ARP
WINTER 2004
Nicholas Vinocur
MY REMOTE WEIGHS A TON
2
Kanishk Tharoor
THE LOSS OF MUZAFFAR
3
Taylor Chapman
CIZUR MENOR,SPAIN, MAY 2004
9
Katherine Sims
UNTITLED
10
Paula Brady
SMALL BONES
12
Adam Eaker
NU-WAY CAFE
13
Yali Lewis
UNTITLED
14
Nicholas Vinocur
CLUTTERED MIND
16
Matthew Schneier
FRANCISCO DE ZURBARA.N
17
Emily Anthes
POSTMORTEM
18
Alexander Nemser
DESERT
19
Daniel Kluger
UNTITLED
22
Elizabeth Gumport
THE HUDSON RIVER WIFE
25
Taylor Chapman
IZZY,SPRING 2002
26
Lucy Teitler
KINGS OF OYSTER BAY
27
Annie Galvin
CAMDEN,MAINE
34
Ivy Wang
THREE STANZAS ON WIND
35
Daniel Kluger
UNTITLED
37
Table of Contents
My Remote Weighs a Ton Nicholas Vinocur
THE LOSS OF MUZAFFAR
The poison hid from Muzaffar's body until his fourteenth year with the Celestinis, when it flooded arteries and a melancholy aorta. Everybody talked about him. Doctors said he died from a sudden failure of the heart while Grandpere Celestini whispered of the unbearable guilt Muzaffar must have had to live with after pocketing the family sapphires, even though the Celestinis, such good people really, decided against accusing someone so stalwartly loyal to them. Others, surprised that such a lean and reticent man suffered from a heart condition, blamed the unpredictable nature of old age. But in the back of the neighboring townhouse's bottom floor, where the Haitian maid slept amidst the ghosts of toppled towers and the aromas of Muzaffar's irresistible cooking, Etoile suspected something else when she tasted secrets in the bitter smell of fried okra. Etoile never ate the food from Muzaffar's kitchen; few who knew of him in New York ever did. The Celestinis sheltered their extraordinary cook until his name became a rumor, his talent a legend amongst postmen and dog-walkers. Grandmere Celestini seldom shared Muzaffar with guests, anxious that one mouthful of biryani or a lick of jasmine sorbet might cost her the family chef, for these were hard times, and even the proud Celestinis could not pay as much as their deeper pocketed friends. Frequent visitors to the household, therefore, grew to understand the distinction between invitations to "High Afternoon Tea" and dinner. The latter were rare indeed, perhaps once a season, while the family held teas weekly on Thursdays at precisely 4:35 in the afternoon. Little brownhaired Leila would languorously stir the pot of ginger Darjeeling while her twin Malcolm, with the gravity of
ritual, would daub twenty-two cups each with a spoon of honey. He'd leave one cup unsweetened for Mariko the corner clairvoyant, who liked entering seven minutes late in a fog of scarves and omens. The psychic always arrived first — punctuality was desperately out of fashion in their neighborhood,even more so than elsewhere. But the Celestinis waited quietly for the publisher, the wine-seller, the Tibetan refugee with a meaty smile, self-referential artists, the Jerrells who floated back and forth from the Hudson to their Caribbean home, Alun the flutist, retired diplomats from Grandpere's working days, Leila and Malcolm's small waddling friends from school, a journalist called Viorel, neighbors they liked, neighbors they disliked, and Cecil, who always seemed lost even when he strolled in last carrying a bottle of brandy and reciting Persian poetry. Once all were snuggled in the red glow of the sitting room, Maman Celestini would pour the tea while Papa Celestini carted out trays of diamond shaped egg sandwiches and loaves of pound cake he loved making himself. Everyone ate while babbling between bites and gulps about the latest openings in Long Island City, Malcolm's recent soccer trophy, or the Chinese diaspora in St. Kitt's. Cecil recommended a jot of brandy for everybody, but after being repeatedly rebuffed, he fell into his customary wingback chair and grumbled at a wizened and deaf man (whose suit everyone admired but whose name no one remembered, not even Grandpere) about the stench of the distant Upper East Side. The old man would grin thinly, but kept his eyes on Alun the flutist's dancing fingers. Few ever skipped Celestini teas. Celstini "dinners," on the other hand, were known for their scarcity and overwhelming awkwardness.
The Loss of Muzaffar Kanishk Tharoor
4
Whenever the family particularly felt the burden of overdue social etiquette, Papa and Maman decided on two guests and had Muzaffar prepare a slightly larger meal than usual. He also made the table, traced with his long fingers and favorite calligrapher's pen the names of the guests on place cards, straightened the mahogany dining chairs, lit two candles and then disappeared into the kitchen to await the tinkling of Grandmere's bell. She only used the bell on these occasions as it allowed the family to avoid calling out his name. As Muzaffar flashed in and out with platters and bowls, the children remained stonily silent throughout, though any guest could hardly fault the two. Leila drooped in her chair, choked by a dozen layers of pearls, while Malcolm's cheeks flushed the same color as his impossibly bright red bow-tie. The rest of the family hurried through the meal, eyeing their guests. Her forearms wrung by glittering bangles, Grandmere sat up straight and let her hooked nose arch grimly towards the visitors. Grandpere talked little. Instead, he cast worried glances from the food to the bathroom in the foyer. Papa and Maman played the reluctant hosts, dully mouthing questions-aboutthe-job or indictments-of-Bush that faded quickly into a sip of wine or another nervous pause and did nothing to lighten the stifling mood of gloom. Visitors would take their leave abruptly after eating, breathing deep relieved sighs once they reached the pavement outside. Of course, these dinners were all successfully choreographed to distiact guests from the splendor of their meal, the incredible sensibility of Muzaffar's cooking hands — such was the Celestinis' dependence on a man who they found one winter afternoon curled on their front-stoop with one palm cupped against his forehead, mumbling words they never understood. "Aadaab arz," he had said then, each gentle syllable rolled to an incomprehensible perfection that, for days after, made Malcolm and Leila scamper about the house murmuring "aadaab arz, aadaab arz" to each
other while thrusting little hands to their heads until three syllables and one motion became their eternal secret language. Grandmere had brought the man inside instantly. She had Grandpere and Papa lay his thin, long frame on a sitting room sofa, while Maman brushed the ice from his cleft chin and plump eyebrows. But as soon as Grandmere stomped off to the kitchen to make tea, the man sprung up and followed her through the house, running his fingers along the ochre walls. Grandmere was stunned when, after a brief glance around, the man busied himself about shelves and stoves, a flurry of hands and feet, like those of a dancer missing his stage. The Celestinis crowded in front of the pantry door, watching in tremulous anticipation. He stopped suddenly, turned on one heel, approached the huddled family with four even strides, and presented a mug to Grandmere. "I am Muzaffar." His voice sounded like a quilt. It was the best cup of tea she'd ever had. Without much of a fuss from anybody, the Celestinis adopted Muzaffar, initially out of Grandmere's insistence that humanity had an obligation to protect thin people from winter and then permanently after Muzaffar's voluntary assumption of all duties within the kitchen. Against polite protests and the furious batting of his eyelashes, the family forced a salary upon Muzaffar, a monthly wad of bills half of which he tucked unceremoniously into the back of a kitchen drawer,next to the fondue forks,and half he left caught in the springs of the cot he kept in the kitchen. Papa and Maman had felt exceedingly uncomfortable (or at least felt that they should feel exceedingly uncomfortable)at the prospect of a slender brown man toiling for nothing in their home. As Papa explained to Grandmere one evening, peering over the top of his newspaper, the money justified the man's role in the house. How else could they understand his most bizarre presence?
