part 2 volume 3 fem part 2
DESCRIPTION
Magazine Tatjana DebeljackiTRANSCRIPT
Future Earth Magazine
Volume Three (point one!)
Food: Hunger & Satiety
Editors
Laura Ortega, Rose Hugh,
and Travis Hedge Coke
Publisher
Daniel Rappaport
www.futureearthstudios.com
Future Earth Magazine, vol. 3: Food, compilation copyright © North
Hamilton Press, 2009. The individual contributors retain copyright of
their own respective works. Future Earth Magazine is published
approximately twice a year and is free for download and upload, so long
as no part of the compilation file is altered in any way. No part, nor the
whole, of this collection may be replicated or excerpted, including
images and text.
A man who limits his interests, limits his life – Vincent Price
The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook – Julia Child
Enjoy every sandwich – Warren Zevon
No hay pan duro para buen hambre ("There is no such thing as stale bread when one
has a good appetite") – Spanish proverb
Gourmets don't get fat – Julian Street
Anything immoral, illegal, fattening, or ON FIRE! – Tennesse Williams, on being asked by Gourmet
Magazine what his favorite foods were
This issue is dedicated with appreciation of all our staff to Nick
and Nora Charles, Julia Child, Cuchulainn, Deirdre Flint, George
Foreman, Robert Heinlein, Sasami Masaki Jurai, Emeril Lagasse, and
Charlie Nagreen.
Mr. Hedge Coke would like to thank his family for their support
and for putting up with him, from his mother to his brothers, sisters,
nieces, nephews, cousins, grandparents, and aunts, and of course, his
wonderful fiancee. He would also like to dedicate this issue to the
animals and plants - no small number of them - who gave up their lives
for his dietary pleasure; it is always appreciated and too rarely
recompensed.
-Travis Hedge Coke
To my father, mother, and sister; maternal grandmother and
paternal grandfather, my cousin Sarah Velez; my cousin Susie and her
husband; foodie and/or artistic friends; and the man in my life: with
love and thanksgiving for guiso [Mexican riff on stir-fry], sitting me up
on the kitchen counter; and making our parents' informal dining room
smell like Gramma's kitchen; excellent chiles rellenos and pollo frito en
un disco; introducing me to Martha Stewart's recipes and baking cookies
with you; vintage cookbooks as well as sukiyaki when you and Susie had
been married a few months and a gravy lesson one Thanksgiving;
holiday dinners, Persian food, cheese talks, chocolate pumpkin cookies,
Baja Fresh-and-Borders nights, arroz con pollo, and talking about food
during high school P.E.; and for future frybread and pecan pie.
– Laura Ortega
I dedicate this issue to Michael Jordan, Andrew Sutton, and the
entire team at Disney's Napa Rose. Their royal level quality of both food
and guest service has forever changed the way I have both thought
about and prepared international cuisine.
Thank you.
– Daniel Rappaport
[An excerpt from] If I Never
Gary Murning
It had never been a joke that I’d found especially amusing, and
George Ruiz was more than well aware of this. Squinting at me through
the oddly static cigarette smoke, he waited for my response—seemingly
counting off the seconds it took for me to raise the coffee cup to my lips
and take a sip. When one was not forthcoming, however, he merely
nodded thoughtfully, taking it all in his stride, and leant over the table,
winking playfully.
“I said,” he said. “‘My dog’s got no nose.’”
“I heard you the first time.”
“And that’s it? You’re not going to play the game?”
We’d been sitting in his mother’s grotty kitchen for the past hour,
talking about everything from the state of local politics to the way the
rain ran through the dirt on the kitchen window. It had been riveting
stuff, and had I had anywhere else to go on such a grey, shitty winter’s
afternoon, I would have. As it was, I’d decided that this was at least
better than sitting in my flat listening to Ray LaMontagne and picking
my toenails. Even with the dog joke.
I looked about the kitchen at the pots piled up in the sink, the
greasy newspapers stacked by the kitchen door and the three in-need-
of-emptying litter trays at the side of the sink—and thought that maybe
there were advantages to my condition, after all. I was sure that had I
shared George’s olfactory ability, I’d have been well on my way to lung
cancer, too. Anything to take the edge off it.
“So you’re just going to keep right on ignoring me?” he said.
“I’m having a bad day.”
He sniffed with disgust and lit a fresh cigarette off the butt of the
last. “You’re always having a bad day. Your life is one long run of bad
days, mate. If you want my opinion—”
I didn’t, but that had never stopped him before.
“—what you really need to do is, you know, get a fucking grip. Not
being offensive, you understand, just telling it like it is.”
One of his mother’s cats—Gemini, I think she called it, though for
the life of me I didn’t know why—had oozed around the door from the
hallway while he had been speaking. George now got to his feet, sticking
the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and picking up the moggy by the
scruff of the neck. Opening the back door, he threw it out into the rain
and returned to his chair at the table.
“Bloody things get right on my nipple ends,” he explained. “If it
was up to me, I’d drown the bloody lot of them. Or just hit ’em with a
good, hefty brick.”
“You could always set your dog on them.”
“I haven’t got...” George wasn’t the nicest man on the planet, which
was understandable, really, since he had never been the nicest boy on
the planet, either. He was a bully and a lout—the kind of person I’d
always striven to avoid, even as, all those years ago in the school
playground, I’d found myself perversely attracted to the prospect of
being his friend. He was more than happy to ridicule another’s failings,
publicly mocking the dragging-footed gait of cripples and cruelly
toasting port-wine stain birthmarks with a nice glass of the house red.
But when the joke was on him, when the tables were turned and he
found himself caught out, George was unexpectedly generous. His smile
would light up the room with its nicotine glow and he would positively
chortle at the absurdity of it all.
It didn’t do to push it, however—as I’d learnt on more than one
occasion.
“Bastard,” he chuckled. “Nice one, Price. You got me for a second,
there.” He slapped me on the upper arm; a little over one year and one
adventure later, it’s still tingling. “Don’t let it happen again.”
As the afternoon dragged on, George became increasingly morose. We
sat in that kitchen, the light fading completely, the windows misting up
(on the outside, George insisted, the room was that cold), and what little
conversation there’d been totally dried up. I wanted to leave, but all I
had waiting for me were four channels on a cracked fourteen inch
television and two working bars on a five-bar gas fire. That and five tins
of beans and one bottle of Stella. Not the most promising of Saturday
nights, then.
“I’ve been invited to a party,” George told me, without looking up
from the table top. He said “party” as though it were fatal blood
disorder. I could understand that.
“Yippee.”
He raised an eyebrow and smirked at me. “A typical day in
Paradise.”
“Parties coming out of every orifice.”
“Not that sort of party, I’m afraid,” he said. “But I appreciate the
thought.”
“So what kind of party is it?” I said—after waiting a moment for
our riotous mood to settle a little.
George shrugged and sat up a little straighter in his chair. His lank,
greasy hair fell across his face and, perhaps for the first time, I noticed
he was greying at the temples. It wasn’t the startling shade of grey that
would make him look distinguished in middle age, either. Rather, it
looked as though he’d rubbed cigarette ash into his scalp and I knew it
could only ever contribute to his unhealthy air of disassociation.
“A family gathering,” he told me, begrudgingly. “Like I say, not
really a party at all. Stale sandwiches and dentures. You know.”
I nodded. I’d been to a few of those in my time. Yet another bond
to tie dear, despicable George and I together.
“I take it you’re not going, then?”
“I have to.” He smiled. Or sneered. It was difficult to tell which.
“Call it familial obligation.”
“There might be some money in it for you, you mean.”
“Pots of the fucking stuff.” His eyes were sparkling with
malevolent glee—the prospect of such unrivalled riches almost more
than his little heart could bear. He told me of his ailing Aunt Martha, a
spinster of this parish and drowning in financial success. As he told it,
her investments were famous in family lore. She saw opportunity where
others saw “inevitable” financial ruin, and had never been afraid to
pounce—accumulating the kind of wealth no one in their family had
ever dreamed of.
“And me,” George Ruiz said, winking at me, “I’ve always been her
favourite, Price. She thinks the sun shines out of my shit-hole.”
“Which it does.”
“Naturally.”
A sound came from upstairs. A dull thud that no doubt meant that
his mother was finally getting up. We both looked at the ceiling, George
still puffing on his ciggy as if his life depended on it.
“She doesn’t want me to go,” he told me. “Thinks I’m spoiling her
chances—which, I have to admit, I am.” He looked at me and shrugged, a
sadness behind his eyes that I’d never seen before... or, at the very least,
one that I had seen and somehow managed to block out. “It’s all
academic, anyway,” he continued. “I’m probably not going to go.”
This was a fairly typical tactic of George’s; as he saw it, his self-
contradictory statements kept the enemy guessing. And in his confused
little world, everyone was the enemy. Even me, it would seem.
“And miss out on a sausage on a stick and the promise of untold
riches? Are you a fool, George Ruiz?”
He smirked and defiantly stubbed out his cigarette on the table
top, a few inches away from the overflowing ash tray. “Maybe I am.
Wouldn’t put up with the likes of you if I wasn’t, now, would I?”
The sound of movement upstairs was growing louder and more
urgent. I heard a grunt of frustration and a barely muffled curse, before
something fell to the floor with a muted thud. “Her leg,” George
explained. “She always drops it when she’s getting it down off the top of
the wardrobe. Especially if she’s been on the piss the night before. I’ve
told her, keep it by the bed, where it’s handy, but...” Again he shrugged.
“You know what they’re like. Can’t tell them a bloody thing.”
I shook my head and smiled sympathetically—wondering just
how bad it was for him, living at home with Carla Ruiz, her prosthetic
limb and all her cats. Whenever I met her, she was always polite, if a
little crapulent, with the air of one who felt as though she should have
been born into more elegant times. Her cigarettes were always smoked
through an ivory holder and she often enunciated with a mathematical
precision that was never quite convincing. Occasionally, as she passed
him on the way to the drinks cabinet, she would ruffle her sons hair
affectionately, but George’s reaction would always tell me far more than
the act itself. Pulling away and cringing, it would have been obvious to
anyone observing that he detested her with a passion. What they may
not have noticed, however, was the tension in his neck and shoulders—
the tightness around his jaw and lips that informed me, the more
educated observer, that, George Ruiz was afraid of his mother… or,
perhaps, afraid of what she could inadvertently do to him.
“I think you should go,” I said, a little sadistically, I must admit.
“You can’t let yourself miss out on an opportunity like this, Georgie. It’s
too... you know, monumental. Money like that... it could change your life
forever.”
It was the most I had said all afternoon. He eyed me suspiciously
as I tried not to let the guilt show, imagining Carla beating him over the
head with her false leg when she found out that he was still intent on
stealing her sister’s money out from under her nose, and for a moment, I
thought he was onto me. If I could see his vulnerability through the
angry, violent façade, it was no doubt true that he could also read me
like a book. In the playground—the memories of which still haunted me
some twenty years later—he had always worked me like a well-trained
puppy, knowing just what to say and how to say it. He’d called me to
heel and used my fear of exclusion (from our gang of two, rather than
school itself) to make me do things I wouldn’t ordinarily do. Today,
however, he seemed oblivious to just what was going on inside my head.
Or if he wasn’t, he certainly hid it well.
He rubbed his face and sat back in his chair, rolling his head from
side to side to relieve the tension in his neck. “Don’t think I could stick
it,” he finally admitted. “Familial obligation or not, I hardly know any of
them and...” He twitched his eyebrows at the ceiling. “Well, she’d be
looking daggers at me all night. More than a boy could bear.” Lowering
his eyes to meet mine, suddenly smiling, the realisation that I had yet
again been played came too late.
“Unless…” he said.
***
It was still raining heavily when I left, but it was nevertheless a huge
relief to be out of the Ruiz household. I had escaped, it was true, before
Carla had managed to hobble her way downstairs for her five p.m.
breakfast of cigarettes and Malibu, but I had not successfully avoided
the snare that had followed George’s planned “unless”. Better men than
I had been trapped by his machinations, this I knew—but as I pulled up
my jacket collar against the wind, the welcome rain beating down on my
balding head, I couldn’t help feeling that it would have been better if I
had spent the afternoon alone in my flat, after all.
Cursing my bad luck and rank stupidity, I stopped at the kerb,
preparing to cross. A piece of cardboard floated by in the gutter, as limp
and lifeless as I felt, and as I looked up from watching it slip down into
the drain, I caught someone scrutinising me from the other side of the
road.
She stood within the shadow and shelter of an old familiar oak—
holding a cat that, although I couldn’t have been certain, I thought might
have been Gemini beneath her chin, stroking it mesmerically and staring
at me unashamedly. Wearing a long, unfashionable raincoat and green
Wellingtons, her drenched auburn hair plastered to her head, neck and
face, she was anything but attractive... and, yet, I couldn’t stop looking at
her.
