Tag Archives: JANUARY 2018

FICTION, JANUARY 2018, Myles Zavelo

As My Attacker Drifts On Through or Other Men

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As My Attacker Drifts On Through

or

Other Men 

Myles Zavelo

Ernest is talking to me and I’m talking to Ernest.  

This is a fact.  

If I ever have a boy, I will name him Ernest. 

(This is not a fact.)

And the person standing next to us says he has a headache.  But I forget his name.  

I know the boy with the headache is well read because in spite of the headache he lets us know that he is very well read.  

He has also written an essay on the possibility of cocaine-induced psychosis in Bright Lights, Big City.  In high school.  

I cannot remember his name but the definition in his face is gone, this is of course self-reported, and he’s gained thirty pounds, all because of lithium carbonate.  They used to be in the school plays. Their family used to tell them they were good looking.  Handsome.  That was before lithium––George?  

Is Adele hot?  Adele, our DBT Skills therapist?  This is the topic of discussion.  Ernest would do her, he says.  But there’s also not much Ernest wouldn’t do, these days, he tells me.  Ernest and Adele do different things for me.  They serve very separate roles.  For example, Adele will take me outside when I become overwhelmed (when I lose it, in her office).  She makes me count.  And Ernest will flash me the pornographic videos of him and the women he meets on Occupied and brings back to his sober apartment.  

You could call Adele an expert in what she does.  She used to work at McLean.  I ask her about ECT.  They have ECT at McLean.  These days I’m asking lots of people about lots of things.  Especially ECT.  

We wear the same brand of jeans and she’s spent time at my college, Bennington, in her youth.  She knows it’s not a sober place.  

“It’s just not,” she says. 

Ernest in not an expert in what he does.  He is from Savannah.  Everyone seems to be from Savannah.  He is coming from Cirque, in Utah.  And before Cirque (in Utah), hard intravenous drugs in Georgia.  And before that, action figures in his bedroom.  

And when playing with GI Joe dolls, he was elaborate, and contemplative.  

And when injecting drugs, he would make grocery lists that he could not execute.  

I will ask him questions about ketamine and he will tell me about going to music festivals, when he was my age, and the k-holes that happened at them.  Are k-holes necessarily bad things?  I don’t know.  

But he will still never know Bennington.  My Bennington.  I talk about my Bennington and he is in the room, listening to what I have to say.  

Other facts about Ernest.  His father is suicidal because of Bernie Madoff.  And his father calls his therapist “his consultant”.  Ernest is thirty-five.

And George?  

George?  Seth?  Or Liam?  stands there, with me. 

⚨

My brother used to tell me this.  Never play around with the escalator brushes.  Because the brushes will hurt you.  The brushes will eat your feet.  If you look into the brushes you will see a monster that swallows.  This is my first time inside the state of Arizona.  I am making a terrible impression.  I’m in pieces.    

My driver holds up a sign with my name on it.  He speaks to me as if I’m mentally disabled.  But it’s okay because he’s a nice guy and an older man and he’s my driver, and it’s a cliché, but everything is already shattered (have I blown things out of proportion?), and I am in pieces.

⚨

For some reason I am afraid of Kevin.  He will call me a fruitcake, later.  But I don’t know this now.  

All the hard work behind his fourth tango in Tucson will not go unnoticed.  He will be appropriately rewarded.  Kevin will become the recipient of, rumor has it, felatio.   

Yes, oral sex, on the track, behind the pool.  This is against the rules.  

The most likely female, judging by his robust homophobia, suspect still unknown.  

But this too, will happen later.  

And never you mind that Kevin is married––to a wife who, like Kevin, has just made an attempt on her life––with three children.  

But I don’t know any of this now.  

I meet Kevin in the car.  Our driver tells us where to sit and this is the beginning of my compliancy.  Kevin knows things.  He knows how much an eight-ball costs.  He knows about the snacks from the cafeteria.  Which, because of the utensils, we cannot enter unsupervised.  

In the car, he makes several phone calls to several buddies back in Spokane.  The ride is an hour long and we speak briefly, in intervals.  Kevin lets me know where we are going (and it’s a place that’s not in the brochure, it’s a place in which I will spend the better part of a week).  He’s done this all before.  Kevin is a train conductor with trauma.  We will be roommates for a few nights. 

⚨

I am definitely slouching because this is Ativan and it works (this is before I graduate to Klonopin).  I am in the tank and this is a sofa.  I’m trying to read but can’t.  Across from me are two young men. They’re watching Marley & Me (2008).  It would appear that Jennifer Aniston is not wearing a bra.  They begin discussing their shared enjoyment of this fact.  

Vernon is twenty-one.  He is wearing his favorite blue tee shirt.  He is a father, with a son named John.  He is a husband, with a wife named something.  He got married in Hawaii.  On a yacht.  A helicopter was present.  His father is probably in Ireland right now.  He owns an auto body shop.  This is what he tells us.  And what to believe?  Vernon is a first responder, detoxing from crystal meth.  A drug I can imagine him doing, and loving.  

