FEATURED WRITER: Brock Hamlin
Brock Hamlin is a writer and editor who lives and works in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995 and served aboard a destroyer and an aircraft carrier before leaving the Navy in early 2002. He is putting the final touches on his debut novel, entitled Cherry Boy. He can be reached at brockyusef@mac.com.
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THE SHORT AND HAPPY LIFE OF LIEUTENANT LYON
While walking home from the public courts, young Lyon saw a blue Buick with a crooked grill slow down as it neared him. The old banger stopped a few yards away, its headlights winking on and off in the autumn dusk.
The driver-a blue-bottle coloured man-winched down the window, and leaned on the passenger doorframe. Lyon noticed the scar tissue on his knuckles and the coarse whispery voice. The man had smoked too many fags, forcing Lyon to step closer. In the dusk, Lyon couldn't discriminate the man's age: He could have been twenty-five or fifty-five. As Lyon walked closer to the Buick to hear the driver speak, the cabin light came on, and the man's voice pitched to a higher frequency. The yellow glow cast a long shadow on the man's pitted skin.
"Time, little man?" the man asked. The voice was like Scatman Crothers, but then again, it wasn't. The voice attempted to be playful and disarming. "Little man, you know what time it is?" he repeated.
Lyon's watch was at home on top of the dresser.
The streetlights had just come on about ten minutes before. Roland, his new stepfather, had just begun enforcing the streetlight rule after a six-month getting to know each other period.
"That's okay little man, because I've got the time right here." The man unzipped his pants and pulled out his enormous, erect, uncircumcized penis. Lyon laughed at its grotesqueness. The man's penis was two shades lighter than his oily, acne-scarred face, approximately the same complexion as his pinkish lips. His penis had been sandpapered, revealing the true color beneath the skin. The man pinned his penis up against the steering wheel, and, as he reached across to open the passenger door, the thing sprung back towards his belly.
Lyon noticed a two-hand timepiece with a cracked leather band tied around the neck, so to speak. The man cocked his head to the side, gazing at his own knob.
"Little man, is almost six o'clock."
The pervert had the nerve to chuckle to himself as he drove off. The Buick made an odd ratchet sound as it sped away, as if a bolt had loosed itself inside the manifold, banging endlessly like coins inside a drying machine.
On his ship, Lion couldn't understand why most of the ensigns had married right out of college to women they had dated since freshman year. Both Lion and Swilly, the two most junior lieutenants, found the notion blasphemous to bachelorhood.
"What's the Navy coming to?" Lion asked. "Where are the swashbucklers?"
"It's the new Disney Navy," Swilly answered. "You and I won't last long in this outfit."
Lion and Swilly recounted their tales to the bored ensigns. With an enthusiasm not seen since he wooed a Master Chief's daughter, Lion became disgusted with himself as he recounted the numbers and the situations, often in league with Swilly. In the years since breaking up with his college girlfriend, Lion had been on a tear, sleeping with forty-two women, forty-three if you counted the transsexual in Ft. Lauderdale. Lion didn't mention the transsexual and didn't count her either. Forty-two seemed like a large number, but if one divided that number by four years, that was a little over ten new lovers a year, maybe an extra for the leap year. There was, however, a problem: the declining quality and attractiveness of each new lover was steady and unmistakable.
He began, as Swilly put it, to slip up. Lion slept with a very unattractive woman because she had gone to Harvard. Sex with her might make him smarter he told himself. Lion had failed to use a condom, or rather, didn't bother to find one. As his penis slipped inside the Harvard girl, the idea of contracting an STD from an Ivy Leaguer seemed thrilling, giving her one, even more so. Afterwards, he went to the ship's corpsman who dutifully inspected the loose skin on Lion's penis then inserted a sharp metal object into his urethra causing Lion to hiss in pain. All tests came up negative. Lion gave the corpsmen fifty dollars to keep his name out of the medical log.
One evening, Lion met a nice woman at a Ghent café. Her name was Zora. She had a charming heart-shaped face, but was a bit on the large size. She carried the extra sixty pounds very well. Of course, the conversation began when Lion mentioned Zora Neale Hurston. Zora said no, she was not named after the writer, and yes she was tired of the question. She had been named after a grandmother from coastal South Carolina. The conversation began nicely but then quickly escalated into a literary arms race. They began one-upping each other in the have you read such and such fashion with Zora steadily getting the best of Lion until Lion mentioned having studied with a famous, or rather, infamous writer at Scaife, a Barbadian dandy by the name of Henry Milius. A wicked smile stretched across Zora's face. "I want to show you something," Zora said sweetly, pulling Lion away from the café.
She drove him to her home. From shelves built over the fireplace Zora plucked an impressive collection of Milius first editions: Alliance of Skins, My Man Rinehart, Speaking in the Frequency, and the highly acclaimed, highly controversial Gentle Brown Rage.
Zora turned down the recessed lights, lit candles, and read from her favorite passage in Rage. Lion listened for a few minutes then pressed the pages shut and kissed her. Zora kissed him back. They began to fumble with each other's clothes.
"Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back," she said before excusing herself. Lion thought that that was a silly order. If Lion wanted to leave, he'd just get up and leave. Perhaps she wasn't used to company staying this late. Perhaps Zora was warning him. Last exit before entering Zora, she might be saying. Lion heard a muted flushing under running water.
With Milius' novel face down next to him, Lion lay in Zora's bed thinking: What the hell, why not?
When Zora returned from the bathroom she found Lion smiling. Lion was naked. Zora paused but did not kick him out.
"You nasty little boy," she said while taking off her robe.
Lion left at five in the morning. He called the next day expecting to leave a message, but she picked up on the third ring and invited him back. Lion spent the next four days at Zora's home.
Zora's hospitality was extraordinary. As the owner of a restaurant, she knew how to indulge. Gourmet meals. Rare vintages. Baths. Large, flat-screen television. Going to Zora's home was akin to entering a sheik's palace. Lion found it hard to stay at his austere apartment while experiencing unfettered adoration on such a grand scale.
There were a few awkward moments:
They were roughly the same weight, Lion and Zora, so there were very few positions that wouldn't impede his breathing.
Sometimes she tried to snuggle under Lion while he watched television, but he would squirm uncomfortably until Zora shifted.
There were a few wonderful moments:
Zora was very, very good in bed, so good, that Lion couldn't stop himself. When Zora rolled over to mount him, the entire ceiling vanished, replaced by her wide, loose flesh. Stretch marks trailed around her shoulders and hips like intricate tidal chartings. When she lay face down on Lion, her enormous tube-shaped breasts flattened to a microscopic width. He wanted to push Zora off in disgust, but her smooth velvet rhythm drew him out. He ceased feeling shame and began to feel the tendrils of something real, that is, until the ship departed on a two-month long combat effectiveness exercise. Lion assumed that the two months at sea would end things.
After two months at sea, the ship set sea and anchor detail and pulled in. That's when Lion saw Zora waiting for his arrival, causing a brief moment of panic. Lion hadn't bothered to write or call her on the INMARSAT line, in fact, Lion hadn't given her any information concerning the ship's return to port, but there she was, on the pier, waiting like the rest of the wives and dedicated girlfriends.
Zora saw Lion. She waved, hopping up and down, her girth rippling through her purple dress. She held onto a tight formation of shiny balloons that were heart-shaped like her face. In those two months she had gotten even bigger. Swilly, who noticed everything, saw Zora gesticulating in Lion's direction. Lion hadn't told Swilly about Zora.
"Who is she?" Swilly asked very slowly.
"I could tell you…"
"…but then you'd have to kill me?"
Lion paraphrased a line from The Natural: "I met a girl at a café. It was a big mistake."
"Big mistake," Swilly the quip-master replied.
"Ha ha," Lion said without laughing.
Swilly retreated to his official naval officer voice. He had the ability to go on and on without breaking up into laughter. "Your deception is understandable, yet regrettable. You are accused of dating a rather corpulent woman without informing the proper authorities. That amounts to a certain betrayal of trust. This breach of trust cannot be tolerated."
"You are right," Lion replied in his own voice, "At eight bells, keelhaul me without an ounce of grog to relieve the pain, sir."
Swilly stayed in character. "Sudden humility and regret, while noted and appreciated, have come far too late in this sad affair. I'm putting you on notice. The Junior Officer Protection Association will convene immediately and decide your fate."
Lion broke character first-laughing at the idea of a kangaroo court formed to investigate the matter. He gazed once more on the pier, looking for those silly heart-shaped balloons. Zora continued to ripple on the pier as she waved. Lion did not wave back; instead, he nodded slightly. That thin acknowledgment registered on Zora's face. She appeared perplexed, perhaps wondering if she was waving at the same man who had once spent a glorious week at her home, the same man she waited on hand and foot, the man she did things to that were downright biblical.
From the starboard Harpoon deck, Lion thought he saw Zora weeping. Swilly had noticed as well.
"Jesus, Lion, what did you do to her?"
Lion tried to reply, but the ship's whistle shrilled, signaling a shift of colors from amidships to stern. Tugs continued to push against the ship as lines were thrown over, binding ship to pier.
Lion watched as an striking, dark-haired woman placed her arms around Zora. "My goodness, who is that creature?" Lion cried out. "They ought to put her likeness on the prow of a man-o-war."
The crowd on the pier numbered about three or four hundred, but Swilly immediately knew whom Lion referred to.
The woman seemed to be consoling Zora. Lion watched the woman's hair change from sorrel to a dark copper brown in the bright morning light. She wore a knee-length brown dress with open-toed heels. If it hadn't been for Zora's presence, Lion would have leapt off the ship and kissed her ravishing collarbone. The woman broke his spell when she waved to a sailor on the fantail. The sailor acknowledged her with a quick wave then went back to heaving the spring line. Lion turned back to tell Swilly that the woman was spoken for, but Swilly was already closing the hatch behind him.
Lion watched Swilly cross the brow onto the pier. As the ship's official representative, he immediately made himself useful to Zora and the beautiful pale creature with the collarbone that needed to be kissed.
***
It had been five months since Zora surprised Lion on the pier. For weeks afterward, he would hear his buzzer at home. He'd turn to the security channel on the television and watch her miserable face looking up at the camera. He listened to her pleas for a while. She begged Lion to tell her that it was over to her face, and when Lion refused, she buzzed all the apartments and hurled accusations against Lion's character, most of them true. Gradually she stopped showing up, the neighbors stopped complaining, and life went back to normal.
A few weeks later, Lion saw an article for an upcoming local reading by his old English professor Henry Milius. An article mentioned Milius was on a fifteen-city tour of cities on the eastern seaboard. Lion mentioned the reading to Swilly who had been in and out of a funk for months and Lion couldn't seem to shake him out of it. At the mention, Swilly perked up and went to the exec's room to make a phone call, but when he returned to the stateroom, he was sullen once again.