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
And the rain continued to fall.
I raised a hand uncertainly, wondering if I should cross the road
and talk to her—ask, perhaps, if she was lost or if there was anything I
could do to help—but my hand got no higher than my waist before she
turned and started walking down the road, away from me, in the
direction of the abattoir. Hunched against the onslaught of rain, she
looked somehow older from behind. I estimated that she was possibly
only in her late twenties and, yet, as she walked quickly away with the
cat still tucked under her chin, she looked much older... forty and
prematurely frail, I thought, weighted down by innumerable burdens.
As I started to walk after her—not quite knowing why, or what I
was going to say once I caught up with her—a car pulled into the kerb
behind me and beeped its horn. Turning, I saw the familiar Renault Clio
and groaned, torn between running after the old young woman and
returning to the car. The cat-cuddling woman promised something—I
didn’t know what, but it had to be preferable to the bad news the car
and its owner would inevitably be delivering. And, yet, it would look odd
if I didn’t do what I knew I must. To chase after a stranger was one
thing—but to do it while my father was sitting in his car waiting for me
to get in was another.
I thought of George’s phrase familial obligation and opened the
passenger door.
“Now don’t say a word,” Dad told me as I closed the door behind
me. The dry, warm interior was welcoming—reminiscent of the family
days out we’d suffered through my childhood, when it had always
rained—but I was already missing the strange girl and her cat. I very
briefly wondered if I could get Dad to follow her, but as he continued
talking, I realised just how impossible that was. My fate had been sealed
the minute I got into the car, as surely as if I had been a little boy
accepting a lift from a stranger. I really should have known better.
“This is how it’s going to be,” Dad said, pulling back out into the
road. He put the windscreen wipers on their fastest setting as the rain
came down more heavily and I had to look away. “I’ve stuck my neck out
for you, here. No question. But I don’t mind because that’s what father’s
do for their offspring.” Only Dad could make me feel like a
malfunctioning mattress. A rare talent. “I had a word with Tony Fraser.
You remember him, right? Used to fix fridges for McArgills? Anyway, he
works for the parks and gardens people, now—“
“Fixing fridges?”
“Eh? What?—No. Not fixing fridges. Jesus, Price, get a bloody grip.
What on earth would he be doing fixing fridges for the parks and garden
people? No, what he—”
“Do they still call them that? Parks and garden people, I mean.”
Dad stopped at the traffic lights on Waterhouse Road. He took a
long, deep breath while I looked out of my side window, hoping to catch
glimpse of my mystery woman. Twisting his hands on the steering
wheel, the vinyl squeaking against his sweaty palms, I imagined him
counting to ten under his breath—and took far too much satisfaction
from the thought.
“I did say, didn’t I?” He spoke with a forced calm that had once
terrified me. Now it just made me smile. “When you got in the car—I
told you, right?”
“What did you tell me, Dad?”
“I told you not to say a word, did I not?” I nodded, not saying a
word. “So don’t. Ok? Just sit there quietly like a good lad and listen to
what I have to say.”
I pointed out that the traffic lights were on green and he muttered
something I didn’t quite catch as he put the car in gear and drove on. I
expected him to immediately pick up where he had left off, but instead
he sat quietly for a few minutes, concentrating on the road and sucking
on a Werther’s Original that he got out of the glove compartment
(without even offering me one.) Thinking that this might go on all
evening, I used the conversational lull to once again look for the mystery
woman, even though I knew that we must have overtaken her a good
ways back. We passed closing corner shops and disused cinemas, school
grounds and multi-storey car parks. Five more minutes of silence and
the rain started to ease up. I listened to Dad crunch the last of his sweet,
feeling suddenly quite old and pathetic—sleepy from the warmth of the
car’s impressive heater.
“So, like I was saying,” he finally continued, “I was having a word
with him and I happened to mention that you were looking for a job.”
“Looking” was probably stretching it a bit, but now didn’t seem a
good time to point that out.
“He always liked you, you know,” Dad said. “He told me that. Said
that he saw something in you. He didn’t say what, and I didn’t ask, but to
cut a long story short, they’re looking for... they’re looking for an
assistant gardener at the Italian Gardens at Redburn and... well, the job’s
yours if you want it.”
I didn’t want it, of course. The last thing I wanted to be was a
gardener, assistant or otherwise. Unqualified for the job in every
respect, I could already see just how much of a disaster it could well be.
It wasn’t so much that I wouldn’t be up to the job. The truth was, I could
pretty much turn my hand to anything. But my heart needed to be in it.
Were I to do a job as well as it had to be done, it required a certain
degree of motivation and commitment on my part—and I could already
see in this instance just how lacking in those departments I would be.
“An assistant gardener,” I said, trying to figure out the best way of
breaking the news to him.
“Could be quite an opportunity,” he told me, indicating a left. I
didn’t know where we were going, but I had a funny feeling. “There’s the
chance of promotion and, well, who wouldn’t want to work in such
beautiful surroundings?”
Redburn was a peculiar leftover from Victorian times. Perched on
the edge of a cliff, the townspeople and their foreboding architecture
traded on their meagre heritage, keeping the funicular railway running
and suckering the tourists in once a year with the fabled and originally
titled “Victorian Week”. Craggy and a little stifling, it was grey in winter
and not much better in summer—the one-time smugglers cove its only
redeeming feature, but for the Italian Gardens... where Dad seemed
intent on my working.
I remembered them from my childhood—regimental formality
and precise colour, so at odds with the garish, excessive fashion of the
day—and it was true that they, at least, were beautiful. On that Dad
could not be contradicted. I remembered looking down on it from a high
pathway, crouching between the comfortingly wild undergrowth and
wondering how they got Nature to run in such abnormally straight lines.
It had seemed obscene, somehow, even to the naïve, seven-year-old me,
and, yet, it had nevertheless been impressive and, yes, beautiful.
I smiled to myself when I recalled how, later that day, Mam had
encouraged me to smell the flowers—still convinced that the Anosmia
I’ve suffered for as long as I can remember could be cured by simple
perseverance. “Sniff up, love,” she had said. “No, harder. There. Did you
get anything?” I hadn’t liked to give her straight “no”. It had seemed
cruel. And so I had shrugged and told her maybe.
False hope. It’s that, not money, that makes the world go round.
“Why don’t you give me his number, Dad,” I said. “I’ll give him a
bell and drop by to see him.”
He cast me a sideways glance—smiling ruefully and raising an
eyebrow. “Oh, I think we can do better than that, don’t you?”
At this precise point in our conversation we passed a road sign. I
didn’t want to look at it, but I was unable to help myself. Redburn, it said.
Two Miles.
Duck Fat Jacob McCall
Rolled up like an old cigar,
stuffed with garlic, thyme, rock
salt and pepper, the bird sat
at the table. Its vacant eyes
leveled with a crucifix
perched between the hostesses’ breasts.
Inhaled, exhaled fogs the flute
of Bordeaux no one noticed
the thumb print outlined
by duck fat. The guests
commented on the tenderness
of sweat pooled in muscles.
Their fat necks jiggled like a comb
as jokes are passed from tongue
to ear. Lips pursed and sucked
marrow from a leg. Snapped bone,
chewed skin, fat that floated
on the surface of lakes a week ago.
Nude wings and bones angled
to protrude, crack and present
itself as a topic to be tabled.
The Courtier’s Beatitude Jacob McCall
Blessed is the man who has the king's ear
for he must be in the palace to hear him.
Blessed is the man who the king touches
for even the king's strike confers his pity.
Blessed is the man who can hear the king laugh
and knows the cause for this man knows his mind.
Blessed is the man who wipes the king's blood
for he knows what injures the king
and all blessings flow from such knowledge.
Another Celebration- Duluth, Minnesota 1919 Jacob McCall
The air is blue and cold, now,
unlike the sweltering August I remember:
When I watched a bronze face lifted up.
I watched the crowd
rent him open. His chest sat ajar
like a Bible. The mob flitted
through his skin to find souvenirs.
One little girls found his liver,
she crushed popcorn around the purple
organ, and called it a starry night.
His body had stopped twitching
as my mother handed me a ham sandwich
and a glass of lemonade. We sat in the field
beside the road on a red and green plaid blanket
that we'd been given for Christmas.
"God, its hot." she said.
Arthur Sze en Colombia Mateo Navia Hoyos
Yo percibo lo que otros están pensando y no dicen,
Yo conozco el placer en las venas del arce de azúcar,
Estoy viviendo en el borde de una hoja nueva.
I feel what others are thinking and do not speak,
I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple,
I am living at the edge of a new leaf.
Arthur Sze
Medellín rebosó de poesía. Del 4 al 11 de julio se realizó el XIX Festival
Internacional de Poesía de Medellín (Colombia), organizado por la
Corporación de Arte y Poesía Prometeo. Con el slogan: el canto de todo el
amor del mundo, los pronunciamientos públicos continuaron
consagrando la lucha por la paz, y el amor por la palabra. En esta
oportunidad, el Festival tuvo el honor de contar con la participación del
poeta neoyorquino, de ascendencia China, Arthur Sze. Yo fui el lector de
sus poemas en castellano, y me siento honrado de haber sido testigo de
su primera visita a Sur América.
Lastimosamente Sze tuvo que viajar el 8 de julio hacia la ciudad donde
reside actualmente, Santa Fe (Nuevo México), para atender otros
compromisos. Sin embargo, los cinco días que estuvo en Medellín fueron
suficientes para que percibiese un público atento y dispuesto a escuchar
poesía incluso en condiciones “adversas”. Adversas en tanto muchas de
las lecturas son realizadas en espacios abiertos, en lugares con flujo
vehicular, con música en locales cercanos, o bajo las inclemencias de
una fuerte lluvia. Condiciones que, no obstante, no impedían que Sze
comunicase sus imágenes como caricias, provocando entre muchos de
los asistentes estremecimientos y temblores. Escuchar a Sze, observarlo
sentado en la mesa con su cabeza ligeramente inclinada esbozando una
sonrisa, fue, para los medellinenses, nutrir sus espíritus de un nuevo
alimento. Pues la poesía de Sze está invadida de diversas alusiones:
palabras provenientes de la física, la astronomía, la botánica, la zoología,
e incluso, la medicina, se insertan en una composición poética particular
que trasmite una lección de vida: el mundo es inexplicable, escapa
siempre a nuestra comprensión, que vive en la ilusión del acercamiento
a conocimientos precisos. La poesía de Arthur Sze profundiza en la
imposibilidad de los métodos, exalta los escollos de la teoría, pero invita
a la percepción sensitiva e inteligente para que se aproxime a la vivencia
del mundo.
Arthur Sze encontró en Medellín una ciudad acogedora y hospitalaria.
Sus versos se conectaron con el público y logró que los aplausos
alcanzaran incluso la ovación. Sze estuvo en el XIX Festival Internacional
de Poesía de Medellín, un honor haberlo leído y escuchado, un placer
haber podido dialogar con un hombre que está más interesado en
escuchar a las personas que tiene delante, que en proferir sus propias
palabras. Es decir, un poeta que depone su egoísmo y vanidad para darle
cabida al otro hombre, a la otra mujer.
Arthur Sze in Colombia Mateo Navia Hoyos
Translated by Laura Ortega, Editor
Yo percibo lo que otros están pensando y no dicen,
Yo conozco el placer en las venas del arce de azúcar,
Estoy viviendo en el borde de una hoja nueva.
I feel what others are thinking and do not speak,
I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple,
I am living at the edge of a new leaf.
Arthur Sze
Medellin abounded with poetry from July 4th through July 11th at
the 19th Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín, which was
organized by the Corporación de Arte y Poesía Prometeo. The Festival's
slogan was el canto de todo el amor del mundo (The Song of The World's
Love). Public Announcements continued promoting the struggle for
peace as well as love. The Festival had the opportunity to count on the
participation of a New York poet of Chinese parentage, Arthur Sze. I
was the reader of Sze's poems in Castilian Spanish and am honored to
be present during his first visit to South America.
I am sorry to say that Sze had to return July 8th to Santa Fe, New
Mexico, where he resides, in order to fulfill other obligations. The five
days that Sze participated in the Festival were sufficient enough for him
to discover an attentive audience prepared for poetry, even in so-called
adverse conditions. Adverse as many of the events take place in open
spaces, in places with the flow of car traffic, with music from nearby
locations, or under the imminent threat of heavy rainfall. Condititions
that did not hinder him from making the images of his words seem like
caresses, causing many of the Festival's assistants to tremble. To listen
to Sze, seated at a table, with his head slightly tilted, with a hint of smile,
provided the residents of Medellin with nourishment for their spirits.
