Volume 4 issue 2 winter 1993 by Yale Literary Magazine

The Yale Literary Magazine an Unciercwacluatc- Publicatic3n

Editors-in-Chief Kathryn Haines and Emily 0. Wittman Senior Editors Patrick Greaney, Carrie Iverson, Michael McCullers, Donna Ng, and Andrew R. Rossi Editorial Staff Jack Chen, Joseph Formaggio, Simon Greenwold, and Avital Rosenberg Art Editor Julie Piittgen Design Jennifer Bernstein and Catherine Sandler The Yale Literary Magazine would like to thank: Ivo Banac and the Pierson College Master's Office Bernstein Design Associates Judith Butler John Fulton and Turley Publications Gerry and Terry Philip Greene Langdon Hammer Suzanne Keen Wayne Koestenbaum Charlotte Pavia Fatt Quinlan Sextus Mary Jane Stephens The Sudler Funding Committee Robert Thompson and Timothy Dwight College Melissa Weissberg Subscriptions to the Yale Literary Magazine are available at a rate of $15 US dollars for individuals, $35 US dollars for institutions. Checks may be made payable to the YLM Publishing Fund and sent to: The Yale Literary Magazine Box 243 A, Yale Station New Haven, Connecticut 06520 The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the staff and in no way reflect the opinions of Yale University, which is not responsible for the contents of this magazine. The Yale Literary Magazine is a non-profit, registered organization. Entire contents 01993. Copyrights remain the property of the individual authors and artists. No portion of the contents may be reprinted without permission. All rights reserved.

Contents

A List of The Body's Travel Michael McCullers Sliding Carrie Iverson Skydog Wally Johnson Arthur Bradford Gelatin Silver Print Charlotte Saenz-Boldt

13 2c.

Sketches Retrieved (The Litany of Jesus Christ in Music) Andrew R. Rossi Cloud Ground Etching Dan Clarke

Ritz Michael McCullers 28

Gelatin Silver Print Jane Johnston

3C1

Tom

Photo Album Michael McCullers

Romantic ZZ Packer

poem to you Rachel Zucker

4â&#x201A;Ź)

Etching and Drypoint Julie Nittgen

Etching and Aquatint Julie Nittgen

The Gymnast Jennifer Mayer

Excavation Carrie Iverson

An Interview with Judith Butler Emily 0. Wittman and Patrick Greaney

Lithograph Christina Gonzalez

To Madame Saffet From Salihat-I Nisvan Umut Ergun

Rousillion, 1992 Andrew R. Rossi

Desaparecieron Andrew R. Rossi

6c.

Sometimes It Happens to You, Too ZZ Packer

The Clay Eaters Carrie Iverson

Bracchial Plexus, Etching Dan Clarke

Traveling Michael McCullers

Rachel Zucker

A List of the Body's Travel for Caitlin

Consumptive boys rest

Cracked squash

in a victory garden,

on a dusty sidewalk, seeds

their city shot through

like shark's teeth in the yellow

with finger-lakes of green,

gourd meat

their jaundiced straw hats lost in

for the shaman of our hearts

(marigolds, scarlet runner

to scatter. Tomorrow

beans, cyclamen, death -

seed-spelled

camus,sweet chamomile,

on the loam, thin black

absinthe, snap beans, climbing wisteria,

skin over

common everlasting,

red clay

bok-choi, gemsbuck,

over swamp,

anise-anise, morels,

the lesson of our soul.

caraway, scallions, corianderâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; for its pungent rootâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; basil and arugula, red cabbage, Greek oregano, rosemary, russet potatoes, blaspheme vine, bullock's heart, dog fennel, collard greens, black-eyed peas, unpicked okra rotting heavy on the vine) verdure.

Ardor in the cathedral, passion drowns the chalice

A gourd rind, washed ashore hollow,

meant solely for grace. In the great, dusty, shooting-vault

toothless and baked hard by that terrific sun,

space of God

the surfeit of the sea

we squirm and shove for elbow room, stamping

proffered. The jellyfish-lined beachâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

the waxed oak

purple bloated majesties

floor for rhythm.

dying in June. Cornstarch

The sacrament spilled, not at the altar,

baths, feverish naps under cold air conditioning.

but in the shadowed

A body as it floats

pew; rosy gold dust descends, filtered by the stained window

in heavy salt water. The lost time. The night-fallen Gulf of Mexico tide

above. The wine-flush spreadsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

around Perdido Key.

Michael McCullers

Sliding Living life a little at a time is how they describe the brutality of this circular world, among all this spinning the name of a street fades into the name of a town, waking in the night she cannot remember what she has said, and what she dreamt. The kitchen is to the left, yes, the noise of the world is outside, yes, she sits still at this center, on this couchâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the humming of the evening insects rises, dark rising into the dark where is your name where is

its name falling into namelessness becomes a terror,

you cannot move, the lamp sits painfully on the table. She cannot bear to look at it.

Moments of ambivalence come as a relief, the light of the cars flashes on one side of his face, then the other, turning it into one profile against the distance of the lamps trailing down the road. You have heard the words before and do not bother to listen. Amazingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;beneath you, your feet continue to move, you walk in and out of the shadows of this sidewalk, the voice next to you drifting in in dark patches. It is not a wearing of sound, it is a monotony, like eyes going up the stairs, looking from one step to the next until they reach the end, a space too dark to move, and far too heavy.

:ts

A little at a time—a little learning, a little read, another means for an effortless day to slide by chosen more by disbelief at how little time it takes to pass a year. Congratulatory of our understanding, little happens, the light drifts through windows a certain way, it is only the motion forward that is important, no matter that one word is indistinct from the next and a terror at how unchosen overwhelms. Habit opens the curtains, shuts the window, winds the clock. Next to all this— little moments of grief and devastation—you know it— or this—has moved—has motioned out—

On this table, the cups sit, dangerously thin, the late afternoon light from the vines outside streaming through their delicate edges. You sit knees tight together, hear the thin voice delicately preaching across that expanse of space, you are no longer a granddaughter, time has jumped back and she calls you sister, and twists her hands together so the skin chaps and bleeds, rubbing them up and down her wool skirt, sisters, we are ladies and must suffer to be beautiful. A part of this suffering is this daily penance of repeated words, yes, you were poor once, you had no books, their pages have fallen out of your memory. You shiver across this room, uncertain of gestures, uncertain of breathing, a thin body locked in the tightness of a closet. And the whiteness of a room stretched around you, and you were

sliding down it forever, and you were sliding down past

the windows forever, small dark squares flying past you in

a rush of light, and the thin memory of regret rose

in your throat; the way he pulled a hat over his eyes,

the way the river glowed like the glass of the bottles tossed

into the fire, the way these things drift into one another

in the confusion of distance and cold, the way the light

of the radio tower blinks across the fields, sporadic

and gasping with a breath filled with hesitancy, its pulse

strewing this frenetic devastation. Carrie Iverson

Skydog Wally Johnson Arthur Bradford Winner of the Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for Fiction

Rita Jane, my showgirl, has been trying to impress me lately with her ability to swallow razor blades. It's a good trick, I tell her, but it is difficult for the crowd to appreciate. They cannot see or feel the sharpness of those tiny blades. They will not know that it is all real. The metal does not shine in the sunlight like, say, a sword. Mickey the Mouth, my sword swallower, cuts a cucumber into thin slices with his sword before plunging the long blade down his throat. "Can you cut cucumbers with that razor blade?" I ask Rita Jane. Rita Jane smiles her showgirl smile and then places the blade onto her tongue like an aspirin. She swallows it with a long slow gulp and then opens her empty mouth. "No, I can't," she says. I'm not in this business because I like to see people suffer. I only want my audience to feel that they get their money's worth. I want for them to discover those sensations which they cannot find in their ordinary lives. They are not satisfied with the calm, tranquil, safe world around us. The violence on the news and in the movies does not fulfill their needs. It is distant. It does not seem real. Have you watched the way traffic slows down as it passes by the scene of a car wreck? Have you ever seen a barroom brawl? The crowd circles around the fighters and locks the bouncers out. That is real. I have seen them waiting on the sidewalk while an uncertain man stood perched high upon a tall building's ledge. I heard the crowd yell "Jump!" I began Joe Smokey's Feats of Greater Amazement because I knew this was what they wanted to see. The next night, during the show, Rita does a little ad lib before she introduces Smiley, the human pin cushion. She pulls out a razor blade and waves it before the crowd. The showgirl smile remains fixed on her face as she draws the edge of the blade slowly across her open palm. Bright red blood spills out from the long slit she has made. The crowd gasps. Rita Jane does not hesitate. Still holding her palm up so that we can see the blood flow faster and begin to drip, Rita Jane pops that blade onto her tongue. They wince and shut their eyes. Rita Jane closes her lips around the blade and sucks it in. Long slow swallow. Showgirl smile. They love it. They hoot and holler about Rita all though Smiley's act. He does not get their full attention until he sticks the needle through his tongue. Each of my performers is an artist. They have all crafted their bodies into spectacles of pure wonder. Every single day, for three years, Mickey the Mouth tickled the back of his throat with a stick. This practice, over time, caused his system to abandon the gag reflex. Now he can slide anything down his throat, including a twenty-seven inch sword of steel. I give Rita Jane a promotion after her little stunt. Now she is Razor Rita and she comes on after Smiley. Her only problem is finding new areas which she can slice open before she swallows the razor. Her palms are growing sore, she says. The true challenge, I tell all my performers, is convincing the audience that what they are about to see is real. And I assure you, Joe Smokey is not in the business of running a hoax. Everything you see in my show is completely genuine. We do not seek to deceive

AIM

anyone. Deception is the work of thieves. The illusionist and magician steal their thrills from the audience. A magician, after he deceives you with his quick hand, is laughing inside. He has betrayed you. You have fulfilled his need. Joe Smokey's performers seek to fulfill you. We are not thieves. We are your humble servants, I tell my audience. There are always those in the crowd who do not want to believe. They search for the illusion. They shout out that the blades retract, that the red hot coals are cold and painted. They claim that I, Joe Smokey, am walking barefoot on fake glass. I have to let them break the bottles themselves, cut their own fingers if they must,just to let them know it is all real. Above all, they must know that the performance is real. One night, after a particularly successful performance I am approached backstage by a thin, wiry kid who calls himself Wally Johnson. "Mr. Smokey," he says, "I have a trick to show you." The kid's eyes are open very wide. He has one of those extremely plain looking faces, round and simple, expressionless. I step back from him. I do not like his wide eyes. "Mr. Smokey," he says, "If you'll please follow me I'll show you an amazing trick." "I'm in a hurry." I tell the kid, "Talk with my secretary, Alice. She always screens the new talent before I take a look." The kid, Wally, drops his head and looks at the floor. Then he walks away. I simply cannot allow prospective talent to approach me like this. It is too dangerous. The pressure upon them to amaze me is tremendous. In Lincoln, Nebraska I watched a young man nearly choke himself on a flaming apple. I said it before. I'm not in this business because I want to see people suffer. Later that night I am walking home alone when I hear a voice from the building above call out my name. "Mr. Smokey. It's me, Wally Johnson." The kid is standing on a window sill three stories up. He is barefoot, wearing only shorts. Below him, on the sidewalk ahead of me, I see one of those plastic swimming pools, the kind they make for little children. The small pool is filled with water maybe a foot deep. The kid begins to make a low humming sound and shifts his weight quickly from one foot to the other. He doesn't look human standing up there on that window sill. He is pale and bony. I hear him take in several deep breaths and then there is silence from above. The kid leans out, pushes off of the sill and springs forward into the air. He arches his back and spreads his skinny arms and legs wide as he falls stomach first towards the little pool of water. His entire body seems to pop when he smacks the water's surface. It is a perfect belly flop. The water splashes out of the plastic pool in one huge wave. I stand there on the sidewalk and stare at the skinny body, now laying face down in the shallow water. What have I just witnessed, I think to myself. I did not buy a ticket for this show. I did not yell "Jump!". A few seconds pass and then the kid, Wally, lifts his head. He sucks in a huge breath of air and struggles to his feet. He stands before me, dripping wet in water up to his ankles. "I can do it from higher up," he says. He becomes Skydog Wally Johnson, and his act does very well. To sign him on we have to lie about his age. We say he is eighteen. When the show plays outdoors we have Wally climb up a huge extended ladder. He gets say thirty feet up and then stops. He stares down at the

shallow pool below him and I stick a ruler in the water to show that it is only a foot deep. I ask members of the crowd to examine the pool so that they can be sure there is no trick. "What you are about to see is absolutely real. The water is a mere foot deep in all places," I tell them. "Ladies and Gentlemen," I sweep my arm up and motion towards Wally's small figure some thirty feet above, "I now present you Skydog Wally Johnson, master of the shallow water dive!" I ask the crowd if they'd like to see Skydog go up higher. They inevitably scream yes. Wally shakes his head to show that he will not do it. "Oh come on Skydog," I shout into my microphone,"We are riveted. We want more. We want you to go higher." Wally shakes his head again and the crowd begins to boo and hiss. At this point I turn to the crowd and tell them Skydog has a problem. He has a sick aunt dying in a hospital far away. I tell them Skydog needs money for her operation. Perhaps, I say, he would be willing to go higher if they offered him some cash. Small bills are coughed up right away, one dollar here, five dollars there. "What's this?" I scream at the crowd. My voice booms out through the loudspeakers. "What is this?" I hold up a one dollar bill. "This kid is perched on a ladder thirty feet above a pool which contains a mere foot of water! He is willing to take this perilous plunge all for his poor, sick little auntie. And all you can offer is a dollar?" "Skydog," I say looking up at Wally, "I think this is an insult, don't you?" Wally nods his head. We make an agreement with the crowd. For every twenty-five dollars they can raise, Skydog will rise up another rung on the ladder. Something about Wally's act strikes me as perfect. I don't yet know what it is. The helpless sight of his frail body clinging to a ladder up so high. The crazed look on the faces of the audience as he reluctantly climbs higher. Their piercing screams when he finally leaps out and drops so quickly through the air. After it's done Wally stands up in the shallow water and takes a bow. His eyes remain wide, his face shows no expression, as if he has been stripped of all he owns. The crowd cheers loudly, and afterwards they thank me, Joe Smokey, for bringing him to their town. At a show in Arkansas, after Wally has already stepped up two rungs, a hefty man comes forward with two hundred dollars. I have never discussed this possibility with Wally. The rule is that once a hundred dollars has been collected he jumps. Once before he ended up taking the leap from five rungs higher when a particularly rowdy crowd tossed out a hundred and twenty five, but we never discussed what to do if someone offered two hundred on the spot. I snatch the money from the hefty man's hand."Two hundred dollars!" I yell into my microphone, "Skydog, your dear auntie has been saved!" Wally stares down at me for only a second. Still facing the crowd he steps up one rung, then another. The crowd begins to count out loud as he climbs up higher, "Five! Six! Seven! Eight!" Skydog stops and I call for total and complete silence. He sucks in a deep breath and then lets it out slowly. Wally is near the top of the ladder. He sways back and forth.