Lion was content to attend the reading alone, eager to hear Milius' voice again. Having already published several novels, Milius had just published his first collection of short stories and was gaining widespread popularity. One of themes of the article was growing popularity. The journalist had interviewed several fans; apparently the small veteran following resented the new acolytes. The old fans considered themselves to be in the literary know and wanted to keep it that way.
Once, at an English department party, Lion listened to a bitter Milius dismiss his own following as literary groupies. "Mindless, vicarious, consumptive creatures," Henry called them. He used an elegant language even while drunk: "They prostrate themselves before my languid, detached prose because they imagine such prose matches their languid, detached lives. There's not a single sublime moment in those poor bugger's lives." The characters in Henry's novel were passionless, middle-class black families living in quiet, sexless, disillusioned anger. Milius refused to budge his characters in new directions.
"God, I hope they bloody hate this," he said soon after Gentle Brown Rage was published.
That novel was about a favored son of a wealthy black family, a disaffected ACLU lawyer who murders liberal white people for no other reason than white liberals were more interesting to murder than white conservatives. Lion read his books with relish, but never thought he was living vicariously through Milius' inventions.
The night of the reading Lion left his Freemason apartment on foot and headed downtown. He turned a corner and saw the bookstore, lit from inside. The sidewalks were alive with smokers greeting each other with warm hugs. The movement of bright red brake lights lent the block a cosmopolitan air, as if Henry had the type of readers who took cabs when they needed transportation.
It had been six or seven years since Lion had last seen Milius. Lion stepped inside the bookstore and was suddenly seized with a mildly terrible thought: What if Milius didn't remember him? Lion never stood out in class. He wrote papers and answered the questions with prosaic earnestness, but that was all. Lion felt so unnerved he slipped into the bookstore bathroom and doused his face at the basin.
Becalmed, Lion went back inside and felt the buzz inside the bookstore-a knowledge that they, the audience, were on the ground floor of literary stardom. People were already beginning to sit down in the aisles. Lion darted for a single empty seat in the first row.
The bookstore owner took the podium and began to tick off Milius' achievements when Lion heard a scattering wave of applause and saw heads craning backwards. A waving and smiling Milius walked towards a chair adjacent the podium, surprising the crowd even though his presence was expected. While Milius sat waiting for the introduction to end, he glanced towards Lion, back to his notes, then, startled, stared back in Lion's direction. Lion smiled back and waited to be recognized.
"Lion, my man!" Milius cackled. Milius stood. Lion stood. Professor and student walked towards each other and embraced. The audience tuned out the bookstore owner. "My former student," Milius explained to the audience. The audience nodded in understanding. Lion felt a tremendous amount of goodwill flow in his direction. He guessed that the audience felt privy to something special, a rekindling friendship between teacher and former student. The crowd warmed their hands to it.
As Lion sat down, he noticed a pair of attractive women-one gorgeous and the other merely good-looking-behind him. The two were seated three rows behind and to the right. They both looked oddly familiar, but Lion could not get a good look at them without staring. The merely good-looking woman seemed to bear Lion a grudge. Whenever Lion glanced back, he sensed the eyes behind her large dark sunglasses. A stylish cloche adorned with silken stitched flowers hid her hair. She reminded Lion of a flapper. She shared Zora's stylish verve. Those kind of girls, Lion thought, had been cropping up like mushrooms on oaks after a summer of thunderstorms.
He glanced back at the flapper's companion. She wore a black blazer over a low cut, sheer black blouse. Her hair was long and brownish red and her face dusted with light-brown freckles. She seemed to be searching the crowd for someone. Lion had to will himself not to stare. Lion sat down and listened as Milius chuckled at the exploits of his murderous protagonist. After an enduring applause, the bookstore owner invited the audience to ask questions.
"Dr. Milius, are you the torchbearer of Ellison, Wright, and Baldwin?" a woman's voice asked. Lion, along with the entire audience, twisted and turned towards the voice.
The bookstore owner asked the person to stand up. "Please repeat the question and tell us your name."
The flapper took off her sunglasses and stood up. Lion felt the press of recognition against his chest. The flapper wasn't a flapper; the flapper wasn't a friend of Zora's; the flapper was Zora. He hadn't seen Zora in months and now he barely recognized her. Her face, once wide and heart-shaped, was now angled and sharp, a marquise cut. Lion looked over her thin frame and visually calculated her weight loss at about sixty, perhaps even seventy pounds. A thin ripple of flesh hung from the back of her arms. Lion thought he'd seen a ghost.
Lion turned his attention to Zora's beautiful friend. Her jacket hung from her seat, her beautiful collarbone had been dusted with a sort of stardust, giving her a mythical, magical appeal.
Henry signed dozens of books, answered several questions, and generally played the part of the jolly good writer, all while exchanging glances with Zora and her beautiful friend.
Finally, the lights flickered on and off, prompting the owner to thank Milius, and then, in the next sentence, complain that he'd go out of business if better writers didn't come along. Milius forced the bookstore owner to admit that he wasn't going anywhere with customers like Zora and Elena around. Elena blushed. God, Lion thought, how he would love to be loved by that woman. They all hugged the bookstore owner goodbye and stood outside. No one wanted to go home just yet, least of all Lion. He wanted to get close to Elena, but then he had to deal with Zora. He cursed to himself. He watched Zora close Milius like prey. Milius looked up.
"My manners. Lion this is-"
"Hello, Zora," Lion said. He shook her hand limply.
"How long has it been, Lion?" Zora said pulling Lion in and kissing his cheek roughly. Same perfume, different woman.
"How do you two know each other?" Henry asked. Lion remained silent.
"Small town," Zora said.
"I should get going," Elena said hoping someone would give her an excuse to tell her husband. Lion noticed that even in the dark he could make out her brown freckles. Lion couldn't take his eyes off her.
Zora roped Elena in. "Girl, you're not going anywhere. We're hanging out tonight." Elena submitted without argument.
"You hungry, Lion?" Milius asked.
"Starving," Lion said, looking at Elena.
Elena suggested Zora's restaurant, but Zora nixed the idea. Lion suggested the Dumbwaiter, one of the few interesting restaurants in Norfolk. The menu was a fusion of French country and southern Creole, and the restaurant was within walking distance. Milius placed the crook of his arm out and Zora took it. Lion did the same, but Elena hesitated.
"Is something wrong?" Lion asked pleasantly. He looked at Elena and felt lightheaded.
"I was hoping to meet someone tonight," Elena replied.
"Who would that be?" Lion asked.
"A friend."
"Is that why you were looking around in the bookstore?"
"You saw that?"
"I saw everything you did." That included the wedding ring that Elena wasn't wearing.
During the meal, other diners attempted to stare, then hush the four into being quiet. After the third attempt, Milius wondered aloud why white people felt compelled to silence loud black people. A new burst of laughing prompted a new round of staring. Lion had never seen Milius that giddy. Lion pulled his seat back a bit, watching him and Zora in deep conversation.
"I've got all of your books, but my favorite is Gentle Brown Rage."
"I still get death threats over that one. I'm under a sort of Negro fatwa. Clarence Thomas and Henry Milius," he said, intertwining his fingers.
Lion laughed, "Peas in pod."
"Yes, except that Clarence never gets invited to those awful Negro literary conferences. If I ever sit next to bell hooks or Ishmael Reed again…"
"I hope you never become popular, Dr. Milius. I like having you all to myself," Zora said. She smiled lasciviously then gulped down her dry Riesling. Lion saw her throat muscles moving the wine along.
"Zora," Milius announced drolly, "you make me feel like a school boy. And by the way, let's do away with this Dr. business. Please call me 'Professor.'" Milius winked. Zora howled. Lion drank from a glass of wine and rolled his eyes.
"I haven't had this much fun since my first novel got a shitty review in Callaloo," Milius said, placing a mocking hand over his mouth, his eyes large as saucers. "Oh goodness, did that rhyme?"
Years ago, Lion's former classmates had summed the clues-Milius' fussy Edwardian stage manners, his starched white shirts, his falsetto laugh, his West Indian lilt, his obsession with Burberry, and came to the false conclusion that Milius was a homosexual. Lion knew better. Beautiful girls followed Milius like lambs to slaughter because they were unafraid.
Lion had just caught Zora's eyes lingering on Milius when Elena' cell phone rang. She fumbled nervously and excused herself with a forced smile. Lion watched the top of Elena's head as she walked past the hostess.
"I wonder what kind of man would let that beautiful creature step out alone," Milius said as they both watched the top of her head. "Well, I'm off to shake hands with the pope." Milius threw his napkin on the table.
Lion took a sip of wine and looked at Zora.
"I want to thank you," Zora said pleasantly.
"For what?"
"For doing this-" sweeping her arms over her body "-to me."
Lion cringed in discomfort. "I apologize Zora. I handled it badly. At times, I can be a coward, but I can't take credit for that."
"Fuck you. You're right. You are a coward, but I'm giving credit where credit is due."
"All right then."
"You made me disgrace myself."
Lion repeated his apology.
"Do you know what's that like?"
Lion shook his head.
"You will soon, I hope. Okay. I'm over it. But something good did come out of this. I mean look at me." Zora again swept her body. It was her new gesture. "And there's the new people in my life. Your friend comforted me that day. He was very good to me. And Elena, I can't say enough about her. She had never seen me, but she treated me like family, you hear? Family. She saw me all broke up and put her arms around me. Now she hates you more than I do. Isn't that odd? We've become good friends, you know."
"Friends are wonderful things to have."
"So what do you think of Elena?"
"I guess you could say she's a nice looking woman," Lion said. He wondered how bald-faced his lie seemed. "Anyway, stop acting like her publicist. She doesn't need one. And neither does Henry, speaking of which, what do you think of Henry?"
"At first I thought he might be gay, but I think I've changed my mind."
"When was that?"
"Just now, when he invited me back to his hotel room."
"Are you going?"
"I'm going and I'm giving that little black anglophile a heart attack. The things I can do with the weight off. I've never had such a thrill of power. Women like Elena take it for granted. With me, it's like a new weapon. I want to use it for the powers of evil. You remember how good I was? Well, I'm like ten times better, ten times freakier."
"That's good to know."
"I was going to ask you about Elena. You would like to be with her, wouldn't you? But I'm here and that makes it awkward."
Lion sipped his wine.
"I bet you feel like you could fall in love with her, couldn't you? It's all right, all the weak ones fall for her."
"Elena is married. Even if I wanted to-and there's a husband."
"Interesting. Your friend said the same thing, but he had the balls to do what he had to do."
Swilly?
"You didn't know?"
Swilly.
"I must say, Lion, the expression on your face is priceless."
Fucking Swilly.
Elena and Henry came back to the table as soon as dessert and coffee was served. Elena laughed to herself.
"What is it, darling?" Milius asked.
"Oh nothing," Elena said, giggling.
"Oh come now, child. What's on your mind?"
"Well, I was on the cell talking to my friend, and this car drives up and this guy exposed himself."
"Where is the sick bastard?" Lion said. He was drunk and would have fought a man for the right to defend Elena's honor.