Indeed as Sze's poetry is ripe with allusions: words from physics,
astronomy, botany, zoology, as well as medicine, are part of a unique
poetical composition that offers a life lesson: that the world cannot be
explained as it defies our comprehension and that it exists in an illusion
of the direct knowledge's close proximity. Arthur Sze's poetry studies
the impossibility of methods in depth and praises Theory's obstacles yet
invites a perceptive and intelligent sense to draw itself close to a
worldly experience.
Arthur Sze found in the city of Medellin a warmth and hospitality.
His verses formed a connection with the people and the applause he
received included a standing ovation. Sze was present at the 19th
Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín. It was an honor to read his
poetry aloud and to listen to him read his poetry. It was a pleasure to
engage in a dialogue with a man who is more interested in listening to
those people in front of him than in offering his own words. In short, a
poet who lays aside his own ego and vanity to make room for another
man's, another woman's.
Flowers of Remembrance Pierrino Mascarino
"Clarisse," he murmured, walking slowly along Hyde Park Ave. in
Tampa, arthritically bent, a lost, tottering old man in distracted
remembrance, his arms swinging loosely in the fashion of the elderly,
wearing his faded frayed sweater she'd knitted him long ago, and
smelling again this same musty aging tree smell.
Wished he could whistle, loved the sound of his own whistling in
the twighlight, as they used to do, he and Clarisse, walking along this
same evening street.
A rattling old jalopy was passing, with headlights still unlit, feeling
its stumbling way along this familiar sunset street over loose sticking up
bricks, clicking them together, treading gingerly on its Goodyear white
corded slick tire-slippers, its wobbling fenders and bumper banging,
springs groaning as it crept slowly by him.
Hyde Park bricks needed sanding—useless as they were now, as
he had become; a dump truck with piles of gray Florida sand and
brooming men to work it down between those empty rattling spaces
time had created between these loose clicking bricks and souls. And
souls.
He ducked down under a huge, dark, low Live Oak trunk
lowering over the sidewalk, these gray massive trunks untended were
collapsing, an old tree's uncut toenails, barely sustaining themselves,
sagging lower over the waiting sidewalk, their million convex shinny
little leaves now catching, holding the whispering darkness amongst
them as this evening’s gloaming progressed.
Even these evenings, gloamings, tree’s leaves were growing fewer
for the old man, and soon God would take the few were left.
Suddenly a passionate mocking bird shrieked out a chickadee’s
stolen song to split the settling silence and protest the setting of the
world's sun, “Stop going down,” demanded the arrogant bird of the sun,
up on a still lit Live Oak branch, bobbing, and arrogantly demanding,
praying his strident objection to this final dimming of a last sunbeam,
screaming back the inevitable darkness. The inevitable darkness.
And another familiar sound, on that corner was the same flower
vendor as before murmuring, "Flores, Flores," on the late afternoon air,
actually flowermen’s faces had changed over the last 40 years, but not
for him.
Today remained one last bunch of bright red blooms left in the
pail and the flower seller was already empting his flower water into the
bricky gutter, clanging the handle on his rusty galvanized bucket.
This was part of the walking old man’s dim ritual, enjoying a first
sight of Clarisse’s favorite blood red carnations, next crossing this same
street, as he was now, at this same place, pausing a moment, and
working one faded pension dollar out of a cracked wallet for the smiling
vendor; then, always remembering inflation, and taking out another
dollar.
The price doubled over the decades but he liked to pretend it still
the same single dollar as on that last day of her life.
Carrying the bright red flowers next to his green sweater he
continued up the street toward the green house with this last bunch of
carnations. For a long time now he could not smell them anymore and
even their bright red was dim in his fading sight.
Suddenly a pair of flashing green eyes under bright orangish
brown lashes shaded by the straw brim of a red hat she wore were
hurrying round a corner—a young woman, she quickly passed him
down Hyde Park Ave.
Momentarily he was shocked by the sudden intrusion of the
persistent bright image of those passing eyes--so like Clarisse--red hair.
He did not hear her returning footsteps.
"Sir?"
He turned.
The hurrying eyes—this time he noted her enormous velvet
irises, almost too big for the freckled young face beneath. She asked in a
soft urgent voice, "Where did you get your beautiful flowers please?"
"Flowers?" Forgetting he even had them, he looked down. The
flowers suddenly much redder, perhaps after the green of her eyes? "oh,
from the flower seller just…” here he stopped himself, whispered, "but
I’m afraid I bought his last bunch."
She said, "Ah, too late and I really must have flowers," and she
frowned a gorgeous freckled frown that made a little ache in his throat.
"Never too late," he whispered, jarring himself him out of his
encapsulated self-pity. He presented the last bunch of carnations to her.
Her long pink dress had delicate white stripes and rippled a
whispering wind rustle in the sunset breeze in the moment of following
silence.
"No-o-o,” she protested very softly, looking up at him, “flowers
are important, you must have bought them for a reason? For someone?"
Her roseate eyes, now reflecting back the glints of the red flowers
he had placed in her arms and revealing a voluptuously gentle heart,
waking him from his sad, self-pitying senescent sleep, reminding him
again of that delicious first moment with Clarisse, a tremor ran through
his body. “Til human voices wake us and we drown”: and the smell, it was
back! He hadn’t been able to smell the spicy smell of these flowers in
years, and see those eyes so clearly, Clarisse’s green eyes.
"Yes,” he said slowly, “but only for an old man's remembrance."
She looked at him a moment with tender comprehension, "I'll pay
you for them," she finally said.
"Please, no. It means much to me that my flower giving in this
world is not completely over with. I know how important flowers are: I
came running to that old house across the street where my greeneyed
Clarisse lay dying, she wanting only one last bunch of my flowers: but,
like you, I was late. It’s made an eternal space in my life. I still bring
carnations now in remembrance of those times—but there’s no one to
receive them. You’ve done me a favor."
He smiled a wrinkled smile and walked away, but much straighter
and even one hand in a pants' pocket, a little jaunty, and—he tried
pursing his lips—whistling, oh my whistling! walking instead now into
the future.
The Peril of the Miss Jenny Pierrino Mascarino
Barefoot Capt. Shelton kept looking at the changing horizon out
here on the middle grounds—trying to see around that curve of the
earth. This large-shouldered, tall man with big fists was worried,
standing here on the rising bow of the 28 ft. Miss Jenny far out to sea in
the green Gulf of Mexico. His sea legs kept him very steady as the little
fishing boat now sank back gently into the sloshing trough of the next
gentle Gulf wave.
Shelton was trying to teach this angry, still hungover slouch of
Havana/Madrid Bar and Grill, never-been-to-sea drunks, what an anchor
was, "This piece of hinged iron laying here onna deck and heating up in
the sun here's a valuable anchor, Matacini--member him back at the
Fortune Street dock? --the boat owner? We lose it he'll take it outta our
fish money. Not only that, caint stop the boat without it. We out here in
the high lonesome all by ourselves, no radio, nobody cept God and each
other; we lose the anchor, we’re adrift forever."
It took a lot of bad judgment and good seamanship to get this
sinking wreck of a little boat all the way--450 miles--across the Gulf of
Mexico to the fish-filled Gulf of Campeche on the Mexican side. Florida
waters had been fished out.
“So," Shelton went on, "be sure, don't throw this anchor over,
without this here damn rope here--wake up San Antonio," one bald
sunburnt and peeling head was drooping, "this damn rope here, the
anchor rode, secured around this little wood post called a Sampson post
with a good knot that can't come loose, like a hatchet hitch."
Where were the Middle Grounds’ black squall lines every small
boat had come? Capt. Shelton's weather eye went to all different points
of the compass card, while talking, for those sinister wind-filled clouds
that would certainly sink this little boat. Shelton’s inexperienced crew
couldn't couldn't face up to no Middle Grounds weather emergency at
all.
Two days ago he'd recklessly putted, in the early humid Florida
dawn, down the Hillsborough River with the wind behind and the Miss
Jenny's coughing little diesel stuttering, sail up, to catch the early
morning westward breeze, but still only making only three or four knots
of way even propelled by wind, tide and motor.
At that time the rest of his crew had been still passed out in an
alcoholic stupor on the deck. Only Capt. Shelton and excited young
Maurice, now sleeping below deck from an all-night wheel watch, were
actually conscious and sober back then. They'd cast off the frayed ropes,
still in the dark, under the shadow of Fortune Street Bridge, with a full
load of ice, big steaming blocks slidden down a plank r-r-r-r-r, shooting
off a little ice particles, loaded with ice tongs from off the teetering-in-
the-mud river dock, bumping down into the Miss Jenny's hold, and a full
tank of freshly pumped diesel; and then the Miss Jenny, poor old limping
seagoing lady, had gasped her way down the falling Hillsborough River
tide under cover darkness, coughing oily smoke through still sleeping
downtown Tampa, on her way out before the Coastguard would see of
the garbaged Hillsborough into perilous Tampa Bay.
It was Joe Shelton's first time being captain. No other boat
owner’d hire him yet because of inexperience. No crew of the real
sailors would sail with him.
But the half-sinking Miss Jenny was, heedless of all warnings,
hurrying further out through Tampa Bay and evrn into the much more
dangerous open water of the Gulf of Mexico just as the blood red Sun
was beginning to pop over the rim of the world, making a long bloody
streak from the East; it garish light tipping her masttop with ominous
red and then, once outside the Bay, Joe Shelton throttled her back to
save diesel as the rising daystar yellowed and she was finally safely out
of sight of the Florida coast before the sleeping shanghaied crew could
wake up to jump overboard.
The Miss Jenny's owner, Matacini, also sole proprietor of the
Fortune Street fish shop by the Fortune Street Bridge, had first said to
Joe Shelton, "Meester Joe, how you like him be Capt. of my Mees Jenny
dees time? Get me crew; we got him goot wedder coming up; ees safe for
Mees Jenny can go across de Gulf to Campeche ahnd steal feesh from de
Mexican."
Matacini had used up the experienced captains in Tampa on the
dangerous Miss Jenny, only winos and chain gang criminals were left,
drunken bums caging drinks at the Havana/Madrid Bar and Grill, that,
properly lubricated, were conveyed in semiconscious cab rides--“We
gotta bottle aboard the Miss Jenny,” had said Joe Shelton once he got the
drunks to the stinking river, and then down the steep slope to Matacini’s
little, muddy, coming apart Fortune Street fish dock, below Matacini's
fish store: FRESSH FISH, down a slippery fishgutmud slope and then,
with some assistance aboard the Miss Jenny, the Death ship, in the
middle of the night.
But waiting for the cab’s arrival, in back of FRESSH FISH for them
this trip, hiding in the skunkcabbage shadows was a monstrously fat
man in jail house stripes. After getting the others on board and drinking,
Shelton had used an electric sawzsall, hacksawing through the fat
jailbird’s leg irons and throwing them splash in the river.
The Miss Jenny was a famous refuge in the prison community.
There were even spare old clothes aboard to replace convicts’ jail
uniforms
The Coast Guard, like most vicious lazy government agencies in
those days, did its duty not at all. Hadn't inspected the sinking Miss
Jenny in years, her pumps pumping 24 hours a day, even at the dock, or
she’d settle right there into the river mud; and, if she ever got out to sea,
no ship-to-shore radio to call the Coast Guard to save the lives of
drowning seamen. Her greasy life preservers sunk like stones in the
water with little rainbows of dissolving grease.
Good for Matacini: fish for cheaps, sold at high prices and no
wasted money hauling and scraping and repairing the waterlogged boat.
Now, days after that drunken departure, these shanghaied drunks
and the fat jailbird were here up forward on the 28 foot Miss Jenny’s
deck; they had arrived all the way out here in the most dangerous part
of the Gulf, on the Middle Grounds, raging, angry alcoholics, dry for the
first time in years, with the Tropic of Capricorn sun now boiling their
brains.
Capt. Joe, went on, "Here's some good knots and hitches I've tied,
you gotta learn’em, practice while you’re settin here, bends, half hitches
and this one here I'm showin you now, so you know don’t never tie this
particalar knot here if it's gotta be untied quick, this here's the
dangerous hatchet hitch."
But nautical knots had gotten Shelton Maurice.
He was "recruiting" his crew at the notorious Havana-Madrid and
there was a tanned, dreamy young man with chestnut hair sitting alone,
tying sailor knots in a piece of rope laying on the table. This was
Maurice, the young man now sleeping below deck.
Shelton approached, "Those’er some knots you’re tyin. Must bea
sailor? Mind if I set? Name’s Joe Shelton, lookin for a crew. Done any
fishin?"
"No,” Maurice replied, “but I’d like to.”
Maurice had only shipped on disappointing huge Merchant
Marine ships, nothing like those magical sailing vessels of his dreams,
dreams that came from reading Pedro of the Black Death, Lord Jim,
Horatio Hornblower, Moby Dick, White Jacket. "I just shipped on
freshwater, doesn't even smell like sailing."