Zach, his movie partner, calls himself crazy.  He’s from Kansas City and his favorite beer is Blue Moon.  

This place is not working out for him.  

For either of them.  

Zach is too sick.  He leaves early, the next morning.  

Vernon is a plain seizure risk.  

Vernon feels another seizure coming on and no longer cares about Jennifer Aniston’s body. 

And Zach notices that something is not right.  So he asks Vernon the following.  Are you okay?  Do you need water?  A nurse?  

This is a barely audible exchange from where I slouch, but I see everything.  Ativan works well (this is pre-Klonopin) but I begin crying so hard that I fall asleep.  The girls find Vernon funny.  

They think he’s a sweetheart from Savannah.  

The doctors and nurses hope for a transfer to another place (he’s been kicked out of most places but I think Vernon’s behavior is pretty good).  Vernon is in the tank for so long that they begin taking him for walks, outside. Vernon will make it out, two weeks later.  

⚨

Kelly stressed me out and made me cringe but Kelly likes me and calls me sweetheart.          So I thank her.  Kelly talks a lot.  Kelly had a crush on John.  Kelly tried sitting on John’s lap but Dirk made Kelly cut it out.  Kelly smokes Marlboro Lights.  Kelly will ask the nurses how the stock market is doing and the nurses have no idea.  Kelly largely complains of a kidney infection.  Kelly wears cowboy boots.  Kelly’s dad was in the Air Force but Kelly’s dad is dead and Kelly was three years old when someone started hurting Kelly and where was Kelly’s dad?  Kelly is not talking about crystal meth.  Kelly thinks Kelly is getting out of the tank but Kelly is not getting out of the tank.  Kelly is mean to Amberlee because Amberlee is traumatized and won’t stop talking about it and Kelly tells Amberlee to disappear but Amberlee somehow does not disappear.  Kelly reminds me of my attacker.  Kelly has two sons.  Kelly has an ex-husband.  Kelly’s ex-husband made Kelly’s blue eyed boy beat Kelly in the kitchen but Kelly’s blue eyed boy’s blue eyes secretly protected Kelly.

Kelly has nephews who ski.  Kelly’s nephews who ski work at a ski lodge.  Kelly’s nephews who ski teach people (who are not Kelly) how to ski.  Kelly asks Olivia if Kelly needs to be Olivia’s mommy in the tank.  Kelly asks Olivia if Olivia’s mom is 51/50 because Kelly’s mom was 51/50.  Kelly loves Olivia because Olivia is English and blonde and has been in movies but Olivia hates Kelly because Kelly is Crazy Kelly.  

Kelly is also mean to Matt.  Kelly is mean to Matt because Matt always calls his mom a cunt on the phone.  You’re not supposed to say words like always, or never.  Kelly is mean to Matt because the nurses caught Matt licking a page of his notebook.  Matt was licking his notebook because Matt dropped liquid LSD on the page.  

Matt is from Skaneateles.  Matt moved from Skaneateles to Colorado.  

Matt talks really funny.  I forget how Matt learned to shoot up.  Was Matt self-taught or did someone show Matt how? 

Matt believes in aliens.  Matt has seen a UFO before. 

I share air with Matt.  How many summers does Matt have left? 

⚨

In my room.  It’s the early morning and I could roll out of bed if I wanted to.  I might as well because I cannot fall asleep for the life of me.  Today I was afraid to leave the house because I might run into someone I know.  Tonight I ate an entire pint of ice cream and smoked a whole pack of cigarettes.  And, right now, I want to make a good gesture.  So I put my feet on the floor and everyone in this house is asleep.  Here are some other details.  I’m nineteen.  I can hear birds.  It’s cold outside, it’s December.  I go upstairs.  I go to my parent’s bedroom and before I know it, I’ve woken them up.  I’m going through their drawers and I’m making a ruckus.  I’m trying to find a box of band-aids that I know exists.  I am being naive.  I remember that I’m doing this because I have been misunderstood by my community.  Obviously my parents ask me what I am doing and I tell them that I am trying to find toothpaste.  But it’s band-aids!  

In the kitchen.  This is hard.  I’m not good at this.  But I’m also scared.  Why are you scared?  I’m not drunk.  I need to be drunk.  If I want to do this.  If I want to do this I need to be drunk but my family doesn’t want me to drink and I can’t break the agreement.  I’m scared.         I want to begin at my proximal forearm and I want to end at my distal forearm.

In the backyard.  It must be four o’clock in the morning.  I couldn’t do what I wanted to do in the kitchen.  I light a cigarette with a match and inhale.