JINN

Some forty feet below, the twelve inches of water looks ridiculous. Wally takes the step forward into the air. The crowd screams as Skydog soars downward and smacks the water hard with his hands, belly, feet and face. Water splashes high in all directions. Skydog Wally Johnson floats face down on the surface of the shallow water. His body bobs up and down with the small waves in the pool. The crowd is utterly silent. I can feel their fear. What have we done? I am about to rush over to the pool when Wally finally stirs. He lifts head head up and shakes the water from his hair. He staggers to his feet, gasping for air. The crowd roars. I scream into my microphone,"Your auntie has been saved Skydog! You have saved your dear auntie!" After the leap in Arkansas I make Wally my feature act. I roll the plastic pool into place and fill it myself while the crowd watches. I ask members of the audience to pick the location for Skydog's landing themselves so that they can be sure that the ground below him is hard. "There is no illusion going on here," I tell them."What you are about to see is reality." The rumors fly about Skydog Johnson. They say he has a steel plate implanted in his chest. They claim his bones are made of rubber. They say he has studied with the great meditation artists of the Middle East and that he has mastered the art of self-levitation. Some say he could do the trick without any water at all. For his part Wally keeps them guessing. He works out alone, indoors. He eats often, but his body remains the same, frail and bony. On his eighteenth birthday Wally weighs in at a paltry lio pounds. All Feats of Greater Amazement work on one simple principle: you are the master of your body. Harold the Hypochondriac could raise his body temperature at will. In less than two minutes he could bring his own temperature up to io8 degrees. You are supposed to die at that point, but Harold did just fine. During the show Harold would take requests from the crowd. They would call out the name of a disease and Harold would go backstage to work on it. When he returned for the second act Harold would display all of the symptoms of the chosen disease, swollen glands, runny nose, pale skin. I would invite any doctors in the house to examine Harold and see for themselves. The would shake their heads, amazed, confirming that Harold was truly ill. His best disease was chickenpox. Harold died in a car accident five months ago. I am surprised at first when Razor Rita tells me about Wally's late night activities. Wally is, by nature, a very quiet person. He rarely speaks unless you ask him a question, and even then his words are few. Women crowd his dressing room after the show. They love Skydog Johnson, but he locks himself inside ti ntil they go away. Rita says Wally has been heading out to the bars lately. One night, in a small town outside of Knoxville Tennessee, Wally is thrown in jail. I send Smiley down to bail him out but Smiley returns alone. "He wants to see you, Mr Smokey," says Smiley. "He told me he only wants to see you." Wally is hunched in the corner of his cell when I get there. When he looks up at me I see that he has a black eye. "Mr. Smokey," he says to me,"have you ever seen the Swansee bridge?" I tell him that I have heard of it.

"I can jump off the Swansee bridge, Mr. Smokey." Wally's right eye, the one that is not black and swollen, is open wide. It stares right at me. There are whiskers sprouting on his chin. Skydog is growing up, I think to myself. "Listen Wally," I say, "I'm gonna bail you out and then you're gonna pay me back, and then maybe we can talk about this Swansee bridge." The Swansee bridge is enormous. It was built by the railroad almost fifty years ago so that the trains could pass over Swansee Gorge. I've seen it on a postcard before. The steel bridge spans the gorge and then far, far below, a small river runs through it. I am a man who has made a living believing that Feats of Amazement can be accomplished. I have faith that where the human body is concerned, we may create our own reality. I saw Cannonball George stand two feet from the mouth of a firing cannon and take the ball into his stomach without injury. I saw Henry The Jaw pull a locomotive on its tracks with his teeth. As I look at Sky Dog Wally Johnson hunched over in the corner of his cell, I do not believe him. I do not believe that he can jump off the Swansee bridge. At the next show, in Rockwood, Wally makes his announcement. He is perched on the ladder, ready to jump, when he begins to speak. "For $20,000," he calls out, "I will jump off the Swansee bridge." The crowd sort of chuckles at first. Then Skydog repeats his offer, "For $20,000, I will jump off the Swansee bridge." There is a general murmur among the audience during which Skydog jumps off of his ladder into the pool below. The trick looks unspectacular. We feel as if we have only been shown the opening act. Everyone is thinking about the Swansee bridge. Two businessmen from Nashville come up with the $20,000 and they hire me to host the event for a television audience. My entire show takes time off from the road and we all travel south to the Swansee Gorge to see what will happen. The newspapers have a field day with the event. Wally refuses to grant interviews to anyone. He says only that he is confident he will survive. He locks himself inside his trailer and ignores the throngs of visitors. We have to hire bodyguards to keep the girls away. A local television crew drops watermelons into the gorge to illustrate the fall. The melons tumble through the air and crash against the rocks. Those that do land in the river emerge in small pieces far downstream. The reporters confirm the dimensions. It is 129 feet from the bridge to the river below. At its very deepest point, the river is six feet deep. Local authorities and police try to ban Skydog's leap, but Wally and the businessmen from Nashville take it to court. "A man can do what he wants," says the Judge. Wally insists on complete solitude while he trains for the big jump. He does not even venture out of his trailer to eat. Razor Rita brings food to him on a tray. A reporter from the Nashville Telegram asks me,"Don't you think this is immoral?" "A man can do what he wants," I say. I am nervous at first in front of the television cameras. The anxious crowd surrounding the gorge is familiar to me, but the cameras make me uneasy. I have never addressed such a large and unseen crowd. I introduce Razor Rita, Smiley, and Mickey the Mouth, the opening acts. They perform their tricks on top of the Swansee bridge. The wind is strong and blows Rita's hair into her face. The camera zooms in close on her bleeding palm. During a break, I sneak a look down into the gorge. The river below looks like a small white ribbon.

MEM

When the cameraman cues me I scream into the microphone: "Ladies and gentlemen, the man we all have been waiting for, Skydog Wally Johnson!" Skydog Wally Johnson steps forward. He is wearing a cape. He walks slowly towards me and as he brushes by he looks up into my face. His lips are pressed together tightly. His wide eyes blaze. Wally takes his place on the edge of the Swansee bridge. His toes grip the edge. He takes a deep breath. My hands sweat. I stand behind Skydog. The wind, once loud in my ears, becomes silent. It is all silent. I want Wally to look back. I want him to see me. I am right there, behind him. I want to say it to him, "Look back Wally." But his body is stiff. He does not turn back. Skydog leans out and drops silently off the Swansee bridge. I rush forward to watch him fall. He cuts through the air quickly and lands with a small thud on the rocks below. I stare down at the tiny figure, a motionless spot. Down below no one moves towards the body. It is too amazing. It is too real.

Charlotte Saenz-Boldt

Gelatin Silver Print

Sketches Retrieved (The Litany of Jesus Christ In Music)

In looking back, We just peek through The crack that divides The night from the day. •*•114,1M•

The deodorant is foul, Flaking on his skin, And a young man perceives The acrid scent of regret.

Supple flesh, tainted by Instinct touches wood And peels of coarse varnish Now too thick for protection.

Sallow green and sickly orange Flash incessantly in the Black of his recollection, Illuminating the open closet.

Sometimes I get this feeling that we're moving in a tightly knit Two-fold world—like a sponge that's been strained so hard I Can't even remember why I must see mommy Unless she will never want to give her sweet surety to the naked soul Of my clothed but unprotected inner form.

...-erA4.1-••••••

I am A person and You are a person But my pain cannot be your pain; I cannot eat your breakfast, Though I can eat the same kinds Of food

Adolescence (Regrets) I smile As the lonely flame of An iridescent pink Lighter ignites the Pages of a romantic Existence.

L____

The cardboard gods Black vendors sell by The beach melt in their Plastic containers, and I cry. (Capitulation) Decaffeinated apple tea In fragile porcelain cups With polished gold-leafed edges Falls softly from dainty trays Carried slowly to the sofa. Sweetened liquid herb Stains an antique carpet, But light-hearted conversation Continues uninterrupted until I vomit atop the pastries. (Nothing but no one) Blue pool grey grass And a yellow afternoon. Pale sea green ice And orange tea leaves too. Analyze and realize and Shut up while you can. Lonely smiles and Bullshit winks and An air bag for heavy days. All I ever heard of And all I ever knew. (Ask me now) My attention was elsewhere: In the hollow recess of a Tall tin can cast gingerly To the side of a cliff. Swept softly past bodies And other debris thrown Carelessly onto shapeless rocks, The can landed safely in Fresh cut grass a dull olive green.

Confusion when x is not y, because you were made to believe that the make believe was to be believed by you as y. The sin of x is x.

As a pale smile lingers And slowly slips to Fitful sleep, This narrative is brewing In the pleasure of Two beats left Of any standard deviation From the norm. Good morning heartache and Welcome dirty blues. The memory might have faded But your burden never moves. When Confession awoke His dreams were slightly Charred, for the conquest Of his nature was not safely Kept in chains that Samson Would have sunk in in yards Of strands of hair. For as Regret swims deeper to Too strong a feeling, the feeling Is plainly drowned. I woke the Next morning, and my Breath was dry; my Fingers were discolored. I turned to the lamplight And thought while yawning, Why does the mare Give her calf suckle If her breast will never Feel the lips in time? And with the spastic sensation That the sound of a loud boom Inducesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;such as that of a gunâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; The vision of a blue-grey wood house Overtook my consciousness, and I recalled The words of half a sentence I had Written or read earlier: Like a ravaged carcass, shattered in paperThin, bloody shards, her... Brother surveyed the room and ignored The unusual scenes of spontaneous Confusion while stepping over a disrobed Body; he found the pack. I sense the memory of a future I defaulted but in the silence lies, because I've said it before but seldom remember objects in mirror are closer than they appear to have found a cure for.

do you know what they sang on my birthday? they sang Happy Birthday to You the anniversary of your pleasure trip through the annals of my mind and the destruction of your-my transmissions

Present Perfect Randomly I think of Feelings, joined, scattered around my heart I want to Contain them. To Diminish them. To Devaluate them. To Release them and Shoot as they run. Love, smooth, glistening on my thighs I want to Believe it. To Accept it. To Cleanse it. To Unravel it and Taste it drop by drop. Forms mingle in shapeless shadows, Innocent and unlabeled. I turn to forget, and I recall The first scenes of playful confusion, Now channeled in an honest clichĂŠ That suddenly lacks meaning and taste. In weekends past We drank tepid tea And toed the vapid line While stifled voices choked. And the disturbance of a thousand Unpleasant memories seldom leaves The controlled calm of A new beginning here, where My private thoughts protect me And the matured fruit of A bold but wayward search is Ripe with ironic subplots And calculated deviations. Blow up dolls and pin-up fiction are much better than Empty tries to shock. Don't you think?

4.4--014.1-0-0

So much to utter to comprehend to responsibility green hospital light a nurse falling down grey stairs Victorian carpets and Gothic cathedrals your lips as thick as wine can red absolve the purple black lighting grim painting hell in a vacuum clean me and my mess rush me to the morgue but never do an autopsy he said, but not I. Excuse me excuse you not no never more inside out down and out trodden on a postcard not a letter that is how the other half lives but not in labels words and clothing pictures dolls or passions stories games or but meanings of soul, voice, face and touch and though we are all the same in the open contexts of growing up I know now I am not he that it would not come back to a future I defaulted but in the silence lies untouched though still salubriously influential. Feel that this is what if you can?

I testify With a picture book my bible; Black photos and yellow stains. It helps to pass the time More than self-conscious introspection That often lasts for less I once said, but if an idiotSavant and a handi-wipe Are all you need for fun I Believe I feel a different urge than The light that ignites your Cigarette has filled you full Of prophylactic treatises and Dulling substances constructed to protect your Deaf maternal instinct Instinctively repulsed Alone I am without Open to nothing yet Not the nothingness more sore than tequila Spilling on black cotton rubbed against my temples. It's too much to handle when the shadows are lurking, So you know I live in sun.

Recriminations Call Me By Numbers Paint Me in names. I only tell the truth on Sundays When my beard is clean-shaven, Non-existent.

...-111111-441•1--1-•

If one more tissue calls for attention, If three more ideas reveal the truth I seem to see I think I might leave it I think it will leave me And fewer pages will be written And fewer stations will be channeled Through to You which Really means Me.

The Chapter Closed Do this in memory of the me honorAble to lie when it's fad in numbers 75 percent of our lives is spent on The toilet is not where I've been, but On the phone I often hear of your Indiscretion is the base of conflicting Realities that slap across a shamed Face of steel hands of thunder heart of Black coal black teeth black love Black soul black stop and soul-stop. A brilliant person knows something most other people don't (know)(get me wrong) A healthy man shares, because even manure we retrieved in the past helps the young weed grow and the pained persist. Music stirs mountains any time Move this carcass to the spotlight Toilet-paper is 25% of what the average Americans buy in the supermarket but sell on The Stock Market where I made millions, but Lost it all? See Peter, he's got the Last night I needed you, since She was gone and you were here and that is there and Body give me music of your Body give me blond waves of Silver-tone aerobic thighs; I Press release eject the tape and play Another song loud. Put it on Loud blast bass pump treble sing the Tune out and let's relax—

Imagine the destruction of your polkaDot condition when Rock n' Roll is Mozart and those who stutter Articulate, while others that Admonish and speak of goals denied Guard the ugly clock. Listen to the leaves breeze Amidst the pleasant draft. Running, I am fresh again; Waiting, I am dead.

The Litany of Jesus Christ in Music Peace in the routine I wish everyday were a naptime I wish every meal were juice and cookies I think the meaning finds itself in what's simple I think it's about more than one can handle when one still needs to try

I like my fables and I know our myths Don't eat green eggs and ham, but Sam, I still am

ained Andrew R. Rossi

sell on ns, but

it9

Dan Clarke

Cloud Ground Etching

Jim

Ritz Michael McCullers

Pratt pulled his Scout off highway 119 onto a gravel service road that he knew from fishing. The overgrown branches of pines and baby hardwoods slapped against the side of his old truck as he swerved to avoid the deepest ruts. It hadn't rained for three or four weeks and the clicking and buzzing of the cicadas carried through the clear, dry air loud enough to hear over the engine and the crunching tires. Mosquitoes and gnats swirled in front of the windshield, attracted by the headlights. He drove with the windows down, trying to catch a breeze and wishing he had a cold Coke, or a beer, something to clear the dust from his throat. The reflection of the moon stretched across the smooth pond like a silver bar. Pratt coasted to a stop on the brown grass by the water and set the parking brake. With the air still and heavy in the truck he could smell Frankie's blood and urine on the seat where his friend had laid a couple of hours before, a smell like sweaty pennies. Some of Frankie's blood still flecked his hands, so Pratt got out of the truck, leaned down,and grabbed a handful of dirt. He scrubbed his hands with the dirt like he was washing them; he knew from hunting that dirt was better to get blood off than water. Pratt walked to the water's edge and kicked a ripple in the moon's reflection. His reel and tackle sat in the back of the truck; he had too much on his mind to fish. He just wanted to get somewhere quiet and think things through. The cicadas buzzed louder and Pratt walked to the other side of the pond, away from the heat of the truck's engine. Nobody knows I'm here, he thought, and sat against a pine tree in the dark and cried. In the bar Frankie had made a terrible moaning noise, deep like the low of a cow, and grabbed his chest where blood seeped from a tiny cut in his shirt. He had rolled over quickly, before anyone had a chance to help him. The Mexican guy that Frankie had picked a fight with ran out into the street before anyone knew the fight was over. Pratt carried Frankie to his truck. All his other friends had scattered. When he got Frankie in the truck, Pratt held his friend's head in his hands for a moment. His fingers, specked with blood, intertwined with Frankie's red hair. Pratt stared at his hands thinking about all the things that hands can do. "Godammit Frankie, I don't even like you very much." Pratt drove as fast as he could without attracting too much attention towards the county hospital, twenty miles away in Fayetteville. He looked over at Frankie, keeping one hand on the wheel. A bubble of blood rose out of the hole in Frankie's chest. It inflated and deflated a little with each raspy breath. Pratt looked the other way and popped the bubble with his finger. "You're making a mess out of my truck Frankie, but if you just keep breathing until we get to the hospital I'll let it pass." Frankie slumped against the passenger door, his face pressed against the window. His eyes were shut, but Pratt could hear his slow breaths. "Pratt Linville, this is your life." He felt sick to his stomach. At the emergency; room he gave them Frankie's name and a fake one for himself. while they were getThe nurse told him to have a seat and wait, but Pratt slipped out the door ting Frankie ready.