A whirling green Silver Bar beer bottle came spinning along the
Havana-Madrid barroom floor, spewing foam, followed by a scream
from a fight across the room.
"I see they whoopin it up already over there," observed Joe
Shelton, “our Snapper Fishery's bout as salty as ye git.”
That sounded good. Maurice wanted the true, old time sea-
adventure, mailsails, jibs, topgallants, royals, stunsails, teak decks to be
scrubbed, rigging to be climbed , crow’s nests to be kept watch in, for
English Men-of-War, midships, gunwhales, anchor rodes and scuppers,
creaking masts, ropes, and spars. Old time romantically rat infested
quarters and eating hardened sea biscuits, moldy salt pork, and getting
scurvy from no vitamin C.
"Merchant ships’re just seagoing factories," said Maurice.
The Havana-Madrid fight was getting louder: screaming, a thump,
somebody hit the floor. A beer glass came flying across the room.
"What’s your name?" said Shelton.
“Maurice.”
“You oughta come with us, Maurice,” now both had ducked under
the small table, looking up at pieces of red Dentine, gray hardened
Wrigley's spearmint stuck to the table's bottom. "It's beautiful out there
on that dark black liquid Gulf at night and smells very salty." The sticky
floor they were kneeling on stank of spilled beer, and stuck to their pant
knees. "Just that silent sound a the parting waves beneath the bow,"—
blam a table fell over "with a great big delicious vanilla moon painting a
long yella streak in the water."
Unspeakably delicious to Maurice, just like the books, something
to get his nose into. The smells of the sea were essential to him.
And now, several days out to sea, here was adventure craving
Maurice, asleep in the dark, tiny forecastle below decks of the Miss
Jenny, smelling that longed for authenticity: molding canvas, urine, and
cockroach stink of this forecastle—emanating from its dense population
of night-flying, 1.5 inch black and tan cockroaches, Periplaneta
americanus. These Blatodids relished these moldy, lightless, dank, below
deck conditions and nightly pattered out softly of the Miss Jenny's damp
boat crevices, out of bulkheads onto the sleeping crew's improvised rag
pillows, stealthily crawling up a hairy, sleeping, snoring, passed-out
sailor's chin and then rasping away on his lip skin.
Cockroaches and alert old salty nautical rodents, survivors of
many leaking Miss Jenny voyages, but now lately worried rats from
rising bilge water levels.
Smart Rats that squeaked rising alarm amongst themselves.
But, sleeping Maurice here in the dark except for a light chinks
leaking through, heard only the whispering wave susurrus, lulling him
under the peeling hull, that had cast him off, onto a great green rolling
sea of dreams—oh the thrilling, majestic, upwelling deep! He slept on
this morning though the wave-induced bumps of sliding ice blocks,
moving back-and-forth up forward in the sodden hold with each rising
and falling of the Miss Jenny in the slight chop, the sunwarmed
deckwood creaking over his bunk, expanding boards up there, baking in
the Tropic of Capricorn sun. The Miss Jenny was sailing south as well as
West; but, even while sleeping Maurice worried: would he be the
seaman he prayed to be? enough to face those sinking Middle Ground’s
seas he’d been warned could suddenly arise out here--would this little
decayed Miss Jenny herself survive the fierce Middle Grounds winds?
The Miss J. was an alkaselzer tablet that, fizzing her way across the Gulf,
each voyage got smaller and smaller, leaving board-pieces of her hull
behind.
This trip was a test of courage, who could know if he was
courageous if untried?
He dreamed a prayer, "Father, help me to be the man you want.
Thy will, not mine be done."
Up topside the other men, including the formerly striped and leg
ironed fugitive now in very tight fitting spare pants that he’d split out in
back from his tremendous hariy gut, were getting drowsy, "Uh-huh an
this here's the hatchet hitch?" said veiny-nosed George St. George, his
multidiscolored large mustache hairs flopping out, then flopping back
again, resticking to his least lip after speaking, stained by tobacco and
heavy with dried crusts of former meals. His aching eyes were squinting
in this sun, while tying knots, the hatchet hitch, tying it to anything
handy, any loose piece of rope, to the rail, to the cleats.
All the men were furious Joe Shelton threw overboard everything
alcoholic.
Sweating Emilio Esteban González was drifting the small wooden
wheel of the Miss Jenny back and forth on an approximate compass
course.
But, at least there were no black squall clouds in sight and finally
Capt. Joe was temporarily reassured. He lay down briefly in the bow and
drifted off for a very short nap.
"Wake me," he had said to González, "for any weather."
But the leaking, only lately sober González was shaking and
dripping volumes of alcoholic sweat at the wheel, massive gouts of
plopping perspiration that burned his eyes. Made him shut them. The
wavering compass card was shimmering in his sight, his feet were
making sloppy sweatwet, inexact imprints on the hot deck as he tried to
keep his feet, even in the slight swell, trying to keep the seasalty
compass needle west-southwest but not even daring to look up at the
painful burning blue sky that hurt his bloodshot eyes.
The sky was now blue, but last night it had been was deeply, richly
black, and ablaze with a billion seastars, never seen on land, salty
constellations reserved for mariners, furnishing last night’s helmsman,
young Maurice, all alone on this same deck the whole night through, a
glorious wheel watch: seastars and young man, caressed by a soft mid-
Gulf breeze.
Maurice listened to the whispering ancient sea memories,
legends of the Gulf. Beautiful waking dreams induced by the whistling
wind sweeping across the narrow little spray-swept deck and through
the Miss Jenny's little bit of rigging--the most peaceful of all peaceful
feelings, a little toy ship rounding the globe’s great curve: the watery
deep moaning with pirate sailor ghosts of the past that had sailed this
storied Gulf of Mexico, perhaps, 300 years ago, them watching, as he
was watching now, these same fanciful night cloud vessels in the Gulf’s
stately sky, those great black fleecy cloud frigates up there, cloudish
men-of-war transiting the huge bare crescent of a yellow summer moon.
It made Maurice remember his own poetry,
Oh the glorious night ocean sky,
Brilliantly bulging with moonbeamed cloud,
Bursting with moonglow and windful sigh,
Filling my ear with wave song loud
And, as the splashing night solitude wore on, he imagined lit-up
swaying deck lanterns of ancient Spanish Galleons, English pirate
sloops. Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, Jean Lafitte, mustachioed
privateers—but, intruded the worry, would he, Maurice himself, have
the courage to be like those brave sea-ancestors?
He remembered, a blearyeyed, old, Havana-Madrid snapper
fisherman saying, "Git off them Middle Grounds, bout half way across,
fast as ye kin, no matter what the captain says; they's dangerous
undersea mountains out there, leetle breeze comes up and they’ll
scramble the waves, coming from all points a the card, sink any boat, let
alone thet floatin coffin, the Miss Jenny. You'll drown out there sure as
snake shit’s slick, or the shark'll eat you up, seagulls peckin out chure
eyes. Always keep ye a never blinkin weather eye to the sky an if ye don
already learned how to pray ta God, ye better take it up quick. No man
ever comes back from a trip onna Miss Jenny a atheist."
Maurice’s imagination saw them, those submarine mountains all
night, lurking below the green frothing sopping Gulf of Mexico waters,
waiting to generate huge boat-sinking-waves from all quarters: while a
helmsman might be trying to put a little boat's bow into a huge
oncoming wave, he’d suddenly find another, larger portside wave
already crashing over on him, or from starboard or descending upon
him from his stern to break over the transom and swamp a little boat,
capsize her.
But now he slept, here below in this dark forecastle, the day
boiling up, only partly awakened, from time to time to take off damp
clothes. It was 107 stinky degrees below decks--even the resident
rodents down here sweat, squirmed and squeaked in the heat.
Topside the Miss Jenny's salt encrusted deck was suddenly
darkened.
Tottering González, the helmsman, was grateful.
The green Gulf turned leaden, reflecting a big black cumulous
thunderhead squashing down, the roiling outlying whitecap fringes of
this fierce squall already reaching the Miss Jenny with a sea-change--the
squall’s breath whining, growing louder.
The chilly cloud's breeze woke napping Capt. Joe Shelton out on
deck, "Why didn't you wake me? San Antonio! St. George!" he shouted to
the still sleeping men.
Large white caps were already getting blown off the fast rising
waves, yellowish sea foam being swept across the little deck.
And then, whoom, a cold slamming squallgale struck the Miss
Jenny hard, ripping her sail, and snatching the whole boat over on her
side; and below decks hurling naked Maurice out of his bunk onto the
forecastle deck--the whole boat jerked over, struck broadside by this
instant powerful blast and pitching her leeward severely: the mast’s
wood groaning; and, on top of Maurice, in the darkness below decks,
was a maelstrom of falling boots, half empty bottles of frothing Corby’s
whiskey, pots and pans, kettles and cans, and Petri wine hitting him on
the head.
And falling, shrieking rats.
And flying roaches.
But, worst of all, blub,blub sea water bubbling in, worm-eaten
boards in the Miss Jenny’s forepeak were pulling apart, in her bow, little
spurts of seawater gushing in with every violent rise and fall, loud
yelling up on deck, falunk, falunk, men’s barefeet, clomp, clomp, rubber
boots, Joe Shelton screaming, “this here’s a damned hatchet hitch.”
The Miss Jenny was capsizing, beginning to get ripped apart and
would soon fill with water and sink.
“Marino, Marino, get a knife," Joe Shelton was yelling to him
through the deck down to him.
Maurice was scrambling, grabbing at anything to get to his feet--
where were his pants in the musty jumbled darkness down here? and
the deck hatch? Trying to make his way in all this fallen cascading junk,
pushing himself out from under cups and plates, with little furry bodies
and clawing rats scratching his bare skin, climbing on him, removing a
fork stuck in his groin, sharp roach claws climbing up his bare buttocks,
stepping, slipping on he-knew-not-what, broken greasy plates, charts
and tangling rope pieces that had flopped out on top of him in a huge
pile from all the bunks and bulkheads.
FLOP, SLOP--ominous sound--surface waves smacking now on the
exposed hull’s bottom, hitting on her keelson--this rotten Miss Jenny
must now sink with all hands, 200 miles here offshore on the
Middlegrounds.
Maurice found the deck ladder in the darkness and his other hand
some kind of stiff, pants-like, cloth object that he stepped into and was
pulling up around him, around his waist while his bare feet ascended
the ladder, the scaly rough something with attached legs he was pulling
on--pair of trousers? felt like in the dark? --oh, it was that convict's huge
pair of wadded up trousers not yet thrown overboard with the leg irons-
-a rat was trying to climb over his face.
“Save me, oh Lord,” he prayed as he finally found the thick boards
of the deck hatch banging it upwards with the top of his head, grating
his grinding headhair against the hard boards--the deck hatch popped
loose, and let in gray stormlight and fierce squall wind, screaming in, a
huge splash of blowing blinding salt water blinded his eyes and cold salt
foam slapping his sweaty torso.
The rats and roaches climbing on Maurice rushed upwards on his
body toward the light, up his neck, greasy lice-ridden rat-teat bodies
clawing over his face, making for the light of the sudden opening and
escape.
Maurice holding his still loose pants pushed further open then
deck hatch and kept climbing out, repeating, Peter, the apostle's, prayer
on the stormy Sea of Gallilee, “Lord, help us or we perish. Father, give
me strength; this is your test," he prayed.
Now on deck the rats and roaches from below came pouring out
the hatch, running over his feet, past him falling into the water. Roaches
trying to spread their wings and fly in the tossing wind, being swept up,
black specks, off into the storm sky as he slammed back closed the
hatch.
These gigantic fatman’s trousers--he could see them now out in
the gray storm light--were the striped prisoner's jail pants.
"Cut this rope!" yelled the Capt.
BALLLOOOWOW-BOOM! A brilliant blindy flash arched down,
liquid lightning fire bolts, boiling the gray sea, the wind screaming up
and down the scale.
"Get a knife! Where're the fish knives?" yelled the Capt.
desperately looking everywhere around him, the wetm, falling,
befuddled men up forward with him, huddling, holding onto the mast,
getting drowned by ponderous breaking waves, nearly dragged away;
and Capt. Joe, now seeing Maurice, "grab a knife--hatchet hitch Maurice!
Some damn fool tied the sail up with a hatchet hitch,” himself still
working frantically at the knot biting it, swollen with water, "Knives
were in that bucket amidships,” yelled the Captain to Maurice.”