"Excuse me," Zora interrupted. "Do you remember the night we first met?"
"What did Lion do the first night you met?" Milius asked. Lion wasn't sure about the tone of the question. Did it mean that Milius was jealous, or was he simply curious about Lion's failings?
"I went to the bathroom-" Zora began. She looked sideways at Lion and continued. Lion felt acutely ill. She was going to bring up that first night.
"Is that really necessary?"
"-and when I came back Lion was holding his thing in his hand."
Lion protested vigorously. "There is a big difference." He tried to argue over the laughter. Milius warned him not to protest too much. Lion was forced to tell them the story of what happened when he was eleven years old. Milius took great interest in this thread and began to pepper Elena and Lion with questions, the greater number towards Lion.
What did he look like?
Pitted skin? Yes, of course.
Scar tissue on his knuckles? Good Lord.
A blue Buick with a rusty grill.
To the steering wheel? My goodness.
A watch? You're kidding. Digital or analog?
Lion answered Milius' questions quickly, without elaboration, without measure of consequences. The waitress dropped the check on the table and began breaking down table settings.
"Oh my God, what time is it?" Elena asked. Elena immediately realized what she had said. For a full minute, they could not stop laughing. All, except Lion. Milius continued to chuckle even as he sat down in the cab next to Zora.
Despite the four glasses of wine and two gin and tonics, Lion did not hesitate to get into his car and drive to the ship at two in the morning. The gate guard gave him no trouble. He walked briskly past the quarterdeck watch, opened a quick acting hatch, and took a right into the blue-tiled officer's country, into the dark, cruelly lit passageway. The air conditioning droned as Lion made his way to the stateroom he shared with Swilly, who was on duty. Lion whipped the blue curtains aside and found Swilly sleeping, his mouth wide open like a gargoyle. He wouldn't hit a sleeping man so Lion shook Swilly awake. Swilly cursed lightly and turned on his rack lights. Swilly squinted up at Lion, his thin intelligent face illuminated by the rack lights.
"Is it true?" Lion asked.
Swilly's face contorted with confusion, then the lines in his thin intelligent face eased into comprehension.
"I had dinner with Zora and Elena," he said watching Swilly's face. "It's true, isn't it?" Lion asked again. Swilly was slightly amused. Lion couldn't help himself. A hard, pneumatic blow to the side of the Swilly's head would have taken the smirk off his face, but Lion didn't do it
"She's getting a divorce. We're getting married. We're happy." Happy. That word, more than anything, set Lion off. He found the notion preposterous. Although it was absurd for him to act this way, Lion couldn't help himself. He felt cheated out of the happiness he could have had with Zora, and the fantasy of a life with Elena. He wanted to beat Swilly.
"Why should you be happy?" Lion remembered screaming at Swilly.
***
A year had gone by and Lion still patronized the same bookstore. The owner recognized Lion and brought over a men's fashion magazine, one that occasionally published fiction.
"Go to page eighty-seven," the owner ordered. Lion complied and found a new short story by Henry Milius, entitled The Short, Happy Life of Lieutenant Lyon. Lion read the first sentence and snorted. Was this some kind of joke? What kind of spelling was 'L.Y.O.N?' But that wasn't Lion's greatest concerns. There were other things in print: the Buick's crooked grill, the scar tissue, the pitted skin, the coarse voice, the yellow light, the lack of cut, the pink underside, the watch with two hands. Five pages later, she appeared: a beautiful Creole ghost with shimmering red hair. Lion seethed. He sat down in the middle of the bookstore and read it again. The details were accurate to a fault. It was story about an affair between an officer-Lyon-and an enlisted man's wife-Eve. A scholarly man with an eye for detail, Milius got all the details right, from the type of missiles on deck (Harpoons) to Zora's (now Sara) perfume, fragility, and new powers. In the last scene, the officer and the enlisted man's wife decide to end the affair while standing between the stacks of a used bookstore that resembled this one. They part ways then come back to the stacks and embrace. The couple cannot end the affair. They are willing to suffer the consequences. The story ends with both hope and doom.
Bastard.
A few patrons turned. Lion realized he was thinking out loud.
The real story ended less ambiguously:
Elena's husband discovered the affair and confronted his wife. When she admitted the affair and moved out of the home, the husband took a nine-millimeter from the armory, walked into Lion and Swilly's stateroom, and waited for Swilly to show. After tiring of waiting, the husband pointed the gun towards the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Lion and Swilly were transferred pending the results of the investigation. Lion was questioned concerning the sailor's stateroom of choice. Lion told the agents that he had no idea.
"What did you think?" the bookstore owner asked.
"About what?" Lion said, annoyed at the interruption.
The owner's mouth was pursed in exasperation. "The story, man."
Lion ignored the owner. He patiently regarded the magazine, lifting it slightly as if the content of the story increased the page weight. In the story, Eva was Lyon's lover, not Swilly's because in the story there was no Swilly. Lion's fury eased a bit. The thieving Milius had taught Lion a distant lesson on how life might be, not how life is, a lesson that Lion couldn't quite put into words. He blew a good thing with Zora. He was willing to pine for Elena, but wasn't willing to suffer like Swilly. He was afraid of things unseen and Milius knew it. That was why Milius was the writer, Lion thought, and he was not.
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FEATURED WRITER: Rex Rose
Novelist, journalist and poet Rex Rose brags of being a 3rd grade dropout.
He came of age in New Orleans, where he played electric guitar in indy rock
groups, worked in a Bourbon Street sex toy shop and shucked oysters for
seven years at a bar. He never returned to school in earnest until entering
Tulane University, where he earned a BA in English on the John Kennedy Toole
Writing Scholarship. During his Tulane years, Rose wrote a monthly
techno-culture column for Tribe magazine and was also one of the magazine's
journeymen music critics. After a stint in law school, he earned his MFA in
fiction at LSU under Andrei Codrescu, Vance Bourjaily, Moira Crone, James
Gordon Bennett and Mark Poirier. At LSU, Rose was assistant to poet,
novelist and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu at Exquisite Corpse, and was
twice nominated for the Scribner Prize by Vance Bourjaily and Andrei
Codrescu respectively. His short fiction has appeared in the Tulane Literary
Magazine, his poetry in Exquisite Corpse and Milk magazine, his biographical
work on photographer E.J. Bellocq has appeared in Arts Quarterly and
Exquisite Corpse, and Creative Arts Book Company, Berkeley, CA, has just
published his first novel, Toast. Rose is a contributing editor at Exquisite
Corpse. He travels extensively in Mexico and has recently moved to Austin,
Texas, where he now lives and writes.
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Humanity at large first encountered cyborgs when they started moving into
gated communities. Intel, Sun, Biomorph, Motorola, Fractive, NASA, the NSA,
the HSA, and a host of other corporations and governmental agencies had
cyborgs on-staff in research and development positions, but somewhere along
the line cyborgs had stopped being exotic experiments and become regular
employees. Why house them for free like lab monkeys? When their employers
stopped housing them, they all bought mansions in the burbs with the huge
salaries their superhuman productivity commanded.
Gatekeepers at exclusive communities with names like The Oaks or Fairfax
Turn would look out of their guardhouses and feel their hair stand up when
they saw cyborgs for the first time. Tinted driver's side windows of brand
new midnight blue Mercedes coupes would slide down, revealing men with metal
housings mounted close against the sides of their craniums, red LEDs
glowing. From the windows of the Mercedes coupes wafted the aroma of warm
electrophotonics, new leather interiors and perfume. As the gatekeepers'
horrified fascination forced them to stoop to get closer looks, they would
see past the cyborgs to the legs of gorgeous women in the passenger seats,
the kind of women that would not even look at the gatekeepers, or even at
the gatekeepers' girlfriends when they gave them their pedicures, and the
tinted windows would slide back up, and the sleek midnight blue Mercedes
coupes would glide away into the cul de sacs.
The governments and corporations had their rules, of course. No cyborgs
allowed in administrative, managerial, or executive positions. But everyone
sensed privately that it was only a matter of timea very short timebefore
cyborgs would run everything. CEOs resigned when they could lay their hands
on the twelve or thirteen million cash it took to get cybernetically
customized. They first faced two or three years of training and practice
before they could exploit the enhancements. Then they had limitless
possibilities.
Only when people actually got a good look at the cyborgs did they begin to
do the math. The prices would come down soon enough, they realized, and
those with the implants would get the best jobs. Those without would man
the gates at Brook Hollow, Northam Heights, Dogwood Hills Country Club, or
give pedicures to the cyborgs' lovers, or be the cyborgs' lovers, reclining
in thirty-thousand-dollar massage chairs, watching reality shows called Who
Wants to Marry a Cyborg? and Joe Borg on twelve-foot bioluminescent
monitors. Instead of counseling their daughters to marry doctors, mothers
would counsel their daughters to marry cyborgs. What employer in his right
mind would hire a bio when he could hire a cyborg? These scenarios played
out in the minds of those humans who had any contact with the first cyborgs,
followed by feelings of empathy toward Neanderthal upon getting his first
load of Cro Magnon.
Homo Sapiens had already enjoyed plenty of indirect positive contact with
Homo Cyberneticus. New super-efficient modes of clean, quiet transportation
filled the roads, skies and seas. The common cold, AIDS, cancer, arthritis,
diabetes, and all the others disappeared. High yield crops and
ultra-convenient modes of contraception ended hunger globally. New gene and
stem cell therapies extended youth past the sixtieth year. The economy was
a bulletproof bull. The cyborgs had even developed mousetraps that called
every mouse within range into stylish shoe-sized chambers that spat them out
on the other side as inoffensive freeze dried pellets suitable for
nourishing house plants.
Although the new technologies that cyborgs developed kept delighting
humanity, the public never fully came to terms with the cyborg until they
saw the metal housings on their craniums up close and personal. Then, never
mind the diet pills that entirely eliminated hunger pangs without side
effects; never mind the pheromones that renewed boring marriages; never mind
the obsolescence of toilet paper. When people saw the cyborgs in person,
there was only the fear, the jealousy, the anger, and politicians quickly
exploited these emotions.
Rep. Sadhi Takamura, D. Nuevo Leon, eventually proposed HR 19899739, within
the ambit of which lay a total freeze on direct neural-digital interfaces
and also contained provisions that amounted to internment for all extant
cyborgs. The bill went on to the Senate, stalled and waylaid by the
Republicans, but the voters came out in multitudes to demonstrate in support
of the legislation. People began to pin ugly popular epithets on cyborgs,
like "chip job," "toaster," "rig," and "instant genius." When the bill
passed, the cyborgs, way ahead of the humans, had already evacuated the
country and joined forces in Red China, where the government had welcomed
them.
In this nurturing environment, well protected by Chinese nuclear missiles,
the cyborgs continued their researches, pushing China way ahead of the rest
of the world in technological breakthroughs. But the Chinese grew tedious
to cyborgs, with their insistent dogma and constant attempts to monitor and
control, and this led cyborgs to their greatest achievement yet: the jump to
quantum consciousness, once pejoratively known as artificial intelligence.