"Looks like you'll be okay, Frankie, I'll catch you later," Pratt said softly on his way out. In the parking lot he threw up twice and then headed back towards town. Pratt didn't know why he cried Things just weren't like he wanted them to be. I could go see Alison, he thought. He stared at the pond. Too small for the bass that most Texas fishermen preferred, it held only bream and some small catfish. His grandfather had told him once that the crews that used the service road sank old equipment and tires in the pond, which gave the bream places to breed on the bottom. Around dusk the fish surfaced to feed, scattering circles across the surface of the water as if a light rain were falling. When Pratt and his grandfather camped here they would fry a mess of bream in butter and flour for breakfast every morning. / don't have anything to say to her, but maybe we could catch a movie. It's reason enough for leaving. Pratt woke up in his truck a while after dawn and headed back down the service road to the highway. He stopped at a Circle K and bought a jar of Gherkins and a Coke for breakfast. He needed some money for the road, and he would've liked to take along his dog, Seven, also. The Scout had a removable top, so in the summer Seven took a running jump right onto the front seat when he saw that Pratt was going somewhere. Seven sat all the way across the bench seat from him, sticking his head out of the window. The AM radio didn't work so Pratt hung a bag half-filled with food from the silver knob for Seven to snack on. Pratt knew if he tried to get Seven in the car with him that Seven would wake his mother up with his barking. The bank closed on Saturday, so Pratt couldn't get at what money he had until the begining of the week. No money, no dog, he thought, and no luck. The doorbell rang again and Pratt waited for Mrs. Mattison, Alison's mother, to answer. He could hear the three-tone chimes echo in the foyer. A fine, silver dew from the sprinkler system settled on the lawn. The Mattisons lived on the south side of town, on Radcliffe Drive, in a subdivision called Southbury. The nice neighborhoods in town all had names and gates. Pratt just lived "over near the station house." He picked up the paper from the white porch and removed the plastic wrapper. He didn't see anything about Frankie. Mrs. Mattison peeked through the lace curtains and opened the bright red door. "Did you come all the way over here this early just to bring me my paper?" She took the paper and smiled at him. She held her robe shut at her chest and patted her hair down with her other hand. "I'm glad you like that robe I gave you for your birthday," he said, "I was afraid it might be too big. They didn't have extra-extra-short." He grinned back at her. "I don't need to get woken up this early to get insulted, Pratt, I can get that from my own family anytime." "Ha, ha." "Shut up and give me a hug." She stepped forward onto the porch and hugged him. Her head just reached his chin. "What's the matter Pratt?" she whispered. "Nothing, I just wanted to see you." "At seven o'clock Saturday morning? Looking like hell? You forget that we mothers pick up on these things."

"Not mine." "Isn't she home yet? Her shift should be over by now." "Have you heard from Alison lately? I was wondering how school was going. I bet she's having a good time in Dallas," he answered. Mrs. Mattison stepped back into the foyer. "Come on in Pratt. You want some breakfast?" Pratt stayed on the porch."I need to ask you a favor Mrs. Mattison. I hate to do it, you know I do, but I need a little money." "Money, Pratt? I thought you had your savings, for schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" "I don't need much,just maybe fifty dollars, but I need it right away. I'm going away for a while." "Where are you going? Whyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" "I'd rather you didn't, to tell the truth. I'm just too tired to explain. I promise I didn't do anything wrong." "Can't you stay here for a while? I won't tell anybody." "No ma'am, I'm sorry, but I can't." Mrs. Mattison walked back to the kitchen, leaving the front door open. Pratt saw at the prom. He and the the family pictures on the wall. Alison at graduation. The two of them . Mrs. Mattison Mattisons two Christmases ago, when his mother had to work at the hospital returned with an envelope. of "Just promise me you'll be careful, Pratt. Promise me that you'll take care face showed a few more wrinkles yourself. "She squeezed his hand. Without make-up, her than he remembered. "Yes ma'am, I will. I'll be careful." He walked back to his truck, past the gardenias that lined the walk, past the goodbye from the porch as painted mailbox. She looked just like a mother should, waving he drove away. His grand-parWhen he was a kid, Pratt dreamed a lot about driving and his mother. Lake Martin. He and his ents had lived about 45 miles away in the foot-hills around Sunday after dark on the two-lane mother often went down for the weekend, coming back a semi-automatic clutch and highway. His mother had a red Kharman-Ghia then; it had she let Pratt shift. side of the road, purple In the fall muscadines grew. They hung on vines on the , the vines reached over the fence, and sweet. On one particular stretch, outside Maclean the car to the side of the road and stretching almost to the edge of the road. His mother pulled nes?she asked him. No, I'll stay in the car. got out. Do you want to help me pick some muscadi nes. When he woke he looked and her Somehow he fell asleep while his mother picked muscadi than real night, and knew that she was seat was empty. He stared into the blackness, darker the decision whether to wait for his mother gone. A lot of time had passed. Pratt had to make car scared him. He always decided to go or go on without her. The night and the forest and the scared him most of all. But somehow the ahead. He didn't know how to drive the car and that accord. It moved like a ship across water, car would go down the, highway in silence, of its own ghost ship. except with no ripples. It glided on the asphalt like a the road with the hazard lights on, Pratt sat on the hood of his truck by the side of the air pressure in the tires, worried that the eating muscadines. He fussed over maps, checked Scout might overheat.

These things make goodjelly, but they aren't a meal. They're giving me a stomachache. He spit out the tough purple skin of a muscadine and hopped back into the truck. He pulled out onto the highway headed north. He rubbed the rough stubble on his chin and wished he could have a shave. No, I think I feel better without it. It makes me feel dirty and half-assed, like this country I'm driving through. The farms to the right and left of him passed by in dull flatness. The wind whipped dust clouds up and down the highway without even a hill to slow it down. The fields' pale dirt held rows and rows of cotton plants. The white fuzz hadn't shown up yet on the green leaves and they looked to him like cabbage. He didn't come from cotton country. He'd been driving five hours straight, just stopping for gas, and only the sun had changed. It had started off right behind him and moved to his left as he headed north. The land stayed the same. The sun off the road was giving him a headache. What I want is some sunglasses, he thought, and a hamburger. After another couple of hours, Pratt pulled off into a town named Calypso. He parked the truck in front a Woolworth's and put a quarter in the meter. He saw a pay phone at the gas station across the street. Maybe I should call home, he thought, or Mrs. Mattison. I'll just see if Alison's home. He left the truck unlocked and walked across the dusty white street to the phone. Alison wasn't at home, and he didn't have a message for her, so Pratt just hung up when the machine came on. He crossed the parking lot to the station and went inside. The attendant was ringing up a purchase. Pratt grabbed a couple of Payday bars and put them on the counter. "Do you know where I can get a good hamburger around here?" he asked the old man behind at the register. "I'm starving." "Woolworth's across the street's got a lunch counter. That's your best bet. It ain't gonna be the best burger you ever had, though." "I'll just take these two candy bars," Pratt said, sliding them down towards the old man. A man in a blue coat with wide lapels turned towards the counter from the coffee machine. "Payday. That's a fine candy bar there. My daddy used to buy me Payday candy bars." His beard made him look about ten years older than Pratt, but he was hard to place. He wore unpleated khaki pants and a work shirt with his initials, T.C., above the pocket. Brownblack splotches of oil stained his Redwing work boots. "Do you mind if I join you for that burger? I could use a little company. My name's T.C." He stuck out his hand and smiled again. "You bet," Pratt said, shaking his hand. "I've been on the road, haven't talked to anyone but myself all day. My name's Pratt, good to meet you." Pratt and T.C. sat at the counter in Woolworth's. The air conditioning felt ice-cold after the long day driving in the sun. The air in the store smelled pureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a linoleum floor, ammonia type of smell. The fluorescent lights hummed and cast a fine white light on the store. The manager spoke into a phone at the front of the store, calling to different departments over the loudspeaker. Pratt ate his burger and listened to T.C. "I've been here about a year, working in the garage. It's not a big town, but it's nice and quiet. Keeps me out of trouble." "What'd you do before you came here?" Pratt asked, his mouth full. "Well, to tell the truth, I used to steal cars mostly." T.C. laughed. "I was in prison a little while and I came here when I got out to live on my grandma's place."

"Why did you steal cars? Money?" Pratt said. "Well, everybody's got to be good at something." T.C. laughed again and took a bite. "No, really, I don't know why exactly I did it. I love cars, always have. If I was rich maybe I would've bought me a.bunch of cars, but I wasn't, so I stole. The other part of it, besides liking the cars, was that it just felt good for those few minutes when I was breaking in and driving off. I never did get tired of that. Even feeling scared feels good sometimes." "I was good at it though, no doubt about it. I really knew those cars, you know what I'm saying? People buy their cars, don't know anything about them. It's just a way to get somewhere for them, but I knew the cars. I loved them. It always felt like those cars just wanted me to take them home with me." "The funny thing was that I didn't usually sell the cars either, though if I was a little short I sometimes popped over the border and sold one to a Mexican. Mostly I just left them in the next town." "Did you get in much trouble?" Pratt said. "Well, I had rules." T.C. took one of Pratt's french fries and dipped it into some mustard."I believe that everybody's got to have rules in their life. Rule number one is that I never stole a car from somebody that needed it. I once stole a fella's car and then found out he was out of work and just got married to a girl I knew from high-school. I went and put it right back in the fella's driveway." "Rule number two, I never stole nothing from anybody I knew. "Rule number three, I never hurt anybody. "I been in jail twice before, though, once in Texas, once in Oklahoma. One time the shit out.of me with a this oil-rigger in New Orleans caught me hot-wiring his car and beat I was ever in." tire iron without even calling the cops. I reckon that was the worst trouble tip for the They finished their burgers at about the same time. Pratt left a nice out into the afternoon sun. waitress from the money Mrs. Mattison gave him. They walked the white light. It looked like a The two-storey buildings up and down the street glowed in he ate. "Why'd you stop?" postcard to Pratt. He sneezed. He always sneezed in the sun after he asked T.C. I the "The best pussy I ever got was on an afternoon in West Texas when gave h Fury, like goddamned brandlast car I ever stole to a bunch of whores. It was a Plymout hydra-glide three on the column. newâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;bright red, fully loaded, air conditioning and the asked the woman if she wanted to I took it down to this whorehouse I knew pretty good and just got out on a eight month grand buy it. She said I could take it out in merchandise. I had that car as much as I did about all them theft auto and I didn't give a good-goddamn about but I was tired of being a thief anyways whores. I knew the police would be coming sometime, fucking them whores and drinking beer "til so I parked the Fury out front and stayed there I felt at home." the station and paused for Pratt started towards his truck. T.C. turned towards might be nice to cool off before you hit the a second. "Hey Pratt, you want to go swimming? It road again." nearby?" "Yeah, sure. We can take my truck. Is there a place It's real cold though, maybe we "Just about a mile south of town there's a creek. momma always said. "T.C. smiled. should wait half an hour so we won't get cramps. Like Pratt laughed and .climbed in the truck.

"This is a nice truck you got here Pratt, but I wouldn't steal it, even though I noticed you left it unlocked. Want to know why not?" T.C. was looking at the truck's manual. 354 cubic inch V-8. Limited slip differential. Locking hubs. They sat in the shade by the creek, resting for their swim. "Why not?" "Because International is a farm equipment company, and your Scout here is considered farm equipment in the state of Texas. Farm equipment is registered more carefully than regular cars; they keep track of all the serial numbers. They also give out tougher sentences for stealing farm equipment. It's sort of like rustling cattle." "I'm glad to hear that you wouldn't have stolen my car T.C. I guess that makes us real buddies." "Well, I'm partial to convertibles anyway." Pratt closed his eyes and stretched out on his back. The creek rushed by, shallow but fast. It washed over smooth rocks and converged into noisy white water at a broken-down beaver dam."You know what this reminds me of, T.C.?" "It reminds me of going fishing with my daddy and having watermelon rind fights in the creek," T.C. said. "When I was in school, me and my girlfriend Alison would skip every once in a while and go down to this quarry near the armory. They must've tapped into a spring when they were digging it, because it stayed full of water, even in the summer when it didn't rain. Blue Turtle Quarry." "In the summer a bunch of people hung out there and drank beer and everything; folks jumped from Blue Turtle Rock, maybe a hundred feet, into the deepest part of the quarry. During the school year, though, nobody came around, so in the spring me and Alison would take off all our clothes and put them in the sun so they'd be warm when we got back into them. We swam and just floated around and everything. Once Alison jumped off the rock all naked. Whenever I'm near the water I think of that quarry." "Was she your first girlfriend then?" "First and only so far. We went out about two years, before she went to college." "She must have been beautiful standing on the rock with sun on her hair, her body just perfect in the breeze. Makes me want to be young again." T.C. laughed. "Her mother used to take me to the movies with them. After work in the summer I'd go over there and her mom would fix me a big dinner and afterwards I'd take a long shower. Then we'd go to the early show and Mrs. Mattison would buy my ticket and we'd sit and laugh. Alison didn't like the movies too much, but me and her mom loved all those dumb summer comedies. I just like movie theaters, too, especially in the summer. I'd watch anything." "I wish I'd had me a girlfriend like that to take me to the movies and skinny-dip. Is she the reason you're on the road?" "I guess so," Pratt answered. T.C. leaned back on the grass beside Pratt. "I don't want to tell you your business, but Texas is a damn large state, and, from what I can tell, it's full of girls. So take that as you will, just some brotherly advice." T.C.'s grandmother's house stood behind a row of pecan trees with a driveway in a half-circle around it. Pratt stopped under one of the trees. T.C. got out of the truck and came around to the driver's side. He shook Pratt's hand through the window.

"It was real nice getting to meet you Pratt. I enjoyed hearing about your girl and everything and I hope you have good luck." "Good luck with your job T.C. Thanks for the swim." "We'll see y'all later," T.C. said, turning towards the house. Pratt started the truck forward slowly, then stopped. He leaned out of the window and turned his head towards T.C. "Hey T.C., you think you might want to come along, you know,just for the ride?" T.C. turned around on the steps and smiled. "I reckon I better stick around. I've got a home to make here, I'll leave the adventuring up to you." Pratt turned left out of the driveway and headed towards town to catch the highway. T.C. waved goodbye from the porch. Pratt got back to town in about five minutes, and saw the sign for the highway. He didn't really feel like leaving yet, so he pulled back into the parking spot in front of Woolworth's. He walked into the store, thinking of a present for Alison. He had the money that Mrs. Mattison gave him. He looked over the perfumes at the cosmetics counter. He didn't recognize any of the brands so he just read over the names. They were all the same to him. He saw a gold and red box that looked nice. He picked it up and saw the name on the front, Ritz. He opened the box and took out the oval-shaped bottle. The frosted glass had flutes running from bottom to top. The heavy bottle felt good and cool in his hand. He smelled the perfume and it seemed to him that it was sort of subdued, classy, like something Mrs. Mattison would wear. The box and everything looked nicer than the others too, so he put the bottle back in the package and walked towards the front of the store. No one was at the register. Pratt looked around the store and didn't see anybody. It was around closing time and he was the only customer. He looked out the window and saw his truck in the parking space out front. He put the perfume in his pocket and walked out the door. No one said anything. It felt good to be scared. He got in the truck and started it up. He didn't feel like going to see Alison. He didn't feel like going anywhere. He didn't know who to give the perfume to.

Jane Johnston Gelatin Silver Print

Jane Johnston

Gelatin Silver Print

Abllow.-___

Tom

Barbara Moore is December's playmate of the month. Hailing from Spokane, Washington, she writes: no one would believe I work the slime line at the salmon cannery. She leaves little to the imagination; I tend to believe almost everything anyway. No photo refinishing for Barbarail believe she likes intimate conversations. Dinner for two, That her dream date is a doctor named Irv. But even though you're not as naked as Barbara Moore I know that you could be. Then, I think, I would give more than two and a half bunnies to see you which is all they gave the movie of the Graham Swift novel which I haven't seen but hear is not at all like Generation X, the book I'm reading now, five pages a day, on the toilet. Something I could never tell you unless I, at least, met you face to face. And then, I would need to remember that you might bruise if I touched you too long. My tongue would run smoother on you than on plastic-coated pages. Your breathing would be louder than surround sound and that alone is worth all the bunny-shaped candy of Easter Sunday. Sometimes I want to crush you into tiny pieces and put you in my pocket with the pennies and waterchestnuts. Sometimes I just want to stand here, outside your window in the cold, with binoculars, and watch you type. Watch you reach into your desk drawer, pulling out your round white plastic pill box; at exactly 11:02 PM which makes me wonder if your watch is slightly slow and I love your precision and your brown hair which you have decided not to cut but leave long and I see you're getting to the end of the pink pills, up to the green ones, but I haven't seen you pull down the shades for months â&#x20AC;&#x201D; what I would give to see the inside of your

3c3

shades! To be on the light side, the right side of your bedroom windows. I'd make you turn off that black and sliver halogen lamp, you never know who might be watching. Although, sometimes, I think it's really you watching me typing up the words I'm whispering to myself to keep warm. You're writing my love into lines that your writing teacher will mark with an X and in the margin you have a good earfor dialogue and you'll wonder where the voice comes from, the voice sometimes seeping into your room like a draft from under your cracked corner window and you'll open the Little Dream Book you've been saving to read on study breaks, underlining: Interpretation of dreams: the conscious mind tries to stand beside the unconscious mind. I'm no dream but I'm longing to stand beside you; waiting to be fictionalized, waiting for you to come across the line in the John Ashbery book I see you have just bought And the poem set me softly down beside you this is the side of me that Barbara never sees; she hates poetry. Still, she has her good side; she never looks away. At my trial they might say over-gratification leads to low self-esteem. A woman in a suit will say: As a boy be had a dog named tragedy. Despite her picture-perfect nipples I3arbara Moore would be intimidated by your typing; silent and furious. By the thesaurus on the bedstand next to your bed. By how many words all mean almost the same thing.