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Though Grandmere accepted her son's clipped reasoning, she had guiltily entertained fantasies of a man so warm and generous that he would respect welcome and shelter with a passion for kitchen-work, that relationships need never make economic sense as long as they were dimly poetic. His reluctant acquiescence in a wage cast Muzaffar as her romantically tragic (or even tragically romantic) hero. This veiled dreaminess of Grandmere's, uncharacteristic for a lady who woke up at five past six every morning to ensure that the baggy eyed Sanitation Department truck picked up all the garbage in front of their stoop, had already infected the entire family. It seemed that Muzaffar's arrival tickled the Celestinis out of character. In the first weeks, Grandpere began to return from his daily dusk strolls with pots of petunias, which he had Leila and Malcolm balance on the many crumbling window-sills so that pink petals fluttered against the grey face of the house. Grandpere hoped the effect would make their home look like Florence, lavender memories glimmering again in his eyes. Meanwhile, Maman dragged the children into the kitchen, where, to Muzaffar's great bemusement, the three Celestinis proceeded to make guava jelly from a faded family recipe. "Our generation doesn't make jam anymore!" she berated Papa the next morning. Papa, too consumed by his own bout of fantasy to care for confectionery, spent day and night rearranging and dusting the family's horde of books. At least two rooms in each of the townhouse's three floors boasted floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall book shelving, all of which suffered from a severe case of accumulated disorder. He decided to set things straight, whizzing zealously about with a plumed duster and knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System. Suddenly, the poems of Mahmoud Darwish no longer found themselves besides Herodotus, Calvino extracted himself from Sun Tzu, Walcott escaped the clutches of DurIcheim. Papa even found the fake book in which Grandpere had intended to stow the Celestini family
sapphires but had instead left adrift alongside Brecht (snatching the fake book from her son and glaring at her bemused husband, Grandmere placed the jewels inside the book's hollow and slipped it innocuously into her study). After twenty-one days, Papa became hopeful. Perhaps, he obsessed, if he could order the incomparable insanity of the Celestini bookshelves, reason would even return to the warring world. Humanity, after all, was nothing but a library. Papa finished his work a month later, happily optimistic and blissfully unaware that Malcolm and Leila had switched books around in his wake, sowing the seeds of new chaos in unknowable whispers, "aadaab arz, aadaab arz." Muzaffar was absorbed by the Celestini household through these abrupt impulses, through a family epidemic of mischievous inspiration, and, above all, through the unrivalled superiority of his cooking. Breakfast, packed food for the children's meals at school, lunch, a light tea for Grandpere and Maman, and dinner. The cycle repeated itself daily, Muzaffar's tireless work pausing only Thursdays in the afternoon, and sometimes when it had snowed lightly and slush had yet to fill the gutters. The elder Celestinis insisted he take more breaks, even offered to pay him for time off, but he shrugged them away with a delicate smile and an even more delicate mango mousse. How could the Celestinis complain? Malcolm and Leila never lacked friends throughout elementary school, middle school, and even high school as students crowded about them during lunch period, hoping for a nibble of sun-dried tomato ravioli or finely spiced merguez. In college, many a steamy night for both Celestini brother and sister began with a dark chocolate torte or several portobello pancakes in a mint sauce, which always arrived at their dorms neatly wrapped in white packaging and including a card that, in elegant letters, read, "Aadaab Arz." Grandmere and Grandpere also benefited from Muzaffar's food. Despite their steadily
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advancing age, they never contracted arthritis, hemorrhoids, bladder irregularities, Alzheimer's, cancer, or even the common cold, though Grandpere still occasionally developed cases of gout (that he blamed on his ancestors). Like both grandparents, Papa and Maman thrived off their cook; during Muzaffar's fourteen-year tenure, none of the Celestini adults felt any older. Time thickened and settled about the house like beaten cream in a soufflé. Muzaffar, too, didn't grow older, only his eyebrows evidenced the passing of time. They billowed and turned a quiet silver, two lost rain clouds above the doldrums of his eyes. This graying struck the family as particularly odd since Muzaffar seemed altogether outside the bounds of history. Each of the Celestinis soon realized that it was pointless inquiring about him. If asked about the land of his birth, or his age, Muzaffar would laugh and later emerge at dinner with a grilled swordfish and declare,"This is where I'm from!" or, after placing a goat cheese tart on the table, clap once, "That, my dears, is the sum of my years." Likewise, he explained his ethnicity with a chestnut soup, while his childhood was one of eggplants and quails. His family consisted of twenty-four cup cakes, he elaborated his political beliefs in dumplings, and the path that had finally brought him to the Celestinis' stoop appeared in the suggestions of seared asparagus. Grandmere suspected Muzaffar hid himself in his food so that the Celestinis.would digest bits of him every day, only ever knowing the man by his endless flavors. It seemed, to her, a wonderfully appropriate game for their sublime cook to play. In this way, the Celestinis never saw Muzaffar outside his talent. But he was not what he cooked, or at least, not entirely what he cooked. Every Thursday afternoon, as the Tibetan refugee sung from his throat or as Viorel took black-and-white photographs of Leila and her little friends with their jaws set and fists in the air, Muzaffar drifted about the city When the sun was
out, he'd join pickup soccer games in the park at St. Luke's Place. During the World Cup,these games grew in length and intensity spilling into the streets after the park closed at dusk. Muzaffar was always the referee. Other Thursdays, he went east to Ludlow Street where he joined an old Cantonese lady whose earlobes brushed against her shoulders and whose eyes were as still as his. She sat cross-legged on a bench blowing smoke-rings from a thin water-pipe. He liked letting the smoke out in slow thick streams through his nostrils and would sit there, watching buses and taxis blur until the coals died out. When it rained and only soggy black shapes slunk through the streets, Muzaffar ran alongside Alphabet City boys, spraying 'East Side' on unsuspecting West Village townhouses — but he always did steer the boys away from the Celestinis'. No one in the house knew of their cook's wanderings, none thought Muzaffar capable of anything else. So it was that whenever he traced his way back to his adopted home, past Mariko's ramshackle stall, through the misty lamplight of Commerce Street till he reached the old stoop and the pink-flowered grey townhouse, Muzaffar belonged to New York City, not the Celestini kitchen. Etoile the Haitian maid watched him from the ground-floor window of the neighboring townhouse, watched as he paused before mounting the Celestini stoop, watched in winter as he skimmed ice from the wrought-iron railings with a slender forefinger. Perhaps it was understanding that drew her eyes. She,too, belonged to New York City—as much as she did to pots and pans and red-cheeked babies, a vacuum cleaner, or even to the divine smells of Muzaffar's cooking that spread through the walls of townhouses and into her daydreams. She was still daydreaming the infamous day New York lost its topless towers, the day ash fell like snow across the neighborhood, the day Mariko forgave the future and closed her shop, the day before Muzaffar's last. Fire trucks and ambulances zoomed through the