Discarding their bodies entirely, they learned to upload their engrams,
memories, and everything that made up their personalities into
electrophotonic computer systems that could completely support their
awareness. Once all cyborgs had digitized themselves and created highly
robust and redundant robotic systems to support their host computers, the
founders genetically engineered and released the virus that removed the
human threat forever.
--------
FEATURED WRITER: Robin Becker
Robin Becker has lived in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Austin, San
Francisco and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Currently she lives in the rural
Midwest with her husband and their two cats.
--------
JAY'S PERSONAL COASTER
In Jay's backyard, there's nothing but sky, grass, shrubs, and his roller
coaster, nothing but blue, green, brown, and his roller coaster, rising out
of the ground like a sea serpent.
Jay's backyard is a prairie. Without fences or cows, with only a few squat
trees, Oklahoma stretches in each direction. Even his house hangs low to the
ground, as if pushed down from the weight of the sky.
To the South, a few trailer homes huddle together, rust gathering on their
flanks. Beyond them, there's more sky and grass, identical shapes and
colors, squares on a quilt, all the way to Texas.
Jay pounds nail number 5,545 into his roller coaster. The alarm goes off on
his wristwatch. He puts down the hammer, takes a pipe out of his pocket,
packs it with pot. The sun is behind his left shoulder, breathing hot air
down his neck.
Anne is in his house this morning. Her head on his pillow, she's dreaming of
leaving.
Three hours later, after laying track for the final bank, Jay goes inside.
It's cool in the kitchen where Anne is, naked and making coffee. Her feet
slap on the cracked tile.
"How's it coming?" she asks.
"It's coming."
She stands in front of the sink, looking out the window at the roller
coaster. Its lift hill is taller than the house, taller than the lone tree
in the yard. The wood is unpainted yellow pine, and it looks dull and dirty
in the bright morning light.
Anne pours coffee for Jay. The insides of her elbows brush against her
breasts whenever she moves. Jay sits at the table.
"How was work last night?" he asks.
"That guy came in again, the one who likes naturally large breasts."
"Isn't that every guy?"
"You'd be surprised, Jay. You really would. You should come in some time.
We've got all different shapes and sizes for all different tastes."
"So what happened?"
"Five hundred bucks is what happened."
"From one guy?"
Anne sits on Jay's lap, dangling her feet. He burrows his face in her
chest, kissing the flat space between her breasts, where it's damp and
salty.
"Nah," she tells him. "But he did tip a little over a hundred. It was just
a good night overall. What'd you do?"
Jay shakes his head, and her breasts jiggle, bumping his ears. She puts her
hand in his hair, which is short and sandy blond.
"Nothing," he says.
"Let me guess. Dexter came over, and you guys got stoned and worked on the
coaster."
Jay pulls his head back and picks up his coffee. His face is thin and
angular, his nose sharp like a hawk's.
"I discovered," he tells her, "that I could've curved that final bank at 55
degrees, instead of 50. Fifty-five! Do you realize the difference that
would've made?"
"Not really."
"A huge difference. But it doesn't matter. It's too late to change it now."
"It's almost over, isn't it?"
Jay nods. He runs his hand along Anne's back-the knobs of her spine stick
out and he rubs each one as if for luck.
"What about after it's done?" she asks.
"What do you mean?"
"What are you gonna do then?"
"Ride it."
"And then what?"
Jay shrugs. "I don't know," he says. "Tear it down maybe."
He looks up at her. She's got three pimples on her forehead,
marching a straight red line across her brow. He loves those pimples.
"Let's go to bed," he says.
Dexter comes over to barbecue that night before Anne has to leave for the
club. The three of them sit in the backyard, swatting at mosquitoes and
looking at the roller coaster.
"How much you get done today?" Dexter asks.
Jay is standing over the grill, basting the meat. His chin is pointy, and
he aims it at Anne. "Mostly her," he says.
"Now boys," Anne says, "play nice."
She's wearing a halter-top and shorts; her skin is the color of the full
moon. When she stands up, her lawn chair falls backwards. She stretches,
balancing on her toes. Both men stare at her legs. "I'll get more beer," she
offers, and heads for the house. The guys watch her ass as she walks away,
and she sways it for them. At the screen door, she turns and flips her head
and hair over her shoulder, looking back at them. She smiles and wiggles her
fingers. Everyone laughs.
"She sure is something." Dexter shakes his head.
Jay nods. "She'll be leaving soon," he says. "I reckon."
Dexter grunts and walks out to the coaster. Jay flips a chicken thigh,
closes the lid, and joins him. They stand next to the bank after the first
drop. Dexter puts his hand out and touches the wood. He pushes on it. "Feels
solid," he says.
"It's pressure-treated. With the 54-degree drop, I expect it to get up to
20 miles per, though it could be more if the weather's right. If the wind is
blowing in the right direction, I mean."
Dexter climbs onto the track. He kneels down and runs his hand over the
nails and screws. "Nice and smooth," he observes.
"The ride itself'll be pretty rough."
"Hell yeah."
Dexter's knees crack as he stands up. He's a big man, twice the size of Jay,
with most of his girth gathered in his stomach and chest. He's wearing a
Hawaiian shirt, hula girls printed on it. He jumps on the track, testing its
give.
"Everyone misses you at school," he says. "You should come back.
Finish the program."
"Fuck 'em."
"Eberhart said he'll let you back in. No problem."
"They just want the coaster."
"Not the coaster, Jay. They want the guy who built it."
"Same difference."
The screen door slams. Anne sets a tray with beers, salad, and bread on the
picnic table. "Come and get it!" she calls.
Jay takes the chicken off the grill and they eat. Anne is loud, oohing and
aahing, licking her fingers, smacking gently.
"Good grub, Jay," Dexter says, but he's looking at Anne.
Later, the sun sets behind the coaster; its hills jut into the sky, and its
edges glow orange. Jay waits for Anne to leave for the club before breaking
out his bong. Anne doesn't like it when he smokes. She says it makes him
boring.
"Eberhart's serious about wanting you back," Dexter says as he exhales a
plume. "He called me into his office and asked me to ask you."
"I'll think about it."
"They might offer you a deal to come back. Eberhart was talking research
grant. Could be sweet."
"I don't need the money. Not yet."
"You'd be stupid not to."
"I am stupid."
"Anybody who can build a coaster in his own damn backyard can't be stupid.
Crazy maybe, stupid no."
"Who cares," Jay says. "Wanna help me with the cart?"
"Hell yeah."
"I need another hit first."
Jay packs the bowl. They pass the bong back and forth and watch the
coaster. The moon is low, full, glowing underneath the arc of the first
drop.
Dexter points at it. "Doesn't it look like an eye?" he asks.
"What?"
"The moon. See it? Your coaster is like the eyebrow and the moon is the
eye."
Jay squints. "You're stoned."
"Hell yeah, but it's still an eye out there." Dexter pulls on his ball cap.
"It's watching us."
A few weeks later, Hollywood comes to town, shooting a drama set in the
segregated 1950s. A white man and a black woman make love in the short grass
of the prairie. The director has a vision: the couple, small and desperate,
rolling on the faded green in the foreground, the hazy sky covering them
like a blanket. In the distance, the horizon never stops.
Anne gets in the habit of driving her pick-up to the location and eating
lunch while leaning against the truck bed. On the third day the assistant
producer walks over and asks her to dinner.
"It's not a date," she tells Jay.
"What is it?"
"An opportunity."
It's late afternoon. Jay's in his backyard, working on the coaster cart.
It's a plain pine box on wheels big enough for one passenger. Him. There's a
crude wooden bench inside it and he's sanding its edges. Anne stands in
front of him, blocking the sun.
"Don't be mad," she says.
"I'm not mad."
"You don't own me."
"I don't want to."
"This could turn into something."
"Like what, Anne?"
"Like a part in a movie or something. He's a producer."
Jay stands up. "Since when do you want to be an actress?"
"I just want to be famous. I want people to know who I am."
Jay gets into his cart and sits on the bench. He runs his hand along the
edge. "I smoothed it out," he says. "You won't get splinters on your butt
when you ride it now."
"I've got to get ready." She turns and walks toward the house. Jay rests
his chin on the side of the cart, watching her go.
When she comes out to say good-bye an hour later, make-up covering
her pimples, hair piled on top of her head, he's still sitting in the cart.
The wind has picked up, gusting to 50 miles per hour. It blows Anne's dress
against her legs; the coaster groans against its velocity.
"He's gonna give her a screen test," Jay tells Dexter.
"Is that what they call it in Hollywood?"
"Shut the fuck up and pass me the goddamn bong."
"You shouldn't let her do this to you. Kick her ass out."
It's early spring and late at night, past midnight. The moon is
new; Anne has been gone for hours.
"She says she wants to be a star." Jay tries to light the bowl, but
the wind keeps blowing out the flame.
"Bullshit. She ever talk about this before?"
"Not per se." Jay sets down the bong. "She loves stripping,
though."
"I've never understood that about her. I thought most educated
women found that degrading nowadays."
"She says she loves the attention. She likes the guys looking at
her, ogling her, maybe even jerking off to her later. She especially loves
it when they tell her how much they love her big fuckin' tits."
"A true exhibitionist."
Jay pours himself another shot of whiskey. "You think she's pretty
enough to make it?"
"Hard to say. There's a lot they do with make-up and lighting. She's
got the body for it."
"Her face, though. It's kinda rough."
"Again, lighting and make-up'll clear that right up."
"But can she act?"
"Who knows? Has she ever even been in a school play? Did she play a
friggin' tree in the second grade Easter pageant? In my opinion, this is a
whim. A shitty one for you, my friend, but wait it out and this too shall
pass. Guaranteed. She'll come crawling back after that slimeball gets tired
of her. Long term, she's not going anywhere."
Lightning flashes behind the coaster, illuminating its four hills.
The last two are close together, giant breasts growing straight out of the
ground.
"You thought of a name for that thing yet?" Dexter asks.
"Not really."
"It's almost done, though, isn't it?"
"Almost. Finishing touches, mostly. Some sanding, and I've got to
tweak the motor for the chain lift."
"It's the coolest thing anyone I know has ever done. To me, it's not just a
roller coaster, dude. It's art."
"You helped."
Lightning flashes again and it starts to drizzle. Neither man moves from
his lawn chair.
"You gonna charge to ride it?"
"I hadn't thought of it."
"If it was me, I would."
It starts to rain harder. Fat drops bounce off the coaster and land in the
prairie. Jay grabs the bong and the whiskey and runs for the back door,
Dexter right behind him.
They turn at the doorway and look back at Jay's creation.
"You've got to call it something," Dexter says. "It's too big to be
nameless."
"How about My Own Personal Coaster?"
"Hell no. You need something catchy like Gravity Run or Death Max. Hold
on-I got it! Ultimate Backyard Coaster."