Rachel Zucker

oto

A.1 IcoLI rrt

Mcbther's Father arid My Father 1972

Grandfather's hands cross in front of his crotch

in a fortress X, and he looks away.

Is he ashamed of us, his family?

Does he regret the growing season,

wish that he had never been a farmer?

My mother wears loose, flowing flower pants,

parts her dark creek of hair in the middle;

she stands, generations apart, between

her father and my father. Fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

a button-down hangs loose from his narrow

I I(

shouldersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;tries to move ahead in the world.

A country kid with numbers in his head:

boy never could plant, boy never could hunt.

l'n

Never quite could get the talk down right.

Mcother's Family 1971

There is no fancy in our family

portraits. Even 'portrait' implies some art,

thr

and our poor Polaroids are sustenance,

recordings, food for easy memory;

black and white, puritan records of who

alc

was alive when the hasty shutter snapped,

carefully placed and dated on the back.

My grandfather stands stiff-legged, edgy,

Lik

as if the camera shot lead bullets

and he'd die for us. He's no model, but

yol

goddammit he fills his t-shirt and more,

and there's no question as to who you'd pick

if your old car was broken down or if

something needed to be killed or planted.

Nicothe.r's High Scht)c-,1Gracitiatic)ri

Fathr's Family

1968

1971

Your eyes glow luminescent like dials.

We wear bitter raiments of country death;

I'm missing the secret mesage in them, I see only Doris Day, Brenda Lee.

do we know a color that is not earth? The sprawling earth in our food, in our talk,

Are there strict Baptist parents in those eyes?

under our nails, in our very prayers.

Are you bored? Do you want to dance and smoke

The field's dirt shades even our wildest dreams.

and sleep with a man, enough to marry?

Only great-grandmother does not wear brown,

That I'm saying these things tells...

but her blue dress is the boring dead blue

Pre-divorce, pre-baby, pre-back-to-school, pre-roaming, pre-Methadone-clinic-stink.

of the night sky stretching arms-out across

I look at your picture to recognize

Where does the earth end and the person start?

something... I only see the paper's grain,

You can't tell by looking at grandfather,

you textured in a million tiny squares.

who died so young I have no name for him.

I'm in a world known only from movies,

Five generations, and only you,father,

a world which you could not have known at all.

have broken with the soil.

N'IcItlicr iii 1.111e!. Wt>()cls 1971

NIc)ther in a Chair

Cocked in the winter Alabama woods, the pine and spruce drop their needles to you,

I guess we are all haunted once, mother. You, haunted by a child; whether that's me,

wave their bare arms to you...

or you, I don't know. Writing this, I think

You smile, queen of this defoliation,

that I would never go out with a girl

alone and free to be young in these woods. Do you lay in the needles and smell sap,

this young, but you're well on your way to divorce.

covering yourself with prickly feathers?

(though the eyes still shine). You've battled it seems,

Like the dark trees, as thin as the dark trees,

not slipped through the lines and escaped unscratched.

except for your bitter, turned, child-birth hipsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

It's something I've always admired in you,

you have me to thank for those shape changes. In these woods, dryad, you escaped being

though it means I missed all the fun of you.

daughter, being wife, being my mother.

back on mystery and slow endurance,

You look as if you've just been born yourself,

given up exuberance, killed the dryad.

born yourself into these new woods.

That's what the men of this family will do to you.

his browning lover's prone corpse, last year's crops.

974

Your face falls in faint lines, bags under your eyes

Your eyes say to me that you have fallen

Michael McCullers Winner of the Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for Poetry

Romantic ZZ Packer

Polly Glenn Truelove decided it was high time for new place mats. She had been watching "Guiding Light" when Carl Jr. and his new lover, Roxy, sat down to eat their first breakfast together. Polly Glenn noticed that Carl Jr.'s and Roxy's place mats were the most beautiful she'd ever seen. It stood to reason, they were at Roxy's apartment. A halo of morning light surrounded the figures of Carl Jr. and Roxy as they were about to kiss, but all Polly Glenn could think about was that she badly needed to get new place mats. The ones on their table at present are orange and pink and brown ones made of scallop-coiled pipe cleaners from Dee's Arts 5 Crafts. Her grandmother made them in the nursing home, and they still carry a certain smell. Polly Glenn had seen her grandmother on her deathbed, had attended to her the very night. Polly Glenn and her mother, Lady Charlesetta Glenn Truelove, decided to bring Polly Glenn's grandmother back from the nursing home at the age of eighty-nine. Polly Glenn's grandmother, Gloriana Glenn Mason, was half-dead already and given to fits of tremblings and hacking. The grandmother was trying with all her might to scream, but restricted by sickness and phlegm. Polly Glenn would cook herself a Velveeta cheese omelet, and sit in the chair next to her grandmother's bed, watching, late at night, the frail body racked of sleep, upright in bed like a tombstone, left with barely enough energy to keep her body alive, then boiling out a residue of energy to try to scream something again, something indescribable about the past that Polly Glenn had never wanted to understand. She resumed this same cycle for days until she died. Her grandmother had left these place mats behind. Tacky and almost delightfully ugly to anyone, save Polly Glenn, who had already grabbed her handbag, thinking whether she needed anything else besides place mats from Sears before she left. "Bring me back some mints and peanuts," says her mother. Polly Glenn buttons her plastic rain coat. It's the kind that's clear and comes in a package the size of travel size Kleenex. She will buy mints, but will say the Sears candy counter was out of peanuts. Peanuts give her mother gas. When her mother gets gas she scrunches up her nose, looking around as though the kitchen appliances were guilty. "Sure," says Polly Glenn, buttoning the last button of the rain coat. The rain coat is a little tight in.the neck but she wonders if she should pull the drawstrings of the hood anyway, to protect her curls. She decides not, heads out the door, shutting it, only for the screen door to bang twice behind her. "Aint nothing worse than a house full of broken things, waitin' fora man to fix," says her mother in a loud voice so Polly Glenn can hear. Polly Glenn would like to create the impression that she did not hear. She could have boxed her mother right in the mouth for that one, really. Polly Glenn is twenty-seven and works at a Mexican restaurant called Chi-Chi's. All the Chi-Chi's waitresses have to wear these white dresses with scoop necklines and big ruffles that make them look like blown-up curtains for some JC Penny White Sale ad. Her Chi-Chi's dress

is the only thing beside her in the cab of the Ford pickup. She notices that the red bric-a-brac border is fraying. On "As the World Turns," they've started meeting at a snazzy Mexican restaurant called "Floronz's". Well, actually it was Italian, but it went for the same stucco look as ChiChi's, Polly Glenn notes. She wonders if Erik will ever get Vanessa out of Montego Bay, or if they will couple up to search for their illegitimate daughter, Celeste. "Guiding Light" also has a character named Vanessa, but "Guiding Light" never meets in a restaurant like Florenz's, they vacillate between the country club and Reva Bend, named after the infamous Reva Shane. When Polly Glenn is working at Chi-Chi's, she likes to pretend that she is in Florenz's, and that Carl Jr.(real-life brother of Erik, former lover of Vanessa), will come in with his Texas swagger and million dollar-oil-field smile and tell Polly Glenn that she had amnesia, that she is really his fiancé but wandered off to Floydd Knobbs, Indiana by mistake. Yet, in her mind, Polly Glenn could not affix exactly who Carl Jr. was to her. Sometimes he was like Woody, her husband, sort of. One night Polly Glenn was in her grandmother's room and, out of nowhere, Woody comes and brings her ketchup to go along with her Velveeta omelet. "I knew you liked 'em this way, we just didn't have any ketchup," says Woody, his voice strange and foreign and nice-sounding. He actually went out and bought ketchup for her. At that moment, he kind of looked like Carl Jr. Woodrow was a handsome man. Really. "Thanks, Wood," Polly Glenn remembers saying. Then her grandmother begins again, bolting upright, hacking, screaming without any sound but that of stale air scraping against her throat muscles. Horror movies are scarier when they're silent. It's like suffocation. It's like drowning. She never saw Woody after that night. He's gone. She is in her father's old blue pick-up, and now realizes that she has not been going to Sears, she has not been going anywhere in particular, just down the road, daydreaming and driving. She could have gone on a long time doing this, daydreaming and driving, and it amuses her that if she had gone on long enough, she might have reached Montego Bay. When she comes home Lady Charlesetta is sitting in the Barco-lounger like she's in traction. Lady Charlesetta is sucking on a Creamsicle and has cotton balls between her toes, letting the red nail-polish dry. The nail polish was actually Polly Glenn's, the bottle went unused. Polly Glenn's manager imposed a rule that all the Chi-Chi's waitresses were to wear nail polish. When Polly Glenn showed up wearing "clear", the manager, Marty Goodpastor, gave her a smile and a bottle of "Fuck-Me-Red" nail polish. Polly Glenn never used the nail polish, and doubts her mother looked on the bottom where the name was. Her mother was a "Wheel" watcher, and thought Pat Sayjak was just the cutest thing. She especially loved it when Pat was too short in comparison to a guest and had to step on a little hidden box so as not to look stupid. "Oh he's so short!" her mother would say, "He's almost like that little mulatto you listen to—what's her name—Princess?" "Prince! Prince! It's not Princess, it's Prince!" Polly Glenn would say. "Whatever," her mother said, adjusting her feet, tonguing the last of the Creamsicle. Polly Glenn also bought Prince's new album, but wouldn't tell Lady Charlesetta that. Polly Glenn set the Sears bag down and brought out the place mats. The Sears candy counter was out of mints, but full of peanuts, so Polly Glenn came back with no candy at all. If she said nothing, maybe Lady Charlesetta would have forgotten about them. Lady Charlesetta didn't even glance Polly Glenn's way. It was "Wheel of Fortune" time for the final

contestant to name the appropriate consonants and vowels. Lissa Greenbaugh from Charlotta, Arkansas requested a T, R, S. F, H, and E. The answer was "Traffic Light" and she won a trip to Mexico. Lissa's husband came on the studio set with a full beard, picked up Lissa and spun her around, almost dropping her. Lady Charlesetta sighed a sigh of contentment, and didn't even mention that Lissa's name was spelled with two s's. Perversion of names was something Lady Charlesetta hated. Polly Glenn showed her the place mats. One set was a simple white plastic type of mat with strawberries lined up across, smiling. The other set were beautiful. They were Polo place mats in burgundy with paisley design. Once, on "The Young and the Restless", Philip was tricked into marrying India, who was the countess of a tiny country called Andorra, but her family had no money and tried to get hold of the Spaulding wealth. India was very aristocratic looking, more so than Lady Di, and everything in her beautiful old castle was burgundy and silver. "We can buy silver candlestick-holders, even," said Polly Glenn. Lady Charlesetta looked wholly displeased. "We already have place mats," she said flatly. "But mamaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" "Don't 'but mama' me, your grandmother is barely cold and you want to go throwing her out!" trembled Lady Charlesetta, her metal pin curlers fearful-looking, her veins threatening to burst, she brought the Barco-lounger upright. The Creamsicle stick slid from the armrest to the floor. Polly Glenn made a move to pick it up but Lady Charlesetta would not have it. She moved to pick it up and ended up unbalancing the Fuck-Me-Red nail polish bottle, the brilliant liquid spilling on Grandmama Gloriana Glenn Mason's oriental rug like fake blood, like sinister ketchup. "Look, look what's been done to me!" screamed Lady Charlesetta. Polly Glenn was sorry, she really was. If only Carl Jr. would come, up from Texas, out of the "Guiding Light" studio. If only her Woody was back, if only Woody were dead. She wants both. His purple and chrome van is still in the driveway, with airbrushed tigers prowling in a glittery desert on each side. It has a custom made licence plate that reads: "IM 469". Polly Glenn is glad that Chi-Chi's gives her mainly night shifts at the bar. She can stay home in the daytime and watch TV with Lady Charlesetta. After the place-mat incident, she has not tried to improve the house anymore. She watches "Donahue" with her mother. This morning's subject is rape within marriage. After the show Lady Charlesetta says that it's just awful, but what else can you do in a marriage? She is in the Barco-lounger and asks Polly Glenn to get her a Creamsicle. Polly Glenn gets the Creamsicle for Lady Charlesetta and decides it would be nice to suck in some fresh air. She takes her cigarettes with her, bounding outside. The screen door bangs twice behind her. It is a sound which irritates her mother to no end. "I wish we had a man to fix that blasted door!" she yells, but Polly Glenn is already on in the field surrounding their house, their barren land, lighting a Marlboro. She lets the brilliant orange ashes die gray in the wind. She thinks back to this morning's Donahue. Donahue. His shaking discouraged head of white hair, his face scrunched up asking questions as though he could have a heart attack at any second. His raised inquisitive eyebrows. His slow, laborious speech when talking to the

rape victims. Three of the women were feminists, you could tell. They yelled and screamed and wanted to cut off their ex-husbands' dicks. But one was mostly silent. She told her story and didn't say much after. The whiny Philadelphian audience hounded her and still she barely replied and the on-panel female psychologist explained her reticence as a phase in the stage of anger. Then one grandmotherly woman in the audience, probably Jewish, called the silent one brave for sharing her story. Everybody clapped. She remembers a time before she married Woody. They were dating and he was everything. He drank a little too much, yelled a little too much, but he was strong and cut a figure. She even wanted to have sex with him, if only he had been nicer, if only he kissed her first. She thought he was getting too fresh and he didn't care. He did not even kiss her. She had just wanted to be held. She was almost finished with her Marlboro. She inhaled. She is not crying, but the wind is blowing, and it's tearing up her eyes. She can't even remember if there was an afterwards, she can not tell at what exact moment it had ended, but she felt as though all the fields were stuffing her mouth with newly baled hay, she felt suffocated by stars and flannel. She felt his head beating against her skull. She was drowning. She felt like iron, like steel, like lilacs, like leather, like snow peas, like hot cocoa, like glass. Then she felt like nothing. She could not tell at what exact moment it had ended, but at the time she was so heavy with tears that Wood had to prop her up, against the cold hard tractor yellow of the John Deere. Wood put his arms around her, and there might have been stars in his eyes— "Look at the moon, Polly Glenn—isn't it beautiful—isn't it romantic?"

poem to you

i am writing this poem for you because you told me that all poetry should be written to someone because it frightened you to think of the poem alone and cold searching for an audience because it is not enough that i was inspired by your eyes i must write to you i am writing you this poem because you read me the end of ulysses because you sneak into the sculpture garden at night because you hugged me even when i wanted to be kissed because you do not have a telephone and i can not hear your voice without having to look into

your eyes

because it is not enough to think about you not enough without writing this poem to you because you speak french and are from utica you were simple because you told me because i can not see one simple thing about you i write to you because you asked me to read my poetry out loud because i felt all the while that you did not like it and knew all the time that i was glad that i could not hide behind the quiet printed words that you forced me to speak and hear my voice my words as you listened and watched my moving lips and i write each word almost at the same moment that you now are reading this poem written to you which is future and

now as i write

and today when we spoke and

you helped me up onto the empty sculpture stand behind the

art

gallery because you told me that poems unlike music unlike paintings because you told me that people are not like poems unlike sculptures and yet that poems are meant to be written to people

i am writing this poem to you because i write poetry which you say you do not do but you still read me your poems I am writing you this poem because i fell in love with you without knowing you and because i stopped loving you before i got to know you before you knew anything at all about me about this poem that i write to you now as

you read it

and it spins through

your mind and you say it out loud say it

NOW

say

she is writing me this poem because i told her that poems are meant to be written to someone because my eyes were blue when she first saw me and because she remembered me before i knew her because she is writing this now as i read it later and between us both we have broken time and together once drove out into the dark new haven night and sat under a highway on a massive support in the corroded connecticut river because she is remembering this now as i am forced to remember it too because she has written

is writing me this poem

oh yes i say yes i am writing to you i am offering you these words because you love the things you don't fully believe like nietzsche and because i never returned the tape of church music you lent me because now i will probably have to because i am writing you this poem writing this poem to you writing to you because i think you want me to because you told me that poems were meant to be written to someone because you really meant you not just someone because this is now your poem

3..14

Rachel Zucker

Julie Piittgen

Etching and Drypoint

Julie Puttgen

Etching and Aquatint

1 She has sacrificed breasts for today. Her tiny body reminds me of our epicene days in dungarees

The Gymnast

back in grade school when sex was new: then, we took off our shirts and kissed each other's flat chests. —The women from Mount St. Helen's nursing home have saved their dimes to see her. And a certain skinny boy from Pittsburgh would give up his stamp collection to see her nude, no doubt, if he did not know that everyone hates their biggest fan. Sure, he thinks, there is nothing sexual—per se— in a girl without hips and her acrobatics. Her sexuality lies elsewhere. He takes his dinner in front of the television. He is sad to love her.