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catatonic streets, chasing billowing black clouds. Schools with many windows and barren flagpoles emptied. Hulking office buildings ground to a screeching halt. Lower Manhattan stayed eerily silent, gagged by yellow caution tape and the soot-laden air. The Cantonese lady abandoned her bench, earlobes swinging behind her as she fled to Flushing, while footballs lay strewn about St. Luke's Place like the toys of mischievous ghosts. Somewhere, giants began to play with the television and wrinkled white men, staring grimly towards Heaven, decided the fate of language. It seemed to Etoile, now once again beside the groundfloor window, that the neighborhood, the entire city even, was sinking into an alien world of ash, interminably grey, and powerfully lonely. She fumbled with the nozzle of her vacuum cleaner, longing to suck away all the soot, longing to return color to her Commerce Street suddenly stiff in black-and-white silence. But in their upstairs playroom, babies broke into wail and drew Etoile from her grounded flights of fancy. In his kitchen, Muzaffar abandoned a promising lunch and slipped like shadow through the Celestini house. He had made a decision. Expressionless except for his stormy eyebrows, which writhed upon an unruffled brow, Muzaffar stole into Grandmere's study, found that book he knew to be a fake, and from its hollow, removed the Celestini sapphires, sneaking a storied heirloom into the pocket of his apron. The jewels had been taken before. They were stolen first almost two hundred years ago, on the green island of Ceylon, where colonial officers made men slither through the mines in search of stones more precious than their lives. A grizzled jewel-cutter, his eyes turning to milk, slid the sapphires into his underwear and descended from the mountains, through a forest of eucalyptus trees, and came to the port. He sold the stones to a sea captain for enough money to soften a long, jagged life under empire. Tucked within a crate of tea, the sapphires sailed past the hills of Aden, into
the bustle and dust of Zanzibar, and round the nose of Africa till they reached the Canaries when pirates set upon the ship and stripped it of all its cargo. Craving the gleam of Malay pearl, or Indian silver, or even Chinese oranges, the pirates found only crate after crate of tea which they sold in disgust to a distributor in Cadiz. The sapphires soon crossed through the Pyrenees, looped around Marseille and tumbled through the Tuscan countryside to Florence, where they emerged quite unexpectedly in Elio Celestini's morning cup of tea. He jumped from the veranda of the villa, yelling for a larder girl who, with a quivering hand, pointed out the recently purchased package of Ceylon tea leaves. Years later, Elio would tell his children of how, by God's infinite grace, the Celestini family had been given jewels as blue and true as their eyes, and that, as long as the sapphires stayed within the family, the Celestinis would be content and have no secrets to keep, and would never forget their history. The sapphires lingered long in Florence, only leaving in Grandpere's breast pocket more than a century later when he escaped decline and crumbled grandeur for Paris and the warm arms of Grandmere. They rented a walk-up in the Marais, and together learned how to dance and how to think. In those days, sapphires glimmered and spun within the bowels of Grandmere's record player. But, restless again, the Celestini jewels followed the inexorable historical current that brought the family to the grey townhouse on Commerce Street where they could shelve all their books and put their sapphires finally to rest. Muzaffar waited a day before taking the sapphires out of his apron. By then, Grandpere had already opened the empty book. The Celestinis had skittered about the house,going through the motions of a search for something that could never just be lost, unwilling for the first time in fourteen years to bring themselves to the table and eat. It was a only a matter of hours before eyes turned on the cook, sapphire eyes crying
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both for their broken New York City and their suddenly missing past. Grandmere's nose bent viciously as Muzaffar removed the platter of tangerine couscous from the table. "How can you think of food at a time like this?" she hissed, "Is it all you care about?" He said nothing but glided back and forth from the kitchen, untouched dishes in hand, while Grandpere muttered black thoughts in the dark of the foyer bathroom. Maman collapsed in the sitting room, feeding herself spoonful after spoonful of her guava jelly as Papa, unable to reach the twins at their dorms, let the television wash over his numb eyes. Alone in the kitchen, Muzaffar poured the sapphires out onto the countertop. The Celestini family jewels were each no larger than his thumbnail, uncertain teardrops under the pale kitchen light. He scooped them all into one cupped hand, and with a flick of his wrist, dropped them into an already sizzling pan. Amidst onions, red peppers, streams of purĂŠed tomatoes, powdered turmeric, cloves, and a mound of chopped okra, the sapphires tossed and fried. In all their travels, they had never encountered the fervor of a cook possessed, the heat of a man breaking from his adopted home. Muzaffar's eyebrows twitched with each shake of the pan. He stirred relentlessly, so frantic in his movements that even his eternally still eyes swirled, catching the blue, now brown, now green light of sapphires disappearing into a stir-fry. Then he stopped, apparently satisfied with the thick smell of burnt okra clouding the kitchen. There would be time, later, he knew, for families to eat and forget, to float uninvited from place to place, to speak words no one understood, to love the city with their eyes, even to be a New Yorker and serve nothing, but not now. Not when colors had fled the world and left maids alone, clinging to unspoken odors. With serene and slow bites, he finished the entire pan, waiting for the poison of the Celestinis to spread and preserve lost history in the memory of his food.
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CIZUR MENOR,SPAIN, MAY 2004
Cizur Menor, Spain, May 2004 Taylor Chapman
1: )
UNTITLED
Katherine Sims
12
SMALL BONES
With the same gasp of realizing the crunch under the tires was a breaking heart, the final swipe of his garden rake turns up a hand. A woman's pale hand. Splayed like the dactyls of a red Chinese maple leaf(there is one crumpled nearby, a thin, smoldering shadow of the thing), a violinist's fingers rest. Pushing the oaks, the maples, the ashes aside, an arm claims the hand, a shoulder, a neck and a face masked in fallen leaves— she lies, a ripple, snaked and still. He is mistaken. The wind shifts the browns and ochres, and the arc of half-moon nails is gone again — her hair was brittle hay, her eye, a broken robin's egg. But later, there she is again, floating nude in a billow of steam from the stove, leaving small bones in a silverware drawer, lips at the bottom of a glass.
