved into its grim politics. “Payroll of Bones” dramatizes a moment of terror under interrogation by power not answerable to any standard of reason:

Nómina de huesos

Payroll ofbones

Se pedía a grandes voces: They demanded, shouting in mighty voices: --Que muestre las dos manos a la vez.

--Let him show both hands at the same time.

Y esto no fue posible.

And this was not possible.

--Que, mientras llora, le tomen --While he weeps, let them take la medida de sus pasos. the measure of his paces.

Y esto no fue posible.

And this was not possible.

--Que piense un pensamiento idéntico, --Let him think an identical thought en el tiempo en at the same time in which que un cero permanece inútil. a zero remains useless.

Y esto no fue posible.

And this was not possible.

--Que haga una locura.

--Let him do something crazy.

Y esto no fue posible.

And this was not possible.

--Que entre él y otro hombre semejante --Let a crowd of men resembling him, a él, se Interponga una muchedumbre come between him and another de hombres como él. man just like him.

Y esto no fue posible.

And this was not possible.

--Que le comparen consigo mismo.

--Let them compare him with himself.

Y esto no fue posible.

And this was not possible.

--Que le llamen, en fin, por su nombre.

--Let them call him, at last, by his name.

Y esto no fue posible, And this was not possible.

[Many of Vallejo’s poems were unpublished and lack dates] [pic] [Augusto B. Leguia, was President of Peru from 1919-1930. He brought order to a chaotic political scene, declaring a revolution and re-writing the nation’s constitution. He then ruled as a dictator, disregarding the liberal constitution he had authored. The ruling interests did well in those years, and Peru to this day continues to struggle over the proper distribution of its natural wealth.

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The Linnet´s Wings Among Vallejo’s associates in his Trujillo days were founders of the opposition who would, years later, replace Leguia’s regime.]

This Kafkaesque inquisition reduces the accused to a nameless, irrational thing, before the mighty voices of power that respect no standard of sanity or compassion. In “Y no me digan nada” (Don’t Say anything to me), the effort of the accused to fight back disintegrates into ludicrous comic gestures.

Y no me digan nada

Don’t Say Anything to Me

Y no me digan nada, que uno puede matar perfectamente, ya que, sudando tinta, uno hace cuanto puede, no me digan …

And don’t say anything to me, since one can kill perfectly, since, sweating printer’s ink, one can do much, don’t say anything to me …

Volveremos, señores, a vernos con manzanas, tarde la criatura pasará, la expresión de Aristoteles armada de grandes corazones de madera, la de Heráclito injerta en la de Marx, la del suave sonando rudamente …

Es lo que bien narraba mi garganta: uno puede matar perfectamente.

We will meet again, good sirs, with apples the creature will pass by late, the expression of Aristotle armed, with great hearts of wood, the expression of Heraclitus joined to that of Marx, that of the smooth one sounding rude …

That’s what my throat was telling so well: one can kill perfectly.

Señores,

Good sirs,

Caballeros, volveremos a vernos sin paquetes; hasta entonces exijo, exigiré de mi flaqueza el acento del día, que, según veo, estuvo ya esperándome en mi lecho.

Y exijo del sombrero la infausta analogía, del recuerdo ya que, a veces, asumo con éxito, mi inmensidad lloranda ya que, a veces, me ahogo en la voz de mi vecino y padezco contando en maíces los años, cepillando mi ropa al son de un muerto o sentado borracho en mi ataúd …

Gentlemen, we’ll meet again without packages until then I insist, I’ll demand of my weakness in the accent of the day, since, as I see it, it was awaiting me already in my bed.

I insist of my hat -- an unfortunate analogy, of memory -still, at times, I assume with success, my immensity of weeping still, at times, my voice drowns in my neighbor’s and I suffer counting the years in kernels of corn, brushing my clothes to a dead man’s song or sitting up drunk in my coffin …

The accused opens with threats, warning his tormentors of violence, in an impersonal gangster voice (“one can kill perfectly”). But his oration disintegrates into a clownish, baggy-pants harangue -invoking the great philosophers, a back-pedaling defense of his rhetoric, and finally the admission of his powerlessness. Faced with the force of law, of police, and of the state, the citizen has no choice but be obedient or appear ridiculous, even to himself.

Vallejo’s complaint extends beyond social justice. Our culture fails to reconcile drives and passions, Autumn 2015 63

Stephen Zelnick with tragic results. But there is a deeper ill, the failure of religious faith to stand against our humiliations and suffering. For Vallejo this “pain without end” results from “being born this way, without cause.” This gentle poem of failed love runs off the rails and ends in existential despair.

Se acabó el extraño, con quien, tarde la noche, regresabas parla y parla.

Ya no habrá quien me aguarde, dispuesto mi lugar, bueno lo malo.

It’s over with that stranger, with whom, late at night, you returned, jabbering.

Now there won’t be someone waiting to take my place … whatever.

Se acabó la calurosa tarde; tu gran bahía y tu clamor; la charla con tu madre acabada que nos brindaba un té lleno de tarde.

Finished the warm afternoons; your grand bay, all the commotion -- the chatter with your all-too-perfect mother who brought us tea full of afternoon.

Se acabó todo al fin: las vacaciones, tu obediencia de pechos, tu manera de pedirme que no me vaya fuera.

All came to an end; the vacations, your obedient breasts, your way of begging me not to rush off.

y se acabó el diminutivo, para mi mayoría en el dolor sin fin, Y nuestro haber nacido así sin causa.

Done with all the little things; for me the great things bring pain without end, our having been born so, without cause.

(Trilce, XXXIV)

In this tidy sonnet, a form unusual for Vallejo, perspective shifts confusingly. What ought to be a triumph, the rival discarded, invites instead an unpleasant reflection in which the victor realizes the emptiness of his prize. The courtship is a barren charade of pleasantries, of polite tea “full of afternoon.” Even the sexual allure is obedient to recipe as is the little drama of her pleading. Instead, his victory brings cosmic disgust.

This theme of the fierce gravity of social convention, of lost souls condemned to mechanical ritual, receives Vallejo’s comic treatment in “Height and Hair”: [pic] [Lima, Peru, where Vallejo lived for a time, was a modern city where middle class people preferred modern European costumes and streetcars over colorful shawls and llamas.]

Altura y pelos

Height and Hair

¿Quién no tiene su vestido azul? ¿Quién no almuerza y no toma el tranvía,

Who doesn’t have his corporate blue suit?

Who doesn’t breakfast and take the train 64

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The Linnet´s Wings Con su cigarrillo contratado y su dolor de bosillo? y su dolor de bosillo? ¡Yo que tan sólo he nacido! ¡Yo que tan sólo he nacido!

With his assigned cigarette and his pocket full of pain?

I who was born so alone!

I who was born so alone!

¿Quién no escribe una carta? ¿Quién no habla de un asunto muy importante, muriendo de costumbre y llorando de oído? ¡Yo que solamente he nacido! ¡Yo que solamente he nacido!

Who doesn’t write a postcard?

Who doesn’t talk of “a very important matter”, dying by formula and crying by ear?

I who only was born!

I who only was born!

¿Quién no se llama Carlos o cualquier otra cosa? ¿Quién al gato no dice gato gato? ¡Ay! yo que tan sólo he nacido solamente! ¡Ay! yo que tan sólo he nacido solamente!

Who is not named Carlos, or some damn thing?

Who on seeing a cat does not say “kitty, kitty”?

Aie! I who only was born so alone!

Aie! I who only was born so alone!

Vallejo’s is a familiar romantic complaint, the alert and sensitive soul, appalled at the mechanical responses of the conventional world. His mockery, however, is enjoyable, as in “Who is not named Carlos, or some damn thing/ Who on seeing a cat does not say “kitty, kitty?” This is a 19th C. theme (Wordsworth, Melville, Dostoyevsky, et. al.), the lonely artist/philosopher stranded among wax figures incapable of discovering their souls. But Vallejo finds a way to treat this in a crisp little comedy.

The spirit has been tricked into empty imitation; far worse, “Hope cries amidst cotton” offers a chill image of the struggle for faith in a world of accident, injustice, and pain: Esperanza plañe entre algodones

Hope cries amidst cottons

Aristas roncas uniformadas de amenazas tejidas de esporas magníficas y con porteros botones innatos. ¿Se luden seis de sol?

Natividad. Cállate, miedo.

A persistent hoarse rasp of menacing tissue from splendid spores with built-in porters and messengers.

Do they scratch at six in the morning?

So it is born. Be silent, and fear.

Cristiano espero, espero siempre de hinojos en la piedra circular que está en las cien esquinas de esta suerte tan vaga a donde asomo.