At the corner store.  I’m buying ice cream with my brother.  He tells the clerk to never sell me beer or cigarettes.  Then he takes my left hand and shows it to the clerk.  “What’s this?,” he asks the clerk.  The clerk studies it and it only takes him a moment.  He tells my brother that is the burn of a cigarette.  That’s the only thing it could be, he says.  I am awful at slaughtering.    

⚨

Now I am living with other men.  This is a step-down facility.  They make declarations here.  They don’t say women.  They say things like…  anorexic bitches are better fucks than bulimic bitches.  They like rub and tugs.  They have gained weight on Zyprexa and Lamictal.  They have poor table manners.  They have blowhard dads.  Some have compliant mothers.  They are SDSU graduates and USC dropouts.  They have access to the very best pornography.  They are psychotic when under the influence of marijuana.  They have body dysmorphia.  They discuss the possibilities of fasting.  They love college basketball.  This is all part of my treatment.  This is the regimen.  What I wanted, asked for, and got. 

⚨

Do I actually do that to people?  I don’t know.  But I think it probably happens when she tells me that I do.  That I do that to people.  It probably happens when she tells me that I’m staring.  At her.  She tells me because something about this is not eye contact.  And this could be a part of the reason why people feel uncomfortable around me.  But yeah, that’s when it happens. Or perhaps it happens when he strongly suggests that I begin attending SLAA meetings here, in Los Angeles.  Either/or, that’s when I realize that they have the best therapists in town.  

I should correct myself–– that’s when I remember someone saying that, and agreeing with them–– they have the best therapists in town and I believe all of them. 

I am now officially doing chores for cigarettes.  I am doing this because a sofa has swallowed my wallet.  I am doing this because my parents will no longer put out for cigarette allowance.  This is because I have become a pack a day smoker.  With nothing to do.  So I empty the ashtrays, clean the stovetop, refill the beverages, and clean the kitchen floor.

Someone has messed with the grocery list. 

It now reads like this:

1. Turkey breast

2. Estrogen

3. Egg whites

4. Caviar

5. Oreo/Brownie Quest Bars

6. Breast Milk

7. Peppered jerky

8. Hummus

9. Rolex

10. Bag of spiders

11. Pineapple

12. Dildos

13. Pita Chips

14. Almond Milk

15. Roast Beef

16. Twinkies

17. Viagra

18. Mustard

19. Anal Beads

20. Trail Mix

21. Penis Pump

22. Jiffy

23. Life

24. Money

25. Corn chips

27. Salsa

28. Dark Chocolate

         And as I write this, something is happening.  An ex-Southern California Trojan Prince explains an ex-princess to us.  She was royalty but not quite royalty because his family was wealthier than hers.  Not as wealthy because they had to share a Ritz-Carlton bedroom with her kid brother and sister.  And at night they would make love on a cot and the lovemaking was rough and because it was rough, it was loud.  The kid sister and kid brother would wake up but then fall back asleep and the rough sex on the cot would continue and so on and so on.

⚨

Every morning my roommate jumps into the pool.  It is a filthy pool with rain water, tree leaves, some cigarette ash, and a deep end.  The pool is cold, our bodies are white, and the shock is a shock, so I begin joining him.  Dan is from Philadelphia/The University of Alabama. His parents own a sporting goods store near Delaware.  Dan has cannabis use disorder and there’s something wrong with his chest.  Dan is not his real name.  I have cannabis use disorder too.  But mild. 

⚨

In my last rehab I met Mark the Shark or Mark S.  A retired optometrist whose husband gave a young hispanic man a Pepsi enema, late one night.  

And a few times in the early mornings, the boy came back for more, and they would play around with him on the optometry chair that Mark had in his home.  

Mark also loved crystal meth and was not going door to door.  

But I go door to door.  

⚨

He asked me why and I told him why.  I say alcoholism.  I say alcoholism as a homeless man wearing green pants is being taken care of by paramedics.  My trainer likes drinking except for the carbohydrates.  

⚨

After the gym, I run into some boys from the sober house.  As we walk back to the house, it is apparent that we have nothing in common so there’s nothing to talk about but we see a policeman, waiting.  And he’s been there for a while now.  Dan calls him a faggot, barely, and I pay Dan five dollars to pee in his shorts in front of Sorority Row and I’m actually not an alcoholic. 

⚨

Why did this happen to me?  I’m not a bad person.  I’m a good person.  It’s been confirmed.  I didn’t hurt anyone.  

I can’t stand the sound of my name.  I can’t look at myself in the mirror.  I can hear the UCLA students on the campus, behind the house.  

August Bloom, JANUARY 2018, POETRY, William Doreski

August Bloom

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August Bloom

William Doreski

 

The flaw begins in my left eye,
expands to warp skyscrapers
and streetlamp posts, then nestles
in the contours of her body,
having firmly established itself.

Now everything looks slightly off,
but I’m always delaminating,
shedding parts I no longer use
and reopening wounds that healed
in the dark moments of childhood.