There was the gleaming silver blade of a thin fish knife spilled out
onto the deck in the scuppers, about to be washed overboard, Maurice
thrust aside a paniced swimming rat and grabbed the knife, while
grabbing a mast rope tied off on a cleat, looped it around his wrist,
holding on, pushing himself off and swinging across the slanted deck
with the wonderful picturesque courage he’d seen in a book illustration
and had prayed God for; landing at the foot of the mast and thrusting
himself through terrified slipping, drowning men--losing their footing—
"Where's my shoes, lost my shoes!" yelled Gonzalez as another
wave subsided.
Maurice was quickly sawing through the yellow tight Manila rope
knot and felt a little thrill of courage and joy of thankfulness that, with
God’s grace, he was keeping his head, doing his job.
But during his sawing—Maurice holding on with his other arm to
not get swept away--cutting through the layers of thick oily faded
yellow rope that sprang apart, and braced against the fierce wall of
squall wind that was filling his loose convict's pants, making his nether
regions shrivel and ballooning out the striped convict pants, from ass to
crotch with its 50 mile-an-hour breeze, bagging them out, lifting
Maurice slightly, hurting his tender parts and ripping the rotten jail
fabric, almost blowing him away, and then ziiiiiiiipppp suddenly the
loose pants blew off and were immediately jerked away overboard.
With the sudden severing of the “hatchet hitch” the dangerous
sail slid quickly down the mast and the Miss Jenny shuddered, masts still
way over, almost pointing at the horizon, but now miraculously lurching
herself back upright, water spilling out her scuppers, off her little deck.
The drenched and shivering men stood there a moment, on the
still pitching and yawing deck, all dripping, looking at the cutting knife
that had saved them, at the severed rope, at first mate Maurice, here
draining water, once again goose-bumply naked.
Several soggy, rats stood indeterminate, stunned on the deck not
sure what had happened, others, their wet fur plastered to them, had
been swept overboard with the roaches and were now paddling back to
the boat, trying to keep their heads above the suddenly sunlit waves.
The squall was passing.
A sunbeam lit up the black tossing sea’s white caps.
All the men were watching the drowning rats over the side that
were now trying to get back aboard, sqeaking for help in the waves and
there were Maurice's snatched off convict trousers, their striped ass
still full of squall wind, now tacking off, riding the crest of a departing
wave.
"Well," said Captain Joe Shelton, "they’re gonna know I’m
bullshittin, back at the Havana-Madrid, when I claim this here squall
blew the first mate's pants off."
Spring Poem Rick Marlatt
The farmers, hypnotized
by the nostalgic vibration
of their tractors,
contemplate another year
while they turn earth over
and launch tobacco spit
over it in an
ethereal cleansing.
Retired men wander out
to their gardens, their wives
hoping this will be the year
they try their own wine recipe
but deep down they
know this
air is far too bitter for grapes.
Teenagers circle in on graduation
with tribal ritual driving
around the very classrooms
they swore to escape from.
The feather of an
instinct I
cling to- the one that tells me
to avoid disease and power lines-
is on loan from the sandhill cranes
who share their independence
with the myths of
grandfathers.
Sometimes I wonder
if I have the endurance, if
in the center of my being
there is a whooping crane
I’m hiding from the
world. Of
my immortality I’m still not certain.
My grandmother says if you
plant five peach pits ten feet apart
the next depression won’t
come without dessert.
I’ve heard
people swear
by a clove of garlic
for every decade of life
in their midmorning mint tea,
to this kind of longevity
I cannot subscribe.
Honesty is no
policy,
it’s a tool I use to
uncork another bottle of sanity,
the supply of which dwindles
all winter long when I
hole up with my reasons.
At the edge of every town
there is a water tower and a cemetery,
at the edge of each evening
four minutes of additional light
and an ever-expanding
shadow, at the end
of each life stargazer lilies
and rainbow-gilded gazanias.
It’s no mystery,
in a land so riddled
with promise and purpose
that one should,
when winding
the clocks ahead,
double check the functionality
of his compass-the one
they handed out at birth-
and pat it close to your skin,
safe and secure in the breast
pocket, just above
the heart.
Peaches Rick Marlatt
Suspended like planets divided
haunting amber space in syrupy juice
my grandmother’s fruit is canned
away in dirty thirty mason jars
that wear seasons in galaxies of dust.
Aristotle and Rajchandra share
the idea of separated souls eternally
searching for their other half and
suddenly the cycle from pit to peach
ferments a truth into this kitchen dusk.
Never has grandmother been so alive.
Opossum Rick Marlatt
In the event our paths cross again,
I promise to watch where I’m peeing
if in return you grant me 17 lines of sentiment.
I had a teacher who was quieter than you,
her eyes always caught in fractals of light.
I understand the need to be a real mean sucker
when you’re backed into a corner
and what the daylight can do to irritated eyes.
I don’t need to see the world from an inverted angle
to know that all dreams have tragic implications.
I don’t need to play any kind of dead
to retain my ghostly sense of autonomy.
I don’t need a face disproportionately white
to put this burden into perspective.
But slow is the soul food I carve with my claws.
Slow are my bites that I savor forever.
And somewhere in a rural Nebraska classroom
a child is asking what time it is in Australia.
Vinetalk Maria Lisella
He: A new winery opens every day
in the rainy state of Washington.
She; Rosés are coming back – dry,
crisp, fruity, elegant rosés
He: We have happy cabernet cows -- they
eat the leftover vines after winemaking.
She: Is it true, the silky Shiraz is to Washington
what the Pinot is to Oregon, but Cabernet is King?
He: The vines have come out of adolescence
Whereupon he inserts his proboscis
into the balloon glass
breathes until he reaches ecstasy,
upon awaking, takes a swig, twists
his mouth, his cheeks, lips to better taste
the nectar of the grapes.
Unruly Herbs Maria Lisella
If mint is invasive as it so often is,
and your condition unremarkable
then clematis leaps tall buildings and
rooftops in a single season.
Oregano is also invasive, you say,
but Rosemary is obedient occupies
its own space, never violates or
chokes that of others.
Basil, on the other hand, is impertinent,
Parsley reluctant and hydrangeas
eternally parched; candy tuft scurries
on the lawn edge blooming faithfully.
Homage to Magritte Maria Lisella
When is an apple an apple? When it is not a painting of an apple. Or,
when its high chartreuse emboldens us to disbelieve its waxen sheen,
size, larger than the palace behind it. It tells us something else, it is an
apple overgrown, overcome with itself, so vast, it drowns all sense of
time and space emits a faint perfume from the skin sealed tight. Once
the skin is pierced, diced, shared with someone you love, that someone
familiar with the ritual of slicing symmetrical crescents of an apple to be
eaten without sharp cheddar cheese or peanut butter or dripping with
melted chocolate marring its pulp and skin. Compare this to a baked
apple skin shriveled, as sugar bubbles out of its core to gurgle and rise
from its bulbous green body, trembling in the heat of a roasting pan,
settling once it hits the cool air, its pulp ready to receive the spoon that
scoops out its heart.
Rev at DFs 7/30
For the Love of Bread 2 Maria Lisella
A loaf of bread
sat on the table
at every meal.
Symbol of an edge
against poverty,
the last call,
the final loss,
the promise of more
tomorrow.
It could not be
just any bread.
It was crusty,
cracked in its center
but not split
long, or round,
seed speckled
yellow inside.
It could not be
a thin slice of
American white bread,
better suited as
wallpaper paste.
A slice of the old country
had to be handmade,
had to have risen
twice, had to be bought
at a bakery from the
baker, an artisan
Arrived home in a
paper sleeve,
never plastic wrapped,
an aroma of chestnut
and home.
What, You Don't Love Bread? Maria Lisella
Mr. Dominic, the master barber "What'sa matter, you
touches my hair as he passes me don't like bread," he snarls,
in the supermarket, turns on his heels
he has a proprietary feeling we do not share
about any hair that is cut this passion for pane.
at his Modern Barber Shop. I disappoint him
My first reaction is visceral, this Italian-American
“Inappropriate” comes to mind, customer has gone too far
but I act nonchalant/ beyond the parameters
“Maria, I lova your hair, of the old country.
it’s wonderful.” I have gone
I am captivated by his to exotic avocadoes.
attention – silver hair And I will also go
flies in my face. Few men anywhere for a
love silver hair, fewer women. good haircut.
His barber, Benny cuts my hair,
Mr. D. sidles up to me
as I press the avocadoes,
the small black variety
that yield beneath
their turtle-like shells.
“Maria, I never eat
those, how do you eat them”?
“Lemon, salt, sliced,
with pears, red onion.”
It is already too strange
this Caribbean cuisine,
he has lost interest.
“Maria, I go to Parisi’s,
do you want bread”?
I shake my head,
“You don’t eat bread”?
Not much, Greek pita,
hardly ever Italian,
Before It Gets Tough Maria Lisella
Standing on my father’s feet
we waltzed in the kitchen
waiting for the dough
to rise – punch it down
two times, spin and dip
flour on our faces
yeast in our breaths.
We talked about my future
as actress, teacher,
lawyer, nun, writer
I said I would write short
stories, long poems.
He said, “Will you write
about me?” Of course.
My mother would pop in
now and then, roll her eyes
at the kitchen counters
piled high with bowls,
spoons covered with elastic dough.
He worked on a dairy farm
in Walkill, supplied
the West Point cadets with milk
said the stainless steel
milking machines
shocked the cows,
made them cranky
he went back to the old way
of squeezing their teets, petting
their behinds.
Like cows, the dough must be
kneaded just right, don’t overhandle
Knotted Ends Wendi Lee
All the lost find their way
here. The amnesiacs and half-dead,
apparitions, monsters, kidnap victims. All
crowded in this midnight
deli, eating samosas with their fingers,
jar of visceral hot sauce passed
under dimming fluorescent light. Pity party
for news print names shrinking,
boiled down to glue, a passing
reference, flutter of nerves
in a young mother’s heart. Who remembers
the name of an eight year-old
strangled by her underwear, the bus
driver holding the knotted ends?
Who remembers anything
but the sensation: sleepless nights, muted
television, glassy supermarket reveries
in the cereal aisle:
yes, he looks like he might be capable--
those deadened eyes brimming hallelujah,
those unspeakable acts of joy.
The Captain Wendi Lee
A boat of twigs and mud,
the blue-flowered
bed sheet from her brother’s
military cornered bed: wrought-iron
and bad dreams. A boat capsized,
hull curved toward beach glass sky. And she
is Captain, digging sand-heavy
beer cans in cotton corners to keep
anchored.
On porches the grown-ups
grow fever-eyed over guitar chords,
the amber sting of age and loss.
Their sadness finds her like the singing,
warbled, far away.
Someday she too will be cast
from the shore, to live
between porch slats and beer cans.
But now she is the Captain. She stares
into the swell and heave, charting
the voyage.
Generation Allyssa Kasoff
Here’s to the generation
of daisies yanked from ground left to
rot behind waxy ears overloaded with
whispers of I, you, them. Ornamented,
punctured with peace signs.
Disco balls that spin and sparkle above
boys and girls summoning each other
with sunken eyes.
Alarms that siren our bodies for morning
class. Mind stuck between 3 and 4 A.M. Caressing
bellbottom dreams that hug and flair out
past thighs. Angel sleeved blouses, marshmallow
heels and Candies that dress innocence in labels.
Clogs clacking down Bowery streets delivering
in soles next minute’s fix for junkies who
shiver and shake for a packet of pure white.
Tie die shirts streaked with blues, reds, yellows that
bleed into each other. No room for blacks or whites.
British flag shirts protesting stars and stripes in favor of
crowns and queens. We hide behind
horn rimmed glasses, because
we cannot trust our eyes to see.
Reinvent ourselves
in bloodshot eyes that avoid graffiti glaring at us
as violence sprayed in pinks and greens. Braided hair
intertwined with Marlboro Lights and secrets. Last night’s
mascara that drips and sticks to skin like leggings. Begging
for Little Red Corvettes zooming down Fifth Avenue
fast enough for us to forget who we are. Snorted from
mirrors lined with cocaine. All that remains are reflections.
Painted lips, blue eyes and pink cheeks make us statues.
We do not see the homeless babbling to strangers
about life inside of paper bags and vodka handles.
People thrown out of homes like rotting apples.
Streets blanket them with their rocky coldness.
We are warm inside.
The elite is immune to AIDS. Reganomics.
Fucking family values.
Exist
as searing lattes whose steam clings to air
like ghosts held in hands that strum black
guitars until they splinter and bleed.
Raspy miseries trapped in blue
eyes. Unwashed hair greasy with the memories of
Hamptons getaways, overdoses, nirvana.
Traffic lights blink red, yellow, green, green, green.
Bohemia clings to skin in peasant shirts that
hug and dangle like semicolons.
Stomachs grumble for bagels and boredom.
Feet stomp on dreams tucked in pavement’s cracks.
Lips tuck romance away in storybooks that rot
in attics. Addicts of burning lights, benzene drips, blurry truths.