Like a Christian I wait, I wait always on bended knee here on this circular rock in the hundred corners of luck so vague wherever I show up.

Y Dios sobresaltado nos oprime el pulso, grave, mudo, y como padre a su pequeña, apenas, pero apenas, entreabre los sangrientos algodones y entre sus dedos toma a la esperanza.

And God, shocked, suddenly bears down upon the pulse, heavy, mute, and like a father to his little daughter, barely, just barely, opens up the bloody cotton And from between his fingers plucks hope.

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Señor, lo quiero yo ...

Y basta!

Lord, I want this …

That’s all!

(Trilce, XXXI [pic] [The Paseo Pizarro in Trujillo, Peru – a crowded Street in the picturesque city where Vallejo, a country-boy, first experienced the city.]

This is a scene Vallejo, the medical student, likely witnessed in hospitals in Peru crammed with victims of tuberculosis, the dread disease that took his brothers and sister. Mentions of Christianity are rare in his poetry, but here the speaker prays on bended knee, placed on the earth, “this circular rock”, for no cause and where luck always fails. He imagines God the Father plucking hope from the bloody cotton and comforting his little daughter. The prayer is terse but certain.

Vallejo writes occasionally about being a poet. In one of his interrogation poems, he threatens his tormentors with printers’ ink, his writing a weapon against madness. “Que me da” reflects the uncertainty of his powers and his confusion, wielding his craft with only limited control, in a state of ongoing absurdity, in a middle state in which he is only partially alive and awake and in the world. ¿Qué me da?

What Gives?

¿Qué me da, que me azoto con la línea Y creo que me sigue, al trote, el punto?

What’s got into me, that I whip myself with the line and believe the period trots along stalking me?

¿Qué me da, que me he puesto en los hombros un huevo en vez de un manto?

What’s got into me, that I have placed an egg on my shoulders instead of a cloak?

¿Qué me ha dado, que vivo? ¿Qué me ha dado, que muero?

What’s gotten into me, that I’m living?

What’s gotten into me that I’m dying?

¿Qué me da, que tengo ojos? ¿Qué me da, que tengo alma?

What’s got into me, that I have eyes?

What’s got into me, that I have soul?

¿Qué me da, que se acaba en mí mi prójimo y empieza en mi carrillo el rol del viento?

What’s got into me, that my neighbor ends up in me and the role of the wind begins in my cheek?

¿Qué me ha dado, que cuento mis dos lágrimas, sollozo tierra y cuelgo el horizonte?

What’s gotten into me, that I consider my two tears to be the sobbing earth and the hanging horizon?

¿Qué me ha dado, que lloro de no poder llorar

What’s gotten into me, that I cry at being unable to cry The Linnet´s Wings 66

The Linnet´s Wings y río de lo poco que he reído?

and laugh at how little I’ve laughed?

¿Qué me da, que ni vivo ni muero?

What’s got into me, that I am neither alive nor dead?

In his early and best known work, César Vallejo is a morose clown, mixing his dreadful certainties of darkness with the casual chatter of everyday. His art is compact and tense, in language impatient with fancy dress. This is no languid tea-party filled with afternoon. He does not hide his distress in romantic notions of nature and lost gardens, of sonorous language and classical evocations. We are creatures illmade who strive for order and consequence, and both the struggle and the failure take form out there in the brusque language of the streets and in the swarm of gestures of thought that stage the interior drama of our fractured being.

In the Paris years that follow, Vallejo turns to the European crisis, his promise of Communism, and the bloody struggle in Spain to construct a human future. But that is another story for another time.

Bibliography: Brosens, Peter and Jessica Woodworth. Altiplano: Fragments of Grace. Bo Films, 2009.

[This lovely film evokes the beauty and pain of the Andean “High Plains”.]

Eshelman, Clayton and Jose Rubia Barcia. César Vallejo: The Complete Posthumous Poetry. University of California Press, 1980.

[Winner of the 1979 National Book Award, this extraordinary collection rescues Vallejo’s unpublished works and puts them in good order. The translations are excellent and bold and reflect the hard work in reconstructing Vallejo’s difficult language and local usage.]

Gonzalez Vlaña, Eduardo. César Vallejo’s Season in Hell. Translation by Stephen M. Hart, et. al. Axiara Editions, 2015.

[A novel that reconstructs Vallejo’s experiences during his Peruvian years, and especially his imprisonment. Sources for these events are scant, but this powerful book is imaginative and convincing.] ...

Malanga, Gerard. Malanga Chasing Vallejo. Three Rooms Press. 2014.

[Malanga’s translations, like my own, attempt to make Vallejo more accessible, and sometimes sacrifice his complexity in order to offer an easier reading experience. Malanga’s work is intelligent and graceful.]

Smith, Michael and Valentine Gianuzzi. César Vallejo: The Complete Poems. Shearsman Books, 2012.

[This is now the definitive collection and translation in English and includes not only the posthumous work but Vallejo’s published work also. The translations are precise and often creative. The book’s apparatus is particularly helpful.]

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[pic] [Santiago de Chuco, some 100 miles east of Trujillo, is the mountain village where César Vallejo was born and raised.]

All translations are by Stephen Zelnick, Emeritus Professor, Temple University, with a great debt to previous translators. Join the Neruda Seminar on Facebook for continuing discussion of Latin American poetry.

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They all crowded round it panting and asking, 'But who has won', Arthun Rackham 69

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Dan Plate

Jack After Being Up So High by Dan Plate Jack, the boy who climbed, climbed up and stole the sun. It glittered in his palm like green eggs. It sang like a broken chicken. He brought it to his mother, laid it in her lap, and said, “Take it. Take it, mother. Make it me; and I will go and sail off to sea.”

She petted it quietly and turned it over and whispered in its ear, “You are not him, you're just a pea, a green stone plucked from underneath a tree.”

Now Jack, the boy who climbed, climbed up to her and said, “I will not have you speak that way to me,” and took the sun and out the door and on until he spied a spinster.

She rested to her knees, part pale, part green; she wanted more than anyone should need: a boy to slip her body out to sea.

Poor Jack. The scene that followed played him out like stream on end of stream. He was blue lines by the end, worn to shimmering.

She said, “You're blue. How so?”

“You spread me thin. You witch, you cancer.”

It was strange, the tone, the scream. He seemed to drip. His legs stripped, ran anywhere.

His mind turned clear, white like an egg. He jumped to fly. He died. He tried everything.

Afterwards, from his castle (this was much later), he wondered, “If I hadn't left; if I'd left that sun up there and climbed on up that tree, I wonder . . . “ “Now Jack,” she said (she was at the castle), “Stop fretting, pick the greens. I've soup.

I've soup to eat, need greens.” ...

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Epigraph

of creation So have I borrowed Linnet's Wings plucked fragile cords from silent strings to sing their praises once again who echoed down that vast Amen.

by Oonah V Joslin

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Photo: Cathy Giles

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Cundonkin Park

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Vernon Watkins 1906-1967: A Bard of Bards editorial by Oonah V Joslin 2015

P

antycelyn, Ceiriog, Taleisin. These strange Welsh words were mere street names to me, elevated only by their positions, high on Townhill overlooking the city of Swansea.

Beneath The Round Top, Byron and Shelley held their own pinnacled crescents and therein lies the clue to the names.

Poets all: Taleisin was a 6th Century Bard whose name means 'shining brow'. Taleisin's work was passed down in oral tradition and “The Book of Taleisin” only written down around the 12th Century by which time he was a subject of, as well as a writer of legends.

William Williams of Pantycelyn is a name from the hymnal – writer of “Arglwydd, arwain trwy'r anialwch,” known to most as “Guide Me Oh Thou Great Jehovah.” John Ceiriog Hughes apparently wrote a Welsh version of “The Ash Grove.” The taking of Bardic names is a tradition amongst poets writing in Welsh; a tradition that encompasses song as well as verse and maintains a strong connection is maintained between the two.

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Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins were participants in a group of creatives known as The Kardomah Boys (poets Charles Fisher, Dylan Thomas, John Prichard and Vernon Watkins, composer and linguist Daniel Jones, artists Alfred Janes and Mervyn Levy, Mabley Owen and Tom Warner,) who met in The Kardomah Cafe which was bombed in WWII and rebuilt on a different street but with its original décor.

You can still go there today. They both wrote in English but the Welsh, like the Irish and the Scots, speak a different English and one can discern the tensions between the two language patterns in their written works. Those tensions are quite deliberate. We like our own words and rhythms. It is part of what makes us Celts.