The lies and evasions return
like army ants. Moonrise over
fly-speckled ponds in the forest.
Insincerities caught in amber.
Those trysts in glib summer dusk

when music sagged in the distance
and kisses as vacant as craters
shared themselves without shame.
The flaw expands to include
tobacco fields ripened in August

and hail peppering the long sheds
where we hung the toxins to cure.
It warps the memory of lightning
spearing the family elm tree
six months after my father died.

The general erasure of time
no longer applies. Warping
that distance, the flaw speaks for me
in pearly tones a healthy eye
would reject because unnatural.

Funereal blossoms close the season
with sighs I can’t replicate,
even though such emissions
would reduce the pressure in that eye
and save me from going blind.

 

image by Harry Rajchgot, 2008, New York City

FICTION, JANUARY 2018, Mother Tugboat’s Children, Stephen Poleskie

Mother Tugboat’s Children

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Mother Tugboat’s Children

a short story

Stephen Poleskie

To our great distress my wife and I had been summoned down to Florida for one of my mother-in-law’s frequent family affairs. Technically, she was my stepmother-in-law. After my wife’s mother died her father had remarried to the “Tugboat,” a massive figure who steamed along pulling everyone in her wake. My wife couldn’t stand the woman, so I had driven down here alone, to get away from the cold and snow for a few days and to “show the flag for our side.”
It was my first visit to their new apartment in a retirement compound, which Tugboat had berthed them in after convincing my father-in-law to sell the house he had lived in with my wife’s mother since they retired to Florida some twelve years ago.
“Ugh! You smell bad, John,” Tugboat grunted at me as a greeting when I arrived. “Go take a shower.”
My reminding Tugboat that I had just driven twelve hours to get here from my last motel stop, one of two overnights, cut me no slack. When Mother Tugboat speaks, you do what you are told.
I pushed open the bathroom door. The room was small, dirty and
crowded with ‘stuff,’ including my father-in-law standing there in his underwear.
“You can’t come in here yet, John,” father-in-law insisted. “I’m not finished shaving. Go sit out on the porch.”
As I had stripped down and only had on my boxer shorts, he handed me a white bathrobe and a pair of Tugboat’s pink bunny slippers, and pushed me out a side door, saying, “I’ll call you when I’m finished.” I stepped out onto the empty porch and sat down in one of the empty chairs.
“Can I get you something, sir?” a man, dressed as a waiter, who had suddenly appeared asked. “I’m sorry; I didn’t know anyone was sitting out here.”
“Sitting where?” I asked.
“Sitting on this porch, this is the porch for the hotel,” was his curt reply.
“What hotel?”
“The hotel you’re staying at.”
“I’m not staying at a hotel; I’m staying at an apartment . . . through that door.” I said pointing.
“But there is no apartment through that door,” he the waiter explained.
To prove the waiter wrong, I knocked on the door; “It’s me, John. . . .”
“I’m not finished shaving yet,” my father-in-law shouted out. “Very good, sir,” the waiter said politely and went away.
Several people passed along the sidewalk, some eying my costume of white bathrobe and pink bunny slippers with interest. Curious myself as to where I was, I walked around the corner of the porch to the front entrance.

“May I help you, sir?” a man behind a reception desk asked.
“Oh, not really, I was just trying to find out where I was.”
“You are in the lobby, sir.”
“The lobby? . . .”
“Yes. Would you like a room, sir? We have a special rate today, only $199 for a single.”
“No thank you, I am staying in the apartment around back,” I informed him.
“But there is no apartment around back, sir,” he assured me.
Not wanting to argue, and perhaps questioning my own credibility, I went and pounded on the door I had just come from.
“I’m not finished shaving yet,” my father-in-law shouted again.

I wondered what he was shaving that was taking so long—perhaps his whole body.

A couple came out from the hotel and hailed a taxi. The driver, who had been parked out front with the motor off, got out, handed them a length of white rope and got back in. The two tied the rope to the front bumper, and then, slinging it over their shoulders began to pull the taxi forward. When they got it up to enough speed, the taxi driver popped the clutch and the engine started. The couple untied the rope, returned it to the driver, and got in. The taxi drove off.
I sat there for some time wondering about this. Then another taxi drove up and parked and the process was repeated. All in all I saw this happen three times in approximately half an hour.