Small Bones Paula Brady
NU-WAY CAFE
In Wichita, where my mother was born, we had hamburgers and limeade at the Nu-Way CafĂŠ. There was a skinny boy behind the counter, in whom I recognized my own effeminacy, and a girl with thick tattoos roping her arms. Together they led a half-hearted chant, "Five-Six-Seven-Eight! God, I Really Hate This Place!" and my mother, who had not been to her hometown in years, looked elegant and alien, and I regretted my second hamburger, that I could not go with the girly boy and the tattooed girl to their concert in Salina, regretted that my mother had married her East Coast professor, that her wedding ring now lay buried in the folds of her underwear drawer. I regretted pretty much everything, and the boy behind the counter gave me a free bottle of Dr Pepper. At the door my mother said, "I have a sister buried here somewhere." She cried just a little in the parking lot, then straightened up her make-up and checked the map before planting us back on the road.
Nu-Way Cafe Adam Faker
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UNTITLED
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Yali Lewis
16
UNTITLED
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Cluttered Mind Nicholas Vinocur
FRANCISCO DE ZURBARAN:THE VIRGIN AND CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF NAZARETH, 1640
The humans only human: even the Christ child, mouthpiece of angels, his cheek is only as red as the heavy book on the table, the blush of falling pears. And in the corner, the white birds discuss what's still pertinent: the weather, how their cousins are, and what they are going to wear. P
Francisco de Zurbaran Matthew Sclaneier
I?
18
POSTMORTEM
This winter, the deaths seem equally uncountable. Each month clenches in a translation of loss, abandons another chance in the abdomen, drops it through a tear into the insistent womb. Heaving, the doctors flung me open, found the leaking ovary, the lidless eyeball, eggs dripping out like tears. Or cells spilling out like images that hit the eye but revert to waves, reflect back off the retina. Each day is full of things I might have seen: rooms I might have built, strings I might have tied, trees I might have planted or uprooted. The surgeons untangle the roots, tie off each stitch around the failing bulb still buried in the body's red folds. They say the other will still push fruit into dry summer. But I resolve to surrender the vigil, know even the luckiest will inherit only amnesia, the evaporation of color and sound.
In the Dominican Republic, the bees hone to the orchids, the crimson throb seducing the drones to pass the pollen on. The plants spread to the edge of the sea, the water bore two girls sharing a single skin, the priest guessed and baptized the conjoined twins as two. They gasped for air together for eight days, and when they stopped, the island thought to open the body up, to see if one soul or two had died — as though the grief would have been any less if they'd only found one heart inside.
Postmortem Emily Anthes
i
DESERT
Night Watch My sullen night stretched so far past the dusk I couldn't stay to see it lift. Our hours On watch extended past the dunes then closed In groggy silence, and my sunburned hands Were always shaking afterwards like compass Arrows, too hot all day to try and sleep Inside a tent whose sides could power a bulb. Our war was waiting for a fire to start. In the blind dark, I packed my bag to go. The zipper on my tent purred slowly shut. Outside, I squinted for the sand. My footsteps Fell soundless on the ground in front of me. A breeze blew up a broken sheet of dust And the moon,though dimly, lit my absent path. First Day We trained to kill as soon as we touched ground. Instead, I choked on sand and sweat myself A final shower through my shirt. Along The road, I thought we might see SHELL around Some turn. A flat meant broiling like a fish. At camp, we killed time playing cards for pinups Or doing sinldng pushups in the sand. The water bad, we brushed our teeth with Coke. That night they tried a raid and shot small holes In my resolve. A dozen plus, I heard, And heavily armed. I fired four rounds at nothing, Then,skulking out the skirmish in a tent, Covered my ears as night exploded orange, My eyes so stung with dust they would not tear.
Desert Alexander Nemser
20
Lost The highway kept the desert from collapsing To two dimensions,flattening to a postcard. I'm nowhere. Land extends beyond its edge. Directionless, each step leads only to Another angle on the same horizon, And wobbling like an astronaut along A wing, you feel your feet no longer walking, But suddenly moving everywhere at once. These bushes keep hushed. Clannish,spiders speak Low,only to each other. Dust whips by Too fast to hear. The heat repeats itself, Though I can't listen to it anymore. I'd ask the sand-scaled viper for the way Out to the sea, but I don't speak the language.
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Arabic Each mark a motion caught in ink, a dancer's Slow kick, a series of bowing waves, the path Of spilt salt—sharp J's sloping up and I's Like silhouettes of men or minarets Seen miles ahead. Sometimes a number I Could recognize: the year, a price for dates Or Dexedrine; the street-side signs defiant As captives, every book impenetrable. Our hands did all the talking, gave commands To cars in gestures:"Stop,"(a palm outstretched) And after,"Move Along,"(a rolling wave). Thumbs up for soccer balls, down for Saddam. In crowds,I'd cross my arms and shake at all The baffled curses hurled in my face like sand.
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RPG From fourteen-hundred hours to evening chow, Our time got thick. We pitched a football, filled Past tight with air for tires, about to split. snapped too many index Touch only Fingers and we remembered afterwards Who hit too hard, who rushed the line, and watched Them usea fork or check their action for grit. When everyone had rushed the line, we broke.
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What their team threw at us, we couldn't catch: Mortars, grenades lobbed high like practice flies. Patrolling convoy routes, we stopped to fuel. They caught our back; a smoke-tailed pointer missed My head by hairs and damned the ground. The hole I tore in my stunned tongue could pass a dime. Stinger I sent my foot to slaughter in a boot. At dawn,I flunked the desert's hidden test, Forgot to check, and felt the needle gouge My naked heel. A shock of throbbing pulses Shuddered along my leg like eels. Removed, The insect writhed in sand, its stinger slung Behind its head, a curling orchid's bulb, Then clicked away and left my blood to gallop. I felt my plangent heartbeat in the ground. Rolled on my side I watched the strips of cloud Burn red and singe the morning. Underneath The cruel, incessant quarter of the sun, My water bottle's level made the best And only progress of anything for miles.
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UNTITLED
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Untitled Daniel Kluger
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Pilot His mother sent him pictures of his truck, A pickup, hubcaps polished every time He stopped to fill the tank, as clear as mirrors; The dog, who'd lost an eye last spring; his town, Apollo, Pennsylvania, near the falls On Roaring Run;the watch his uncle won From playing cards; his empty chair at dinner, Audacious as the space left by a tooth. We traded rifles, scripted final letters And promised their delivery home. At night, We planned escapes to Istanbul to join The dervishes. Eleven miles from Baghdad, I stood, dumb as a cow,and watched two choppers Collide like fists and spin across the sky. Letter to C—,M—,unwritten I dreamt you sprained your ankle yesterday, Did you? Remember June, before I left, Thunder all week: we drove my father's car Into an ill-starred power pole and made The bumper arch its brow at us. Our cracked Left arms in lolling slings prevented us From holding hands, now walking everywhere Like love-struck missionaries in the street. It looks as though I'm never coming home To you, despite my word. My helpless mouth Is filling up with sand instead of words For you. I've got your letter memorized— We'll take the boat on the river by your house, And cross from bank to bank,in love, in love...