Watkins, who was one of Bletchley Park's code breakers, also spoke French, German, Spanish, Italian and Magyar and translated poems from those languages. He thought it important that the translation be of a lyrical quality that defined it as an art form in itself. Meanwhile Watkins, having been prevented from completing his studies at Cambridge because of financial constraints, worked many years as a teller in Lloyd's Bank in Swansea and my husband remembers seeing him there – as one of the teachers described him – a real live poet! Watkins said that Swansea was “the enemy of reputation” and that it made artists “renew themselves”. Swansea is hard to impress. It's Bay has been compared in loveliness to the Bay of Naples but Swansea is a rainy, unpretentious town and it doesn't let its people get above themselves.

Dylan Thomas said of his friend Vernon Watkins that he was, “the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English.”

And Watkins wrote after Thomas’ untimely death: “The man I mourn is gone, he who could give the rest so much to live for till the grave, and do it all in jest. Hard it must be, beyond this day for even the grass to rest.”

Each valued the other's work enormously and to me it seems a pity that the name Vernon Watkins is not equally, widely acclaimed today. It is not as if Vernon Watkins went unsung in his lifetime. Indeed he won the Levinson Prize in 1953 and the inaugural Guinness Poetry Award for “The Tributary Seasons”.

He also received travelling scholarships from the Society of Authors and was made Doctor of Literature from University College, Swansea. And both men were celebrated and died in America. In 1967 Watkins became visiting professor of poetry at the University of Washington but died of a heart attack playing tennis, shortly after arriving to take the post.

Watkins wrote in praise of Taleisin several times and in these poems, he honoured the bardic tradition: Taleisin wrote, much as one might expect, on religious topics and in praise of kings and lords so it is fitting that he should be the subject of another poet's praise. In one of Watkins' poems, “Taliesin and the Mockers” he lauded the Bard as a bringer of light: “I am as light To eyes long blind, I, the stone Upon every grave.”

And one can see in the section below how he emphasises the religious themes in the psalm-like structure of the poem as well as giving voice to the eternal truths that the poet embodies.

“I was a lamp In Solomon's temple; I, the reed Of an auguring wind.

What do you seek In the salmon river, 74

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The Linnet´s Wings Caught in the net What living gold?

What do you seek In the weir, O Elphin?

You must know That the sun is mine.

I have a gift For I have nothing.

I have love Which excels all treasures.”

At the end it says: “Mock me they will Those hired musicians, They at Court Who command the schools.

Mock though they do, My music stands Before and after Accusing silence.”

Extracts from Taliesin and the Mockers by Vernon Watkins

That last stanza is very telling. For Watkins as for Tallesin, the poet is very much part of the eternal. He not only saw poetry as a bringer of light, but as part of God's glory; a sign of divine creation within man.

This brought to my mind some of the first 'studied' lines of poetry that impressed me as a schoolgirl and which I remember underlining in my book. They are from Wordsworth's ode Intimations of Immortality: “The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home:” So, in "Woodpecker and Lyre-Bird" Watkins writes: “Taleisin, body and soul Compelled his muscular song To gather glory unborn From glory already old.”

Watkins described himself as a Christian poet. Questions of life, death and transience recur over and over in his work.

“In all good poetry the transience of human life becomes an illusion,” he wrote.

He said that poetry Autumn 2015 75

The Round Top and Pantycelyn Road from the Mumbles at low tide

Oonah V Joslin

ought to be addressed simultaneously to the living and the dead. “If a poet dismisses the living he becomes morbid; if he dismisses the dead he ceases to be a prophet.”

He deals with the subject of childhoods cut short by war, cities changed by war and memories altered by war in this extract from The Broken Sea by Vernon Watkins.

"My lamp that was lit every night has burnt a hole in the shade."

What is it about that line that is so right that it burns into the soul? The bringing of light – of destruction – juxtaposition of the two in an innocent act – the sheer domesticity of it? It has a certain inevitable quality – that the light is bound eventually, to burn a hole in the shade. Light must necessariily expel darkness.

“A sea-wave plunges. Listen. Below me crashes the bay.”

This line speaks of natural change; the daily and very visible change in a town that boasts some of the lowest to highest tidal sweeps in the world. But in this poem an untimely destruction builds throughout 76

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The Linnet´s Wings the lines in images like smothers; the christening cup that was never given; the invisible thread; the criminal thumb-prints and swaddling shroud; the blown-up city; murdered; shattering .

“The rushing greedy water smothers the talk of the spade.

Now, on the sixth of November, I remember the tenth of May. I was going to fly to your christening to give you a cup.

Here, like Andersen's tailor, I weave the invisible thread.

The burnt-out clock of St Mary's has come to a stop, And the hand still points to the figure that beckons the house-stoned dead.

Through the criminal thumb-prints of soot, in the swaddling-bands of a shroud, I pace the familiar street, and the wall repeats my pace, Alone in the blown-up city, lost in a bird-voiced crowd, Murdered where shattering breakers at your pillow's head leave lace.

For death has burst upon you, yet your light-flooded eyes do not tremble” (extract) The poem touches on myth and legend and is a cry for the loss and pity of war.

In “Three Harps” which is perhaps my favourite, what are the three harps? The harp is an instrument of heaven. It echoes the Holy Trinity. The harp used as a creative device is here a shining inspiration. It represents the need to create: the need for flight: an arpeggio perhaps towards the light like Icarus' flight towards the Sun. This instrument of heaven is within the reach of man. The youthful ambition to take over from the father is strong yet almost unattainable: “A harp at arm’s length.” and is constrained by human limitations: “A harp a hand away Held by a human cord.”

That human cord is a broken thing and not musical. It gives us life and life teaches many lessons. One of those is that creation is not easy – it takes pains. It requires craft: “The second word of day; The second word:” he repeats. Poetry like life, has three stages; inception, work, completion.

And these three harps appear to have three woods too – cypress representing grief for youth, laurel representing fame and yew representing death – again mythical references.

“By cypress taught and yew, My soul I made Write old ambition new

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Oonah V Joslin And qualify the laurel’s shade.”

Life ultimately teaches humility.

He speaks of lying down. In Bardic legend the poet would retreat to a dark place and lie down to contemplate his work so the harps become a celtic symbol here also and there are three celtic nations in the British Isles; three harps; three voices. But we lie down too in death and in the creation myth (and this poem is all about creation) God made Adam lie down and took one of his ribs to form woman but all born of woman must die at last and so Watkins fulfils his idea of writing also for the dead in these lines: “I set one grave apart, Gave speech to stone:” and in recognising: “The end of birth’s enterprise And death’s small crime.”

Death's crime is 'small' because we all die and so in a way, death is only doing its job. Birth's enterprise has always been finite. This is the manifestation of “the shrouded harp” through poetry. And when he says: “I began To touch, though pain is sharp, The ribs of the man.”

This is visceral. Think how the unfleshed rib cage resembles a harp! It is painful to acknowledge that all the works of man, no matter how inspired or crafted, come to nought unless the man becomes the harp himself – a willing instrument of the divine. And so he pleads: “Come back to my sad heart And play this harp of bone.”

So Vernon Watkins is indeed a Bard for the living and the dead. An eternal.

Three Harps

by Vernon Watkins “Ambitions playing: The first, inseparable From gold-edged printing On Daedalus’ table.

Desire for flight: Chariot-usurping skill.

The god of light Torn from the godlike will.

What tears of amber, What pre-natal force From dawn’s dark chamber Fired me on my course?

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The Linnet´s Wings Three harps: one From emulation drew its strength.

The rising sun: A harp at arm’s length.

I saw the unknown, unshared, True grave. So I lay down; Lay down, and closed my eyes To the end of all time, The end of birth’s enterprise And death’s small crime.

The second word of day; The second word: A harp a hand away Held by a human cord.

By cypress taught and yew, My soul I made Write old ambition new And qualify the laurel’s shade.

I set one grave apart, Gave speech to stone: “Come back to my sad heart And play this harp of bone.”

Little for the sun I cared, Little for renown.

Then at once the shrouded harp Was manifest. I began To touch, though pain is sharp, The ribs of the man.”

I hope my little tribute will encourage you to seek out his works.

Oonah wishes to acknowledge: McCormick, Jane L. The prose ofVernon Watkins.--. Diss. Theses (Dept. ofEnglish)/Simon Fraser University, 1969. as a source for quotations by Vernon Watkins used in the writing ofthis article.

Creation of the World IX by Mikalojus Ciurlionis

...

BETHLEHEM by alisa velaj I had never set foot On that land Yet my memory fled there Following a star And began to shine

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Alisa Velaj PILLOWS OF SOUNDS by alisa velaj

What more do you seek from sunsets, man?