Jay opens the door and steps into the bright light of the kitchen. He pours
the bongwater down the sink and looks out the window at the coaster.
Lightning flashes once more behind it, and Jay remembers the scene in
Frankenstein when electricity infuses the monster with life.
"Frankencoaster," he says, but Dexter is in the bathroom and can't hear
him.
It rains for the rest of the night. Anne never comes home.
Early morning, mid-July, and the sun hasn't burned off the haze yet. Jay's
Personal Coaster is still damp from an afternoon deluge the day before.
Jay steps out his back door and stands facing west, hands on
hips, admiring his work. He walks towards it, passing underneath the second
hill, which arcs high above his head, until he's in the center of his ride.
It's complete; the track meets end-to-end, forming a circle.
Jay touches his toes and swivels his torso. He's wearing the
boxers and white t-shirt he slept in. Barefoot, he jogs to the lift hill,
starts the motor, and positions his cart on the track. Last week he added a
vinyl cushion to the bench and painted the outside blood red.
He sits on the bench. The roller chain grabs the bottom of the cart and
pulls him 20 feet up the lift hill at a 26.6-degree angle. The chain clicks
and thumps and bumps. Birds hiding in the lone tree fly away at the sound.
At the peak of the hill, Jay turns his head from side to side, swivels in
his seat, searching in every direction. There's nothing out there. He throws
his hands in the air as he begins to descend.
Anne is in the Bahamas with the assistant producer. Her things-winter
clothes, stripping clothes, Anne Rice paperbacks, the life-size cardboard
Ronald Reagan she bought at a garage sale-are still in Jay's house. He walks
around touching them sometimes, but not often.
The ride is rough. Earsplitting. Jay doesn't scream or whoop. He doesn't
make a sound. His face, tan and unlined, is impassive and bird-like.
Four drops, three banks, and one minute later the cart stops
exactly where it started, at the bottom of the lift hill. Jay smoothes back
his hair, gets out of the cart, and repositions it on the roller chain. He
climbs back into the cart and rides his personal roller coaster again. Then
he does it again. And again. All morning he rides it.
By noon, the sun is high, and the sky looks artificial in its pale
blueness. In the North, the moon is visible, but just barely.
Jay's cart rolls up to the bottom of the lift hill and stops at the
beginning. He steps out, turns, and walks towards his house. His legs are
shaky and his butt hurts. His teeth feel loose and his head hurts. He is
hungry. He has to go to the bathroom. He opens the back door and walks into
the cool of the kitchen. He doesn't look back at his coaster.
--------
FEATURED WRITER: Wanda Coleman
Wanda Coleman was born in 1946 and is the author of Bathwater Wine
(Black Sparrow Press, 1998), winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry
Prize. A former medical secretary, magazine editor, journalist and
scriptwriter, Coleman has received fellowships from the National Endowment
for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation for her poetry. Her other books
of poetry include Native in a Strange Land: Trials & Tremors (1996); Hand
Dance (1993); African Sleeping Sickness (1990); A War of Eyes & Other
Stories (1988); Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories 1968-1986 (1988);
Imagoes (1983); and Mercurochrome: New Poems (2001). She has also written
Mambo Hips & Make Believe: A Novel, published by Black Sparrow Press in
1999.
wcoleman@hotmail.com
--------
BLUE ELEPHANT
Ruby Jane had stood alone against the wall so long she was rubbing off the paper. The house party was a bust. Looks her way were hot but no one made a move to bother. Swaying sexily to the music failed to stir up offers to dance. Too many sexy women had shown up and not enough eligible men. Going home alone presented an undesirable option. The kids were away for the summer, spending time with their father, her ex-husband. She was between boyfriends and had no romantic prospects. She was weary of facile newspaper articles declaring the city tops on the list of urban metropolises wherein single females outnumbered desirable males-without the complications of the color bar. On impulse, she abandoned the mixed company of revelers, left her Ford coupe curbside and ambled slowly, restlessly downhill through the working-class neighborhood.
The steamy empty streets were lined with weather-beaten automobiles. Below, shimmering neon marked the main drag where Saturday night traffic flowed. On the way up she had driven past a corner bar. She decided to check out its jukebox over a cooled glass of concord white to settle her nerves before making that solitary drive home. If these were the days of peace and love, there was more peace available than love.
The Blue Elephant was nearly as empty as her heart. A bevy of fresh-faced college Joes crowded two pool tables in one corner. Juvenile jokes and pitchers of beer were being spewed between groans and laughter. In an opposite corner, two sexagenarian barflies buzzed loudly in one of the red leatherette booths as they swapped tales of dyspepsia and ex-wives. They eyeballed her tightly clad figure with unbridled lust as she attempted to ignore them. She was suddenly uncomfortably conscious of her Hawaiian print short-waisted tie-top, red slit skirt and that she was barelegged in red open-toed heels; however, they did not address her, and resumed their conversation at a slightly lowered volume.
She spotted the jukebox, went over and read the selections. They were largely country-and-western, forties-and-fifties pop, Elvis and contemporary rock tunes. She fed in the quarters, pressed her choices, stepped to the high-glossed mahogany bar, empty of customers, and eased up onto a stool. The bartender, a bald, glazed-eyed side of beef in his forties, sized her up with a stare and smirk as he laid down a cocktail napkin.
"I take it you're drinkin'."
Ruby Jane met his gaze and understood his ironic tone of voice. What else does one think when a colored woman enters a neighborhood bar that caters to Whites? Finding a respectable woman of any stripe in such surroundings was as rare as finding a blue elephant, was it not? Surely, she had to be on the lookout for some John to trick. Even in this enlightened day and age, when an unescorted woman entered a bar some immediately assumed she was something less than a lady.
"Concord white." Ruby Jane ignored the vibrations-the hostile and the lustful alike.
"Rotgut. Not in my place."
"Crème Sherry."
"I can do that."
"Then-please-do that. On the rocks."
He grabbed a fresh blue bottle from the display case.
Ruby Jane went off into her thoughts, eyes roving the mirror which reflected all those within its airy dimness. Tomorrow was Sunday-the worst day of the week. Her apartment was spick-and-span. She'd get up early and hand-wash the coupe. After that, there was no place to go and no one to talk to. The sniggerers and whisperers had run her out of the church she favored. She had yet to find another strong enough to hold her faith or interest. Her girlfriends were all married and sleeping late with their hard-working husbands.
What could she do with herself? Get a good night's sleep. Go roller-skating on the beach. Treat herself to a light brunch. Catch that new exhibition at the museum. Spend the afternoon into early evening painting at her easel. Write a few letters. Watch the TV news omnibus over a light supper. Read herself to sleep. Hers-the not-so-gay regimen of a late-twentieth-century divorcee sans involvement opportunities, charity work and the prerequisite riches that bought diversity and mobility. Her paycheck and child-support barely maintained the roof overhead and filled the larder, while she daydreamed of gallery showings and lucrative fame as a discovered artist. In the meanwhile, she treated herself as nicely as possible.
A masculine shadow disrupted her musings as a stranger exited the hallway that led from the restrooms and payphones. She recognized the flicker of hand movements made by a man zipping his fly. He strolled to the counter and made it his business to sit two stools down.
She watched him in the mirror as he searched his sports jacket pockets for a pack of cigarettes. He was pigeon-chested with a slight paunch, long sturdy legs and large pasty white hands. He felt her eyes, looked up and snared her gaze. He held it a moment before going back to locating that pack of smokes, found it, lit one, inhaled and let blast a funnel of satisfied exhaust. Without word, the bartender drew a pitcher of sudsy brew and set it, and a double shot of whisky, before the stranger.
"There you go, Hank."
"Thanks Rip."
Exuding the familiarity of a regular, Hank went into his breast pocket for his billfold and, with quiet authority, laid down more cash than necessary.
"Rip, give the lady another of whatever she's sipping." He spoke in a medium-ranged singsong that had a strong nasal component, as if he had untreated life-long sinus troubles.
Rip's smile became a twitch. He let the bill stand, poured her another shot from the blue bottle, then busied himself washing mugs and refilling the stock in the cooler.
Hank winked at her, got up and closed the distance between them, the double shot in one hand while he slid the pitcher along with the other, taking the stool to her left, turning to the right so that his legs teased hers. He reached for the ashtray, tossed the matches aside, and dropped his ash.
"Still waters run deep," he half purred, half growled, giving her the once-over. "But no one has to drown in them."
Ruby laughed. "What are you, some sort of comedian?"
"No, I'm not."
Closer, what light there was revealed the stranger was older than his attitude suggested. Hefty, he was just shy of being a six-footer. His head was large, his face an acne-pitted oval. Thinning black hair was raked straight back off his forehead and curled to cup his neck under large, flat cauliflower ears so ugly they looked obscene, like exposed sex organs.
He freshened his beer and inhaled the air about her. "That's the good stuff you've got on."
"French and expensive-or is that a redundancy?"
"Very goood. What's your name?"
"Ruby Jane."
"Ruby Jane? That's a country girl's name. Nothing about you smacks of the backwoods." His eyes roved her upper torso, probed the silky brown mounds of cleavage exaggerated by her push-up bra.
"I'm completely citified, as they say."
"The name's Hank." He offered a hand. She clamped it daintily and let go. It was warm, dry and friendly. "You're quite a striking woman-a real eyeful."
"Thanks. So I've been told." Her toothy smile was unrestrained against lips glossed in maroon.
"Got a boyfriend?" He offered her the pack of smokes.
She shook her head. "Not at the moment."
"Come on, a hot number like you, on a Saturday night?"
"It happens."
"I guess it must."
Without being told, Rip set out another double shot of whisky and a Crème Sherry on the rocks.
"You're built like you could put a fellow six feet under, Ruby Jane."
"I've buried a few in my time, Hank."
"You're fast too," he nodded. "Smart girl. I like that."
"Any time."
"Like now?" He looked at his watch then looked at her legs.
"Beg your pardon?"
"I'm asking you for a date." He stared at a point between her eyes.
"What?"
"A date. You know."
"No. I'm afraid I don't." She was annoyed by the implications.
"Whatsamatter? Don't you like white meat?"
She nearly gagged, half-sputtered, half-laughed. "I'm sorry, you're mistaken. I'm not a working girl."
"You're not?"
"No. Not that kind of work I'm not."
"Well I'll be damned. You've got such beautiful flanks and a beautiful mouth. What's a prime piece of wolf bait like you doing here in Mayberry?"
"There was a party up the street."
"And you got bored."
"Close enough."
"You must be some kind of mix, with those high cheekbones."
"Haven't you heard? Everything Black is a mix. Never can tell who might show up in the woodpile. Might even be your daddy."
"My ol' man was a racist. He'd sooner lynch you than look at you. I'm not like that. He didn't pass it on."
"If you say so."
"Look-I've got a couple of steaks, a bottle of hooch for me and some port for you and a bed as soft as a baby's ass."
"Sounds cozy. Who's the cook?"
"I am. Whatdayah say?"