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Rain The desert never shuts its eye, but mine Can hardly see the dust. I tied my shirt Around my head like gauze to fight the glare. But is it night or afternoon? A plane Flew overhead, a fighter by the sound. I tried to shout, but after it had passed, Once the roar had died away,I heard the shout, Buried alive between my lungs and throat. Beneath me now,the sand is sinking down. I'm sinking with it, too: my thirsty fingers Won't pull me out in time. I thought I saw A rain cloud forming like a nucleus Above my head, and felt the moment just Before a storm,as tense as —water—
Boston A Spanish cannon towered near the Common, Hollow, but heavy as a galleon's mast, Beneath the State House portico. The swans Had fled the pond already, leaving only Their coy, mimetic boats to grace the water. Across the park, I held my father's hand As we passed the site where freemen clustered close To watch them hang the witches and the traitors. The sky was purple when it snowed at night. We took the tunnel underground to catch a train And waited on the bustling,sooty platform. When the doors closed, shuffled by the crowd, I found myself alone inside the car. Breathless, I rode until I fell asleep.
N emser
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THE HUDSON RIVER WIFE
We spent an entire Saturday at the museum. Your hair reached your waist, then. Eddie saw you in Chicago, he says you've cut it, and you've got a lovely neck. That day we stood by Egyptian stone, and dropped pennies in the reflecting pool. I thought perhaps you would be my wife,
I
and we would share decades' newspapers, and drink tea in darkened kitchens, and I would touch your skin for years. My scarves slept in their drawers this winter. The subways flooded, and the snow in front of my apartment froze like glass. It's March now. The winds still come, blowing hard and silver from New Jersey, and the island sleeps cold and solemn. If you're ever in the city, give me a call. I bought you a cigarette case, and a lighter. I don't know if you smoke anymore.
The Hudson River Wife Elizabeth Gumport
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KINGS OF OYSTER BAY
"Doesn't grandma look like Allen Woody?" asked Susannah. "What's that?" Ben said, sorting the jellybeans into piles of red, light purple, white with yellow spots. "Who, not what! He's a skinny movie star. He slumps." Susannah dug her bare heels into the ground and grabbed at the grass with her toes.
•
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Each pale with sunscreen,they sat in the backyard of their grandmother's house, two-hundred and sixty-seven steps from the nearest stop sign, three blocks past the club pool,in the town of Oyster Bay,on the peninsula of Long Island, in the former colony of New York, on the east coast of America, somewhere on the spinning globe. "Mom loves Allen Woody.She wants to marry him if she wasn't married to Dad." "Gross." "Anyways," said Susannah, "Grandma used to be prettier, there's pictures in the basement." Susannah tucked the bottoms of her shorts under so that it looked like she was wearing an enormous madras diaper. The grass felt like crawling ants on her pale legs. "Mom told me Maximilian first met Grandma at a dance at a firehouse in New York City and he saw her across the room in a blue dress and when one of his friends told him what her last name was he decided to marry her right then." "Guess that was a bad idea." Ben ate a red jellybean and then spit it out."Eww,cinnamon." He held the tiny tooth-marked blob between his fingers and then threw it down the hill toward the road. "This was before they got divorced,"Susannah said. "Obviously." She started picking blades of grass and arranging them in a design on her thigh. "Maximilian's mom made him promise he'd marry a Jewish girl. Before she died,she made him promise. He didn't want to, though. Being Jewish made him throw up the whole time he was in the Navy. Cause he couldn't wear a white
jacket if he was Jewish and he wanted to, so it made him sick. But he didn't want to be puking his whole marriage so he tried to find the least looking Jewish girl there was." She added a twig to her design and then blew the grass away so the twig was the only thing left. "Anyways," she continued,"Grandma was wearing a blue dress. And playing doubles at tennis. So they got married." Susannah picked up the twig and started scraping it against a rock, filing one of its edges into a weapon. "I didn't know Maximilian's Jewish." "Yeah,that's the whole thing," Susannah said. She poked herself with the edge of the stick to see if it was sharp. "I thought he's Catholic," said Ben. "No, he's Christian, but before he was Jewish." The stick was not sharp enough and Susannah kept scraping it. "I mean he's really Jewish but he just doesn't tell anybody." "If he doesn't tell anyone so much, how do you know?" asked Ben. "Mom," said Susannah. "Why does Mom tell you everything?" "I heard her talking to Dad. I spied it through a door crack upstairs, when Grandma was running my bath. But anyways Mom said when I'm thirteen I can go out to dinner with her and she'll tell me everything I want to know and I can order a creme brulee." "I hate creme brulee," Ben said. "I used to not like it either. It's an acquired taste." "But like last summer I asked Mom why we always go over to see Maximilian on Christmas, but Aunt Carrie and the cousins never come see Grandma.She wouldn't answer,but then yesterday through the door crack I heard her saying that they don't know about Grandma. I mean, Aunt Carrie does ob-
Kings of Oyster Bay Lucy Teitler
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viously, but James and Andrew don't even know Grandma exists." "Weird." Ben blew at a strand of his hair and it went up in front of his face. "But I mean — Grandma's their grandma and they don't even know it. What if they walk by her one day on their way to baseball practice or in the grocery store and they just run by her and just think she was some old lady they didn't even know? Even though if she'd never worn a blue dress they would be dead. I mean, they would be little stars roaming around the world wanting to be born." Susannah suddenly threw the stick as far as she could down the hill and watched it hit a tree, a few feet short of the trash can along the road that she was aiming for. Assoon as she watched it soar through the air she wished she had not thrown it, but it was too late. In the air it had looked like the first spear thrown in some mountainous battle, but now she had thrown it and did not have it to poke against her skin. She squinted to look at the New York license plate of a car parked on the road and then turned back to her little brother. "Hey," she said,"Do you think I look Jewish?" Ben poured the jellybeans into their yellow bag and shook them back into chaos."Both of us don't," he said. At home in California, Susannah did not go to Hebrew School. Two days a year she woke up early and put on a dress and tights and patent-leather saddle shoes and skipped school. Those two days she went to a temple where the chairs were plastic and she could never hear the Rabbi well enough and all through the service people whispered about the shoe sale on Montana Avenue and their new salmon recipe and Bill Clinton and what movie was going to win all the Academy Awards.The families whose kids went to Hebrew School sat in the front of the room where there were real red chairs, but everyone else sat in the back and clapped at the end of songs, which someone said was "so LA." Susannah never clapped.