At sixteen she does not think of sex in the usual fashion. She has never had the chance to be disappointed. In her room her only memory is of the time she locked the door to the bathroom, hid in the cardboard box

with the little boy next door, and sucked on his penis while her brother kept guard. Tonight it is impossible to keep her mind on her work. Her hand in underneath her nighty.

When she falls off the bars her coach throws up his hands in ironic resignation. But the old women from Mount St. Helen's have never been so inspired. To win is to be regular. They carry placards which read We love our daughters' or You will always be number one with us.' They would like to see her at the altar someday.

The boy from Pittsburgh watches her adjust her leotard over her buttocks.

She will leave the games without medals. There are women like that. The women from the nursing home will not ask for autographs. Instead, they pursue her as we pursued boys in fourth grade.

(We stood in the cloak room and watched them drink their milk.) But the skinny boy from Pittsburgh

changes his shirt, puts his stamp collection under his arm and heads down the street,

as if she were waiting around the next corner.

Jennifer Mayer Winner of the Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for Poetry

Excavation

And it was all carefully arranged- Jefferson traded his you

daughter,

Mariah,for political influence, and in return built her a beautiful house, and gave her as a servant Betsey Hemmings, daughter of his lover Sally_ Sec where the branches bend down, scrape the remains of the house emptied out, hollowed out, filled only with a catalogue of accidental discoveryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;twenty feet away, the bricks slip down in a green wall to a garden of glass, the old arching roof of the green house, black pieces of the door's iron lock strewn beneath the leaves, Look carefully next to the abandoned burned walls, there is a line drawn into the dirt, the water line, left by years of rain off an unhappy roof The heat of the summer sun makes the ground baked as ii by lire and all the talk turns to water, reverently singing its slowness between the trees. Those pine trees one can get lost within them, a labyrinth of red mud and prickling branches and buzzing dirty grasshoppers alter a walk through their closeness a parking lot seems inordinately civilized The door of this convenience store bangs shut with a rattling of bells and as I take my drink to the counter I see the large man in front of me pulling up his pants with one large hand and wiping the other greasy one on his white shirt as the first goes back to the pack of beer on the (minter his fingers trailing across it lovingly as his thick voice drifts over to me, talking about a strip show, 'the lights was so blue as his fingers go around the plastic, 'and they was so pale. The dirt grows into larger and larger piles as we sift it, peel off its skin to reveal the sheen of white china, bent nails like roots, hard red mud changing to dark earth, We were told not to go between the well and the stables, the stones there are covered over by thorns, and the family does not want those carved best forgotten.

names seen, things

unwanted are

And we stretch out on a giant sheet of black plastic to lie in the sun above the sharpness of the grass, and the light of the blue sky above blinds the eyes and the heat of the ground beneath becomes like the burn of snow, black cold, and the fields stretch out around, and the hills sing with the summer heat, and the branches of the thorns glint beneath it, and the trees shimmer behind this solid wall of it, and my hands feel the smoothness of this plastic sliding away-Anil Alm ii!, was unhappy married to Thomas Eppes, and soon died, and he married again, but his second wife outlived him although hated by his relalives. She died mysteriously, and the body was laverfound, it was lost somewhere between Virginia and North Carolina...

The cover of the well has been made more secure; there is screen after screen of branches and the only sound within it is the ring of stone and water when you drop your voice down it, plunging elusive, and no answering Spot of light from the sky above at its bottom-The blackness of the well seems replete with knowledge, old knowledge, old voices, the saving dignity of the way time slips into memory and leaves it, the way we gather in the shade of the oak trees and sit among their roots, watching the brick patterns rise like water from the ground, our silence filled by the drip of water from some distant pump, a smoothness of sound, like lingers moving slick over plastic, circling out patterns of forgetfulness.

Carrie Iverson

An interview with judith Butler

Judith Butler is the author of Subjects of Desire, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, and of the forthcoming Bodies that Matter. She is a professor at the Humanities Center of Johns Hopkins University. Patrick Greaney and Emily 0. Wittman interviewed her in Baltimore on November 25, 1992. In your article "Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of 'Postmodernism'" in the book you recently coedited, Feminists Theorize the Political, you write that "the rifts among women" over the term "women", "ought to be affirmed as the ungrounded ground of feminist theory."' Implicit in this statement is the need for feminists to engage in the critique of identity categories. What are the challenges which the critique of identity poses for feminism? How must feminism rearticul ate itself?

I think that in the late 1980's, there were a number of us, white feminists mainly, who complained about rifts in the women's movement. There was an incantation repeated again and again, and it went something like this: "The issue of race is ruW ing the movement, the issue of lesbianism is ruining the movement" Ilaughifi and, more recently, I hear "Gay/lesbian studies are ruining or calling into questie the movement." Implicit to these formulations is the notion that the movement IS perhaps separable from the questions raised under the rubric of race or homose ality. And I saw an effort to territorialize feminism as this unified enterprise at the same time that I saw these various contestations being figured as threats to unitY rather than as calls for the rearticulation of unity on some more plausible basis. 56 I guess I then came to expect that whenever there was a feminist event, there w01i1 be those who stood up and failed to recognize themselves in the terms in which feminists were speaking. And that happened within groups of women ofcoloras well as within groups of lesbians and within groups of white heterosexual femini And so I began to understand this as a kind of recurrent motif. Everyone seemed shocked every time it happened 'laughs'.They couldn't understand why this was happening. I think that Lauren Berlant actually theorized this in a piece called "The Female Complaint" that came out in Social Texta few years ago as a kind of 11 genre for feminist political activity. There's first the assertion of the "we" and the the complaint or the insistence that the "we" is provisional, exclusionary, and thi some grouping of individuals fails to recognize themselves in the "we." Perhaps, there is always going to be this failure of recognition that the postulation of any "we" produces. I suggest, then, that this rifting needs to be thought rather than bl shocked by it again and again by a failure of recognition that is by now almost a

mundane scandal, a kind of utterly mundane recrimination. And utterly predictable. I mean you could stage it, and it would in fact be a very funny play, if one were to stage it'laughs'. You could get different people to play the roles—you really could—like, "Okay, who's not recognized in what I just said?" And certainly there would be those who stood up. So, I began to think, well, maybe part of the problem is that there's an impossible expectation of recognition that's built into identity politics and that identity politics actually produces this misrecognition again and again. It's only when one continues to have faith in that notion of an identity which will fully reflect and fully recognize and fully include everyone that one can be shocked by the failure of the category to include. Now, I figure that every invocation of identity is going to be provisional and violent, and by violent I mean that it's going to produce exclusions. And I don't mean this to be in the service of a kind of politics that says, "Well, you know, we can't include everybody anyway, so we might as well just assert our white heterosexual privilege and go on with it." I don't mean it as that. I think instead that there's probably a very productive way for the rifts among women to become part of an ongoing democratic contestation. So, I think in Gender Trouble, I spend a great deal of time simply questioning the concept of identity. And then some people said, "Well, doesn't it have some uses?" I think that my revised position is something like the following: Yes, it's inevitable and necessary to assert identity, but it is equally inevitable and equally necessary to allow that very necessary assertion to come under critical contestation and then to become part of a movement which nly, tion

is not grounded in a fixed notion of identity but is rather grounded in a commitment to a constant rearticulation of the categories by which it is necessarily mobi-

s rui

lized. There has to be that double movement. I think it's what happens anyway, in a certain way, but I think, for the most part, we haven't yet thought affirmatively

"151 stlO

about rifting, fracturing, exclusion. I have been interested in the work of Slavoj 2iiek and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe insofar as they tend to understand this

lit is

moment of misrecogniton and failure as democratizing, as a place where one might in fact infer something like the promise of a democratizing movement. Insofar as

osoa

it the

one can read those rifts and mobilize those rifts toward producing a more inclusive movement, knowing full well that there's never going to be a full inclusion, but

fnitY sis. 5 wou

nevertheless having that as an impossible and necessary goal. That strikes me as a much more useful way to proceed.

ich

1r as

You mentioned a revision of your thesis

Gender Trouble...

minis

Well, I think it's a revision of my thesis in Gender Trouble. I think that I was really interested in the subversion of identity and overstated the case there in order to

med y this

make a point to what I took to be a kind of presumptive heterosexuality in feminist theory, but I think that many people read it as a simple recommendation that we

:ailed

d of I the

no longer use identity at all. So then I had to rewrite that—which I think I did in my essay in Feminists Theorize the Political—to explain that it's not that there's no use for identity but that identity ought not to occupy a foundational status. So, I

d that

any an be

St a

tried to make that distinction. I don't know if anyone's going to hear me. You criticize categorization and territorialization in feminism. How would you respond to some fears of feminists that the discipline is being usurped by other

fields? How would you respond to this fear of some feminists that somehow the territory proper to feminism will be colonized by other fields?

I actually think that the most urgent demand on feminism right now is to rethink ways in which it has marked its territory. There's a fear of usurpation, but I actuallY think that you can't have a fear of usurpation unless you're already committed to a fixed territory. I think that feminism stands to be enhanced and enlarged by virtu of its dynamic interchange with what's happening in gay and lesbian studies, what'5 happening in race and post-colonial studies, what's happening among scholars and activists who are trying to rethink the meaning of Marxism or socialist democracy. I don't think that feminism ought to be holding its own territory, and for it to renla dynamic, it actually needs to rethink that territorial impulse. It may not be the fell' nism we have known, but then perhaps we're indulging a nostalgia for a feminism that appears no longer to be operating at the same strength or in the same way thal

it once did. The fear of usurpation and the desire to fix territory is a defensive posi'It tion which may well be defending against the more timely rearticulation of femirli51 SL owithin a larger map of power relations. I don't mean to suggest that feminism doesn't become co-opted, or its political force dilated by those who would domesth an po cate its agenda. I just think it is a mistake to respond to that aggression by fixing territory in an increasingly narrow way. But that's not the same as the destruction of feminism. A related question would be about Foucault, someone who has had an influence in so many different fields. You've offered readings of Foucault and borrowed from his methods and strategies in your work, most notably his genealogical method and his presentation of the generative power of repressive discourses. It seems that you have also refined Foucault's project in the places where you read him against himself. You've written of his "sentimental indulgence in the very emancipatory discourses his analysis in The History of Sexuality was meant to displace."2 But it seems that Foucault is always very important to your work. What role do you think he has in your work?

Yes, well, it's interesting, because I think that recently he's become less important. I think that what Foucault gave me and a number of other feminist scholarsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and here I'm thinking of Joan Scott, Chandra Mohanty, and Biddy Martin in particularis a very thorough analysis of power. He offered as well a kind of caution against a certain kind of emancipatory narrative, one that also emerges in feminist theory. What became clear to me is that opposition, opposition groups, oppositions to dot# nant power not only ended up being complicitous but very often reiterating the worst aspects of dominant power, and it's always very painful to be part of a politiâ&#x20AC;˘ cal community which ends up uncritically miming the dominant norm and replicat' ing that norm in the very terms of opposition. On the other hand, I don't think there's any pure standpoint by which dominant power can be opposed, precisely because we all grow up, live, breathe in its terms. We are in some deep sense constituted in a matrix of power relations that we never chose, but that chooses L15

in advance. So, the question for me is: If there is this complicity, as Foucault has argued, and if there is this sense of being radically implicated in the power relatio0

"1 tr

that one also wants to resist, oppose, or subvert, how might it be possible to do

that in a way that is not a simple recuperation of dominant power, a simple recoil'

Ar fr

solidation of dominant power. One issue that I feel like Foucault didn't pursue

eâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;

far enough, is in thinking through forms of repetition or rearticulation which might effectively work to subvert dominant power. I think he had an almost utopian faith ink

in the proliferative possibilities of power and in subversion through proliferation.

tualll

I've become increasingly suspicious of the strategy of proliferation. The other prob-

d to viral

lem I had with Foucault is what I take to be his too hasty rejection of psychoanalysis.

vhall s ad

has to say about sexuality, especially in the first volume of The History ofSexuality, and what Freud is doing, say, in Civilization and its Discontents. I actually think

'acy.

that Foucault mischaracterizes Freud in certain ways and that Foucault's own analy-

retrial

sis of subjection could be deeply enriched by some psychoanalytic perspectives

I don't want to accept that there is a complete opposition between what Foucault

which are not necessarily hostile to what he's doing. But that's a much larger question, and I could go into it if you want me to, but it would probably be thirtythree pages..

y thal pOSI'

nest" rig

It seems that Foucault, instead of doing what you've done, talking about inserting subversion in the repetitions that you have to perform anyway, posits moments—especially in his interviews but also in The History of Sexuality—where he talks about anonymity and about somehow "starting over." I get the feeling that he sees subversive Potential in the very utopian moments that his own work questions. What do you...

lion

Anonymity is interesting. There's a history of the notion of anonymity that he's schooled in, and it comes in part from Merleau-Ponty and the phenomenological tradition. I think also even in the lectures on governmentality, he talks a little bit about the radical impersonality of the "I." He has a short reverie in there about what the personal pronoun "I" will mean in his case when he is dead, that it's always in some sense radically emptied of any meaning. I don't know what to make of that strain in him. I'm not sure it's "utopian," but I think that there's a kind of philosophical belief in a—not quite a cogito—but some kind of identity that is not purely personal, some structure of subjectivity which he inhabits but which he does not fully own. And I don't know what to make of that.

twit

and

I wanted to ask earlier for an example of the miming that you mentioned, the miming of dominant power that occurs within opposition groups.

larI think that within some feminist communities the effort to police identity behavior practices ended up miming the regulatory apparatus of the state and the way in

1st a

which the state actually treats women in trying to normalize, regulate, and produce sexually repressed and sexually viable beings. There was not enough self-conscious-

flical

ness about how shaming, policing, and repression of that kind reemerge within the movement. Without an understanding of the kind of power relations that they

ely

were engaging, they were repeating those relations in utterly non-subversive ways. They were simply replicating a certain kind of repressive regime at the level

dorll

of community organizing. es Us

atiorI5 con.

This is another question for an example. At the end of Gender Trouble, you write, "The task is not to celebrate every possibility as possibility, but to redescribe those possibilities that already exist, but which exist within cultural domains designated as culturally unintelligible and impossible.' What is this redescription? And what are the possibilities that already exist? You seem to want to pull back from the example of drag. What would you want to substitute for drag, or would you even want to substitute another paradigm at all?

I'll probably never substitute another paradigm again'laughs], because the drag example was actually supposed to be about thinking about inside and o UI side and the way in which certain kinds of gender discourse actually produce the alte-rnatives that, on the one hand, gender is what appears, and that gender is nol inside, and, on the other hand, what is a true gender is what is inside; you have people who actually believe both at once and without contradiction. It was abou that, and, instead, it has been taken up as the exemplar of performativity. What I meant by performativity was not theatrical performance, but rather the power of discourse to produce that which it names and, more specifically, the repetitive power of signifying practices to produce and destabilize certain kinds of natural. ized beings. That emphasis got lost as did the entire emphasis on the Foucauldiarl theory of power by an appropriation which seemed to think that I said that I could become any gender I want at a moment's notice, and that it was all a mattel of clothing. I'm concerned that this is what has been made of my work. It makes me want to change my name, it makes me want to divorce myself, it makes me via to never go to another drag show - and I like drag shows. But you asked me anolhe question before drag... About the redescription that your book ends with, this call for redescription.... Use this as a forum to clear yourself.