A bunch of copper leaves Fell on the strings of the guitar leaning against the tree trunk And slept the most anxious sleep Using sounds as pillows The solitude of seas persecutes the leaves in dreams Like the shadows of seasons do to man What more do you seek from sunsets You being that keep travelling on the shores of oblivion?

The guitar will always succeed In weaving serenades An inexistent bridge can connect no river banks Be a sunrise if you want to understand the sunsets, man Someone called the Caspian Lake a ‘Sea’ And to this day they write it so on every world map …

MOZART APPEARED ON THE STAGE by alisa velaj They all said that There was the place where acacia flowers take their rest They all said that And a child pointed to Salieri’s grave Lying a little further ahead At dusk when oblivion invades the rivers Mozart appeared on stage holding acacia flowers in his hands And wept ...

Translations from Albanian to English by Ukë ZENEL Buçpapaj (These poems are included in Velaj's poetry book "A Gospel of Light" published by Aquillrellle.)

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Photo: Cathy Giles

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Carla Martin-Wood

Thanksgiving by Carla Martin-Wood Before we descend into winter purple twilights, numbing glare of snow and ice, let us delight in November gold embrace its small rains, dying leaves wet and bright against black bark its mists that shawl the mountains let us mark remnants of Monarchs that dare the stark and final nectared hour and farewell cries of geese in V-formation silhouette against the grey and glower let us hold these days wholly this season of cider and smoke and know that nothing is final yet, let us praise feasts prepared by hands diligent and loving crops gathered in by hands rough and torn firewood stacked and waiting and while in every corseted garden tasteful and blueprinted April slumbers oh, let us honor the wild, wild fields where rampant runs the sorrel’s flame punctuated by late marigolds and weeds that do not even have a name.

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Title: The Boat, Artist: Cathy Giles

The Album by Nick Bowman

We open the bottom drawer. It rasps in its weight with a sharpness that aggravates new wounds, its screech is shrapnel past our ears.

The contents rattle our excitement though we should be grieving.

We are kneeling at an altar to her life. In its depths our sighs swerve like swallows. This is a guilty pleasure as we pluck at the filigree of her life; childrens’ drawings, pasta necklaces brittle with age, holiday tea towels never used, their folds set in years of darkness.

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Nick Bowman

We have differing shades of association as we pass these parcels. “Oh look” you say at each turn as the sarcophagus, laid bare, exhales its contents.

At the bottom of this bottom drawer, the depths kept for winter showers in the armchair, we find an album.

She had been to Germany after the war.

There had been silk pictures from the Black Forest, a wooden plaque with its teutonic inscription “Gib uns heute unser tägliches Brot”.

She had taught us to count to ten as she gave us our daily bread.

Now huddled quiet on the bedroom floor we see the ghost of her at twenty four, hiking with friends in unknown hills, lounging at a café flaunting the smile of youth with the sun in its face. Faded notes in white ink confirm names and places, as though left for us.

We stop short at one. She is holding flowers, in front of a sign which catches our breath: “This is the site of the infamous Belsen concentration camp”.

Behind it, desolation. A tall wooden cross stands stark at the world’s end. It punches a hole in the sky.

Her silence on this is suddenly resounding.

All those years, not mentioned once.

Was it unimportant? After children did this life seem archaic, the perspective of it lengthening its shadow to a rock in a distant sea?

Was it our selfishness that never thought to ask more about the dreams of this woman, younger now than us?

Outside the deep blue sky slowly darkens.

She has crossed a bridge between her life, and ours, and we wonder, in a new found loss, where she laid her flowers.

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Cathy Giles

Title: Rolling Pin, Artist: Cathy Giles

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Amma’s rotis by Anna G. Raman The ingredients are always the same.

Holding the end of her colorful sari, I watch as she soaks the flour in warmth.

She kneads what she feels, into the dough with gentle, expert hands, and lets it sit while I visit the kitchen every minute.

She makes perfect little spheres without wrinkles or cracks.

She knows the first few are mine, as I collect from the kitchen, tumblers of different sizes, plastic knives, and spices, to model and make dough-men, with black-pepper-eyes and mustard-seed-smiles.

When she rolls each one out, it spins on the wooden board, like a merry-go-round cheering children, even those simply watching.

Each roti is a perfect circle as if drawn with a pair of compasses.

When she puts them on the hot tava, they puff with life and my mind soars higher than a kite in a fine breeze.

The aroma of warm wheat is the same as the scent of the earth, that rises, before one can see rain falling.

The ingredients are nearly the same.

I stare at the blob of wheat on the wooden board in my white kitchen and my mind whirls around it struggling to make it as perfectly round as Amma’s rotis.

(roti – a type ofIndian bread; tava – a griddle; sari – a long, colorful, usually patterned cloth, traditionally worn by women in India)

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The nine-yard sari by Anna G. Raman It’s all about auspiciousness – the arduously decorated wedding hall, with its yellow and red aesthetics, bright and prominent, the music played by the two men - the thunderous thumping of the majestic thavil and the loud notes of the long nadaswaram, rising above the noisy chatter of the mingling crowd, through the open entrances and windows, seeming to invite the inhabitants of heaven, the priests’ incantations and prayers, invoking Gods, Goddesses, and sufficient goodness, the yellow turmeric and red vermillion on the tray in my hand, and on the bride’s forehead.

Her red nine-yard sari serves the same purpose, its unending length being fervently folded and pleated, woven around the bride’s waist and shoulders, by women in her dressing room until her shy face and braids are seen again.

The energies now converge - the thavil thumping faster, the nadaswaram louder, the priests’ recitations strained, as the bride is promptly placed in her father’s lap.

With the strength of the moment, the groom holds the string stained yellow and the couple gets rained on with petite red petals of polite wishes, as he ties, the fragile knot. (thavil – a barrel shaped drum from South India) (nadaswaram – a popular South Indian woodwind instrument known for its intense volume and

strength)

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He’s old, so old he doesn’t worry about it anymore What’cha got there, boy?

Liquorice pipe

He gets out his own pipe takes a drag The boy pulls a face Mine’s better

The old man laughs

Well, I aint got time t’quit now

The boy hands him his last pipe Try it, sometimes it turns your teeth black, but that’s it nothin’ else

The old man studies his pipe only pleasure left but he knows what the boy means So they sit there smoking two pipes grinning while their teeth go black Mock Turtle, Arthur Rackham

Pipes by Barry Charman

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Carla Martin-Wood

by Carla Martin Wood

Auld Lang Syne

a fairytale

Deepnight, otherwhere and faraway fireworks Van Gogh’d inexhaustible heavens with swirls of stars that fractured, shattered a momentary scatter of emberfall prismed through treetop silhouettes midnight bells splintered voices of our friends lively greeted one another while evanescent kisses sprouted glass stiletto’d dreams in champagne addled heads beGrimmed by such enchantments beneath that carnival sky wayward child I believed everafter could be happily now and such love bloomed so unseasonal even the mothering earth embraced me joyful as false spring until fast fast that icy stumble down the stairs the tattered gown the tangled hair the broken coach the fall brief as pyrotechnic stars dark dark and burning out skies blacker somehow more empty than before.

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Illustration: Cathy Giles 91

Autumn 2015

James Graham

Autobiography by James Graham My mother was conceived three months before her father went to his grave in France.

In 1935 my father, out of work, pulled last week’s paper from the bin, found a situation vacant, moved to another town, and met my mother.

We are accidental. I found myself in a small town with Sunday bells, a moor to the north with heather and bleak farms. My mother sang Dream Angus. Southward, the last working horses ploughed. It was Scotland. There has been time to walk sorrowful Strathnaver with a wife I loved, to love and speak to warm applause the wise comedies of Burns, to give some days to music, some to flowers, some to words.

Almost time enough, these fortunate waking years.

Bless the new children who will happen here.

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Title: My Dancer, Watercolour Study, Artist: MLF, 2015 (Following Rodin) 93

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Julie Hogg

Dull day at the beach by Julie Hogg Between Jerez and Cadiz, operating on a mezzanine level at the end of an indolent morning, stifling a yawn and stretching itself out way beyond the last letter of the alphabet, a Costa de la Luz cloud is kissing the sting out of the sun like a dock leaf. Two red dragonflies paso-double through a reconnaissance mission, skimming surfaces of cooling sand and vacuity left by a lizard split seconds ago, before slipping from rocks of intertia into deeper pools of poignantly still water.