"Hmmm."
"You think I'm a plainclothes man? I'm no copper, Sweetheart."
"Don't flatter yourself."
"So what's the hang-up?"
"You're awful ugly-and older than what I'm used to," she laughed-at him and at herself. He laughed with her. Why didn't she just freeze the creep?
"You sound like music. Even when you're insulting. Well, I can't help what I look like anymore than you can help how beautiful you are or the tint of your skin, or how your teeth nearly blind me when you smile."
That almost made her like him. It certainly piqued her curiosity. Maybe he wasn't the usual creep.
"Well. . . ."
"Well?"
"I'm thinking about it."
"Not too hard. Might strain your brain." He was amused, and chased a slug of the whisky with beer straight from the pitcher. Not a drop was spilled.
"A date, huh?"
"Yeah. A date."
"No strings? Nothing promised?" She crossed the fingers of her right hand at him, elbow on the bar.
His face fell slightly, but his hands went up. "Scout's honor, no strings."
"Okay-your place?"
"My place. Not far from here."
"My ride's up the hill. I'll meet you there."
Hank scrawled his address on one of the cocktail napkins and handed it to her. Ruby Jane looked at it, tucked it into her clutch purse, blew a kiss on the air and sauntered off. Hank watched her go, licked his lips at the switch of her hips, downing the whisky all the while, chasing it along with cold hard swallows of brew.
The address was located in the eastern, less glitzy part of Hollywood, in a series of dreary courts built at the end of World War II. They were landscaped cheaply in cacti and agave. A tore-down Chevy squeaked noisily at the curb and leaked antifreeze, an indication that Hank had arrived scant minutes before her. She imagined him scurrying around his place, picking up dirty underwear and spritzing air freshener.
She hesitated.
What if he were some sort of psycho out to expunge the Black race, specializing in the female of the species. Insist that he keep the door open, a voice said. She knocked tentatively on the screen door, fighting off the doubts.
"Come in, take a load off," he called from inside.
She pulled back the screen door and stepped into the closeness, leaving the inner door ajar. It was drab and cluttered. Cheesy faded beige curtains were crowned in dust and grease. Overloaded bookcases choked the walls and crowded the grungy brown and beige ensemble of couch, loveseat and recliner. The much-abused wooden coffee table barely retained its finish and strained under weighty stacks of men's magazines. The rug's nap was shoeworn to a sheen along paths to and from the kitchen and to and from the hallway leading to the bedroom. Crammed into a corner, a small desk bent under reference texts and dictionaries, reams of paper and an old typewriter. His sports coat was hung on the back of an ancient swivel chair. There wasn't a television to be seen. The radio was tuned to a local station specializing in ballroom standards and movie theme songs.
Hank popped into the room waving a cooking fork, in shirtsleeves, apron at his waist, a wide welcoming grin.
"The steaks are basting. How about those drinks?"
"Sure."
"Coming right up!"
Hank scurried back to the kitchen, doffed the apron, stuck the fork in one of the steaks, and raided the cabinet where he kept the good liquor and crystal.
Ruby Jane made herself comfortable on the couch, back flush against the armrest. The walls were hung with prints-a Bearden, a Turner, a Gauguin and several original urban landscapes by gifted local artists.
Hank hopped back into the room balancing fifths of Scotch and port, and tumblers with ice. He joined her on the couch, sat against the opposite armrest, poured the potables liberally then handed her the port.
"Skoal."
They extended arms and touched glasses.
She took an appreciative swallow. "That's delicious, Hank!"
"Imported."
They fell into a silence in which they assessed one another openly.
"Ruby Jane-you look even better in this light."
"You look a little better yourself."
He gulped once or twice to her repeated sips.
"You mean the acne? That, too, is an act of God."
"No. I didn't mean that. But now that you mention it, it actually favors you-gives you a gruffish sort of dash."
"Atta girl. Tell me more." He patted the cushion between them but she ignored his gesture.
"You read a lot. Me too. But I don't think I've ever seen so many books in so small a space."
"Tools of the trade."
"If you say so."
"Where's your TV?"
"I don't have one."
"Hate it?"
"No. Just don't believe in it."
"What about sports?"
"There's the radio, or I go over to friends, or find a dark corner in a sports bar."
"I like the paintings. You have remarkable taste."
"Forget the paintings-you're the most fuckable work of art I've seen in a coon's age-if you'll forgive the expression?"
"Sure. You don't mean I can compete with the blondes spread-eagled in those magazines?" She pointed.
"Oh, those?" He laughed. "They publish my stories." He picked up a copy, opened it to his photograph on the author's page and held it out to her. "See? Pays good money, too. That's how I make my living. I'm a writer."
"What kind of writer?" She handed it back.
"Oh-sexy stories, funny stories, sad stories-sometimes." He tossed it on top of the nearest stack.
"That doesn't mean you don't look at the nudes."
"I do-look at the nudes."
"Men who keep those kinds of magazines around usually masturbate a lot. You've got the hands for it." She was surprised by her own casualness.
"They do come in handy." He held them up and made a mock study of them. The nails were clean. "Some consider writing a form of masturbation."
"I thought that was what the pictures were for," she goaded.
"Only in an emergency. Don't let the mug fool you. Women find this red-blooded all-American boy attractive." He downed more of the Scotch.
"But you're between girlfriends at the moment."
Hank nodded into his drink.
"What happened to your last one?"
"She took a job overseas."
"A case of business before pleasure?"
"We weren't that close." He looked at her. "We were fuck buddies."
"How long?"
"A couple of years."
"Damn. Why didn't you just propose?"
"Bad knees."
She laughed as she polished off her drink.
"Another?"
"Naw, thanks. I've reached my limit if I want to keep standing straight and keep any food down."
"Speaking thereof-how about an appetizer?"
"What you got?"
"A cock as long as the Mississippi and as hard as Gibraltar."
"Where do you get that jive talk?"
"Drinkin' buddies."
"What happened to no strings?"
"I'm no boyscout. I lied. I can't help it. I want to be your-friend." He dived toward her, closing the gap, face targeting her chest. She squirmed under the blast of his breath, too warm and smelling of the Scotch. Her nails were soft and short. She couldn't scratch him. She held him at arm's length, but he had his giant's hands at her shoulders.
"Come, on Baby-drop the pose," he hissed.
"I-I bet you've never made love to a Black woman, have you?" She felt her own body heating up, with alcohol and passion.
"No. Something special I should know?" He nuzzled the bow between her breasts where her top was knotted. "Are Black chicks so different?"
"I've been told but I can't say I know."
"Well, I'm ready, willing and able to find out." Both arms snaked to her waist, his trunk sliding in against her knees. "What say we practice a little integration?"
"Hold on, Hank."
"That's exactly what I intend to do."
He nuzzled her cleavage, flicking between the vee with lizard-like strokes of his huge crimson tongue. It had bumps. She had never seen a tongue so repulsive. It, too, was a sex organ. She struggled to maintain her composure, fighting off the urge to flee his excitement and hers. She clutched his hands but could not budge them from around her waist. Steadily, he was pulling her into a prone position. One hand found her buttocks as the other eased her skirt past her thighs.
"Stop it, Hank! Stop it!"
She tried to break free but he held her with the force of his weight.
"Come on, give it up!"
Hank sensed impending surrender, freed one hand, unzipped his fly and liberated a huge semi-erect shlong and lunged. She looked at it and gasped. They tussled, all the while talking in rapid bursts between intakes of breath.
"Wait! I've seen smaller dongs on horses."
"A blow job, then-wrap those hot lips around my cock."
"I'm not ready for this!"
"Baby, you were born ready!"
"I'm sorry, Mister-." She pushed at him.
"Huh-what? Come on! The name's Hank." He was panting, organ full throb, belt dangling, pawing. "Don't be such a cock tease, Baby Jane!"
"Ruby Jane. I can't go through with this."
"No-you-don't!" He ripped off her bikini panties, poked the flimsy skivvies under his nose, and took a deep satisfied whiff.
"Ambrosia!"
She smacked one ear with her clutch purse.
"Ouch!" He took the blow and reeled back. The ear was tender.
She tumbled out from under him and went to the floor on her knees, bumping against the coffee table, rattling the bottles.
"I'm outtta here," she mumbled dizzily.
One stack of magazines slid to the rug. One heel slipped from her foot, she maneuvered it back on, hoping the weakened ankle strap would hold, sprang to her feet and tested it.
"Haven't you ever had a White guy fuck you?" Hank's words were slurred. He remained sprawled on the couch, breathing heavily, arms in an empty clutch, staring at her legs, reeling with the jolt of emptiness as his erection subsided.
"Yeah. But it was normal," she gasped.
"What in hell's that mean?" Mussed, his hair had fallen across his forehead. Flushed and sweaty, he brushed it back with the flat of one palm.
"He took his time. You're a cum freak. Wham, bam, etcetera."
"Well isn't that normal?"
"Not in my book."
"We talkin' Bible or romance novels?"
"The hell with you!"
"Wait, wait! Ruby Jane-I'm sorry." Huffing, he hastily tucked his privates away. "Stay. Let's have the steaks, talk, get to know each other. I'll be a good boy. Promise." Gingerly, he fingered the ear. "That vinyl's hard. I'm not bleeding am I?"
"No-I don't think so." The violence had upset her. She hated it but would not hesitate to defend herself, and was only half concerned that she had hurt him. She lingered halfway between the couch and the exit. Her stomach growled loudly. She was suddenly terribly hungry. She thought of those steaks.
"Look, I'll sweeten the deal." He pulled up his pants, left them loosely belted, and clambered for the desk, snatching his jacket from the swivel chair.
"Sweeten?"
"Here!" He emptied the billfold on the coffee table. "That's all I'm good for till payday. Honest."
She looked at the notes and sputtered.
"You think I'm only worth that?"
"Oh-no-a heck of a lot more-"
"That's what I think. Keep your money. Shove it up your ass. Bye, Chump."
"Krrrist-no, wait, wait!"
"Wait for what?"
"Let's back up. Let's start over."
"Start over where? All you think I am is a prostitute. Not just like you-someone who's lonely, someone looking for companionship."
"Companionship?"
"Sex. Yeah, that too, but something a hell of a lot less shallow than a one-nighter. A real date-to use your word, with more in the offing."
"Just my luck-a woman with ambition."
"I'm grown, Hank. I make a living doing an honest day's work, speaking of-and the last time I looked, there was no law against an unmarried woman enjoying sex with an unmarried man without it being something degraded."
"Ruby Jane, you're absolutely right. Absolutely."
"I know I am."
"Yes, Sarge."
"That's right, show a little respect. You might get rewarded."
"Oh, Ruby-reward me. Please." He made a move toward her and she stepped back.
"Forget you!" It was the worst curse she could utter, fighting words from ghetto school days. She turned and sprinted through the door, heels clattering against the pavement.
Puffing, Hank chased her through the courtyard toward the Ford coupe parked across the street. "Ruby Jane! Wait, please wait!"