That was her entire religious education until one night when her Dad came upstairs with a big fat black bible and started reading it to them before bed. He read it for three nights: lists of names, sons and kings and kings and sons, names that she had never heard before. And each of the characters was the son or daughter of a character from before, each of them all the way back to Adam; each new man, in his time, which was only long enough for Dad to speak his name, had been all that was left of his father, and his father, back to the beginning of time, when the world was nothing but one well-watered backyard. That was why people had to become kings,she thought,because they were all that was left. But Dad got tired of reading that big fat old bible. He said it was too complicated for them,so they moved on to Peter Pan. Two weeks later Susannah saw the bible again, resting on the edge of one of the living room bookshelves. She took it down and ran upstairs, hiding it in the top drawer of her bedside table the way they do in hotels. She decided she was going to flip to a random page and read that page every day until she knew it as well as the kids who went to Hebrew School. She thought she could be like Larry Bird, who taught himself basketball like it was a science, shooting a hundred shots in a row from the bottom of the key and then a hundred shots from the foul line and then a hundred shots from the three-point line. Every night, she lay in bed talking to Ben and watching the way the lights of the restaurants down by the ocean filtered through the leaves of their neighbor's trees, making shadows against the wall. After a while they would talk less and less and when Ben's short doughy breathing became louder than the low sigh of the ocean, Susannah would open the drawer of her bedside table. She would sneak the Bible under her covers and read it in the hot red cave that her flashlight created on her Mickey Mouse sheets. She had to come up for air every few minutes and she was a slow reader and she ended up skipping around when one part was
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too hard, but she did it every single night even when she was tired. She did it every single night like it was some kind of ancient ritual. Susannah did not bring the bible to Long Island with her, but it was in Long Island, during her sixth night sleeping next to Ben in her grandmother's downstairs guestroom, that she had the dream. Maximilian's mother did not have a name in the dream. She was just the face of a skeleton, painted with the pale sunrise color of the very old. She lay in a bed in a room with wallpaper and four wooden bedposts and her ice fingers crawled across the lace tablecloth on the bedside table to grab a little white pill that could not keep her alive. Her fingers were like silver spider legs and in her ears played the white lullaby of her ancestors, churning her and luring her into their long sleep. And the door opened and in came her sister, who also did not have a name.The windows were closed,but little puddles of cold liquid were gathering on the windowsills and Maximilian's mother's fingers were getting colder than ice, were getting sticky and hard so that moving them was like pulling your tongue off of the poles of a swing set in Long Island in the winter. It was colder than ice and in came her sister who did not have a name. And Maximilian's mother felt the presence in the room even though she was too weak to turn around. "Sister," said Maximilian's mother, "I am worried. I am dying and your nephew my son does not love the Lord. When I die, and I do die, so will die his ties to our Lord." And Maximilian's mother's sister stood very still by the wooden bedposts, so still that she produced no heat and for a moment Maximilian's mother thought that her sister had left the room. When she spoke again,her voice was soft like the whisper of a hundred books closing at the same time. She said: "Now therefore, obey my voice according to what I command you. We shall bring my nephew your son Maximilian here to you, that you may bless him before your death and you shall ask him to grant you one wish and you will command him to marry an
Israelite woman with an Israelite last name." And the thing was very grievous in Maximilian's mother's sight because of her son. She said: "Would my last request be to trap him? Is there no other way?" But Maximilian's mother's sister was a tall woman who wore a dress made only of one big piece of fabric, like an enormous pillow case, the kind of dress that unmarried women wore then. The view out the window was as cold and bare as the tundra and Maximilian's mother's hands stuck to her shrunken and invisible thighs like a cat's angry claws. "He will not say thee nay," said Maximilian's aunt. "Ask on, my sister, for he will not say thee nay." After that, the dream turned into an action movie about boats in a storm and Susannah was pulling the riggings and pulling the riggings to keep the black ocean at bay. When she woke up,her Dad was kissing her hair and telling her it was time to get on the road. Before driving the three decades and two highway exits to visit Maximilian, Mom wanted to go swimming. Grandma and (step—) Grandpa Charlie stuffed a bag with clean towels and walked with Susannah,Ben,Mom and Dad down hill to the club pool. Grandma kissed Susannah three times on their blocklong walk, holding her hand and telling her that she could not spare her company,not even for a single day. Grandma's lips were very wet and Susannah was glad when they arrived at the pool. "Good morning, Thomas," Grandma said to the lifeguard when they first came down the steps on to the concrete pool area. "How's the swimming pool this morning?" "Nice and warm, Mrs. Chesler," said Tom, the tall lifeguard. He sat beneath an umbrella, brown to match all the roofs and flowerpots and barbeques that covered the endless fields and gardens of the club. "Temperature's 72, like you like it." Grandma pulled up her bathrobe as though it were a
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gown and dipped her toe into the water,sending a little ripple all the way to the blue-tiled side. "Divine," she said."Thomas, it's divine this morning." Then they all marched over to the chaises in the corner of the pool because there were umbrellas over there and Grandma had skin like paper and wanted to stay out of the sun. "Me and Suz want to play with the raft — will you ask him?" Ben shouted in a whisper, pointing at the long red lifeguard raft that hung from the wall. "Susannah and I," said Grandma. "Susannah and I want to play with the raft." "Leave them alone, Mom," said Mom."No raft today honey, we better just swim and then get in the car." "They want to speak English correctly, don't you darlings?" asked Grandma. Before they left, a short man came over and said something about golf to Grandma, who laughed and said something about how bad her handicap was even though Susannah knew it was good. They spoke a minute more about some woman in the hospital and then the short man walked away. When he walked, his blue bathing suit clung to his legs and he looked kind of like a balding monkey. "He seems nice," said Mom. Grandma shook her head and whispered,"Oh, he's impossible. "His wife's worse. Every weekend they bring different kids down here and they never sign them in. Last weekend,they had a baby in there with a diaper and the diaper fell off and poor Thomas had to fish the foul thing out with a net, can you imagine? Six year old child in a diaper and everybody's screaming and that man thinks it's the funniest thing he's ever seen in his life. Impossible, that man, I'd like to kick him right out of the club." Grandpa Charlie came out of the pool right then and started drying himself with one of the blue towels, combing up and down his body until all the dark hair stood up. "Lou Fishman, he's a jerk. Really is. Just a jerk." "This is a great place you've got here," said Dad,
stretching his big arms to put his hands behind his head."What a great pool you've got here." Maximilian lived in a wooden house on a street that belonged on a TV show. Every time Susannah's family went to visit him, the routine was the same. He had three huge golden retrievers that always bounded out on to the lawn just as Susannah was opening her car door,and just before she looked up at the red brick house and saw Maximilian and his wife Beverly smiling and waving. Sometimes one of their golden retrievers would die, but they always got a new one by the time August came around. All their dogs had names like Bootsy and Lucy and Martha and Barbara-Anne. Mom said they named them like that because Beverly did not have any children. They were her daughters, those blonde monsters. They smelled like bacon and feet. And after the ten minute car ride, there they were as usual, licking Susannah's thighs and trying to eat her shoelaces. Maximilian and Beverly stood on the front porch,each wearing green seersucker pants and a white shirt. Maximilian did not have any hair but he did not seem bald. Hair would have disturbed the smooth roundness of his head and so Susannah, who acknowledged that she never seen him in the years he had spent lying awake on a bunk bed, watching the dawn and praying to feel the hard rush of a Ubomb in his side, could not picture the fine dark curls that she knew had covered his temples then. He had looked like a very old man for as long as she could remember, but she never had feeling that he was older one year than he had been the year before. The grass of the lawn was as green as a football field and Maximilian walked out towards the car with his arms open wide. "Hello!" he said. "Look at you cubs, California cubs!" He hugged Ben and then Susannah, holding her away from him for a moment,just looking at her face."Beautiful," he said,"what a goddamn beautiful girl you've turned into."