Sparrows sip up Atlantic Ocean whilst a single wave side-strokes along the shoreline, resembling a momentarily arched eyebrow, subtle nuance of swaying palm tree on a printed sarong, pitch perfect riff off a song, or a lukewarm feather across a jawline.

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The Rose, Artist: Cathy Giles

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Patricia Walsh

False Detective by Patricia Walsh A benevolent informant, a world of persecution skulks in corners awaiting doom. twelve-year's old life is interesting now.

A dictionary of anger, biography of outrage.

She'll hang you out to dry, no mistake.

What crime fits the punishment I'll never know.

Staring out windows, a multiplication salves all curiousities save depression.

Attention sought and delivered in time.

Freedom for discos is out of the question.

Social life unimportant, toxic at best paving ways towards derision, if you're lucky.

Healing the brain is another question entirely.

Inside and upstairs will keep you sweet an illusion of studying for ever more.

Letters to friends go censored.

Phone calls go through silent screenings to glean some excitement, an innocuous scandal.

Every move I make is known, for my own good paranoia becomes me, a constant glare in the corner watch my back for the reporters, fleeting as they are.

A rod for my back, repeatedly every day around surreptitious corners, looking with intent on my latest design, however chaste

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Geese in Flight before a Full Moon: Ohara Koson

Hand Travel by Dave Morehouse Tractor trailer vortex Buffets up And under, her collar Thirty minutes or so Her shoes shuffle shoulder gravel

It races by Too close Lifts her tattered Goodwill dress Leaves an acid-edge scent of diesel In its wake

A pickup on the horizon Makes her turn back, slog forward She knows better than to get in Learned the hard way

The Salvation shelter of Memphis Is a single hitch away It would be good To arrive before dinner soup is gone

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Dave Morehouse

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Listening to Maria Callas

by James Graham My neighbour’s van growls by with a stuttering crescendo and a long diminuendo down the hill. Another snarl: a rotary percussion drill, or something, wakes like a serpent de profundis, performs its ugly upward slur, and whines.

Enough. I power up my gentle engine.

Track seven. Preset.

Strings whisper like blown grasses, then the first note breaks like a morning sun through smokeless air.

Casta Diva, she implores. O virgin goddess,

we behold your lovely face. This voice of one who was no angel, is lovelier than all the invisible choirs we conjure.

It falls without slur across a pensive interval, and my tears obey. There is no other sound in all the universe.

Spargi in terra pace, she cries out.

Sow peace on earth. When the long last chord is breathed, then the innocent tools and motors may repeat their tuneless tunes but the howls and rat-a-tats of armies, let them be now and always silent.

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James Graham

Title: Two branches with leaves, Artist: Eugene Delacroix

The Linnet´s Wings

Breaking Branches by Ronald E. Shields This home where I spread thin my youth has become bitter with death.

I don’t know how my brother can live here.

I have returned to take Aunt Vicki to the place where she will die.

The old woman comes quiet as a saint.

The day wears on us, too many papers to read and sign.

We begin to stretch taut nerves.

She decides it is time to go home – there is too much sunlight through the window.

The nurse pulls the shade next to Vicki’s bed, finally it is dark enough, she is safe from a ravenous sun.

When the doctor arrives he suggests sleep would be best perhaps a pill will help the patient rest through the night.

Under a shattered sky each of us lives between thin layers of beginning and end, light and dark, asleep and awake, An empty halo drifts above my ghost of a skull.

Time is a tree and all our lives breaking branches.

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Ronald E. Shields

y G i le h t a C rtis t: A , d u le a o y e r Wh e : n o i t ra I llu s t

s

The Linnet´s Wings

People in rooms by Gemma Meek I tempt fate.

I give it red eyes and sharp teeth and ways of knowing the things I fear.

I should learn to shut my mouth.

I’m trying my best to survive here, sitting on this hard wooden chair with my chin resting on my hand resting on my arm leaning on my elbow.

I’m doing the best I can here as I sit looking out at another fading day with the bridge in the distance seeming to say, come here, follow me.

Good men and good women still die alone.

I stand and push the chair back, a pained scraping noise on the floor.

Moving quietly to the other side of the room I lie down on the bed and pick up Bukowski, wishing I had money for beer.

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Gemma Meek

Surface tension by Colin Will

Tango by Frantisek Kupka

The Linnet´s Wings

Tombstoning on the coast or bombing at the baths we like to make a splash.

Touching the surface we pass straight through into liquid, feel the smack of impact on the part that hits first.

Which of us hasn’t felt the sting of a bellyflop? And the faster you fall, the harder you hit.

It’s a matter of scale; to midges and pond-skaters the surface is as strong as a trampoline, hard to push through, easy to slide on.

At the lowest level it’s a balance of forces at the interface between air and water.

Below there’s a dance of molecules, linking and unlinking as tenuous attractions form and unform, holding water together.

Electrons, each a fuzzy point of charge at the end of a leash of force, are more stable in pairs, spinning in opposite directions. At the top of water, stretched in a plane, their tiny tugs are stronger, last longer, until a body breaks them.

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Colin Will

The Fool of a Cloud, Marie Fitzpatrick, Watercolour Study

The Linnet´s Wings

Thunderstorm by Nora Brennan It wasn’t that the sky split open above our heads or half the variegated laurel bush in the lawn turned black that July afternoon, shades of Golgotha on the horizon, the still, heavy air interrupted when wild animals, loose in heaven, trampled the blackened clouds, my father, back early from the fields– an ominous sign in itself on a July afternoon– joining us in the dining room to begin a long litany of prayers; my mother, hearing loud rumbles, a clash of horns, interrupting Hail Marys to plead with God not to pierce the house with crooked forks or incinerate the electricity transformer in the Orchard Field but that I was kneeling next to her, my head resting on her heart, she with her arm around me, drawing me close.

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Nora Brennan

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Autumn Berries, Cathy Giles

Moving On by Eira Needham I toss in sleepless ripples, overwhelmed by mother-thoughts.

She surges across the turf of her new home, arms outstretched - legs no longer disfigured with fluid.

Her kisses cover my damp face calming turbulent waters.

I bask in her bubbly chatter meeting new friends. Surely Eva drifted away last year.

Marvelling at her upbeat state Has medication changed?

Staff smile. It is a miracle.

Surf swells uplifting me; I'm buoyant in her warm embrace; goodbye.

Sleep’s ocean pillows a soft caress and soothing whisper; her aura lingers.

I wake refreshed in a tranquil tide pool sensing I've journeyed through a celestial porthole.

Ashes committed to the deep

many years have passed; Mother.

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Eira Needham

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The Owatonna Library by Ronald E. Shields A black bear rears up, ponders the long ripple in the grass beyond, the space of its wake in the grass behind.

A cold hard lamp comes on over the prairie.

Its echo shines through a window miles away.

The Lakota woman hands me a book our fingers touch, the footsteps of a thousand generations pass beneath our feet.

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Ronald E. Shields

Title: Bouquet of Flowers, Artist: Odilon Redon

The Linnet´s Wings

The Silver Birch at The Botanics by Maggie Mackay forTommy andNessie Mackay Our memorial tree stands in a grove of six, leans back on its black rugged base deep-rooted in the soil, a celebration.

Male and female catkins keep company, as husband and wife, father and mother, souls intertwined in spring renewal.

Grasses, mosses, wood anemone, a clump of bluebell gather beneath its shelter, draw blue through light-green leaf canopy.

A woodpecker forages for grubs in a branch.

White bark is paper tissue curl, it sheds like tears.

Diamond fissures grow henna dark-deep.

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Maggie Mackay

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How Facebook Helped a Girl To Get What She Wished For by Miki Byrne Tagged in Facebook photo’s. She expected comments.

Warm anticipation filled her, brought hope of party memories. Cool. Fashion forward.

Blinged. Like an Oscars of their own.

They had papped each other. Bent into celeb poses, taken pouting selfies. Phones fireflies, flickering.

Next day comments boxes shrieked.

‘Too fat for that’. ‘Dress like a tent.’

‘Fat pads not boobs,’ made her cry. How unsexy she was.

Gross. A lard-assed lump too ugly for words.

Stripped, she scrutinised her perfect self.

Eyes blurred by hatred. Blind to normality, adolescent bloom.

Her appetite recoiled. Withdrew into a tight kernel.

Closed her throat .Dinner was refused then and slow withdrawal from fridge raiding. She became busy at meal times, Found convenient diversions. Ran to burn calories, danced in frenzied sadness.

Mum heard retching behind the door. Smelt toothpasty vomit on her breath. Worry brought heads crashing. Hard words bruised both sides. She smiled as weight tumbled.

Loved hip-bones like clam shells, A hollow sided face.