It seems to me that there are basic verb forms that ensnare gender and sexuality. People don't know whether they "are" a gender or if they "have" one, and they01 know what they mean when they say that they are one or that they have one. If you actually ask, someone says "I am homosexual" or "I am a woman"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;they're tviÂ° very different claimsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and if you actually ask them in what this "am" consists, you get very complex descriptions, which suggests that the copula serves as a kind of hieroglyph or abbreviation which conceals more than it expresses, and I'm much more interested in those complex descriptions. For instance, I think that one cou0 read a book like Toni Morrison's Sula for the homosexuality in it, but you would never be able to say that anyone in that text is definitively homosexual, and I thir4 being liberated from the necessity of using "having" and "being" as the modes of access to questions of gender and questions of sexuality can produce very thick de scriptions of gendered and sexual experience that involve cross-identification, involve discontinuous narratives: "I was homosexual then but only in that sense but then I became homosexual in another sense and then I wasn't for a while ar then once again became." Those stories, those narratives are infinitely more useful for trying to think questions of sexuality and gender than the rather simplistic categories of identity. I would actually suggest that in order to unpack the notioi of what it is to be a gender or what it is to have a sexuality, one needs complex narrative and anti-narrative strategies. But it's not simply a question of substitu ti narrative for categories. Can sexuality be narrativized, much less described defio tively in terms of identity categories? Probably not. So you would have to describe that.

Well, I don't know if I would describe it, but I think that there are a number of cultural practices, I think that there are a number of ways that literature and palrit ing and performance art do some of that highly complex and ambiguous cultura

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work. It might be good for some of us who are more conceptually inclined to pay d out

more attention to cultural presentations that dislocate conventional identity cate-

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In your interview with Liz Kotz in Artforum, you mention the "transgender community challenge.'3 Transsexual and transgendered people challenge the notion of a coherent subject because they can't be given fixed gender identities. There always seems to be anxiety in the face of gender indeterminacy. We must know the gender of the people we deal with. Language also mandates this. We need to know what gender a person is to refer to him or her. How might this anxiety over gender indeterminacy be theorized? And what, more precisely, is this transgender community challenge?

First of all, I don't think that there's a single challenge. There are people who like the term "transgender," and other people who like the word "transsexual," others

aue

who would identify as "transvestite," and still others who would identify as "cross-

dressers." So, it's highly complex. But I would suggest that it opens up a terrain

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which is quite complex and can't be easily dismissed. I think there has been one very conventional feminist analysis that male to female transsexualism is nothing other than the appropriation of femininity by men and so the quintessential patriarchal gesture. I think that's a radically unfair characterization.!laugh sl. I wouldn't want to have dinner with a person who thought that...

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together with a transgendered person...

No, one who believes that transsexuality is the quintessential patriarchal gesture! And I also think that there has been a general misunderstanding of butch/femme identification as nothing other than a kind of unthinking replication of heterosexuality. And I think that Joan Nestle's work and Cherie Moraga's work have shown us that it is much more complex than that. I am concerned that these kinds of posi-

could

tions, whether it be transsexual, transgendered, butch/femme—and these are not equivalent positions—get produced as aberrant instances, as marginal positions, as

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if the kind of cross-identifications that are operative in those kinds of identities or those kinds of sexual practices or gender presentations were not already at work

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in mundane heterosexuality. I actually think that heterosexuality has to exclude the possibility of cross-identification everywhere at the same time that it is radically

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dependent on it. Perhaps that constitutes the "anxiety" that you mention in your question. A woman who anxiously puts on make-up in the morning may well admit that the reason she does it is that she's afraid that when she walks out on the street, she's going to be taken as a man or perhaps as a failed woman. Or perhaps feminin-

,tion

ity serves the function of deflecting or transfiguring some other kind of rage, of aggression. I think I could give other examples of that. The casting of transsexuals

tituti

outside of feminism is actually a failure on the part of feminism to consider the way in which cross-identification actually exists on a continuum from mundane hetero-

efi ni'

sexual identity—from mundane gender non-dysphoric heterosexual identification— to the most flaming queer transsexual, that there's actually a kind of common truth that's being articulated, but it's one which I think think many people don't want to see. If one always in some ways resolves the loss of another person through identification, then women who lose their brothers and fathers may well find an identification with them animating their gender bearing and presentation. And if those very losses are mandated by certain early sexual prohibitions, then the fear/desire of becoming the lost object will constitute gender as such.

I'd like to talk about what I think is a very common response to a specific type of feminism and queer studies work that discusses new gender and sexual possibilities. The response is a direct confrontation that could be symbolized as a grasping between the legs: someone could pose the question "But does she have a vagina or does he have a penis?' as like— the ultimate question— as like, "Yeah, party's over. Great theory, but —

But,Judy... But Judy... But Judy, she still has a vagina, or he still has a penis. What —

Well, Monique Wittig claimed she didn't have a vagina— That's the best part of your book—

Isn't it just the best? We were going to ask you that but we decided not to....What does this recategorizing question do to—or for—alternatively gendered subjects?

Right, right... What does it do and how is it reintegrated?

Ifs interesting to look at how the question is posed. Some people will say, "Isn't it the case that some people have penises and others do not?" at which point, the lent mine is actually designated as a lack, so that we're already within a fairly heavy syro' bolic —in fact, the paradigmatically symbolic—differentiatingact, where there's one that has and theotherthat lacks. That has nothingtodowith biology. That has to do with how a certain kind ofsignifyingpractice seizes on biology to elaborate its own power. But one might say, "But isn't there a biology to be seized upon and doesn't it exist in some independent way?" And I would claim that, in fact, certain kinds of general biological differences are undeniable. They are not as coherent or as con tent as we are led to believe, and the opposition between the sexes is not a logic opposition. That is to say, it is not a relationship of mutual exclusion. And here I would simply refer to Helen Longino's work, in which she reviewsa host ofbiolog0 and hormonal theories, all of which begin with a hypothesisofideal dimorphism, which is the anxious hypothesis of presumptive heterosexuality, only then to prc duce anomalies that can't be fully explained.4 I think that there is a degreeofchl o• mosomal, hormonal, biological anomaly that the thesis of strict dimorphism can' accommodate. But, beyond that, I would say that yes, there are general biological differences that are undeniable, that there are certain beings who do bear childrefl although there are many women who can't or don't bear children who are still women. There are certain beings who have penises, although there are men whose penises operate in very different ways from one another and not always in the spr vice of the same reproductive function. My point is, simply, that to claim that these differences are to some degree undeniable does not in any way entail how those ferences are to be affirmed—that is to say, what meaning is to be given to them. Ai the act by which they are affirmed—"there are differences, and they are this"—will inevitably be one in which a certain kind of cultural and political inscription tak€

place. So, what I would argue, then, is that there is an indissolubility of the procedure by which biological differences are established and a certain kind of political and cultural signifying of difference. There is no articulation of difference which is not at once a political and cultural signification, and the one that I have just given you is an example. Of course, I say all this from a highly interested, politically invested point of view IIatighsl. .now you have a Ph. D. in Philosophy—

from Yale. I'm a "Yalie"— but you work in the "humanities,' you're a humanities professor. You engage problems Which could be addressed from a variety of academic fields. What course of study would You recommend for a student interested in working on the kinds of questions addressed In your work? We also want to ask for your evaluation of the status of the humanities in the age of "the critique of the humanist' or whatever we want to call it. What has humanities become, and what course of study would you offer?

Yeah. Good question. I presume that the kind of work I do is specific to the kind of training and derailment in philosophy that I underwent and I could never prescribe that history to someone else. And it's not actually a prescribable one. There are a series of accidents and circumstances that produced the kind of theoretical work that I do. What I find heartening is that the work that I've produced has been taken up by people in literary theory, in film studies, in law, sociology, political theory 't it

and performance art in ways that I also could not have anticipated and don't always like. The way in which intellectual work travels these days is across certain kinds of disciplinary boundaries. It's a problem for graduate students who want to come

e fero' y syny one

in and begin by reading the most recent work in feminist theory and don't have a background; who aren't coming from English, who aren't coming from film studies,

to do own fl'thl

who aren't coming from philosophy. They actually end up feeling that they're in the throes of some contemporary trend, but that they're lacking a substantial background. They're very often right. So I teach courses on Hegel and Nietzsche here, try

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to give a certain kind of philosophical background, and encourage my feminist students to learn the history of philosophy that I have to offer. But they are not always

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philosophers, and one of the reasons for that is that my own approach to philosophy has become highly rhetorical. It's important for me to do a certain kind of rhetorical

prochro•

reading of philosophy which most philosophy departments in this country are very reticent to accept. There are some but not many. So, I think it's a hard question. I suggest to students that if they want to do work in contemporary feminist theory

or contemporary theories of sexuality, that they also ground themselves in some other place; that they go become immersed in contemporary French literature, that they go learn the history of film criticism, that they establish a strong background

cal tdren,

in another field. I think that one of the reasons I got my job here is precisely because I did have two fields: I had nineteenth century German philosophy, and I had contemporary French feminism. In some ways it's an unlikely pairing, but not totally

'hose e ser these

unlikely. I think that very often that kind of range can be valuable, both for the kind of scholarship that a student wants to do and also on the job market...

Ise d n. And will ikes

The job market... The job market...

The job market... You mentioned that your book is a response to the misreadings of Gender Trouble. Before we finish, could you say a little bit about your forthcoming book, Bottles That Matter, if that is still the title...

Supposedly, except I'm embarrassed to say that bodies kind of leave the scene after a while. I'm afraid that I dematerialize the body in the course of writing about it. I guess that's a sign that I'm still a philosopher. I was asked the question, after the publication of Gender Trouble, "But what about the materiality of the body, Judy? There's always a kind of diminutive "Judy" at the end of the question. It's likeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; "Come on, Judy, you know you still have that body." So I became interested in th notion of materiality and what people were saying when they invoked materiality. There's a rich and problematic history of materiality and matterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;one in which women often figure matter, and it can't easily be used as the ground for thinking about what a body is, especially within feminism. I mean, when one delimits what the materiality of the body is, that's a highly invested act, and it's also a highly WO ble one. So, in some sense, I sought to think through those instabilities and try to demarcate the materiality of the body. But I also move into some of these discus. sions about cross-identification that we were just talking about. Have you already started your next project?

I don't know. I have a fantasy that I want to write a book on subjection... Dot, dot, dot.

... about Foucault and Freud and try to figure out their relationship, maybe also bringing in some work in post-colonial theory that I'm particularly interested in. Okay....The end.

Great. Alright. We're done?

In Judith Butler and Joan Scott, ed., Feminists Theorize the Political, New York: Routledge, 1992.

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble New York: Routledge, 1990.

Liz Kotz,"The Body You Want: An Interview with Judith Butler," Artforum, 31 November, 1992.

Helen Longino, Science asa Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990.

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Christina Gonzalez

Lithograph

To Madame Saffet From Salihat-I Nisvan Salihat-I Nisvandan Saffet Hanimefendi'ye

I remember one evening I'd paused before a hill your horses were hungarian your lacework german hatirlarim bir ak§am bir yoku§a durmustum in atlariniz macardi dantelleriniz alman

neither songs of nightingales nor shinasi his excellence in those days a warm love would flow through me now and then ne goksuda bulbul dinlemek ne abdulhak 5inasi bey ipilik bir sevgi gecerdi arasira icimden o zaman

when did you die for god's sake I mean when slush still on the ground there was no news of april siz ne zaman Nth:inf.:1z allaha§kina yani ne zamam kirli karlar bile erimemisti haber yoktu nisandan

rtishda pasha he was, known as crazy rash& in the army the sultan then was hamid his moustache huge and grand r4tii papydi deli rii§tuye cikmi0 adi osmanli ordusunda o zaman hamitti padisah kocaman biyiklari kocaman

in those days everything would flow by and we'd be stunned freedom constitution the april revolution and all that o giinlerde her ey akip giderdi biz de wrdik hurriyet me§rutiyet otuzbir mart falan filan

the boats likewise up bosphorus down bosphorus he'd wring his moustache he would not care my pasha husband then gemiler de iiyle bogazdan a5agi bogazdan yukari biyiklarini burardi umursamazdi pa§a kocam o zaman

rash& pasha he was he was bearded perhaps all he was was bearded so that the beards of his past must make a whole timberland rii§tii pa5aydi sakalliyidi belki sadece sakalliydi ki sakallar gecmi5inde herhalde bir orman

a son a daughter two brides a groom switzerland lausanne only I know how I cried and cried after a fire then bir ogul bir kiz iki gelin bir damat isvicre lozan nasil agladigimi ben bilirim bir yanginin ardindan

now my sleep is broken I'm guarding this mansion tell me oh feather of lovebird tell me death will come when uykularim boluniiyor artik §u konagi bekliyorum sOyle ey muhabbet kupnum tuyii sOyle Olum ne zaman

I always looked after something protected something got angry angry he was he had a harem he was bearded my rush& pasha then hep bir eylere baktim bir eyleri korudum kizdim kizgindi haremi vardi sakalliydi r4t0 pap o zaman

I remember one evening I'd paused before a hill your horses were hungarian your lacework german hatirlarim bir akpm bir yokup durm4tum in atlariniz macardi dantelleriniz alman

the naval minister tevfik pasha armistices and all that how the earth would withdraw from under my feet then bahriye naziri tevfik pap mutarekeler filan clOnya nasil cekilirdi ayaklarimin altindan

my mother's endless clothes the tram that whets a haste what a beautiful child I was in the wake of loneliness annemin sonsuz giysileri bir tel4i bileyen tramvay ben ne gOzel cocuktum yalnizliklarin ardindan

a waterside house in yenikoy homes in fatih a time of moonlight riishdil pasha was his name a hero at yildiz and at domeke yenikOyde bir yali fatihte evler ayiikli bir zaman ri4t0 papydi adi yildiz'da ve clOrnekede kahraman

when does one die surely on the evening when one's rose fades I took I grasped not I died I grasped not that evening when I took not herkes ne zaman 61Or elbet gOlunun soldugu akpm aldim anlayamadim OldOm anlayamadim almadigim akpm

never have I died in the past with my july and my pearls the evening when we honored goksu with all those lights daha Once hic Olmedim temmuzum ye incilerimle gOksuyu iiklarla twif ettigimiz akpm

when will my rose fade when the sea when evening when was it the boats when my husband the pasha ne zaman gOlOrn solar ne zaman deniz ne zaman akpm ne zaman gemilerdi ne zamandi pap kocam

now my bedside gives rest to a candleholder's ornament tell me oh goksu evening hafiz burhan when death will come artik bapcum dinlendirir bir amdanin silsOn0 soyle ey goksu akpmi hafiz burhan Num ne zaman

prayers are said waves remain after a boat is gone died I madam saffet from salihat-i nisvan mevICitlar okunur dalgalar kalir bir geminin ardindan Maim ben saffet hanimefendi salihat-i nisvandan

Umut Ergun Turgut Uyar

Rousillion, 1992

His silver goatee and the shimmer of those greasy gold locks Loose upon the boulanger's suede shoulders. Across, the lovers—their helmets sitting comfortably on The stone beneath the table—savoring light rosé.

This space is large as open plazas go but The walls are too high for a breeze And only the waiter knows how long till The next rain fall and summer's final peace.

The clock is on time after three hundred years of ticking And every night on the hour the Psychedelic coat of the fat cat passes between my legs.

Only children understand among these lines Where buildings touch but don't collide and People talk yet never lie all In perfect angles, groans and sighs.

Rhythm re-presents itself in memories of the Present so that moments of the basil, stars and Flies are what we remember and make alive.

Andrew R. Rossi

Desaparecieron

El Senor y la Senora Have gone to Mar de Plata For fishing and the beach In these pleasant winter months.