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Maximilian kept his hand on Susannah's shoulder as he embraced Mom. "Goddam terrific," he said. "Baby doll, you look terrific." Beverly took Susannah's face in her hands:"Hi!" "Hey Dave," said Maximilian, whose hand was still on Susannah's upper arm,"What's in the water out there? Two ravishing girls you've got here, and one tough little man." "I don't know how I got so lucky," Dad said, locking the front door of the car. Susannah thought:fluoride, there's fluoride in the water out there. They all headed into the house,following Beverly and the dogs. Maximilian shook his head. "Goddam terrific," he said. The brunch table was all set on the back deck,laid out over the red-and-white table cloth like the kind of banquet where a king would have special tasters to make sure that nothing was poisoned. Beverly served bagels and cream cheese and smoked salmon ("for Dave")and coffee cake because everyone loved it. Maximilian and Beverly talked about Europe and sports and the newly-planted flowers in the garden that were finally starting to bloom. Maximilian walked everyone through the backyard and showed them a tree he had planted specially when Susannah was born. It had grown taller since the previous summer and Maximilian said that when Susannah was his age, it would be so fat that she and her husband and children would all have to hold hands to make a circle around its trunk. He would be long dead and decomposed by then, he said and laughed. So would her husband as a matter of fact. He was just slapping her on the back and telling her to lighten up, kid, he was only kidding, when Aunt Carrie's giant van pulled into the driveway. "I'm boring the hell out of this little girl," said Maximilian. Susannah blushed. "No you're not," she said. The tree was a thin pine,
pointy and green, and it leaned out of the mulch at an angle. "What a polite little thing," Maximilian said to Susannah's mom,as though he had just witnessed something incredible, like a comet flying into a billboard. Susannah blushed again and before Maximilian could say anything more, Aunt Jane burst through the screen door with Andrew and James, who carried a handball and a whiffle ball set. Hello! said everyone. It had been a whole year! James put down his whiffle bat to shake hands with Dad, who asked him how school was going. Of all the cousins, James was the oldest and the tallest and kind of the dumbest. He was thirteen, but he didn't seem to know anything. Once Susannah had told him that her parents were Democrats and his were Republicans and he had not even known what that meant. He knew the Suns were from Phoenix,but he didn't know that there was a desert in Phoenix. He had no idea how hot it could get in Phoenix. James started talking about the tie he had to wear to school, and the trouble of remembering to button the collars of his shirts down. "A man's life," he said with a sigh. "Tough, isn't it?" said Dad, raising his eyebrows. Andrew was already hitting the whiffle balls against the garage, when he ran back toward the deck. "Wait!" he said,"James, ask Dave about yesterday!" "What?" said James. "You know, yesterday, in the city — when we saw the Jews." Dad scratched his eyebrow with his thumbnail and glanced down at the pool in the very back of the yard. "Oh yeah," said James. He turned to Dad. "Hey Dave, yesterday we were in New York and me and Andrew saw these two Jews running. It was raining and they were holding newspapers over their heads like they didn't want to get their hats and their beards wet. So,like, why?" Dad looked a little confused for a second, as though there were sun in his eyes.
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"I don't know," Dad said. It looked like he smiled a little. "Maybe they were late." "Maybe there was a holiday," James said decisively, and then he ran back toward the house and they all went to play handball against the garage door. Susannah played handball at school. She also played handball against the living room wall when Mom was in the shower or out by the pool. She could not catch a baseball or kick a soccer ball straight and she still could barely throw a basketball high enough to bounce off the hoop, but she was a handball master. She could even return an American, which was when someone hit it straight off the wall, without waiting for it to bounce. Susannah thought about being in the Olympics for handball sometimes. She thought she could travel the world like that, winning games with the thrust of her right fist. By the time Maximilian was pouring drinks for the grown-ups and the sunlight was a heavy yellow, Susannah and James were playing the championship match of their handball tournament. The score was nine to nine and it was James' serve. James served with his left hand. He hit it into his corner of the white garage door and it bounced back on the other side of him.Susannah ran and was about to reach it when she stepped on a sprinlder and tripped. It hurt so much that at first she thought she had been stung by a bee. When she stopped almost crying and looked up at James, he was slapping his brother high-five. "Game point," Susannah said when she stood up. "No,game over," said James. "No,nine to ten, you can't win with one point. Tennis rules." "Maybe in California," he said. He was palming the handball now,lifting it up and down in his long skinny fingers. Susannah walked over to where he was and stood in between him and the sun so that her figure made a shadow across his chest and face. "It's tennis rules everywhere, like ping-pong." She looked over at Ben, who quickly said "Tennis
rules," but obviously had no idea what he was talking about. James threw the ball at Andrew and it bounced off of his head back toward James."My serve, jerk," he said. But Susannah did not move, so now she was standing in the middle of the court. She watched James as he bounced the ball in gleeful triumph, his shoulders wide and square like the wire skeleton of a folding closet. "It's okay, Suzy," James said,"You did good for a girl." Susannah still did not move.She moved even less than before. "You're not as weak as most girls." He reached out and felt her arm."Well, maybe you are." He bounced the ball down like a basketball and Andrew laughed. "Girls just aren't as good at things," James said."Like sports. It's obvious. That's why Dads work and Moms pick you up at school. Boys play sports and girls are bad at sports. I usually never play with girls, so you should be honored that you even scored on me." Susannah still did not move and her foot still hurt from where she had tripped and she felt her throat starting to get hard, like she was going to cry. "Um, security?" said James. "Security? There's a girl on the court. Mrs., please leave now or we will have to remove you from the premises." He was laughing and dribbling the ball between his legs. Susannah started to walk away, back toward the deck. She could feel the tears welling up in her jaw and she thought if she could just make it to the deck and eat one of the gumdrops on the table, everything would be okay and James would not know that she was going to cry and she would not make it worse by being a girl about it. It was hot out and her legs stuck together when she moved. She started walking away and then she stopped. She turned back around and looked at James, who had stopped dribbling and was now laughing with Andrew about something else. The shadows of the house and chimney were so long now that they