“The dining room is open now, sir,” a waiter announced, a different person than had come around before, a Hispanic. “We have a special today, the roast beef is only $22.”
I was tempted, being hungry, but I didn’t have $22 on me, and Tugboat had promised us a slap up dinner. “No, thank you,” I said. “I don’t believe I’m dressed for dinner.”
“It’s not a problem, sir; our dining room is very casual; a white bathrobe and pink bunny slippers would be completely acceptable.”
“No thank you,” I repeated. “I am having dinner in that apartment back there.” I pounded on the door.
“I’m not through shaving yet,” a familiar voice replied.
A short time later yet another waiter arrived. “Do you have a dinner reservation, sir?”
“No.”
“Are you waiting for a taxi?”
“No.”
“Are you a guest at the hotel?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t sit here in a white bathrobe and pink bunny slippers.”
“No?”
“No!”
“But just a while ago it was okay to go into the dining room in a white bathrobe and pink bunny slippers.”
“That was then, sir; the rules have changed.”
“I didn’t know,” I apologized.
“Haven’t you been listening to the public address announcements?”
“What announcements?”
Just then there was a squeal, and the blare of a loud speaker: “It is not allowed to sit on the porch wearing a white bathrobe and pink bunny slippers.”
“You have got to leave, sir.”
I pounded on the door. “Father-in-law! If you’re there you’ve got to let me in!”
“You’re in luck, I’ve just finished shaving,” was his welcome reply, “and dinner is just about ready.”
The small apartment was full of people, all wearing white bathrobes and pink bunny slippers. They must have arrived through some other door as I had not seen them come across the porch. Half of the men were male versions of the Tugboat, in various sizes and shapes, while half of the women were female tugboats. The rest of the crowd was made up of river barges, ferry boats, skiffs, and scows.

“I’ll make the salad,” said a little female tug.
“I’ll do the desert,” added a medium lady barge.
“My children are so wonderful,” beamed Mother Tugboat as her family backed and filled around her. And the sons were not idle either. ”
“I’ll convert the basement into a game room while dinners cooking,” said one.
“The roof looks a little ragged,” declared another,” I should be able to get a new one on before it’s time to eat.”
“I could put on a new overhead garage door and still have time to mow the lawn,” the littlest man tug volunteered.

The place was a flurry of activity as white bathrobes and pink
bunny slippers hurried to and fro.”And what are you going to do, John?” Mother Tugboat asked, staring at me in what I took to be a hostile manner.
“Oh, I thought I’d take a shower.”
“You were supposed to have done that earlier,” she glowered.
“But the bathroom was occupied,” I said, “So I sat out on the porch.”
“THE PORCH!” everyone said in unison, stopping their activities. “There is no porch,” Mother Tugboat said firmly.
“Yes there is . . . it belongs to the hotel,” I replied, “through that door; I sat there watching the taxis.”
“THE TAXIS!” everyone shouted, again in chorus.
“Yes, taxis would arrive, and the people who took them would have to pull the cabs a short way by a rope to get them started.”
“So?”
“So I thought it odd. . . .”
“Why?” Tugboat asked.
“Well … that’s not the way it’s usually done, at least not where I come from.”
“If you just get in you have to pay full fare,” Tugboat explained. “But if you pull the taxi to get the engine started you get to pay a much lower rate, it saves the battery.”
“Oh, I see, kind of like those ‘early bird dinners’ everyone eats down here,” I said. “I guess everyone living in Florida is out to save money.”
“But we’re not in Florida now, were in New Jersey,” Mother Tugboat declared with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“New Jersey!” I exclaimed.
“Yes . . . New Jersey.”
“How did we get to New Jersey? . . .”

The bustle in the kitchen had resumed; a clanging of pots and pans. And from the basement, garage, and roof came the sounds of male tugs hammering and sawing. I was lost at sea in a storm. My mind told me I was supposed to be feeling guilty, but I did not. I lifted up my armpit and sniffed; I did smell bad.

Seeing my gesture, a middle-sized female tug sailed up to me and announced: “I’m going to take a shower now.” Opening up her white robe, she flashed her naked body at my startled eyes. “Would you like to join me?” she said with a wink.
“Oh, are we still in New Jersey?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.
“Does it make a difference where we are,” she replied with a smile.
“I think I’ll just go sit on the porch until dinner,” I said, pushing open the door to the porch, but there was no porch there, only a sidewalk and a parking lot.

image by Harry Rajchgot, 2016, Montreal, Quebec

Creative Non-fiction, JANUARY 2018, Mary Street, THE CASTLE

THE CASTLE

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THE CASTLE

Mary Street

 

Dublin, Ireland, 1978: The taxi pulled up to the curb on a narrow street, lined with identical brick houses side by side. Pushing past the metal gate that opened onto a tiny, bleak front yard, I knocked on the black enamel door.

Vera swung the door open, baby at her hip, her face betraying a slight panic when she saw me.

“Ah! Mary! What a surprise to see you!”

“But, didn’t you get my letter with my arrival date?”

“No, no, Mary. Don’t you know we’ve had a mail strike for the last month? But, come in, come in.”

And so began my short vacation to Ireland, a special get-away for a single woman about to get married back in San Francisco. My suitcase was packed with the bare minimum: a pair of jeans, a quilted green jacket I’d bought in Chinatown, a sort of peasant blue dress with a billowing skirt, a pair of high leather boots.