Hipsters parade down Bowery streets in
tight flannel shirts exposing midriffs and bones. We see
the world through vintage Aviator glasses, as if
flying away is a fashion statement.
We have been to Tokyo, Milan, Barcelona, Rio and Paris, but
how far do we have to travel to escape ourselves?
Feet Torn Street Allyssa Kasoff
I want to bathe in the midnight.
Until my eyes glisten with light.
Until I blend with grime’s bite.
Until I feel so low I fly like a kite.
I want the pavement to caress me.
Ridged in my bones like a key.
Imprisoned in a concrete sea.
Too lusciously perilous to flee.
I want to awake to summer air.
Congested with breaths we share.
Clinging to mouths. Lingering in hair.
Shampoo scents glimmer with despair.
I want to walk through fuming streets.
Permeating with strangers’ heats.
Dreams spoiling faster than week old meats.
Sugarcoated lives disguised as feats.
I want to tattoo glamour to my eyes.
Fuck realism. I need a disguise.
I know the answer to being wise:
Live through other people’s highs.
I want to shoot up the stars.
Evaporate melancholy ringing in bars.
Dissolve fear left behind wheels of cars.
Drivers who steer with their doors ajar.
I want to tear apart the heavy pavement.
Too impermeable for hands to dent.
How are roads so stable and people so bent?
Cracks the only sign the road can vent.
I want to light a fire in the night.
Ignite streets until they scream with might.
Repressed yearnings allowed to fight.
Burning until pavements gleam with respite.
Nikki Purrs
Michael Lee Johnson
Soft nursing
5 solid minutes
of purr
paws paddling
like a kayak competitor
against ripples of my
60 year old river rib cage−
I feel like a nursing mother
but I’m male and I have no nipples.
Sometimes I feel afloat.
Nikki is a little black skunk,
kitten, suckles me for milk,
or affection?
But she is 8 years old a cat.
I’m her substitute mother,
afloat in a flower bed of love,
and I give back affection
freely unlike a money exchange.
Done, I go to the kitchen, get out
Fancy Feast, gourmet salmon, shrimp,
a new work day begins.
A Chance Encounter Leigh Held
I grew up in Manhattan, but my born and raised Bayside, Queens mom
did not want my brother and I to turn into pansies. So, every summer
when my friends packed up to go to Long Island or got sent to camp, my
mom took my brother and I to Breezy Point, a gated community home to
the largest concentration of Irish people in the United States as of the
2000 census.
I spent summers in Breezy while Clinton was President. There was no
war on. The economy was good, even the middle class was feeling the
effects of the tech boom. Gas was cheap, global warming was a tree-
hugger problem, and every adult had a fanny pack.
As kids we were distanced even from those facts -- well not the fanny
pack one. But life as a kid down in Breezy consists of one thing only--
having fun. I had some of the most extreme fun of my life in Breezy. I
once heard it referred to as, “teenage paradise.” There are no cops in
Breezy enabling teenagers and adults to walk around with open
containers, smoke joints while walking in public, and steal the
occasional car.
I met one of my best childhood friends, James Flanagan, down there. We
met a year prior to his first arrest during a water balloon fight. The kids
who live there all year round periodically terrorize the summer kids
who hang out in a separate clique. Kids in Breezy commonly hang out in
groups of forty or more. He was totally different when I met him, well
not totally.
I don’t remember a thing about my first day of high school, but I
remember every single moment from the night I met James. I was
wearing bell-bottom jeans and a brown suede shirt that tied in the front.
He was wearing khaki shorts, polo shirt, and was sporting a side part.
James was from a huge family, four boys and four girls.
“Hey little Flanagan come sit and talk to me.”
He put his waterballoons down. All the Flanagan brothers looked alike.
Handsome Black Irish.
“Which number are you.”
“Oh I’m number four.”
Some say there is a moment with people when you most perfectly click.
For James and me it happened instantly.
“Hey aren’t you the surfer girl?”
There’s not much to do in Breezy Point except fish and surf.
“How old are you if you’re number four?”
“I’m fourteen.”
“Why? How old are you?” he asked.
“I’m sixteen.”
He took out a Marlboro Red cigarette.
“You smoke?”
“Since sixth grade.”
“Are you leaving with your friends?” I asked.
“Nah, I’m going to hang around here.”
“Flanagan, come on,” someone yelled.
“No I’m stayin,’” he yelled back.
So we stayed right there on the sidewalk for the rest of the night talking
about surfing. He didn’t surf, but he did have a boater’s license.
“See this scar he said lifting up his shirt. I almost died getting hit by a
boat last year. The boat hit me and I went right into the dock, but I
landed in the water. It was a mess. I needed so many stitches. Hey do
you want a beer,” he asked opening his bookbag. Almost all the kids in
Breezy Point go cooler hopping when they’re young. The houses are
built really close together along small cement sidewalks in one section
of the town. They’re called the Walks and each walk has a name and
they go alphabetically A-U. Usually something beachy or Irish K is
Kildare Walk J is Jamaica. Behind each walk is a sand alleyway. It’s used
by the private security, by the garbage men, and by the teenagers who
steal beer off decks right out of beach coolers. So anybody from age 12-
15 has beer if they cooler hop, and most kids do. It’s a pastime like
manhunt.
There is a risk with cooler hopping -- the thrill that this might be
the house where you get caught. In any case, that is how thirteen-year
old James Flanagan had beer.
“I can’t drink,” I replied. Now for living in Breezy that comment made
me an automatic freak. In Breezy Point beer can make you famous. It
can make or break your whole reputation.
“Why can’t you drink?”
“I have epilepsy, and I take a lot of medicine and I can’t mix the pills and
the alcohol.”
“Oh, what’s epilepsy?”
“Like seizures.”
“That’s ok, more beers for me.” He just took it in stride. Maybe it was
how young we were that my being sick had no impact on us becoming
friends. He didn’t automatically worry about the things adults worry
about.
“Hey, I have to get home. I have a curfew.”
“You’re parents are really strict or something? It’s so early.” This was
true. I had the earliest curfew out of all my friends. My parents were just
a bit over-protective. I blame the epilepsy.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“221 Street.” He started to follow me home. My life changed on that walk
home. It was apparent from the very beginning James was my other half.
Our paths just crossed that night and we were never the same. Cynics
call that chance, believers call that fate.
Dedication Stephanie Hart
I wore my ring today
I told you I would
you know - the black silver one
Made of marcasite
No not marcasite - hematite
It caught my eye
Flashing in the light
Reflecting vague images
Of us - I’m sure
I thought of kissing your ring - just like mine
So you could carry my love
Everywhere
I remember when you told me -
You made me swear
Never to take it off except in the bath
Or washing dishes
Remember what I said then?
Never
I will wear it always
It reminds me of you
The hard stone with square lines
It’s so smooth
You kissed my hand that night
And my eyes flashed in your ring
Do you think of me when it catches your eye?
THE YOUNGER POET John Grey
Page after page, I document the tragedies
of sixteen years on earth,
the worst of them misspelled.
Sometimes, my mother looks over my shoulder
but my writing hand has learned to protect itself
from all such eyes.
The neighbor's kids are throwing footballs in the yard.
Every thump of leather hitting hand that she hears
is one less pass thrown in in my direction.
I know that look others.
The weather's perfect outside, like a canvas,
and she's the willing painter of
"Golden Child Outshines The Sun."
But my head's down,
my pen scratches a trembling trail
through the harrowing day to day.
Page after page, my feelings skirt
the worrying shore of discovery.
"I'm your mother," she says. "Let me see."
But if she could truly see,
I wouldn't be writing this.
MY MOTHER SHOWS ME THE OLD HOUSE John Grey
Take heed, the voice says.
I am memory
and you have been in
this place before.
An old house,
its stumps like crutches,
one rusty metal bed
and a sheep skull in the garden...
I don't think so.
Still, I'll run my finger
along the rotting mantle
if that's what you require.
And you can try to convince me
that this is not my first time doing this.
Or picking up the rain-spoiled book
from the floor and turning its yellow pages.
Yes, I agree, there are parts of lives
that go missing and need to be found
once in a while.
But this is not it, surely.
That faded photograph...
who are these people?
They inspire no cathedral-like
reverence in me.
And creaking floorboards
recall no childhood.
Not even the one I almost
crash my foot through.
Staircases... mmm, the one
I remember best was in the Psycho house
when mother suddenly bursts from her room
and knifes the poor detective.
But that was a movie
that I wasn't in. And, if this house
is a movie, then it's one I didn't
star in or even see for that matter.
So what are you telling me?
I was two months old at the time.
Like I could close my eyes
and be that age again.
But the past must have a stop
and it's at one or two dwellings
beyond this one. You can shed tears
but I shed unwashed ash-trays.
And you can plunk yourself
in one room for an hour or more
and feel it coming back to you.
I wish you well on your journey.
Those days of mine
dwell no place else
than in the warmest
of your assurances.
You held me in your arms
exactly where I'm standing.
You couldn't do that now, you say.
Well I can't do that then.
Pica
Richard Godwin
pica an abnormal craving to ingest substances such as clay, dirt, or hair.
Call me old-fashioned, but I love eating dirt.
Used to get called shovel, on account of the fact I always seem to have
my head down in the ground. But then, can you hear an earthworm turn
and sing, or tell when the rain’s coming on account of the types of leaves
settled in the wet patches? I can.
Some leaves lay and flap, and some don’t, and the earth’s got its own
secrets. Well, I just reckon we’s all different.
Sometimes I get called magpie, and they’s intelligent, birds are an
always have been.
Clay I love, and potters know its uses.
Hair tastes like rotting metal turning on a breeze catching the smell of a
late summer barbecue when roast pork and hog crisp up under a nice
old flame.
Tastes an smells. All different.
Folk round here think I’m simple-minded and would like to set me
hanging for stuff they done themselves.
Old George he been fucking Farmer Brown’s wife for years now, I heard
em at it in the ground.
That’s the secret of the earth, see, it tells you no lies and acts as a power
line, conducting sounds and all sorts if you’ll just be patient enough and
hear it. They’d’ve done blamed that on me if they could’ve, and many
times I’ve been yelled at when money’s disappeared, but I’ve never done
none of those things. Too busy listening to the ground.
You see, the eating’s only part of it. It’s the bit everyone concentrates on.
But when you take that earth into you, you become part of it, and the
earth tells you its secrets. And I say, what the earth don’t know, it ain’t
worth knowing.
It all happened like this.
I hadn’t been blamed for nothing for a long time.
Mostly cause they’d given up.
All their lies wouldn’t hold with me, cause I’d just tell em what I heard
from the ground and they didn’t like it.
Old George’s wife went crazy after she found out and she chopped his
bollocks off with a meat cleaver and ran around town with them waving
them at everyone before they took her away and I never seen her again.
And Grenville the town clerk was arrested for stealing all the money.
Good ol Susie always took my side, saying I had a gift, and they’d left me
alone for a long time.
Then the trouble started.
Hadn’t rained for months, and this here being a farming community,
people were getting desperate.
We don’t have much of an income out here in Plough. Always farmed,
and guess always will.
Some folks’ve got ideas above their station, if you ask me, cause we’s
stupid and backward, anyway that’s what other people say.
No rain, an the crops witherin.
An I had my ear to the ground, eating dirt.
It was a while since I’d eaten any hair, and was hungry for it.
Has a special taste, hair.
It’s a certain kind of food.
I’d gained a reputation for understanding rain and a few times got
credited with making the rain come, and so all the townspeople started
acting real nice to me.
I knew what they was after. I ain’t stupid.
Then one day it arrived in the post.
I pulled it out of my broken mail-box, covered in bird-shit. A little brown
parcel and a note.
‘Dear Pica,
Please accept this gift as a token of our appreciation.’
Inside was a bundle of hair, all colours, and thick.
I ate it all day long, popping it into my mouth at intervals like you see
some kids do with liquorice.
Earth tastes better’n pecan pie, when it’s right, it’s the best taste in the
world. Folks round here love their burgers, an they spread onions all
across them an lace it up with sauces, some hot, some not, but the best
earth is the deep dark soil with its secrets and tellin ways, it’ll beat
anything. It’s better’n treacle, better’n apple pie, better’n any cut of beef
you could come up with an set down on the table before you, running
with blood or just plain ol sauce.
People’ve been doin it for years. Eatin earth. Always have. Always will.
I saw folk lookin at me out of the corner of their eyes, their hair a bit
clumpy like they’d had bad cuts on em.
Jackson, the local bigwig approached me in the town square.
‘We sure could do with your help’, he said, clappin me on the shoulder.
I just looked at him.
I’d heard he’d been sellin off the land.
‘Now’, he said, ‘as you know we’s been having a real dry spell here in
Plough and what d’you say if you tried to make it rain?’