A clinic was found as she lay. Wrapped in Mums questions.

‘Why did they say that? Why did you listen?’

‘But Mum,’ her whisper replied, ‘These are my friends.’

Woman catching firefly by a stream by Utagawa Kuniyoshi 106

Miki Byrne

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Is the boy there again in the dark ofthe hallway in the cold face turned to the crack oflight hand reaching?

Time will come seeping.

Call up the sun light to blast doors and walls to splinters.

Then bring the old man his supper beside the hearth he made meat broth and bread thick curls ofbutter.

Artist: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Title: Fire

A place by the fire by Bill West

This is the boy cutched by the fire mother sister father brother.

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Bill West

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Talc

Pale air stirs, startled from its humid nap by the cool pinch of a breeze. Evening stomps its boots across the porch, peering through screens, as a Texas Autumn tries to get in.

Crickets, waking to a red-tipped sunset, lament the flat lamplight that spreads shadows too thinly over slices of bleached wood. A mouthful of smoke, exhaled into the dull darkness, carelessly drifts from dry lips tucked between thin jowls. I watch it slip out of sight from where I sit on the steps. The boards creak I as shift my feet and pull a thin jacket closer.

I recall exactly the last time I sat here. The trees had tight, light green knots that dotted their grey brown limbs. The air was fresh and just as rough as the bark in the early sunshine. You sat beside me then, the way your ghost sits beside me now.

Your outline drifts a bit in the glow of yellowlit windows as I shift a little more. A whiff of talc, measured and faintly pungent, scratches my nostrils. It used to perfume your rooms. At my side, a third cup of bourbon melts ice while I watch another smoky exhale lift to caress your face. I long for it to be my hand, at least one last time.

It had been your plan for me to leave back then, when months had rambled on with no work loitering around after graduation. The beginning of a new year had left me restless. You could see it whenever I spoke, in the way my eyes always darted to the horizon there beyond the sweet gums. I thought I’d been clever, hiding it, not wanting to leave you alone. You said, as your hand cupped my chin, that the conflict creased my smooth brow.

That last letter I wrote nestles in my back pocket. I discovered it earlier where it leaned against a tiny crystal vase on the desk in my old bedroom, the one you used as an office. I smiled when I found the computer I had shipped to you still boxed in the closet. A worn pair of house slippers rested on top of it. I didn’t write often, though, because you preferred a phone call. Such, you said, was like someone’s ghost paying a visit, speaking without really being there.

There was no directive, I’m told, just the gravel that popped under the paramedic’s truck, a

by AKeith Walters

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The Linnet´s Wings last testament as it pulled away from what little you wanted. So I imagine. The morning rose and walked forward into a shiny afternoon, leaving you behind. You had stopped to sit in your rocker, to listen no doubt to those damn doves nestling in your sweet gums. Your voice never broke through the phone lines, either. You had no cell so I will never know if you wanted to call one last time.

So I don’t know what you want me to do. This house has become a home of recollections, those relatives of memories that never visited until the end. The little town down the road had gathered like a flock of crows to carry you, a captured trinket, to the local pasture that served as a small graveyard. They left a marker behind as if that was where I would find you. Knowing better, I stayed where I belonged.

Here, your face became my face, like a double-exposed snapshot taped to the morning mirror. I see it when I shave, when I wipe the frost of steam away from the glass and find you looking out at me. Your smile remains for a moment before disappearing under the razor.

The kitchen window, small sharp panes with years puttied in the corners, reflects your eyes as I stare out over a cup of coffee. An early morning presses against the edges. Bacon and eggs pop in a skillet behind me, your favorite meal.

Walking through the rooms, I hear those damn doves, again, cooing beyond the screens.

They whisper your words in the small foyer, their echoes in a slow-motion swirl of dust bunnies.

A wood-burning stove sits in the center of the front room, blackened and unused, worn from pushing short winters out beyond the threshold. An empty pewter pitcher rests on top.

You must have kept cut flowers there. The central heater beat the lack of broken wood years ago I wait, away from the closed doors, to take an afternoon nap that becomes a growing ease on a elongated couch under a spread you made from old flannel shirts. A light wrap with an odd touch, like your arms around me, keeps the ceiling fan’s stirring fingers at bay.

It is when a less yellow sun slips behind the sweet gums that I scrape a shuffle in your slippers across the wooden floor, the polish mostly worn near the screen door. I carry another cup of bourbon out onto the porch. Grey shadows spill across the boards, yours moving among them as I go to wait on the steps. In the red-tipped twilight, your ghost comes to sit beside me, again. It stares at my duffle leaning against a rail, mindful of the locked windows and doors. No lamps are lit, but I can still see your face translucent in the glow of my cigarette, in the drift of its smoke. Your eyes watch as I pull on my boots. Your face places its frown in my direction. I can not look away and yet, it tells me that you know I can not stay.

I toss back the last of the cup and leave it next to a stained terracotta pot. My pickup across the yard keeps it place on the gravel, its red paint a dark maroon in the evening. From behind the steering wheel, I look back at the house, a bulk of slate against the curtain of sweet gums, the wooden porch steps vacant, but bowed a bit, from where you used to sit.

As I pull away and turn the wheels down a narrow road lit by the headlights, I look in the side mirror. Something, the breeze maybe gently twisting twilit tree shadows, or you in your housedress blending with them as they gather around, leaves me with a slivered feeling like a hand raised in a final corrugated farewell.

Then, for a moment, like a brief sniff of talc when opening an old bureau drawer, I see your reflection on the windshield, half-smiling at me as the truck jostles along the rutted road, as if to let me know you will always sit beside me at the end of a day, that you are really no more than a thought, if not a cup of bourbon, away. I glance back again at the shrinking porch and watch your house, once full of jutting angles pegged with life‘s rich garments, become a flat folded square, a last letter tucked into the envelope of night. And I see that I leave nothing more behind than an abandoned construct of the past.

Autumn 2015 ...

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Fallout

The Linnet´s Wings

by Katharine Crawford Robey

Woman, Watercolour Study, MLF 2015

“No binoculars?” The guide, a tall, handsome thirty-something Aussie asked Alicia.

“I came to get away.” She’d flung her engagement ring at her finace and leapt on board the first ship bound for sea. Now, sixty seasick miles later, she was at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. The boat gently rocked at the small pier behind her.

Larger birds than Alicia had known existed floated on the sea breeze. They gazed down at her benignly.

But her heart was palpitating, fingers cold.

The destination wedding was tomorrow. Breakfast service had been good. Her fiancé hadn’t even tipped. It wasn’t right!

Birdwatchers, interesting men, swept her over the moat, into the courtyard. The guide was at Alicia’s shoulder. “It’s a fallout!” he exclaimed. Afternoon light played over his turquoise shirt. He reminded her of the changing sea.

“A what?” she asked him.

“Fallout. Wind and rain forced them to fall out of the sky.” He swept his arm gracefully back and forth. “Look!”

Birds of every size and color clung to bushes, hugged branches. Blue, yellow, indigo, red. The tiny island was covered with birds, and men.

“They just flew five hundred miles over the Gulf. They’re exhausted. ” The guide peered at her. “You look flushed. That straw hat’s not doing much good.”

They entered a lush and shady grove. Alicia splashed cool water drops on her hot face from a small 111

Autumn 2015

Katharine Crawford Robey three-tiered brick fountain, fanned herself with her hat. Her fiancé would never take her to an enchanting isle like this. He’d said Key West was exotic! She pictured his rigid back, filing into the Audubon House in a starched shirt while everyone else wore a t-shirt or less.

“Only fresh water for miles and miles.” The guide remarked. He smiled at her, then up through lacy leaves to the clear blue sky. “Stars will be out to guide the birds north tonight. Poof! Tomorrow they’ll be gone.” He patted a bench. “Sit here with me and enjoy the show.

Alicia sat. The guide’s warm side touched hers.

A black and white scissor-tailed bird flew to the fountain. It balanced on the rim, and drank, then tail floating, glided away. A flash of her fiancé all dressed up in tails came to her. He’d taken her to an opera in their town. He was carrying two flutes of champagne, resolutely, swiftly, sailing downstairs, eyes sparkling at her.

The guide whispered. “You’re smiling. Ah, the Swallow-tailed Kite.”

“Elegant.”

A scarlet colored bird with black wings appeared, sipped, raised its throat and drank—she lifted her own throat. The bird plunged in and raised its black wings, about to bathe. “Raise your arms,” her fiancé had said to her, on his knees beside the tub. “I’ll wash you there.”

“The Scarlet Tanager,” Alan announced.