Abuela coughs in silence, Face chiseled in grooves ill creased Like cardboard bent by string Tight, though weak and tearing.

Dilapidated casa, where no one now resides. Torn and tattered curtain that no longer hides the sun. Riddled wooden doorâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;closed upon the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Beneath which lies the handle, open to the worms.

They forgot to warn the pedestrians, When they bleached the bloody streets.

El Senor y la Senora Have gone to Mar de Plata For fishing and the beach.

Tiny salmon race upstream, But the tide is unrelenting.

Andrew R. Rossi

Sometimes It Happens to You, Too ZZ Packer

Etete Abobenet was furiously indifferent. I, however, was in my essence, a Girl Scout Extraordinaire, selling Thin Mints, Samoas, Shortbreads and Chocolate Chips with the seriousness and reverence of a mortician displaying caskets. "These are Thin Mints," I declared. I was allowed to open one package a day. Today was Thin Mint Day "Examine the thin-ness. It's a svelte mint," I smiled. Etete and I tried to outdo each other by learning "esoteric" words. "Svelte," I repeated. I was overdoing it. Etete, herself was not svelte at all. At nine she was large and formidable,just plain fat if you really thought about it, but no one dared call her fat. I don't even think she knew she was fat. . "What good will it do me to buy some Girl Scout Cookies when I'm going to Africa?" she asked. I sighed. Etete was forever talking about going to Africa. If you tried to pin her down for a long term project, she would begin telling me about her imminent trip to Africa. Etete's father was from Africa. I've never seen him and I doubt Etete had either. "Mama says we're going to Africa Christmastime." "I bet they don't have Girl Scout Cookies in Africa," I said. The thought of some Kenyan girl scrambling to sell 6o boxes for a Friendship Rainbow Badge was humorous. "You can give them to everyone you meet. You can buy plethoras and sell them and become rich. I'll be your U.S. Cookie Connection," I beamed. "Shut up," Etete said, "Plethora doesn't even take a plural, "You can buy a plethora..." "You can buy a lot of cookies," I said. "Sheee," Etete hissed. We said 'sheee' when we really meant to say "shiiiit", but couldn't because we weren't allowed to curse. "Whatchu just say?" It was Mrs. Abobenet. One time I called her Miss Bob and she hit me on the head with a Wonder Woman Doll. I now call her Mrs. Abobenet. She was standing big and fat in the doorway, blocking the light to the room. "I didn't curse," Etete said. "Might as well had. Come eat," she demanded. Mrs. Abobenet was one of those black women who always looked mad. She told you what to do and you never thought about not doing it. She was a mystic, I thought, because she was always lighting strange smelling candles. She was religious because she was always talking about the Jesus and Armageddon. Mysticism and religion were irreconcilable in my mind. I'm a Baptist. We went to eat with Etete and Mrs. Abobenet. Those days I was always at Etete's for dinner because my mother was going back to work, coming home with aching feet and falling asleep in the LazyBoy. So mama started sending me to Mrs. Abobenet's house. I guess she was like a babysitter. Mrs. Abobenet threw some sea shells on the table then brought her arms together like a Vishnu sculpture I'd seen in my Social Studies book.

"Let us pray," Mrs. Abobenet whispered. I was about to break into the 'God is grace, God is good' bit when Mrs. Abobenet started muttering something I couldn't even begin to understand. Maybe it was African I thought. But I didn't think Mrs. Abobenet knew any African language. I knew Etete didn't because one day I demanded that she speak African for me and she said 'no, dummy, I never learned it' and I said 'Oh'. Mrs. Abobenet kept muttering things, adding intonations and crescendos. Etete started muttering something too, really fast. My eyes watched their closed stillness of their eyes, the rapid fire tongues in the reserved hole "0" of the mouth. I also closed my eyes, sighed, and began to speak in tongues. I don't know exactly what I said but I think it sounded like: "SweetpotatoescornbreadhammockmacaroniandcheeseandChipsAhoywithSpritealamode. Amen." Mrs. Abobenet looked at me. We sat down. Broccoli. I hated broccoli in any form. Mrs. Abobenet tried to hide her broccoli in cheese. That would not work with me. "I'm allergic to broccoli," I declared through bites of sweet potato. "Oh really?" she said, giving me the same inquisitive-yet-unbelieving looks that one also found on the faces of sit-corn moms. "Yes really," I said in all seriousness. Etete looked from me to her mother as though we were two playground children who had just traded insults about each other's mothers. "Think about Christ," Mrs. Abobenet said. "Excuse me? Think about Who?" I asked. "Christ died on the Cross for you and your sins and you won't even eat broccoli!" she almost screamed. I was stunned. I lifted my fork in an effort to bring the greenery to my mouth and put it back down. I looked at Mrs. Abobenet's static face. But it could change! It could cry pitifully or hit me on the head with a Wonder Woman doll in her rage. I thought about Christ while I ate my broccoli. I ate it all. Then I threw it all back up. Mrs. Abobenet refused to speak to me. Etete and I cleaned up my vomit and played cards. "Now I probably won't even get to go to Africa. She's upset now. We'll never go," Etete sighed. I shuffled the deck of USAir cards, Etete's most prized possession. Her father sent them for her birthday. If my father was African, I would have asked him to send me the head of a wildebeest or a lion's tooth or something. Etete all but slept with those cards. "I don't think I'll ever forgive you if we don't go to Africa," she said. "I don't care," I lied. The doorbell rang. I knew it was my mother because no one else ever came to the Abobenet's house. They had a sign which read 'No Soliciting. Ever.' I opened the door and quickly ran to the side of the threshold which she stood, not even giving her a chance to think about entering the house. "Let's go," I said. "I didn't even get a chance to talk to Barbara, my mother complained, knitting her brows in a column of frustration. "Mrs. Robinson," Etete began, her oratory voice and her syllables like a gun and silencer, "my mama's heart is broken." She shut the door. My father called himself a "man partial to gin"; my mother called him a damn drunk. Dadda owns a bar and lounge, and, I later discovered, owning a bar and being "partial to gin" can also make one partial to bankruptcy. Dadda, I knew, was having an affair with his bartender, Lucy. I didn't think this was fair at all.

Lucy was a woman whose lashes were too real to be hers and a diamond too fake to be real. She was beautiful, honey colored and wore shiny magenta lipstick. When Dadda let me go to his bar Lucy would hug and kiss me and call me 'Sugar'. Her hugs would envelop me with the scent of "Jean Nate". Sometimes she would take off her shoes to reveal what an eight hour shift in heels could do to feet. Her stockings looked as though they themselves were bleeding. I would look at my own Buster Browns and ask her why she didn't wear other, flatter, shoes. Mama did. Lucy would just thrust her head towards the phalanx of shimmering martini glasses above her head, blowing dragons of cigarette smoke from her nostrils, and reply, "Beauty." One night, Dadda came home early and sat down in his armchair. Lucy must have been taking care of the lounge. He needed rest. He drank gin straight from the bottle. "I'll get you a glass," I said. The one feature I was most proud of in our house was the bar. Etete and I spent countless hours sipping Slurpee Margaritas and 7-Up Martinis from the conical glasses at our bar. We had even used up all the little umbrellas. "I don't need a glass," Dadda said. He smelled sweetly. Like English Leather. Like Jean Nate. Etete's uncle was coming into town. "What does he do?" I asked, gluing a panel on a 'spaceship' construction I had seen in Childcraft. "He's a hairdresser," Etete answered, cutting airholes in a cast-away box of 36 count Charmin, "he's a prison hairdresser."Hmmm. A prison hairdresser. Isn't that a little—odd. Gelastic even." 'Gelastic' had her stumped. She proceeded. "You know, like when prison inmates have to re-trial, they have to look nice, like they've been on good behavior and all that—well my uncle does their hair." "Oh," I said. "Weeell, he's gonna do my hair. He might do your hair." "I don't care if he does my hair." I lied. "Well, whatever," said Etete. Etete's uncle came from the airport in a limosine. Mrs. Abobenet looked through the peephole to make sure it wasn't the persistent Encyclopedia Brittanica salesman so concerned with Etete's intellectual development. Etete's uncle—Cisco was his name—had a magnificent pompadour with spirals like the new Kraft macaroni. On other black men, blonde hair with red streaks would have been dubious, but he looked wonderfully Hollywood. I was excited. Mrs. Abobenet asked her brother if he had seen the Lord yet and he said no but that he was seeing a lot of this showgirl named Candella and that they were about to have a baby. Mrs. Abobenet said that she would not attend the wedding and Uncle Cisco said there wasn't going to be a wedding for her to attend. Etete quickly led Uncle Cisco by the hand to their bathroom abounding with fresh clean towels Etete had laid out. Uncle Cisco went back out into the living room to get his bags full of sodium hydroxide, hydrogen peroxide, glitter and fake hair pieces. He dyed Etete's hair red and when Etete paraded out in front of Mrs. Abobenet, who appeared to be doing calinsthetics with a long be-ribboned stick and a ball, Mrs Abobenet immediately sent Etete back to get it died black again. As

for me, Uncle Cisco created this waterfall of tendrils and spirals which erupted from my head like champagne. One package of fake hair read "Burnished Rum" and the other package read "Platinum Party". He added gold sparkles and curly tinsel. Ah, the rapture! Mama picked me up and I introduced her to Uncle Cisco. She extended a limp hand to shake and Uncle Cisco kissed turned her hand a quarter and kissed its back gingerly. Mama tried to wipe the kiss off on her jacket pocket without Uncle Cisco noticing. I noticed. She paid him ten dollars, grabbed me tightly by the hand and did not let go until she was clutching the steering wheel of the car. The whole time she babbled, asking me how I could ever let that man do what he did to my hair. Lifting my head to meet the dying veloured roof of our Impala I replied, "Beauty." I was getting poorer. Sometimes Dadda never came home, and that was bad. Not only because I liked to see him, no, that couldn't have been the only reason because usually when I saw him he was passed out or endeavoring to pass out. When he passed out, he generally left his pants in the chair, and in the pants was always a roll of bills. It took a steady hand, but if you were deft enough (I'm sure my mother became skilled at this operation as well) you could swipe enough to pay for a few Baby Ruths and Salt and Vinegar potato chips. I had begun to miss the smell of English Leather, not to mention, Jean Nate. Uncle Cisco was leaving the next day. He had given us entirely new styles now. He had sculpted Etete's hair into a pyramid and he had arranged my hair into two mushrooms on either side of my head. "It's the style of the Hopi Indian girls. It brings about fertility," Uncle Cisco said. "Say what?" I jumped back. Etete twirled around with her new hairstyle. Uncle Cisco's raised his eyebrows told her to "Stop". How dare she thinking of thinking with her hair so precariously set in it's monumental Egyptian splendor. "I want you to take a picture of me with my hairdo so I can send it to my father in Africa!" Etete yelled, trying not to get too excited. Uncle Cisco laughed. Girl, your father ain't in no Africa! Where he is you ain't gone see him!" Cisco laughed. "Where is he?" asked Etete. But Cisco just kept on laughing. If I had been a better friend, I would have stayed with Etete, but one of my 'shrooms was loosening, so I went into the bathroom to Aqua-net it. Dadda hadn't come home in a whole week and mama didn't say a word. I kept my hair in mushrooms for as long as they would stay. I would spray Aqua-Net on one mushroom and Final Net on the other to see which one would stay in the longest. I had wanted Dadda to see my hair this way, I had been saving it for him, but he hadn't come home. He wasn't even at the bar and lounge. One day when I was setting the table for two, mama happened to come behind me. She sniffed the air and decided the 'shrooms had lived on hairspray long enough. She made me wash it all out. I tried to put my hair into mushrooms again after I washed it but it just wasn't the same. They looked like Mickey Mouse ears.

Depression. It's the most alone you'll ever feel. I went downstairs to the bar and fixed a martini and a 7-Up, both in martini glasses. I watched the 7-Up lose its fizz. The martini was for Dadda, but he hadn't come home, he wasn't going to come home. I drank one gulp of the martini and spat it out, breaking the martini glass. I got a broom and a dust pan to clean it up and ended up cutting myself. I wanted to cry, but I didn't. I burped and went to sleep. This time before dinner, Mrs. Abobenet went to the record player and put on, "To Dream the Impossible Dream". We all saluted. Dinner was Spaghetti-o's, cream of corn and broccoli casserole. She told me that if I made a Christmas wreath the diameter of the 'No Soliciting. Ever.' sign that I wouldn't have to eat the broccoli casserole. I quickly aquired wreath materials. When I finished making the wreath (I made it out of old Sunday Comics) I went to Etete's room and got into our completed spaceship. Etete's hair almost didn't make it. She too, had tried to recreate her hairdo and her pyramid looked more like a goblet. "Why don't you move to the side!" Etete grumbled. "I am to the side, why don't you lose weight!" I yelled. "Girrrl, you better shut up!" Etete threatened. "Ain't Gonna Dance With No Big Fat Woman!" I sang and giggled. Etete started to fake-strangle me. Then she kissed me full on the lips. Like a boy-girl kiss. She kissed me again. It felt weird because girls weren't supposed to kiss girls, but it felt nice too. It was my first kiss. "You know, my father's gone. I'll probably never see him again," Etete whispered. I don't think I've ever seen her cry, and even if she was crying now, I wouldn't see it because it was dark in here, in this spaceship. "Yeah," I said, "mine too." I really didn't know about this, and for all I knew, my father could come back tommorrow, as drunk and lovable (well, maybe not so lovable) as ever. Etete kissed me again, and this time I squirmed away, as far away as one can squirm in a recycled 36 count Charmin box. Her hand was still on my neck, and she drew it away as though I burned her. "Yeah," she said. I did not see her face, but it had sympathy in it. The kind that I could never really have. Sometimes it happens to you, too.

The Clay Eaters

Think of the way small towns begin to stifle you, stand themselves on end— afternoon shadows fall across your face and close your lips. You shiver as you climb from the water, dirt clings to your legs, a sleek still moment of absolutes.

Afternoon shadows fall across your face and close your lips; they move down to the river in a line, ready to kneel. A sleek still moment of absolutes, stick your hands in the water, see, they float like bread.

They move down to the river in a line, ready to kneel, you bury your face in the mud to eat the clay, stick your hands in the water (see, they float like bread). Things fell yesterday, dropping with the precision of hours.

You bury your face in the mud to eat the clay and think of the man who keeps his coffin in his living room, (things fell yesterday, dropping with the precision of hours) how he nails on it everyday.

And think of the man who keeps his coffin in his living rooms it is a delicate question to ask—how we are washed out how he nails on it everyday how the pieces of his fence come together likefingers.

It is a delicate question to ask, how we are washed out of our bones, how the door is always open, how the pieces of his fence come together like fingers, peeling together, pulling the center out

of our bones.

Hour the door is always open—

Think of the way small towns begin to stifle you, stand themselves on end, peeling together, pulling the center out— You shiver as you climb from the water, dirt clings to your legs.

Carrie Iverson

Dan Clarke

Bracchial Plexus Etching

Traveling Michael McCullers

The silver necklace dropped just below the glistening hollow of Sarah's neck. Her white cotton button-down opened to the tops of her breasts. Caleb could see a hint of the curve beneath in the shadows of her blouse. Jesus, he thought. The shirt stuck lightly to her chest. It rose and fell with her breaths. His wife slept well in the heat. Caleb did not. He felt oppressed by himself when the heat from his inactive body settled back on him, making him sweat. He thought of waking her; the airplane was about to land. We're home, he would say again. This was the fourth leg of their trip. The twin-prop plane had flown from Malaga, across the Straits of Gibraltar, to Tangier, the rocky blue water giving way to the coastal plain and then to the low, russet hills that held the airport. It's too hot to talk. Now the pilot approached for landing. The tarmac beneath the plane glared white. Caleb pulled down the window shade to ease his headache. The cabin felt small and hot that way, so he raised it again. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip, tasting the salt of his hand. The pilot turned the plane and the tarmac flashed white once more. The sun glinted off the equipment on the field below. The light from the tarmac reflected off Sarah's silver jewelry. Cuemevaca, Mexico. Three years ago, our first anniversary. Caleb unbuttoned another button of his linen shirt. The shirt smelled like wet straw, organic. Sweat beaded where the metal of his glasses pressed into his temples. Sweat ran cold down his side from under his arm. He took off his glasses and wiped his face with his shirttail. Worship isjust an afterthought to suffering, he thought. The tarmac came nearer now, huge. Sarah still slept beside him. Caleb saw nothing but glittering white under the plane. He thought to himself. Why is the field so white, what is it made oP Maybe the skulls and teeth ofenemies long forgotten. Bleached white by a hundred years in the sun unburied. Crushed and mixed with water, laid out over the land. Humiliation. When the plane landed Caleb woke Sarah and climbed out; he stooped down and rubbed his hands on the hard ground. Chalky white dust rose where he touched it. He inhaled the dust and coughed. He wiped his hands on his face, leaving white streaks. Crushed shells. From the ocean not ten miles from here. Caleb watched as the driver loaded their luggage into the trunk of the Mercedes. The car, too, was white, but spotted with rust the color of the sandy hills on the horizon. He sat in the back seat with Sarah. A young man from their flight asked them if they were going to town. "Certainly," Sarah said. "May I join you? I'm trying to meet a friend by three." "Certainly."