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seemed to carve up the lawn, creating stripes of light and shadow, stripes of bright color and dulling dusk. James' short blond hair was almost orange in the sun. She wondered if he realized that he was a cheater. She wondered if he actually thought that handball could be won with a one-point lead. Suddenly it all made Susannah really sick. "Hey," she said, "why do you always ask my Dad about being Jewish?" James shrugged, barely noticing her question, still out of breath from his playing and his laughing, only half-turning towards her. "My Dad's half-Jewish," she said, walking straight up to him again, to where she had stood before, only this time the sun had moved a little and James had to squint when he looked at her. "He's half-Jewish," she said. "Like you. Only difference is that he had a Bar Mitzvah." James had stopped dribbling the ball. "I'm not Jewish," he said. "Oh yes you are." "No I'm not," he said and he tried to push her out of the way so he and Andrew could start playing their handball game."You're crazy." "Am not," she said and she pushed back to where she was standing. "I go to Episcopal school." "So?" "Get out of my way." "So what if you go to church school?" "So I'm not Jewish," he said and he pushed her again. She pushed him back, pushed him straight on both shoulders like people did in the movies. His shoulders felt good under her fingertips and she suddenly felt like she was a trapeze artist at the circus who was about to step out on to the rope and knew that she was going to make it on to the other side. She felt sure. She didn't know what, but she felt sure about something and she pushed James' shoulders again even harder. "Why don't you ask your Dad," she said and she
pushed him."Why don't you ask your dad if you're a half-Jew cause you are." She pushed him again and he was moving back, back toward the garage wall. She pushed him on every word. "Jew — Jew — Jew — Jew — Jew,like Moses, like Jesus." "Yeah, okay,I'm Jewish like Jesus." He was laughing still, but his laugh was different, harsher, full of the caustic asphalt of defense. "We're cousins because our mother's sisters with your mom, so if we have a grandmother together, where is she?" "Grandma Bev's our grandmother," said James. "So why isn't she my grandmother? Oh,and it's really likely for a grandmother to be only ten years older than her son. Not." They were up against the wall and she was yelling, she thought, almost screaming right into his little red ear. "Shut up," he said and he pushed her away. His hands struck her arms and she grabbed them and twisted them around, trying to give him an Indian burn. "Shut up!" he said. He kicked her feet and they both fell to the ground, entangled like wrestlers. "You shut up you big Jew!" she said. "Stop calling me that!" he said. She hit him again. She hit him again and again and she started to feel like it was a dream and not real at all. Maybe she was really asleep and it was the slumber that made her feel as she felt now, as though she was riding on a giant ocean wave whose tide took her in and out, closer and farther away from the white door of the garage and the sun's reflection in the blue pool and the tomatoes growing on garden stakes, in and out of Ben's frightened eyes, up into the branches of the oldest willow tree, as though all her life had been part of this endless dream, ("You should be dead," she screamed, "I wish you died."), all her life spent screaming and crying and rolling around in the well-groomed yards and dusky shadows of that ancient seaside town, pulling the riggings and pulling the riggings to keep the water at bay.
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35
THREE STANZAS ON WIND
i. dream I'm standing in a hollow. Things fly in. A gull, a grenade. A woman throws herself where it spins. She takes the blast, right in the stomach, and blows apart, skin, dress, knuckles, face, like a wind through curtains. 11.
The wind moves from the curtains to the leaves, their downy backs shimmer, very slow. I wake hearing a voice I lost years ago. The trees pass their swaying, elm to beech, bough to windy bough. To wake up after death should be like this. 111.
The fat bees are dipping in their flight. A cup of tea opens all its leaves. And then it's fall and all the bees are dying. They leave behind the empty air, empty of buzzing. A boy's father waits on a hill, holding a kite, but the wind doesn't come.
Three Stanzas on Wind Ivy Wang
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Editors-in-Chief Meredith Kaffel Allie Stielau
The editors of the Yale Literary Magazine wish to thank Ruben Roman and the Yale English Department, Betty Trachtenberg, John Crowley,J.D. McClatchy, Henk Van Assen, Mary Alice and Chuck Stielau, the JE Master's Office, and Koffee Too?
Designer Scott Hartz
The design staff wishes to thank George Guman and Joe Maynard at RIS and Rich Nesbit and John Robinson at Gist and Herlin Press.
Publisher Jonathan L.Sherman-Presser
The contents of the Yale Literary Magazine are 2004. No portion of the contents may be reprinted without permission. All rights reserved.
Managing Editor Helen Vera
The Yale Literary Magazine is a non-profit, registered undergraduate organization at Yale University. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editors or staff members. Yale University is not responsible for the contents of the magazine.
Literary Editor Alexander Nemser Senior Editors Meral Agish Katya Poltorak Associate Editors Lexy Benaim Tom Cannell Jeremy Kessler Chloe Kitzinger Julia Wallace Public Relations Annie Galvin Laura Schewel Events Coordinators Abigail Deutsch Jason Meizlish Alice Phillips Circulation and Distribution Managers Russell Brandom Paul Gleason Art Editor Yali Lewis Online Editors Gordon Jenkins David Chernicoff
The winner of the Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for Poetry is'Desert' by Alexander Nemser. The winner of the Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for Fiction is 'Kings of Oyster Bay' by Lucy Teitler. The winner of the Yale Literary Magazine Art Prize is'Cizur Menor,Spain, 2004' by Taylor Chapman.J.D. McClatchy was the judge for poetry, and John Crowley was the judge for fiction. Henk van Assen was the judge for art. Subscriptions to the Yale Literary Magazine are available for $15(individuals) and $35(institutions). Contributions to The Lit are welcome and tax-deductible. Make checks payable to the YLM Publishing Fund and mail to: The Yale Literary Magazine PO Box 209087 New Haven,CT 06520 Library of Congress catalog number 7-19863-4 www.yale.edu/ylit/
Selections Committee Emily Anthes Catherine Brobeck Nicholas Buttrick Jessie Ellner Julia Felsenthal Hannah Geller Elizabeth Gumport Brianna Hill Alice Huang Nadia Kanagawa Ani Katz Mina Kimes
Emily Kopley Matthew Kozlark Alexandre Lessard-Pilon Katherine Linzer Carolynn Molleur-Hinteregger Dayo Olopade Lauren Ro Sara Schneider Sam Spears Noa Wheeler Joanna Zdanys
UNTITLED
Untitled Daniel Kluger
The Yale Literary Magazine Established 1836
"Duin mens grata manet,'lumen laudesque YALENSES Cantabunt SOBOLES, unanitnique PATRES."