“Marvelous,” she replied. Two little yellow birds fluttered in and splashed up water. “Charming. But so quiet ... can’t one maybe hum?”

“When they get home to nest, he’ll sing !” Alan said triumphantly. His voice soared. “Tomorrow we visit a wild and beautiful Key. Peregrine Flacons, turquoise water, sand even whiter than this.”

“Falcons!” She pictured those dashing birds. “Tomorrow?”

“We don’t return to Key West for two whole mornings, Alicia. Talk about getting away!” His hand brushed her knee.

That very morning, just as she’d landed in Alan’s boat, her fiancé had shouted, “Stick with me!” She rubbed her naked ring finger. Blood rushed to her cheeks. Pressure throbbed in her head.

Out of the shadows, a man in khaki pants appeared. “Hydrofoil for Key West-five minutes.”

Alicia rose unsteadily to her feet, glanced back at Alan and the birds, then dashed to the pier and onto the strange-looking boat. ...

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Corridor in the Asylum by Vincent Van Gogh

by

It’s Like That

Catherine Power Evans

The realisation that life can change in the time it takes to form a thought is dramatic. One minute I’m all Jaegerbombed up, dancing with my girly crew to ‘Blonde’ blasting out ‘All Cried Out.’ The next minute the mobile lowers from my ear in slow motion to a world that now spins on an entirely new axis. Just like that.

Clichés swirl and crowd. Lines of words—phrases—slide off the walls like flocks of word birds. Swooping in streams they target anxious, helpless relatives in A & E cubicles. They don’t help, those sayings that bombard the void in my skull, ricocheting against feeble, flabby nothingness. Numb bum. Numb brain. Is this what happens in these situations?

In these situations. I whisper needlessly. Even at this dead hour of the morning,

the footfall of staff wearing out the floor tiles is constant. The clip-clop clickety-clack or the slap-slap-slap of varied soles briskly emphasise their owners’ attendance to the seriously ill and those teetering on the brink of existence.

Medical angels battle on through the night, coaxing or sometimes shocking weakening bodies from the warm cloud of illumination seducing them to another realm.

Porters push beds round corners with surprising dexterity, rushing the prone and the prostrate to places where diagnoses and death sentences are deciphered. Wavelengths and WiFi are the tools of the day. A cleaner wipes bio mess from surfaces. She is diligent in erasing beginnings and endings. I have to lean forward on the chair to rest my palms against my eyes. They feel scratchy and heavy.

What is happening? I’ve fallen into a role: I’m living the cliché. Like a scene on a TV drama, I find myself acting as the person waiting for their loved one after a sudden Autumn 2015 113

The Linnet´s Wings trauma. I wonder which camp I’ll be in by dawn! The thumbs up gang or the other—like those Roman gladiators. What if the doctor sucks his breath in like the plumber did when our boiler packed up? (Which is actually hopeful since he managed to overhaul the boiler—at a cost that made my mother suck in strong words.) The other option was the grave sympathetic face: the doctor fills the air with sentences you know mean something if only you could arrange them into some sense. A newfound empathy with the plight of dyslexics is brought on by the current tangled web of intangible, floating, spoken words congesting your ears.

There will only be one future: one reality despite anything I do or fail to do. The realisation is not comforting. A new taste floods my mouth. When the inevitable happens and I actually do puke, it is partially on the floor, partially in the toilet bowl of the bathroom through whose door I hurl myself. In cruel irony, even when I think I’m done, the smell of bile makes me dry heave. I remain kneeling, unable to relinquish my desperate grip on the toilet seat I was strewn over. Hygiene, or lack thereof, made me think of food poisoning. It was an unfortunate idea that sends my vision swimming as my aching stomach endures another impotent retch.

The tap water in a cupped hand takes the worst of the acidity from my mouth and I begin to rouse from the enclosure of the bubble of sickness. There is stomach splatter on the new black suede heels but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters now. I wipe the shoes idly with toilet paper because of some vague urge.

It’s funny how small, irrelevant things keep you going when there is no clue what else to do. There’s a strong wish to flush reality down the pan and watch it swirl out of sight.

Doctor Atkins sits me down. He looks like Grandad when I was younger. It is neither of the imagined options: a mixture of both. Dad has a brain injury. Swelling on the brain. He’s in an induced coma to help him. Some of the doctor’s words register: recovery, time, wait and see. Trying to digest it all on an empty stomach isn’t easy, I can’t decide if it’s good news or bad. The urge to pinch myself is strong though I resist. Atkins waits. Raising my eyes to his, he proceeds with more words: optimistic, good odds, occupational therapy. And the scariest: quality of life Leaving the hospital to grab some things from home—just for me Dad has no need of anything right now bar prayers—I feel the terrible burden of being responsible for someone else. Everything has turned upside-down. Only now do I truly know how Mum and Dad felt parenting me for all those years.

At twenty years old I thought I was grown up, but I grew more in these last few hours than in all the time before—since I’ve been on this planet. Shamed, I give myself a mental shake. A deep measure of breath expands my chest and moves it upwards. In that moment of inertia things seem so much clearer, more concrete. I set my shoulders back and lift my chin up. Finally, I set my eyes straight ahead ready to face my new role.

Life—and death—really is just like that. ...

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Archie Fights Pike-Eye

by Bill Frank Robinson

Boy on the Rocks by Henri Rousseau

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L

Bill Frank Robinson

onnie is walking home pulling an ancient toy wagon. The wagon’s bent rusty wheels wobble and squeal under the heavy load of his auto mechanic’s tools and a crate of oranges. This is the first day’s work he’s done since the killin’ and he don’t feel good about it. He never should’ve repaired that truck but Harvey Hyde talked him into it. Good ol’ Harvey everybody’s friend on the south side; a poor man could always get credit at Harvey’s grocery. But if Caleb Toolbee found out he hired Lonnie the kindly grocer would be run out of town. What’s more Lonnie agreed with Toolbee; he didn’t deserve to live let alone work; he should have found a better way to handle things rather than kill that kid. Hell, he was a fighter. He had whipped hundreds maybe thousands of tough guys and nobody ever got hurt.

If he couldn’t out muscle a man he toyed with him till the man was tired: nothing took the fight out of a guy like being so worn out he can’t raise his arms. Never mind the DA refused to prosecute and the grand jury refused to indict. Lonnie was never going to forgive himself for killing that boy.

Lonnie nears his house and stops dead in his tracks: there’s a crowd of people in the alley behind the house. He grabs the oranges and tools leaving the wagon sitting empty on the sidewalk. Throwing his burden on the porch, he dashes into the alley and pushes his way through the milling spectators.

Archie’s worn-out tennis shoes are pointing skyward. Lonnie shoves people aside and sees Archie, blood pouring from his mouth and nose, lying with his head in Grandma’s lap. Grandma’s crying. She looks around at Lonnie. “I didn’t go to do it. He just walked into it, that’s all.”

Archie, his eyes closed, begins choking. Lonnie goes to his knees and seizes Archie’s head and shoulders, turning his face to the ground. “Let’s turn him over so he won’t swaller his own blood. What the hell happened?”

Grandma cries louder, her body shaking violently. Lonnie looks around and he sees a pair of boxing gloves lying in disarray on the ground and Archie has the matching pair on his hands. “Grandma, did you cold-cock Archie?” Grandma shakes her head but the evidence shows different. Lonnie’s face breaks into a wide grin; he scans the crowd. “Whatta ya know? Grandma just put Archie down for the count.

Hee! Hee! Now that boy can call hisself a man: ain’t everybody can say they got knocked out by Grandma.

Come on, boy, git up. Hell, if this’ the worst that’s gonna happin’ you’re gonna have a soft life.”

Archie, aided by Lonnie, staggers to the fence, grabs a rail, and vomits blood onto the ground.

Chapter VII Archie is lying on the couch in the Johnson’s front room. From time to time he rolls on his side and vomits into a bucket on the floor beside him. Grandma has moved her rocker up to the couch and is holding Archie’s hand. Lonnie walks by, opens the front door, and steps across the threshold.

“Lonnie, come back here. This boy’s in bad shape. We gotta git him to a doctor.”

Lonnie closes the door and walks back to the couch and looks down at Archie. “He don’t look so bad. I’m going out back and kill that old stewing hen I been saving. Fix him up some chicken and dumplings and he’ll be brand new.”

Grandma shakes her head. “I heard tell that if somebody gets hit in the head and starts throwin’ up it’s a bad sign.”

“Naw. That’s an old wive’s tale. Chicken and dumplings will do him good. Besides I got a fight 116

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lined up for this Saturday. ” Grandma is perplexed. “A fight? With who?”