His wife leaned forward to talk to the driver and the young man. Caleb leaned back, far enough not to hear them. He enjoyed the smell and feel of the burgundy leather. It reminded him of his library. He cranked the windows down. The wind blew stiff, hot, but fresh after the closed cabin of the plane. Not even a radio in this car. Real rosewood. The big diesel engine labored like a boat engine. He could smell the exhaust through the open window. It smelled like a boat engine. The car reminded him of a cruise ship that way. They sat in the hotel bar. Sarah drank a gin and tonic with lime. Caleb drank Scotch because it was the only drink he liked warm. She had changed into a dress of light cotton. It fell from her shoulders, touching lightly at her breasts, and gathered in her lap. He wore slacks of a very light wool weave, blue, and a cotton knit pullover. He also wore a straw hat with a black band. Every few minutes he took it off and wiped his brow. The air clung to them, tight, but outside the temperature was falling. The small bulbs above them glowed yellow. The rolled-up canvas wall at one end of the bar revealed the expanse of darkness outside. "Not much of a landscape," Sarah said. "No light for miles." "No cities, no cars. I bet we could see every star if we went outside." "It is cooler in the north. Maybe I'll finally sleep." "Yes, they said it would be." The bugs outside hummed. Caleb watched as a couple danced. No music, he thought. Sarah ran her hand down her glass, collecting the condensation. She touched her fingers to her throat. "Look," she said, pointing with a finger from the hand at her throat, "it's Robert. He shared our car, remember?" "I guess he found his little friend," Caleb answered. Robert sat at the bar with another man. They both wore jackets. Robert's blond hair was slightly long. He dabbed his face with a handkerchief. "We should invite them for a drink," Sarah said, rising. "What makes you think they want to drink with us?" "Oh, I'm good company for everyone but you darling. Though I doubt it's me they'd be interested in." She laughed. "Fine," he said, standing up, "drinks it is." The next morning Caleb sat on the patio of a cafĂŠ, under an awning. Sarah and Robert had made plans over drinks to go hiking. Caleb sipped his coffee, biting the bitter grounds between his teeth. The bazaar sat still, or almost so. The sun had moved just past its zenith, lighting the bazaar and the square a dusty orange. Four men, mostly older, sat on the patio around him. They drank coffee, smoked, and argued over the paper. Caleb had looked for an International Tribune but didn't find one. He gazed out over the square, at the dirty stalls, and imagined that the men argued over soccer. A man approached from his left. He wore the local woven tunic, but also a crushed and dusty bowler. His grin showed crooked, brown teeth, except for one which shone golden. Blade from the thigh bone ofa gazelle, he whispered. "Excuse me?" Caleb said. The man leaned forward. The thigh bone of the swift gazelle. Caleb rose from his table and walked away. "I'm not interested." The speed of the gazelle lives with this knife. The man pulled a knife from under his tunic.

"Leave me alone." Caleb walked by the breadmaker's stand. He smelled the fresh bread. He hurried, but he didn't know where to go. The sun beat down and he began to sweat. The groove in the blade drains the blood of the prey. The notched tip, like the vulture's beak, makes a ragged cut. The blade, dyed blood-red with berries, finds blood. Caleb entered the empty square. He stopped at the fountain, splashed water on his face. The sun's reflection darted in the water. He tried to push the man away. The handle is teak, from the forest ofghosts. On it is carved the wisdom of beginnings. On it is carved the wisdom of endings. Caleb fumbled for his wallet. It fell to the ground, spilling bills, coins, identification. He stooped to pick them up. The man held the knife in the sun. Birds fly beak to foot. Elephants carry each other's tails. Fish swim mouth to fin. Snakes crawl tail to fang. The man made a fist around the blade of the knife with his free hand. Sharp, he said, grinning. With a quick motion he yanked the knife from his fist, as if unsheathing it. He held his hand open. Blood, black in the afternoon sun, sprang up in a line across his palm. The man dropped the knife to the ground and held out his hand. Caleb pushed several bills into it. The man ran away, laughing. The sky had grown darker. Caleb wasn't sure how much time had passed. People began to drift around the square again. He picked up the knife. Blood stained the teak handle. He rinsed it in the fountain. "Oh, we're Americans, we don't believe in sex anyway." Sarah was talking with Robert at the bar. Caleb had just showered. He felt fresh and rested for the first time in a while. Sarah drank a martini. "Oh darling, Robert and I were just talking about sex. He said he couldn't see why the population here was a problem, it's much too hot to have sex." "They don't seem to think so, I guess," Caleb said. "Different strokes ... as they say." Robert smiled. "He thinks any sex is a sin anyway, Robertâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Catholic, you know,"said Sarah. That afternoon Caleb had woken his wife from a nap with kisses on her eyes. He'd put his hand on the warm,smooth skin between her hipbones. "I think I'm getting sick," she'd said. He'd stroked her hair when she fell back asleep. "I only like things with an element of risk," Sarah said to Robert's companion. She turned to Caleb. "Darling, the boys have challenged us to a rubber of bridge, but we can't think of a wager. What should it be?" "Drinks," Caleb said. "Dammit, you are dreary. How about you Robert, any ideas?" Robert smiled at Caleb. "The losing couple must have an adventure. It has to be at night. They have to break the law, and they have to tell all." Caleb shuffled the deck. The slick new cards popped against each other and settled into his hand. Sarah sat across from him. She wore a strapless sun dress. Her shoulders were tan from hiking the day before. The yellow light from the lamps cast deep shadows in the hollows above her collarbones. Her silver necklace glowed dully. Her hand rested on her glass. She tapped the rim with the silver ring on her finger. It was her wedding ring, silver gold. 69

"A heart," Robert opened. "Two spades," Sarah replied. "Pass" "Three spades," Caleb said. "Pass." "Four spades," his wife said. Caleb looked at his cards. "You overbid." "I want an adventure." Sarah smiled at Caleb and touched Robert's hand with her finger, leaving a spot of gin and tonic on his wrist. The fever came to her all at once, like a warm hand to her forehead. It pushed her down onto the bed, into the starched white linens, crisply turned down by the maid. As she fell onto the bed the sheets gathered around her, damp, and clung to her. Sarah gasped, but the fever was on her now, not just a hand, but a whole body, pressing against hers. Her breaths went nowhere, they clung to her, hot, and their great weight covered her. Her chest rose slowly with her breaths, her heart pounded; a heavy weight rested on her stomach. When she breathed, hot dust clung to her throat and settled in her lungs. Her head beat loud with her heart; her breasts ached. She felt sweat gather on her forehead, on her back, between her breasts, on her thighs, between her legs. The sweat did not cool her. She lies in her father's field. The long hay spills seeds with the gusts of wind; it is ambercolored, almost dry, ready to harvest. She lies on her side, her head propped on her hand, her elbow digging a little into the cool earth. A storm cloud approaches, purple and rolling, from the northwest. It looks like rain, and her father works far off to her left, trying to gather as much of the hay as he can before the showers wet it. To the north, the field dips once and then rises again to the hill where the house sits. The sunset shines off the rusted tin roofof the house, which stands like a garnet beacon in the waves of yellowing hay. She sinks lower to the earth, on her stomach. It is cooler here, pressed to the ground;she smells dirt and plants. The wind blows harder, the hay makes a whipping sound. The rain is definitely coming. She has melted into a fiery pool the shape of her body. Her hands, the features of her face, her hair, melt into fire. She is molten metal; when she moves in the bed she flows, and when she touches the sheets they leap in fire and then disintegrate in ash. She tries to be careful, but the items in the room are drawn to her, drawn into her where they burn. The room shrinks around her as the flames grow higher. Everything is burned. The walls seem to curl towards her, warped by the heat. The armchair, the rug, the writing desk, are all burned. Nothing can touch her, she can touch nothing. Soon the walls and ceiling will reach her, touch her, and burn. Then there will be nothing but the blackness of the night outside. Can even the blackness of the night burn? she wondered. She digs into the cool dirt of the field with her fingers. The soil collects under her nails, leaving blue-black half moons on each finger-tip. The dirt crumbles in clumps from her hands, dark and moist. The roots of the hay spread in all directions only inches under the surface. The roots connect and weave and make a vast bucket to collect all the rainwater. The roots prevent anything else from growing in the fields, choking it to death, but they also prevent the fields from blowing away. She tries to trace one root, to find where it comes from or where it is going. She'd like to travel with the roots. They are woven together; there is no way to separate them without tearing them. She shakes the soilfrom the clump she has torn up. There is no way to tell where the roots travel, but she likes the way they cling to her hand. As the blackness begins to burn,someone places something on her head, cool, a rag. It hurts. She cries out, but the nurse shushes her and wipes her burning face with the cloth.

7C,

The old man called to Caleb from across the cafĂŠ. "American, come and sit with me. I need to practice my English. You will tell me stories, and I will tell you some as well." Caleb had left Sarah back at the hotel, resting. The fever had broken after only a day, but she felt weak. He sat at the corner table with the old man. They faced the door. "I like to see who comes and goes," the old man said. Above their heads a ceiling fan turned. Its brass body shook slightly. It cast a shadow on their table. As the blades went around, the old man's face went from light to dark, light to dark. "Now tell me a story." The old man leaned back and tapped the table. A boy brought them both coffee. The old man brought out a carved wooden turtle from his robe. The shell swung aside to reveal a pile of fine brown powder. The old man dipped a tiny spoon into the powder and brought it to his nose. He inhaled and sneezed. He closed his eyes for a moment. He offered the turtle. Caleb saw the old man's gums and mustache, stained yellow from the snuff. When the old man smiled Caleb saw his yellow teeth. He refused the turtle. The old man closed the shell and put it away in his robe. Caleb told him the story of the man and the knife. "I have heard that story before, friend. Rajah puts on a good show. He rarely misses a sale. Caleb brought out the knife from his pocket and handed it across the table. The old man turned it over in his hands. He felt the blade against his thumb. He studied the carvings on the handle for a moment and laughed. "This is a ceremonial knife. Used for the sacrifices of spring, you know. The bloodletting brings the fertile soil, all life is from death, and so on. "They capture a gazelle, kill it with a stab to the heart. The skin is cut from the feet up the haunches. Another cut is made from the belly to the breastbone up to the throat. A cut is made across the ribs and the animal is flayed. "From the thigh bone of the gazelle the knife for the next year is made. All life to life returns you know. Silly old customs, my friend, but then they sell the knives to people like you. But you have yourself a nice one, do not worry. I will show you the really inter esting part, though, this part here... The old man showed Caleb how to unscrew the cap at the base of the hollow handle, and then filled it with snuff. He offered Caleb the spoon again. Caleb took it, inhaled. Adventure, he thought. The shadow of the ceiling fan brushed across the old man's face. Caleb asked for the knife back. The old man frowned before handing it back over the table. Caleb walked out of the cafĂŠ, his head buzzing with the snuff. Caleb walked as if in a tunnel. The streets of the bazaar narrowed. His vision darkened; he could only see directly ahead of him. At the edge of his sight the darkness pressed in. The gazelle quivering, tethered to a tree. The swiftest ofall the beasts, tied. The rank smell ofanimal fear. The lamps hanging from poles above him swam in his vision. They left paths of arched light. He tried to head for his hotel. Sarah had stayed in. All directions looked the same to him. Everything receded to darkness at the edge of his vision. The vines and trees overreach, dark. Drums beat to the pounding of hearts. The urine smell of death fills the air as the knife falls.

The wind blew hard. It had grown cool. The tunnel had closed around him; he ran without direction. In the distance and above him tiny spots of light looked on like eyes. Vines twined around his hands and feet as he ran. He ripped them off, kept moving. Branches tore into his face. The drums beat louder. The knife cuts, the gazelle spills wine-dark blood. Nothing is wasted, the blood is collected in a cup. He stumbled and fell to the ground. He lay panting, his face on the cool earth for a moment. His muscles quivered. He touched his face, wet from tears. He sprang to his feet as someone touched his shoulder. Caleb whirled and grabbed a man by the throat. His blood pounded in his ears. The knife was in his hand; he had been running with it. The bone of the blade met bone and caught. Caleb pushed harder, grunting. The blade slipped through ribs. Blood covered his hand. The metallic smell of blood and urine filled the air. The black closed in around him. He fell to the ground. The rain washed the blood away, but not the coppery smell. The knife was in his hand. Robert lay beside him, his shirt stained. Robert's whiskey glass lay in the dirt a few feet away. Caleb could see the hotel from where he sat at the edge of its garden, less than a hundred feet from it. His head ached. The drums had stopped, but a high-pitched singing rang in his ears. He unscrewed the bottom of the handle. The brown powder spilled out. He rubbed it on his gums, inhaled it. Some of the powder stuck to the blood on his hand. The singing stopped. There were no drums either. Everything was quiet. He headed back for the hotel. Adventure. Caleb stood in the doorway of Sarah's room. His wife lay asleep on her bed. Light from the window cast dusty shadows about the room. The dust in the blue light swirled and eddied in front of him. Everything was slow. The furniture and the rug and his wife's things were all dark, removed. Sarah lay dark against the white of the bed. A single sheet covered her body. Caleb removed the sheet. Sarah slept on her stomach. The small of her back glowed in the light, pale gold. He wiped the knife on the sheet. He ran the blade up her leg from the ankle, up her thigh. The maroon blade whispered on her pale leg. He held the knife lightly, as if shaving her. He ran the blade up her other leg, slowly. He ran it around the curve of her buttocks, down her inner thighs. Her legs quivered. She woke, and pressed her face into the pillow, raising her buttocks slightly. He followed her spine with the maroon blade. He held the ivory handle with two fingers, following the curves of her body. He paused between her shoulder blades, kissed the nape of her neck. She turned over, raising her arms above her head. He skimmed the pale surface of her thighs again, up to the hollows under her hipbones. He ran the knife lightly over her pubic hair, over the soft belly above it; he kissed her there. She stretched her legs, arching her back. He laid his hand between her thighs as he drew the knife up over her stomach, between her breasts, and up to her neck. He turned the knife so that the tip was poised at the hollow of her throat. She arched her back again. pressing into his hand, and pressing the tip of the knife. A single bead of blood rose. She pressed into his hand again. He ran the knife back between her breasts, under them along their curves, across their tops. As she arched her back, her chest rose slightly and the knife left a thin pink trail along her breasts. He ran the knife over her nipples lightly. They tightened, turned dark. She pressed into his hand below harder and harder, arched again. Small beads of blood rose, evenly spaced on the trail the knife made. As he ran the knife across her rib cage, under her breasts, she turned her head, covered her eyes with her hand, and gasped. She relaxed back on the white sheet, her eyes closed. He pulled the sheet over her, watching the pattern soak in, red, and kissed her on the mouth. "Let's go to Rabat tomorrow, darling," she whispered.

Cc)1 cop h co r-1 This magazine was designed on an Apple Macintosh Computer using Quark Xpress 3.1. The text was set in Matrix, Syntax and Weiss fonts. The type was output at 1200 dpi on a Linotronic printer at The Sarabande Press, New York City. It was offset printed and perfect bound by Turley Publications, MA. The magazine is printed on Mohawk PC, Colonial White, vellum finish, 80 lb text and 80 lb cover, a recycled paper. Yale University, New Haven Winter 1993