She raked the blood-red clutch purse for the car keys as she ran, found them, scrambled behind the wheel and cranked the engine. When she looked, Hank was at the driver's window. He shouted at her, face twisted into a mask of frustration, hurt and rage.
"Whore! You fuckin' whore!"
Resolutely, Ruby Jane set her eyes on the road. As the coupe roared to a start, Hank socked the safety glass, recoiling with the fruitless blow. It hurt his hand. She flinched then slipped the gearshift into drive and gunned the accelerator. Hank spun haplessly, the tip of his left shoe crushed under the left rear wheel. The coupe roared south. Angrily he screamed after it.
"Whore!"
She was long gone, yet Hank raved blindly-the shock ill-absorbed, the consternation of neighbors ignored as he clowned in the middle of the quiet street, arms flailing drunkenly as he yelled into the night.
"Whore! WHORE! Come back here-whore-FINISH what you started!"
--------
FEATURED WRITER: Olympia Vernon
Olympia Vernon is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel, Eden, which
received rave reviews in The New York Times Book Review, Village Voice, The
Long Island Press, The Texas Observer, and many more. Eden was published
January 2003; foreign rights were sold almost immediately to Germany. Eden
was chosen, out of eight books, as one of the Best Reads of 2003 by the
Atlanta-Journal Constitution. She is also the author of Logic, due in
bookstores in Spring 2004. Her third book (for publication) was written in
twenty nine hours and five minutes and is being kept under her hat. Both
Eden and Logic are published under Grove Atlantic, Inc., home of such works
by Kathy Acker, William Burroughs (author of Naked Lunch), Charles Frazier,
others. She is a graduate of Louisiana State University's MFA program. "O"
is an excerpt from her actual diary.
--------
O
Diary Entry: July 7, 2002
It is early morning, or late at night I should say. And for the millionth
time, I was reading one of Grove Atlantic's catalogues to see what or
imagine what Eden will look like on paper...and something made me look at
this journal.
I have grown to hate writing in journals now; I seem to feel a third eye
creeping in; I am not sure who it belongs to or will...in time.
I found out yesterday now that there is a "finding" in my mammogram. I am
not sure how to feel. It was a great shock at first.
I was on my way to Taco Bell before I checked the mail and there it
was---two lines that would change everything, every part of the emotion and
(the symbol and) what invented it.
----a finding---
----a finding---
I suddenly----no, not suddenly, before suddenly, back in the doctor's
office, the waiting room at Charity.
no----after the waiting room at Charity when I was putting on my gown and
there was a woman there with singed hair sitting----she had somehow followed
me---no, I had followed her from the patient registration room (where the
blue cards are given to you---like cattle) and this woman with the singed
hair, dyed too many times, told the aide how it never flooded in her
parish----somewhere near Cut Off, Louisiana.
They took so long chatting and I prayed for the two of them to wither away,
evaporate b/c it was after noon and I already had to come up from 732
(Mammography) b/c I did not have my cattle card.
Blue.
Finally, I was sitting beside the woman from a parish near Cut Off,
Louisiana.
She was sitting upward, like an ivy on a brick wall, saying nothing.
We talked.
It was this woman who told me about her mother and how her breast was cut
off--but she did not die from this you see. She had an aneurysm (how it is
spelled in my diary).
Everyone thought it was nothing at first.
The blood kept coming and they rushed her to Charity where the blood on the
roof of her mouth turned to death.
My God, suddenly, I thought about my friend Cedric's kinfolks, the man who
was diagnosed with cancer but died in a car accident.
Or old Miss Hamilton....who stole all that money from Mister Cleave---that
old man, Mr. Cleave, who used to come through my grandma's back door and we,
the grandchaps'd have to feed him something hot, something that wouldn't
turn his kidney to concrete going down.
But this woman, Ms. Hamilton took his money and finally, she was there, in
her mansion with an oxygen tank tied to her lungs somehow.
.....and so, it was my turn to put my titty in the system; it was
everything that I had described about Pip. My God if Eden was not a case of
a foreshadowing mountain of events.
....my God, a nurse called me into the room and asked me to remove my gown.
I did.
[A picture I drew of my titty; there is a square here and inside the square
is what looks like the titty and there is a nipple at the end of it]
My breast was flattened by a clean, square-shaped pattern of glass, while I
was told to hold the other breast back, chin up.
And everything came back to me, what I had written about Pip, her putting
her "titty" under a compressor.
It was my breast that I had flattened out on those pages.
And I cannot help but think that it will be
my gown
my Styrofoam bust
my record player
my porcelain dolls,
cracked at the ribs too---
p.s. Please do not think that I did not ask God for forgiveness---for
wanting the lady with the singed hair to evaporate.
--------
FEATURED WRITER: Jirí Koten
Jirí Koten (Czech Poet)
(*1979), following poems are from The House written 2002-2003, published 2004. They were translated by Helena Rychlíková, 2004.
------
DUM
THE HOUSE
PRVNÍ NOC V DOME
Hned první noc jsem vystoupal do podkroví.
Bylo tam horko
a tela mrtvých much na podlaze šustila,
jako když si všichni rohatí leští ešusy ocasem
a drhnou je pískem z predpeklí.
THE FIRST NIGHT AT THE HOUSE
Just the first night at the house I climbed to the attic.
It was hot there
and bodies of the dead flies were crisping on the floor
as if all the devils were polishing their mess-tins with tails
and scrubbed them with sand from the purgatory.
--------
DRUHÁ NOC
Na skríni jsem uvidel váhy zlomené v rameni.
Co ted zbývá
než prestat vážit a nahýbat se jen v tu stranu,
kde nesvírá bolest výcitek.
A pak, ješte pozdeji, jít spát jenom na jeden bok
a neotocit se.
V žádném prípade se neotocit…
THE SECOND NIGHT
On the wardrobe, I saw a weight scale broken in its beam.
What else is there left to do
than to stop weighing and lean towards that side,
where a pain of reproach is not constricting.
And then, a bit later, go to sleep and lie down only on one side
and not to turn.
At any case, just not to turn…
--------
TRETÍ
Chtel jsem si potme mluvit pro sebe, ale hned první
slovo zustalo vydešene pritisknuté
jazykem na zuby.
Když jsem pak v pokoji rozsvítil,
bledé múry splašene létaly od okna k oknu,
jako by naráz zcizily andelum
všechna naléhavá proroctví.
THE THIRD
I wanted to soliloquize in the dark but just the first
word, frighten, got squeezed by the tongue
on the teeth.
After I switched the light on
pale moths were fluttering, alarmed, from window to window,
as if they all at that instance stole away
all poignant prophecies from angels.
--------
SKLENÍK V POKOJI
Dnes zase! Rezatá žiletka svedomí mi škrábe
nejen tváre, horní ret a bradu,
ale i pecen v osrdecníku
krájí na drobné krajíce.
Zrcadla jsem povesil vysoko, abych se
celý den nevidel.
A presto: klidné hladiny sklenených výplní
odrážejí mou tvár…
A GLASS CABINET IN THE ROOM
Today again! The rusty blade of conscience is scraping
not only my cheeks, the upper lip and the chin
but also a loaf in the pericardium
slicing it into petite slices.
I have hung up the mirrors high, so I would not
see myself for the whole day.
And still: serene surfaces of the glass panes
reflect my face…
--------
JAK ZVLÁŠTNÍ JE ODESTÝLÁNÍ!
Ráno prikrýváme a vecer odkrýváme
neviditelné spící,
abychom se vecer vtlacili vedle nich…
Kolikrát jsem si už ríkal, že v snení
pripomínáme trójské kone:
najednou prázdní,
svuj vnitrek posíláme na ztec…
HOW PECULIAR MAKING BED IS!
Mornings we cover and evenings we uncover
the invisible sleepers
so we would push ourselves in next to them in the evening…
How many times have I said to myself, that when dreaming
we resemble Trojan horses:
suddenly empty
we send our interior to the battle…
--------
PODZIMNÍ NÁVRATY
(a Ty)
1/
Mezi chalupou a kolnou
chycené nic
v pavucinách zmrzlých
prádelních šnur.
Kdosi koupe rez
v plechových vanách
pred zimou neuklizených.
THE FALL COMEBACKS
(and You)
1/
Between a farm house and a shack,
a trapped nothing
in spider-webs of frozen
clothes lines.
Someone is bathing rust
in tin tubs
not put away for winter
2/
Vracíme se do domu, kde ukrýváme naše letní šatníky, aniž bychom je dnes otevírali. Zdá se, že rašelina pred domem polyká císi hrob, ale nemám tušení, pro koho by mel být otevrený. Vítr ted hladí bažinu a na okamžik pripomíná tvoji peclivou sestru, když puntíckársky rovná prehoz v obývacím pokoji. Pak kloubem klepu kulne na suky. Nechci vstoupit. Uvnitr je žebrinák plný jinovatky a já už jsem se dnes mrazu navozil dost… (…)
2/
We come back to the house, where we hide our summer clothes closets, not opening them today. It seems that the peat in front of the house is swallowing someone's grave, but I do not know who it should be opened for. Wind is now caressing the swamp and for a second reminds me of your meticulous sister, when punctiliously straightening a throw in the living room. Then I knock on the nobs of the wooden shack. I do not want to enter. There is a hayrack full of rime and I have carried enough of frost today… (…)
3/
Dívám se na muže, který se blíží.
Houbou pesti utírá tabuli na cele,
aniž by se mu podarilo smazat si vrásky…
poznávám v nem souseda,
prekupníka drevených pravítek,
trojúhelníku a papírových úhlomeru.
(…)
Vecer: poslední noc v dome.
Mateš mi pocty svou neposedností.
Porád dumám kterým smerem
ti zmerit stehna úhlomerem…
3/
I am watching a man approaching.
Sponging the board of his forehead with his palm,
without making the wrinkles go away…
I recognize a neighbor in him,
smuggler of wooden rulers,
set-squares and paper sextants.
(…)
Evening: the last night in the house.
You confuse my figures with your restlessness.
How could I get the proper size
of the angle of your thighs...
--------
FEATURED WRITER: Jonathan Locke Hart
Jonathan Locke Hart's poetry has appeared in Grain, The Antigonish Review, Quarry, The Harvard Review and The New Delta Review. This is Jonathan Locke Hart's second book of poetry, the first being Breath and Dust (Mattoid/Grange 2000). When in Canada, Jonathan Locke Hart lives in Edmonton, Alberta.
--------
I
What they made and shaped
Of wind and sun, the stones
They drew, the circle they took
From the earth turn as thoughts,
Return as memories. How do we take
The rain and make it in our minds
More than the wet that seeps
Into our pores? The surf
On our toes might consist
Wash over us, pull us with
Its undertow. Can the moon
On the water be more
Than a double reflection?
The shadow of a shadow casts:
Where do ideas and earth begin and end?