Lonnie’s face breaks into a big grin. “It’s a perfect fight for Archie. Pike-Eye Monahan.” ...

Saturday, September 27, 1941 Archie rolls out of his blanket on the kitchen floor. Foreboding seizes him, chilling his body to the core. This is the day he’s been dreading. The day he’s going to fight PikeEye Monahan. Pike-Eye the toughest meanest kid on the West Side. He hears and smells the bacon frying at the same time. He looks at Grandma as she moves the bacon around with her spatula.

“Bout time you woke up, sleepy head. I gotta get some victuals in you. Get you ready to give that monkey the whippin’ he’s been asking for.” Grandma’s smiling, almost laughing. How could she be so happy when Archie knows he’s going to lose this fight?

Archie begins dressing and thinking about he’s the only guy in town that has two homes. He spends most nights here with Grandma, Lonnie, Molly, and Andy but on Mondays he stays with his mom. She still works in Tracy and comes home on her day off to clean house, do the laundry, and buy a sack of groceries. She knows about his living with the Johnson’s and says it’s a Godsend because Cab’s hardly ever home. She just knows that things will open up for her in Modesto one of these days—the blackball can’t last forever.

The back door opens and Lonnie Johnson comes crashing in. “Hot damn, Ma! I been walking around the neighborhood and everybody’s talking about the fight. They wanna see that Pike-Eye feller get his’en. It’s too bad Molly and Andy ain’t here to see it.” He turns to Archie. “How ya feeling, laddie?

Ya ready to take that feller apart jest like Grandma and me taught ya?”

Archie nods his head. ...

Pike-Eye Monahan is the leader of a gang of boys that have earned a bad reputation in the neighborhood.

Pike-Eye, for reasons unknown, has declared a vendetta against Archie. A vendetta that culminated when the gang swarmed over Archie as he walked home from school. Lonnie leaped into the melee and sent the boys scrambling. All but one, he slammed Pike-Eye against a fence and held him there. “Ya little weasel. If it’s a fight ya want, it’s a fight ya gonna get. Be over to my house next Saturday. We’ll put the gloves on ya then Archie’s gonna give ya the whuppen’ your mama never gave ya. Don’t try ta crawfish out neither ‘cause I’m telling everybody and if ya don’t show, everybody’ll know what a yeller dog ya are.” ...

The alley behind the Johnson’s house is filled with people. Young people, old people, even mothers carrying their babies. Archie sees most of the kids he knows watching him, pointing at him, and talking with smiles and excitement pouring from their bodies. The crowd leaves a small clearing in the middle of the alley.

In this clearing Lonnie is kneeling in front of Archie tying the boxing gloves on him. “Now remember, you can fight and he don’t know how. He’s gonna rush ya and try to drive ya straight back. Don't back up. Don’t back up and don’t back up. All ya gotta do is step to the side. Keep moving to one side or the other. Don’t let him get his butt behind him. Make him keep turning ta face ya. Don’t even try ta hit ‘em the first couple of times he charges jest make him miss and …”

Grandma shouts from the back porch. “Lonnie, you gonna jaw or you gonna get this fight underway?

You got another fighter to tend to. Remember, you’re the referee.”

Autumn 2015 117

Bill Frank Robinson

Archie watches as Lonnie moves over to tie the laces on his opponent’s gloves. His cronies, who are laughing and joking, surround Pike-Eye, but the gang leader doesn’t look happy.

There is so much to know so much to think about. Archie looks at his boxing glove. He used to think the glove was to protect the head, soften the blow but that’s not so; it’s to protect the hands and let the fighter hit harder and more often. A fighter with bare knuckles would feel the pain and not be able to hit so hard and often.

“All right. Archie, get over here.” Lonnie is pulling Pike-Eye by his arm to the center of the alley.

He grabs Archie’s arm and pulls him close. “This fight is under the Marquis of Queensbury rules. No hittin’ below the belt, no wrasslin’, and if ya tie up, break clean when I tell ya to. We’re gonna have three minute rounds with a minute rest in between. If ya get knocked down and don’t get up by the time I count ten, ya lose. This fight is to the finish.” He motions the fighters back a few steps then claps his hands. “Start fighting.”

Archie looks at his opponent’s face for the first time. The dead fish eyes and angry scowl send a cold shiver through his body. Grandma’s instructions roar through his head. “Circle him. Concentrate on defense and don’t even try to hit him. Wait till you get him stumbling around then hit him with all ya got.”

Archie sidesteps as Pike-Eye charges forward. It works: Pike-Eye stops and turns as Archie circles.

Archie holds his gloves close together and high around his face; Pike-Eye holds his gloves chest-high and wide apart. Archie’s thinking, “The guy don’t know nothing,” when Pike-Eye lunges with a round house right. Archie ducks and throws a right that connects. Pike-Eye staggers backward, fighting to stay on his feet as blood gushes from his nose.

“I wasn’t supposed to hit the guy yet.” The unspoken words take over Archie’s mind as he looks at Lonnie. But Lonnie’s looking at and following the wounded fighter.

Grandma leaps off the porch and pushes her way through the crowd. “Hit the son of a bitch again.

Hit the son of a bitch again.”

Archie turns his face toward Grandma, trying to understand what she’s saying. He sees a blur of color out of the corner of his eye then something hits him hard in the back of the head.

“One … two …” Archie’s looking around, trying to figure out what hit him. He’s lying on his back.

The ground’s what hit him. He’s been knocked down and Lonnie’s counting to ten. “Three…four…”

Archie rolls over and gets on his knees, everything’s spinning, everything’s out of focus. “Five…six…”

Archie wobbles to his feet. Lonnie grabs his gloves and rubs them against his shirt. “You OK? You wanna go on?”

Archie says, “Yeah.” And Lonnie steps back. Pike-Eye, bloody face and all, runs at Archie swinging round house punches before he gets close. Grandma once said, “If ya get knocked cock-eyed don’t try nothing fancy. Jest block, grab and hold till your head gets right again.” Archie wraps his gloves around his head, blocking punches, and when Pike-Eye crashes into him he grabs with both arms. Pike-Eye spins and throws him to the ground.

“There’ll be none of that. That’s against the rules.” Lonnie pushes Pike-Eye back, shaking a finger in his face. Archie climbs to his feet and Fat Oscar rings a cowbell. Lonnie says, “Round’s over. Go back to your corners.”

Archie looks for a corner, spies Grandma and walks over to her. Grandma says, “He gotcha a good one, closed that left eye right up. But you got him a good ‘un too. Soon as you get your legs under you, you’re gonna beat him easy. Just keep circling and crack him ever chance you get.”

Archie looks at Grandma’s smiling face and realizes he can only see out of one eye. Now that he knows about the eye, it’s starting to hurt.

Fat Oscar rings the bell and Archie springs forward. He feels good now. He circles Pike-Eye and jabs his left to the head and then down to the body, dancing in and out, careful to keep to the side of his 118

The Linnet´s Wings

The Linnet´s Wings unskilled opponent.

Pike-Eye is reduced to warding off the jabs with both gloves extended and stumbling off balance, always turning in a circle.

Archie walks to Grandma at the end of the round. “My jab ain’t landing.”

“That’s because he ain’t fighting. Feint with the left and throw your right. If you nail him with some shots he’ll quit.”

The third round begins and Archie lands his right sending Pike-Eye staggering backwards. The confused fighter backs into the crowd and is pushed back into a torrent of punches. He slaps blindly and lands on Archie’s injured eye.

Archie screams and grabs his face, moving away from his adversary. Now it’s Archie in full retreat as Pike-Eye runs after him, swinging with both hands. The bell rings.

“It feels like somebody shoved a hoe handle in there and twisted it three times.” Archie is leaning down and Grandma’s holding his face, looking at the eye.

“It looks bad but I’ve seen worst. Give yourself one more round. I don’t think he’s got anything left.”

Grandma squeezes water from a sponge onto her fighter’s head.

Pike-Eye is dead tired as he walks out for round four. He ducks a right and drives a right uppercut into the groin. Archie drops to the ground and rolls around in pain.

Lonnie pushes Pike-Eye in the chest and shakes a finger in his face. “Ya do that one more time and I’ll disqualify ya.”

Back on his feet, Archie swings wildly and is dropped by another low blow.

Lonnie screams at Pike-Eye, “Ya just lost the fight. Give me my gloves and get the hell outta here.”

Archie is lying on the couch with an ice pack on his eye. “I won the fight but I don’t feel like I won.”

Grandma says, “You won all right. That monkey’s never gonna bother ya ever again.” ...

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Autumn 2015

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