‘Don’t mind.’
‘That’s awful good of you, and you can come an dig in my garden if you
like.’
‘That’s all right, Jackson, I prefer the wild earth, it’s better quality.’
I could see he didn’t like that, and I chuckled on my way home.
The next day a dry sky burned blue overhead when I walked to the
creek.
The air crackled like firewood an there were no clouds around.
I set right down on the spot I knew would work, and put my face into
the ground. And I ate away until I tasted earth and worm and leaf and
water.
I sat there, my mouth full of dirt and soil and looked into the stream.
And then I washed in it.
I went home and finished eating the hair they gave me.
Rain didn’t come for a few days, but that night something strange
happened.
Jackson was seen riding naked through the town on the hood of his
Dodge, shouting at the town for being a shit -hole in a paint pail.
His wife, Vera, who liked to lady it all around, was found fucking a pig.
The townsfolk saw her laying in the road with this pig going away at her
and she shouting at it to come on.
I knew she liked animals. Earth told me. An I knew all about Jackson. He
didn’t like farmin.
I heard later that she’d been stealing money from the church and after
that she didn’t like stepping out in public any more, cause all the folks
would make fun of her.
Jackson never lived it down, but at least we got to hold onto the land.
Then the rains came.
Hard and strong for weeks.
Plough saved some crops, and things returned to normal.
Got treated with respect after that, an Susie told folks they should’ve
listened to her all along.
‘He knows things other folk don’t’, she said. ‘An if you all hadn’t thought
you was better’n him, we’d have had rain before now. We’ve got rain,
and it’s thanks to him and we should remember that.’
The earth’s always been here. There are many different types of soil,
and it’s always changin. The weather takes care of that. Some’s wet,
some’s dry. An you get used to its different textures an flavours. You dig
your tongue through its layers tasting the different flavours it spills up.
We farm. That’s Plough.
An I eat dirt and hair.
People give me their hair now without fuss and no one calls me stupid.
FROM FOOD COMES ALL
or THE EARTH IS FEMININE IN MOST LANGUAGES:
A PSALM (From an Essential Libretto for a New Age
Symphony)
Daniela Gioseffi
- after a passage in the
Taittiriya Upanishad 2.2.
From food comes all, all that lives upon the Earth.
All is food, and to food it shall return.
Food is the only goddess among the living.
They are blessed with food who worship earth,
for the Earth is food and goddess among the living.
All are born of food
and by food they grow.
The Goddess is Earth and food her panacea.
All are born of her food
and to food they shall return.
All eat Her
and she eats all.
Food we are
and to food we shall return.
That is why She is called Sugar! Blossom! Honey!
The Great Mother gave milk in the beginning.
She arose as a dream from mud
but from Her comes food and from food: breath, spirit,
truth,
worlds, and in works, immortality.
EGGS Daniela Gioseffi
-for Francis Ponge
Eggs that come from chickens,
squeezing oblong from their feathered bottoms.
Tapered ovals opaque with white
filled with albumen. Delicate thickness!
I've eaten them raw, sucking them from a pin-hole
carefully made in the shell.
I've pressed my lips to the hole and sucked
until the white carried the yolk out in one mass onto
my tongue.
I've beaten them and butter-fried them into spongy
yellow chunks.
I've left their sunny sides up
until the whites were glazed like plastic,
and then pricked the orange yolk with the sharp
point of a fork
and watched it slowly spread and ooze over the plate.
Then, I've sopped it up with toast
until the toast was soggy and limp
and dripped when lifted to the mouth.
I've boiled them and listened
to the click of shells
as they wobbled in the bubbling water.
Small sounds of thunder; shell against metal.
I've cracked them and peeled them,
pulling the residue of skin-like membrane from them,
then sliced or bit into their shine of rubbery white
with its yellow paste center.
I've lathered them into my hair with shampoo,
mixed them with cheeses and mushrooms and onions.
Today I've bought one hundred dozen of them --
farm-fresh, Grade A, large white eggs in
spongy, grey, cardboard cartons.
I've arranged them around
the bathroom, their cartons opened, exposing
rows of gleaming white lumps.
One thousand two hundred of them!
Delicate shells threaten to burst and spray
yolk over tile.
I choose the first, tap it lightly on the porcelain tub.
A thin line shatters the cool shell.
I violate the crack, thumb-nail first, slowly
separate the shell, tearing
the inside membrane with a small sound of skin, and
plop it into the tub.
Its nucleus of yellow pops on the hard surface below.
Slowly, from the ragged half-shell
a clear string of mucus, a long thin globule, follows
after it. I take the next
and the next, crack
each on the tub edge, plop
it to the hard surface, see
the yellow yolks break, ooze, and splatter.
I keep on with my work
till the tub fills enough for me to watch
the yolks bounce into the thick
liquid, sink a little, then buoy to the surface.
When I drop, at last, the-one-thousand-two-hundreth,
the tub is full; the mucoid surface
is cobbled with yolks. Slowly,
I put one bare leg into the tub, letting the viscous
mass climb up my body as I slide
down in up to my chin. I lie
perfectly still, listening
to the silent squish of the mass that surrounds me.
I smear the fluid into my hair and over my skin,
I move and thrash my limbs about
until the mixture of yolk and white
is thoroughly blended.
When the Aspen Turn Serena Fox
Despite my cool arms
You want to take me flying
When the aspen turn.
I make you carry
Me, gingerly, like an egg,
With no intention
Of letting you in.
Without any good reason
I guard a creature
Waiting to be born
From a color not its own.
Even though your hands
Can shape my surface
They hunger for my yellow.
I want to see gold
Canyons and crimson
Wing tips out of an unseen
Unknown pilot's cup:
Hands that can warm pockets
Of air in my flawless shell
And cause explosions
In cockpits, startle
The foliage inside out
And abort Autumn.
Kibbles & Bits Serena Fox
kibbles&bits kibbles&bits betta grab your kibbles and bits
lucky for dog food makers dogs will eat anything and people
will buy it "Woodstock, my master of drool, my yellow-headed
slave when I'm slipping you treats, my welcomer who bypasses
pretension and goes for the crotch..." lu ckydawg lu kydawg
don't you ever skip? don't you ever haul out an'
shake everything that actually moves when you do?
Only in America...! synthesize an indulgence and then
sell it FAKE FAT TwinkiesLite yummmmmmm I tell you people
will buy anything and eat it "fourmore! andthree andtwo
andone" your holiness Airbrush Anorexia Aerobics Nervosa
awaits your displeasure Why is it so embarrassing to be happy?
it doesn't happen all thaaat often sometimes I just wanna splat
ptchou dadadadada instead of keeping it all to myself "thankyou-
thankyouthankyouthankyou, G'd" for lack of a better word for
all these cliches this miracle of cellular intervention
I can SEE I don't even know what that means my nose tells
me that you, yes, you are the one breaks my boundaries with a
pfft in my ear. "You turn me on" under a star-deluded night
in a white Cabriolet convertible Chris is our boyfriend for
the evening otherwise Iranian snake-charmer Mitra and
my bigbraid self might have said yes to the puppies stuck
in Helena on football scholarships "and then what?" Puuurina
thankyou for the lakelakelake a priviledge of poets I can hardly
gabble I know such workings thankyou for bluedeepeverlasting
thankyou for cleardowntothebottom thankyou for letting me miss
them "you wonderful- self-sufficient-not-bad-looking-
mildy-survivor-neurotic -a-week-is-about-all-I-can-take-
wish-you-could-see-this-lake family of mine thankyou for accepting
me to this place thankyou for gushing and pooh-poohing bad omens
and diction and taste IknowIknowIknow this is newsbit only-in-the
movies-Marilyn America "Happy Birthday, uh!\ Happy Birthday,uh!
Why do you think I tossed my t.v.? splat ptchou dadadadada
grab-it-while-you-can life's-hard-enough you-only-live-once I have
been happy here the least I can do is spread it around "Wanna dance,
Woodstock, my pretty paper-towel-scarfing poocher love-slave?"
kibbles&bits kibbles&bits splat ptchou dadada dadada dadada....
I Want You In A Suit Serena Fox
There is no end to it
Pacifying anyone who
Demands a suck or cure.
Insurance pays for E.R. visits.
I can swim.
I can fix you while you wait.
The bottom of the tank.
Twenty rectals in a day.
CPR you out of the
Ocean of Heaven.
Puked, shat, peed, and
Spat on, I reel in
Twenty bodies in a day,
Organs plus-or-minus,
Appendages of all shapes,
Sizes, locations, prostheses.
I want you in a suit!
Socks, underwear, shirt,
Jacket, tie— the works.
I want to love you, slowly,
Through your pants.
I want your knees and my knees
to meet underwater. I want to suck
Cuff-links. I won't send you to
The lab. I don't want everyone
To know you. I am further than
You think. Not everyone is
Green Valentine Serena Fox
Trust pools like swallows of violet pastilles,
Soapy and sophisticated.
My bamboo breathing finds your fingers easily
And my heart twangs,
Green as a slice of kiwi.
My round palm tastes your hand
Firm and equal as a sun-green sour apple,
And I cannot think
Which work of yours to call my own,
The gift having been given in the offering.
So my mind banquets on metaphysics, physics,
The cornucopia of the spheres,
From which I pluck an impassioned palette,
More to still the impulse
To savor in awe and silence,
This moment
Like a delicate spoonful of lime sorbet,
Happy,
Green,
And unexpected.
Wild Town Joolz Denby
Dogs walk with their flap-slappy ears smacking in the wind
And the smells from the moor-lands jostling in their heads;
Babies shoved along the Leeds Road wriggle in pushchairs
Howling for more more sugar and to get at the dogs and bite them;
Girls stilt along on catalogue stilettos getting cross when
Boys hang out of yellow cars and notice their breasts,
Boys get giddy on traffic bang-ups and lean on the horn
For half a mile of ratcheted cacophony while they roll a blunt
To take the edge off the coke and keep the day at bay.
More shops have shut over night and stolen away with nothing,
Gypsy Poundshops spring up with shelves full of tattered remains
And toothpaste from the Ukraine or baby oil from Saudi Arabia;
The Arndale Café serves the same clientele and the same cakes
That taste of nothing and chew like melting rubber laced with raisins;
The air outside the treadmill mall is dusty with Autumn coming
In sheets of savage gold that wrap the city trees in perfect splendour
And the skies burgeon with a blue more tender than the Virgin’s cloak.
The Council is still corrupt and without redemption hiding
In the dense gothic eyrie of the city hall guarded unwittingly by apathy
And the stoic grind of the peasant mind unable to believe in hope;
The apparatchiks fence their jobs in with barricades of paperwork
And try never to look out of the arrow-slits at the town uncoiling
Into desperation below them in case the virus of despair is catching;
The Great Pit dug for the phantom shopping centre fills with water
And grows its own Dawinless eco-system of aquatic creatures
That roil and bubble in the dim, blind underwater car park caverns.
And roses bloom in cheek-red clusters by the garage while daisies
Jaunt on the verges alongside memorial poppies and butterfly studded
Buddleia with purple cones seedily aromatic and sneezily pollenous;
A columbine coils sexily through the blistered turquoise of the ruined
iron
Railings by the sore-shaped demo site and foxes trot russet and
oblivious
Through the cool misty morning’s breakfast tumble and yawn;
Ducks pedalo on the lake in the big park where the bandstand
Serves as a nest for spiders webbed in diamonds and leaf-litter;
The city is reverting to the wild; the town is going feral;
And the heather and the bracken will one day soon, cover it all again.
Smokin’ Joe Joolz Denby
Smoking’ Joe dances in the car-park feeling the rhythms of the
music in his head and the sound of the juke box thudding from
the pub and the boys in the band who are packing away think;
Look at that old geezer gonged off his head and they laugh.
And Smokin’ Joe smiles at them, missing a tooth, meant to have
It fixed but seemed to forget and he says good gig lads and he
Sounds like he means it so the boys drop their cool and say yeah it was
And Joe says I am a drummer and the boys think right, as if.
From the pub come Joe’s cronies, drink weathered leathered lads,
Hair going or just going grey ,still wearing the waistcoats and the
Washed out jeans and they cackle like biddies and take Joe’s arm;
Famous drummer this boys they say with a wink, and Joe smiles
And remembers music, music, soft in his hand, cupped and precious
Like a little bird, like a thistledown caught in the breath of the wind;
He remembers it pouring song after song from the drums he played
From the beautiful guitars and the singing that filled his throat:
And the gigs with the lights hotter than stars and the drink and the
Girls with their warm winning ways and the other men all smoking
And saying Smokin’ Joe, Smokin’ Joe never smokes and him laughing
And opening another bottle of wine while music wrapped him in joy:
And the road unfurling like a tarmac banner rolling away through the
world,
And the tour bus comrades, shield brothers, soldiers, all for one and
All smashed out of their brains and the music, the music, soft in his
hand,
Singing in his blood like a wild old hymn and him caught pure and fine.