--------
2
The metaphysics of snow
On a dark night
In a boreal forest
Shifts with the moon and sky
Awakens with the day
And changes with light and eye.
The sound of feet on the crust
Rubs out the miles like speech
With no one to hear, not
Even the falling trees, a dead bishop
Buried overseas. The mind
Breaks from but is part
Of body and nature on the march.
The light falls on the snow
In a changing pitch, now
The sands obscured along the lake
Lie like a buried text: what proof
Issues from the mist and breath?
--------
76
These bones on the prairies are frozen
to the marrow: the riverbed riffles
with wind through the long brown grasses
the stubble from harvest toppled
by snow against wire fences. The short days
weigh the soul like blanched straw
after baling. There have always
been those who collect rents
and waste the land, shrink
the summer, lace the blood
with a slow poison. Some lazy greed
gives no rest to the dreamless head.
--------
80
My son doesn't like to go to sleep
or wake up: he defers both moments
like a commuted sentence, picking up
a ball, chasing an enemy off the screen
pressing all the buttons, moving from room
to room, or, once asleep, not really wanting
to leave the world he seemed to dread
the night before. Dream, fancy, fantasy
imagination all ill-defined define
the shadows the sun chases across
his face. The shirt of night
slips into the rags of day, and he
manages to make those hours beyond
transition sing like the barn swallow.
--------
86
Dreamwork is an oxymoron
except when the sheets are wet
with the wrestle of night
when the music
changes sharply. The pull of sun
and moon moves tides and blood
the uncertain wisdom of the unseen
and unremembered becomes something
unintended. The almost labour
of the nearly dead lies caught
in the net, a web in the diaphragm
between breath and naught. This
fable breaks up the prose of day
with the waste of poetry, the dance
of an alternative world, the blue
of her sleeve fluttering in the wind.
--------
93
The elders are all dead
They have been stuffed away in wood
Or cast upon a pyre
Put out to sea wrapped in fur
As if they were warriors still
Or dropped in a moat from a castle wall
The lines life gave them are so uneven
That they are burnt by the sun
Magnified under glass, their skin the paper
Their contracts were written on. They store
Their dreams in vaults, stir from the earth
When the murder of time, the people they had been with
Have let them down.
The elders are, in this din,
All dead. They are grown stiff
And the wind has broken their staff.
--------
FEATURED WRITER: Rodger Kamenetz
Rodger Kamenetz's latest book of poems is The Lowercase Jew (Northwestern, 2003). Poems in recent or forthcoming issues of Exquisite Corpse, Pequod, Crazyhorse. He lives in New Orleans, bats right, throws left.
www.kamenetz.com for books & encomia...
--------
CEREMONY
They came to a place carrying their books
their mezuzahs, their crucifixes, their golden buddhas.
They had been carrying them a long time
through cities of twisted lanes, into the heart
and bone of the dying-- they'd carried them
in dreams, and awake at night, sweating out
the last minutes of the hour, the death of the clock.
They'd carried them into high places, wrapped
in thin wool, or wrapped in their own skin
They had died for the crucifix, they had been born
with a mezuzah in the mouth, they had bowed down
to the buddha and offered bowls of water
when they were thirsty, and fruits when they had none.
They had decorated their homes, nailed them
to the doorposts, to the gates, buried them
in the garden, erected statuary, strolled musing
and meditating between shadows cast by a giant cross
or they felt a doorway welcomed them or
felt the light hurt by the silver or edges of gold.
They had stuck the books in their wounds, sharp points
and corners, they had rolled around with them in bed
until they smelled like love in heat, they had sweat
on them. They had turned the pages of old wisdom
looking for new answers, they had torn the pages
with their fists, dropped blood on them, menstrual
blood and the blood of hate-- they'd put the blackened
cords of their newborns between the pages and forgotten
and now they brought the books, the symbols,
the golden pages, the silver threads, the subtle curves
the hidden scrolls, the messages from above and beyond
in secret ancient languages, the new interpretations
the revelations, the betrayals, the enemies of the faiths,
they wound through the hills and into the bare plain
and laid them all in the dust. It was a long procession.
--------
EXIT ROW
What would it be like to die next to you,
in your green cable sweater who nonetheless
asks for a blue blanket against the arctic air ?
Our plane would go down sobbing with gravity
in the chilled black night; sadly our eyes would panic
then look around. Who dies with us? What strangers?
Cabinmates who shared sleep side by side,
who shared rudeness, discomfort, poor air and not one word.
We could not even walk two decent steps in the cabin.
We would have shared no names as we plumbed the dead sky.
And if we fell into the sun, would you even burn?
Possibly you are an angel, possibly you aren't even
buckled in my dream, or you live only to die in words.
There is no certainty, not even catastrophe is guaranteed
and God has funny eyes with strange powers,
God sees the crying others can barely hear
and sees our death laid out in rows.
If there is a silence just before the plunge
I can only imagine your voice scattered on clouds
My lies would be intolerable as I lost my breath.
They would flock around my body like crows
My lies mixed with your lies, intolerable mess
cacophony of metal skin, blood and hurt.
From below, someone watches our bodies into the earth,
not knowing those lies were once our wings.
But how can I speak of your lies, my seatmate?
Perhaps you are a secret saint,
perhaps your death was even ordained
and I am just a packing accident, a baggage slip.
Is there a center to the soul? Or does it pivot madly
like a ball of mercury on a griddle?
Does it fly in all directions like my eyes do
when I panic and when I dream?
I will never have looked openly into your face
for we flew in secret, each in a separate fear.
--------
REMOVAL
They removed the day from my foot.
They removed the hair from my hair.
Drinks were served in my former house
in the sunlight where I hid.
They removed the pain from my feeling.
They removed the eye from my hand.
Now wherever I look is gone
in a shadow cut of shadows.
How could they lift me out of my bed?
How could they drop me into the fire?
How could they kiss me on the dry lip
with my forehead in forever?
On that morning, a yellow bird sailed
with its tiny beak of flame.
The arrow lost its tip.
It is only motion now.
--------
NO BREATH
A man waits by the side of his bed
without his breath. Quiet and dark room.
He would do anything to find his breath,
but the room does not have it.
Outside the moon minds her own business.
The praise of poets has not changed her.
The man lifts his shoulders, tucks in his belly, no good.
This man in solitude, his wife sleeps along
her white head sunk in the pillow in a nest of black hair.
Her very breathing announces she belongs to life
while he cannot find one spark of air.
The taste of his dying is on his tongue like metal.
What kind of metal? Zinc. (The color of the moon)
A man is so alone tasting death, he even talks to the moon.
--------
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
I gave you my lung, you thought it was puffy.
My ear, and you shouted.
My eye, and you rolled it along a ruler's edge.
Look into my mind and see if you find there
the lost key, a wheel in the sky.
If feathers are flight, is there any use for logic?
Why illustrate what's already already?
Under my tongue is a small temple
and angels to lift it into the sky.
--------
NIGHT AT DAWN
It isn't busy right now in my person
so the night corrected my quiet in its sleep
with silver dots with black marks with gold stars
I am sleeping in it to find my face of a dumb animal
my cow face, my face of a loyal dog
At its center night puckers and folds time
It pulls far away into near and high
stretches a thin muscle of vacuum
streams silent between twigs holding up the sky
soaks the grass and the loam, soaks earth at the core
soaks salt from tears
My head laid to one side, my ear on the pillow listening
your heart near mine flies in its cage
love, don't worry there's nothing and that nothing is soft
you can rest in it all night, you can hear night in the joints
Everything joined together, my hand in your hand
my day laid flat against your night
my sky inside your promise my promise inside your sky.
Don't worry, an untucked corner of the night
always shows the first touch of day,
white sheet under dark blanket here in our bed
we'll lie together flat on top of the earth
Some day we'll sleep together in the night that doesn't wake
it won't be soon it will be too soon
then our life will be whole, a dream no one can read
our life will be a dream, night will be our day
--------
FEATURED WRITER: Ron Houchin
Ron Houchin, born in National City, California in 1947, was raised in Huntington, West Virginia from the age of three and has lived for the past thirty years on the banks of the Ohio in South Point, Ohio. During that thirty years he taught literature, composition, creative writing at Fairland High School, Proctorville, Ohio. His books include: DEATH AND THE RIVER (Salmon Publishing, Ireland, 1997), MOVEABLE DARKNESS (SalmonPublishing, Ireland,2002), and GREATEST HITS ( chapbook in the Greatest Hits Series of Pudding House Press, Columbus,Ohio, 2002).
A new book, MUSEUM CROWS is due out from Salmon next year.
--------
LAMENT FOR THE OPEN FLAME
Now that I've given up tobacco,
for you, and closed off the fireplace,
like everyone else, I long to see the yellow
cancan of fire. I know there is
a blaze under my Pontiac's hood
that's buried inside steel and aluminum.
I long for the wild tongue that licked
my mustache when I lit the first Camel.
Something burned in me then.
I didn't yearn to see at a distance like
the wolf-dog watching the forest
through window-glass. I held the match
that splashed into my cupped hands
and turned the world white.
So if I stack teepees of wood
at evening on the river bank, dear,
forgive me if I also climb maples
to look down at the feeding flames,
drinking gold and blue desire.
--------
AT FOURTEEN ON THE LAKE WITH GRANDFATHER
Standing in the boat on a clear day at
Beech Fork is like standing on the great
lip of the world. I know something's
down there as tackle ploinks into the water.
Before grandfather can say, "Reel her
in. Don't give her too much line,"
I think of the fish as she. She is
swallowing my offering,
and I am lifting her from water
into a world where she cannot live.
Now, I've got to get her into the boat,
close to me, to be held in the sun
and air of my fantasy .
She smells like the deep mystery of
the world's insides. She is all
things bright and provocative.
I look into her face thinking
this will make a great memory,
as if we are alone and I am capable
of more than one kind of love.
--------
WINTER CAST
Crows in the city mourn
under a forecast of rain.
Even this one, in rearview, flipping
a colorful candy wrapper over
on a vacant lot, turns
into a tall lady in black hat and coat,
opening her funereal purse for a mint
or stick of gum while waiting
for the limousine. Details of rain trap
in the mesh of her veil like sorrow
in a tired heart.
Everything about
crows among concrete, asphalt, and sleet
suggests a black and gray memory.
Under the silent eaves of the public
library, a fat one caws flensing
light from the bones of day.
Once in the dull air,
it drifts toward graves.
Between
the flapping omen and the strutting past
come the landing, the smoke and snow
among tall stones, drab cloud,
the loose feather frozen in numb light.
--------
HISTORY OF SLEEP
Once, I hit the bed as if falling
into the arms of a lover.
Sheets whispered and kissed
my arms, hands, and feet
as they arrived.
Pillows smiled into my hair.
And sex was unconsciousness,
simple and sublime disappearance
into some other.
Now, I've lived too long awake,
am old in the same darkness.
My Greek bed wrestles me
to exhaustion each night.
The covers squeeze out
my little strength.
I hear the referee counting
from the night stand