I stayed for a few days with my Dubliner friends, then planned to explore Galway on the west coast. Vera’s husband was a cameraman at the television station, so a highlight of my visit included tickets to a popular variety show, broadcast live.

Wearing my blue dress, I made myself comfortable in the audience. There were maybe 30 seats, situated in a small studio painted entirely black. A tacky velvet curtain served as backdrop for the moderator’s desk and chair, atop a small elevated stage. Very low budget, but the right ambiance for the first guest. It was a farmer who brought along his goat for the interview.

The moderator cracked jokes, and the audience leaned forward, enthralled. I shifted in my seat and wondered how long the interview would last. Then came three dancing girls, dressed in satin shorts and fishnet stockings, crammed onto the stage. They harmonized about the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B.

After a rousing finale, the goat, the farmer and the dancers marched off the stage. The audience followed them into an adjoining room for a cast and crew party. My friends and I found seats to relax and share a cup of tea. I was about to sip from my cup when a young man joined our group, kneeling beside me to fall into conversation.

“Ah, yer from San Francisco, miss, and where do you go from here?”

“Well, my friends have suggested I take the train tomorrow morning for Galway, to stay at the castle there.”

His eyes twinkled. “And what time does your train leave, may I ask?”

His eyes were very sweet, very playful. He seemed irresistible to me.

“Seven a.m. On the dot.” I swallowed hard.

He broke into a merry smile and said, “I’ll be there, and I’ll go to the castle with you.”

And then, he took a bowl of sugar cubes, held the bowl high while he met my eyes again, and silently spilled the sugar cubes onto my lap. He leaned over, took a cube delicately between his teeth, and dropped it gently into my tea cup.

As he slowly leaned away from my lap, he turned his face toward mine and grinned.

Did I blush? Did my heart race? Did we exchange another word? None of that remains in my memory. I can recall the weight of the sugar on my dress, the way his dark curls fell forward as he leaned to capture a cube from my lap.

Next morning, I left on the train for Galway. Alone. I felt disappointed that he hadn’t materialized, but it was a relief to keep traveling light without a stranger as extra baggage. Once I arrived at the castle converted into a hotel, a bellboy escorted me to my room in a tower overlooking a moat with white swans.

As we rode the elevator, I asked him, “Are you from Galway?”

“No, ma’am, I’m from Belfast, Northern Ireland.” He stared at his shoes, then looked up to see if his response made any connection with me. His ill-fitting beige bellboy uniform only made his poor complexion look more sallow. A ridiculous cap on his straw-colored hair made him look like a sad monkey.

That night, I wore the blue dress — my sugar cube dress — to dinner in the elegant hotel dining room. A gregarious couple from Texas invited me to join them, sharing a bottle of wine and a wonderful meal. Feeling well fed, content and tired, I nodded hello to the bellboy as I passed his station on the way to the elevator.

“Room 11, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Right,” I said. As the elevator door closed, I thought, “That’s odd.”

An hour later, I was locked away in my turret room, snuggled under a comfy quilt. Suddenly, I heard the distinct sound of metal to metal, as a key turned in the door lock. A slice of light from the hallway cut across the far wall as the door slowly opened.

Into the room slipped my prince charming monkey bellboy. He stood stock still facing my bed, his back against the wall. Wordless.

Reflexively, I pulled the covers up to my shoulders, as I sat up in bed.

“What is it?” I half-shouted.

“Electricity’s out.”

I switched on the bedside lamp.

“Well, this light’s working.”

A long silence ensued. I glared, my mind racing. He took a deep breath, eyes on the floor, then nodded.

“Yes, ma’am. Just checkin’.” And he left.

 

Image from British Library, original photo of Dublin Castle by Maurice O’Connor Morris, 1888. (Wikimedia Commons)   

JANUARY 2018, My Suitcase Is Packed, POETRY, Scott Laudati

My Suitcase Is Packed

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My Suitcase Is Packed

Scott Laudati

i know you’re home somewhere out there
in colorado
where the desert flowers
wait all year to turn yellow
and horses with spanish blood
whip their manes under lightening
as the snows melt down to refill
the dried beds.
somewhere where enough was enough
and you had to put a continent between me
and new jersey.
i’ve seen that land and pulled over
to swim naked where the white crests shatter
and freedom is something more than a dream.
there are no dead ends on your streets,
the rain only falls straight down
and even stray cats
come when they’re called.
i bled for you once
when the war was still far from over
and the end hasn’t gotten any closer
so i guess
i’d do it again

 

image by Benbarka,2014. (Wikimedia Commons)

JANUARY 2018, Michael C. Gebelein, POETRY, The Fortune Teller| Miami Beach| Fla

The Fortune Teller, Miami Beach, Fla.

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The Fortune Teller, Miami Beach, Fla.