And he smiles remembering and standing unsteady while his mates say
The name of the big old band that Smokin’ Joe rode like a mustang,
And the young lads say why did you stop playing music then fella
And it gets cold suddenly and Joe shakes his head still shaggy and fair:
Got sick, got married, had some bairns, it’s a hard life on the road, boys;
But they don’t understand and he doesn’t either, because the music
Is still in him passionate and wild, but his hand isn’t apt to the sticks
Or the fretboard and it doesn’t beat in his heart quite true, quite true.
And he smiles and waves as he gets put in the car by his mates
Who drink and tell stories of his days of glory feeding from the
Scraps of Smokin’ Joe’s legend in an arse-end town far from the
Bright lights, far from the music that he held so soft in his hand.
And the lads in the young band load their equipment forgetting
The drunk guy swaying in the car park, only remembering the rush
Of the gig and they drive away just as Joe gets driven and they pass
But they do not wave, they do not wave, and glory beckons them.
And soon after that, in the pub where he drinks, Smokin’ Joe dies.
But the music was in him, wild and savage to the end, boys, to the end.
MEMORY OF NOTHING Daniel de Culla
Listen:
Drag branches comeback
Across the forest floor:
Knowledge of the rough¡
At water’s edge
I gather some things up:
Memory of nothing.
We’ve the time to give the Babel Tower
A close reading.
Awful good, Tú
As Roy A. Rappaport’s
Ritual... as Communication and as State.
Our preferences might be
Toward more emphasis
On species places:
Smooth textures of dead wood
Knowledge of our hands on arms
The body-art of bullshit
Drinking cocoa
And tend to the faith
With a Vampire’s short stick
That smells of infinite urine.
History reveals itself to us
In this way:
Poetry, Tales, Essays are pamphlets
Of impossible interest
Multiplying voices-human, voices-animal
Voices-plant
Voice-life of Earth
As Dan O’Neill’s
Holiday for Cynics.
Look, little one
We live this close to disaster
There is no turning back
From the tops of the trees
Which are so dense
Almost no sky is visible
Only the odor dilates the nostril
And quickens the heart
On a marijuana tortilla.
The buddhists have been tellig us
That the Self (Ego)
As we conceive of it
Is an illusion.
A good tip
Thinking about Gurney Norman’s
Jack and His Ego.
Is it?
It is that we are of a Time-Sexual
Wherein all species has been joined
To the Wo/Man
Of Homo Sapiens
And Life is a single exercise of Cannibals
In constantly elevating towers
Of Bureaucracy.
Nothing in Something
Something in our Nothingness.
Gord-A-Dan Tajana Debeljački
THE ROOTS ARE CLAIRVOYANT, GRASPING UNTOUCHABLE WISDOM.
THAT IS THE WAY IT STARTS, THE SIGN OF TIMES IS DECEIVING. IT IS
THE TIME TO SEE THE DROWNED. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU
ARE READING? YOU ARE BRINGING AS SMALL AMOUNTS AS YOU LIKE
TO. YOUR IMAGE IS STILL GROWING AND CRYING. COMING CLOSER
AND GOING AWAY, STRONG WEAKNESS. THE WORLD THAT IS
SPREADING BUT DOES NOT BELONG TO ANYONE, GIVE SOMETHING
FROM YOURSELF THAT COULD BRING SENSE FROM THE THREAD OF
WILL. TRY LOOKING WITH DIFFERENT EYES TO THE LIGHT. EVIL IS
DANGEROUS, CONTAGEOUS ILLNESS, MOVE OUT OF THAT EVIL, IT
MAKES THE CENTURY LONGER."GORD-A-DAN" THE TEAR RIVERS ARE
NOW MURMURING, THE DOG IS WAILING, YOU ARE GONE. BREAK
LOOSE I BEG YOU! AND SLENTLY, THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR, COME
TO ATTEND THE FEAST OF PRESERVED EMOTIONS, DAYDREAMS, THE
HAPPY MOMENTS! DECENT GIFT, HUNGRY CRAVING IN THE BUNK OF
FEATHERS, SILK AS PURE AS THE SNOW, WITH THE FORCE OF
SILENCE. FLOWERS OF DANDELLIONS LET'S DANCE FROM AFAR WITH
OUR LOOKS, WITH OUR BODIES, LET'S TOUCH WITH PALMS ONLY.
Are There Tatjana Debeljački
Someone is breaking the branches?!
From midnight to the dawn,
The forest is trembling inside me.
My trees are innocent,
Thirsty for milk,
Firm hands, and
The scent of effervesce.
I'm drinking my mint tea.
I'm bringing tranquility without aim,
And flowers for the vase.
When I look at it is never the same.
I'm starting to believe in a fertility of miracles.
Is there the flame, which could turn the heavens
Into the ashes?
Are there any hands to pick up my ripe apples?!
Sauce, Or A Force Distributing Itself Lori Davis
I never tire of a man's quiet voice,
the timbre of thunder underwater.
I can't see you, but your cologne unfolds
in every direction—a sauce
I want to know at its source.
You are a patron, an entree,
a perfectly good breakfast served all day.
With a sprig of parsley dipped in honey
and hollandaise, I write this to you—
long hand on a short stack
Sometimes you can't judge a man
by his metaphor, or reality
by how easy it is to abandon.
Did you know every morning
they bake all the awkward strangers
into one big exotic frittata?
This may be caffeine-speak,
but I do want to thank you.
Your voice is a sparkling reservoir,
a free refill on one of those thirsty days.
Only the Sun Decides When it is August Lori Davis
Humidity, an uncomfortable layer of perspiration forms between her
and the atmosphere. There is no sea view from this side of the Villa
Marie, because he understands beauty can accumulate to a point of
agony. The odd strains of Morcheeba, I left my soul there down by the
sea, I lost control there, living free. The chorus clings to the chaise,
slides off flat surfaces in the room and exits through the window. The
streets are narrower here. The people are life-size. Try suppressing
rationality to see what is left. Drown logic and night is free to begin.
His blood is thicker than hers. It pumps through his heart slower, with
more authority. Hers is the color of cinnabar laced with quicksilver.
His voice enters her ear like a wind. Tints her brain the hue of a
morning sea. She hasn't been hungry yet, in spite of the dishes placed
in front of her: quince jelly, the color of an angry tongue, spread over
warm brie, sitting on the heel of a day old baguette. The pastries and
tarts from downstairs look like a woman in love made them. This is
the body processing. Arousal falls somewhere between the instinct of
fight and flight. Sometimes, night actually lasts all night and day
doesn't ask anything of you. What if she took his hand, looked him in
the eye and evaporated. She is real; he is real. But so is the echo of a
reflection and the symbol of an idea. Tosca's Natural High is playing.
Pineapple vodka: overripe fruit steeped three days in Grey Goose. It is
so sweet, they forget the sting. She knows they could just as easily be
making love above a gallery in New Mexico, in a modern flat in
London, aboard a houseboat on Lake Mojave, or in the back room of a
public library, between the delectable, unstable stacks of belles-
lettres.
Thanksgiving Billy Cryer
There was a vale that long shied its dismal face from the world, until
discovered by a band of dour pilgrims. In thanksgiving they slaughtered
turkey upon turkey, until their gobbles became a dark wind that sighed
up over gables, and hissed past the church steeple. Thenceforth, each
year at the appointed hour the townspeople sealed themselves inside
the church. ‘They draw nigh!’ shrieked a small boy, his tender
countenance disfigured by a spasm of terror. ‘Speak not!’ shushed the
mother, and pressed the trembling child to her bosom. Outside gathered
a legion of little shadows, silent as death. Waiting.
Memories Billy Cryer
Mornings she sweeps the porch, and as the leaves tumble around, so the
memories cloud up around her. Of marrying and buying the house in the
country, of raising the kids and playing with them in the wide lawns,
and of waiting for his red truck to break into view down the road. Of
caring for him in old age. Of burying him. Evenings she takes her broom,
and though the porch is still swept from the morning, she begins anew,
rounding together the invisible debris, and sometimes she pauses and
lifts a heavy eye to the silent country road.
Starbucks Rant Brenda Boboige
sidewalk click
from Barbie feet
arched like a
scared cat’s back,
a metronome march
en pointe to make
a statement with a
cellular screech,
something about
backpeddlers
and love
like a sneeze
blown off
much too quickly
for her liking -
venti-soy-quad-shot-extra-hot-caramel-macchiato-
please-thank-you
-and how his
red-flagged
kindergarten
nervous breakdown
should have been
all she ever needed
to learn mix signals
are the only freebies from
a used-car salesman,
and, what is the old saying,
misery loves company,
money to be made
from this bitter -
skip-the-whip-please-thank-you
-party of one,
visions of Hallmark
Jaded Love Series
she’ll have time to write
since she won’t
be dating -
this-is-not-extra-hot-but-whatever
-and how her
‘I’ll settle for
anything’ stance
bit her in the ass
again, yes,
first time his fault,
fifty-fourth time
hers, tired -
wow-quad-shot-they’re-no-joke
-of insomnia
with the thinking,
thinking, thinking
of what she did
wrong, wishing
for an alarm clock
reminder of the last
nasty thing
he said,
then maybe
the rest of her day
could only get better
oh-fuck-it-give-me-some-crumb-cake
Kelly’s Kitchen Brenda Boboige
She brings lots of sauce
to the table
and, though a tad too cheesy,
I consume the course
she offers, always
starved for confection,
I sugar-coat cannoli
and conversation
rolls off hot tongues
smoother than cream
in my coffee, she melts
L’Artigiano chocolate
as a drop of milk steams
through the spoons,
through the croons
of Frank, blue eyes sigh
Come Fly With Me
and I do, how I do
beg for more, a little,
a lot of everything
that’s amore, that
feeding the famished, that
fly me to the moon feeling
full of something sweet,
a sick-of-my-empty-dish wish
Christmas Twitches Brenda Boboige
Cookies crawl across the kitchen
Crumbs stick in a cold stove
Fruitcakes outrun the eggnog
But they still hear
Fuck you
I didn’t get you anything
What do you want from me
and
Stop it, it’s Christmas
with a Chocolate Kiss lost in the middle
a Cherry plucks from the tree top
and Sugar Plums so black and blue
they call themselves Coal
Word as Fish Kimbely L Becker
When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish
on it, and bread… Jesus said to them, “Come and have
breakfast.”…Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and
did the same with the fish.— from the Gospel of John
Our teacher tells us: ask for the words you need.
Example: doadt cat? wesa
Doadt
the mouth of the [river] where the blood will answer?
shimmer of [silver] on rainbow scales?
as you slept, I drew [breath] from your depths?
[mountains] shawled with purple clouds?
Doadt
how in the violence of [love] you fell free of your knife?
behind the mask of your [fear] lies your true clan?
thunder and [lightning] together come close to the tumult of us?
the hook requires an open [mouth]?
Doadt
the[formula] for binding and release?
never more [hate] than where love withheld?
ducks [devoured] entrails and head?
our enemies are those who know our [secrets] best?
Doadt
[calling] your name in my sleep, I wake to your shape?
dance of [war] and desire?
smeared with [red] paint made from bear fat?
leap of resistance at moment of [capture]?
Doadt
when I dream of you, your [knife] is always at my life?
my mouth [waters] for a taste?
Doadt
woodsmoke of your [skin]; smell of smoking fish?
clay pot held in shape by [fire] alone, blackened by sorrow?
Doadt
the price of intimacy is the stress of the [bead] on the cloth?
Somewhere I have the words to tell you who I am
They’re stuck in my throat, lodged in my blood
Here: draw them out, fish on fish, from that deep place
Feed me as you did before, for I am hungry now: agiyosiha
False Fruit Kimbely L Becker
Easy to see why First Woman picked them:
garnet pendants on slender white-flowered stems.
Angry at her mate, she strode away, but
they sprang up, so she slowed to pick the fruit.
You showed me where to find them in the field.
I dismissed them as too tiny to yield
much, unlike the brazen store-bought ones.
The wild ones steeped to fullness in the sun.
As you picked, I searched for the fantastic:
puffball mushrooms, stomped to powdered magic,
bullfrog whose mating calls came from the creek.
Your careful gathering brought rewards: sweet
pies, preserves, strawberries cream and sugared.
Easy to see how First Man caught up with his partner
and made up from their fight. Some quarrels don’t mend.
Some stain the hands, crushed past scab and wound.
Your own mate said to me and my other,
I want you kids to be good to each other.
I reach across the years to take that berry.
That heart-shaped conceit, seeded treachery.