Michael C. Gebelein

I was on a beach in Miami with two beautiful girls.
they were both topless and, even though I wasn’t sleeping with either one,
I counted myself as the luckiest son of a bitch on that stretch of sand
and as we were laying there, joking and laughing,
an old woman, a fortune-teller, walked up to us.
she looked me in the eye and asked if I wanted my fortune told,
but before I could send her on her way she told me that
I looked happy but, really, I was very sad,
that something was broken inside of me.
I laughed, and said that it must be true for almost everyone.
and one of the girls touched my arm and
kissed me on the cheek and told me that
no, it’s not true for almost everyone,
that there are people in this world who are content,
easy-going, satisfied with the way things are,
but that there weren’t any of them on that stretch of beach that day.

 

image by Harry Rajchgot, 2008, Miami Beach, Florida.

FICTION, Inmate Trout, JANUARY 2018, Patrick Dobson

Inmate Trout

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Inmate Trout

By Patrick Dobson

Fishing the North Platte River under crystalline sky, I cast a Royal Coachman on a number-eight hook behind a large rock midstream. Immediately, a big trout pulled my rod over, silencing the wind on the sagebrush hills and rocky outcrops where the night before I had heard mountain lions. The trout fought up and back downstream, narrowing my vision to the width of the line as it telegraphed messages to my hands. Reading code, I could tell when its fear turned into determination, and I lowered my rod tip to keep the fish from jumping and getting a good look at me.

I played that trout several minutes before it tired and moved in fits toward me. It was a healthy rainbow, twelve inches long, not fat but not skinny. It was picture book. The silver of its belly blended like sunset into blue and red on its sides. Black flecks started at the pectoral fins, gathered momentum along the sides and melted into themselves along its back. Had the trout been human, I would have just caught the perfect physical specimen, ideally proportioned, with wiry arms and shoulders to gather fruit and carry babies, and legs made to walk.

I held the trout up from the water, and in the clear depth of its black eye, I saw a couple I met three years before. Standing there with a trout inches from my nose, the sun stopped and the North Platte turned into a flowing mirror of memory.

The couple seemed old beyond their years as they moved around the gourmet coffee and cheese shop. They lightly touched packages of chocolate covered espresso beans and tiny packets of saffron with their callused fingers. The racks of wines packed between shelves of ceramic cups and specialty mustards intrigued them for a moment. Then, they shook their heads and moved on. As they walked the narrow aisles, they stopped now and then before bins of tea leaves. They whispered to each other, shifting in their worn shoes and adjusting their dusty spectacles.

Years of work bowed the backs of the man and the woman. His tall frame dropped like a waterfall about to dry up in a curve from beneath his ball cap into his loose jeans. She wore a fading pink button-up sweater and a translucent polyester scarf over her gray mane. In their eyes flashed dreams like rays of sun through pines reflected off dark, blue trout pools.
The other store clerks ignored them, and customers for the boutique restaurant and coffee bar in the back of the crowded shop shuffled past them as if they did not exist. After packaging up some Stilton cheese and a jar of Devonshire cream for a blustery and parsimonious real estate agent, I came from behind the counter of glass bins full of coffee beans.

“Can I help you find something?” I asked the old people.

“We’d like something special for our son,” the man said quietly, his wife nodding as she stood close to him, love of decades binding them into one. “He is far away. We need something nice.”

“Any idea what he would like?”

“We think he might like some sausage,” he said, “the kind you have in the case there, and some cheese. He would probably like some crackers to go with it. We will have to send it to him, so it can’t be anything that spoils easy.”

The three of us walked over to the deli case. Tins of caviar, glass jars of marinated sardines and anchovies lined the shelves. Wheels and odd pieces of cheese were laid out on decorative mats and surrounded with plastic grape leaves. The man pointed to some hard salami from Italy, some pepperoni and wheels of Swiss cheese.

I took the things out of the case and sliced a hefty length of sausage from a long moldy link. I gathered some pepperoni and cut and wrapped a piece of aged Swiss cheese. I folded it all among wafts of tissue paper in a box on the counter. The woman placed a small jar of mustard and some expensive crackers gently, but firmly, into the box, like she might assemble a jigsaw puzzle. I closed the box, taped it, began to fill out a form for the parcel delivery service. They handed me their son’s name and address on a small piece of paper.
Their son’s name was written in tight, neat script. I recognized it. The story of the murder and his trial had appeared on the front-pages of the newspaper. The stories recounted his terrible mistake, a murder. But it seemed to me he was not the murderous maniac the news made him out to be. His lawyer was a drunken, dottering sot. His parents attended court every day of the trial. They were in pictures in the papers, holding each other as they did in the food shop.

They thanked me quietly after paying their bill for $29.46 and $7 post. I had no idea what prison regulations were for packages to inmates. The couple disappeared through the door, still holding on to each other, as I finished the form and attached it to the box. I never saw them again—until I looked into that trout’s eye.

I think about that couple frequently now. I know the sausage and cheese never made it past the door of the Kansas State Maximum Security Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kansas. Prisons don’t take food delivered in the mail. Their son never knew the moment his mother placed the mustard and crackers into that box.

Sometimes, that couple comes to me late at night, when I am not sleeping well, and I dream I deliver that package to their son. I swim past wires and bars, walls and guards on rays of light flowing from his cell window. I see him open the box while he sits on his bunk staring into forty years-to-life. He pulls one of the carton flaps back, and the ice-blue sky over the North Platte streams from the folds of tissue paper and fills his cell. The river itself flows through the holes in the Swiss cheese, spilling over riffles of crackers and falls of salami. He peers into the pool behind the mustard jar and finds his parents with their arms open to him.
And there are trout. Lots of trout.

image by Rhododendrites, 2016, Old Police Headquarters in San Diego’s Seaport Village/Marina district, California. (Wikimedia Commons)

JANUARY 2018, Kim Suttell, POETRY, RETIRING

RETIRING

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RETIRING

Kim Suttell

Lob wedge left at the bunker—dammit. Was
already mad for being there. Anger
ratchets to lawn sprinkler pressure when the club
is unreturned to the clubhouse. Trek back
to the trap. Re-skulk the whole damn course. Scour
the locker room. Guest relations is getting
condescending.
Glower over gimlets
to the end of afternoon, emitting patio
umbrella suspicion on every
felonious-looking foursome until
the gin, the nettlesome sun, drones of distant
trimmers, the steady sooth of polos all
soporific hues, pull the cumbersome
head down, down, aslump on the diamond-grid
tabletop mesh.
Ice settles. Men called Dude
bravado beers in the twilight. Spotlights
sputter on above the putting green. Balloon
bouquets are brought to the banquet hall where
groups collect like bagged clubs around tiny
crab cakes and lollypop drumsticks caddied
on trays. With genuine affection,
the honoree is presented with a
lob wedge. Applause lofts clean across the green.

 

image by George Jackman, Queensland, Australia, 1940. (Wikimedia Commons)

FICTION, JANUARY 2018, R. Newall Searle, War and the Compassion of Cows

War and the Compassion of Cows

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War and the Compassion of Cows

R. Newell Searle

In general, a dairyman and his cows know each other intimately. He identifies each one by her name, appearance, personality and habits. Cows are sensitive and recognize their owner’s voice, look and touch. They won’t easily let down their milk to a stranger because a dairyman is married to his herd. That kind of marriage didn’t suit 18-year-old Henry Gershon in 1942.

When the war came, he was happy to leave his father’s drafty dairy barn and enlist in the 101st Airborne. The heady months of paratrooper training in Kentucky and England remained a romantic memory of uniforms and badges; demanding drills and unsupervised pleasures. Completing jump school put him in the ranks of elite—a proud parachutist with corporal’s stripes. When his unit based in England, he dank in the pubs, dated the ‘birds’ and took in the sights! He was, as the Brits griped, over-paid, over-sexed and over there. No matter. He believed he was about to do something more important than pulling tits and shoveling shit. It was a fool’s prelude to horror.

That was 50 years ago! Why couldn’t he forget the war? Why couldn’t he wash it out of his mind and memories? When he jumped into France he landed in an eternity of mud, fatigue, misery, destruction and death. He still shuddered at the memories of fighting across pastures littered with the bloated carcasses of cows among the corpses of dead GIs and Germans. Dead GIs and Germans—he expected that—but why did cows have to die? Many times, he looked carefully to be certain his target was a soldier and not a cow. During this fitful year of combat, he expected a bullet to find him but it didn’t. Instead, bullets killed the men on his right and on his left.

In the decades after the war, he held at bay the horrific memories of his decimated company slogging from one brutal fight to another. His youthful delusion of heroic action darkened to a grim determination to stay alive. If he survived, he wanted to marry and settle down with his own herd of Guernsey’s. Nothing seemed as peaceful as a dairy. All he had to do was survive.

When the peace came at last, he returned home and used his savings and veteran’s points to buy a herd. Then he married Shirley, his high school sweetheart, and they raised two daughters and a son. For half a century, Shirley’s bubbling laughter, the children and the grandchildren kept him from talking about the war. Then Shirley died and he had nothing to keep the dark memories from returning at night and staying all day. Without Shirley, he had only the cows for companions. He talked to them, confided in them and apologized to them for the boys who didn’t return home. The cows didn’t speak but they listened without comment.

“I’m sorry Dickey. I’m sorry I got you killed,” he whispered as he attached the suction cups to the cow’s teats. “My fault … all my fault,” he muttered. “I should of known …” As he moved from cow to cow, he called each of the dead squad members by name and apologized for their deaths. “Danny, your chest! Oh my God, your chest …” he said, except it was a lumpy sack of oats that resembled a corpse. He avoided looking at window panes because he sometimes saw their pallid features, like portraits, each as boyish as they were in 1944. We thought we were immortal. But we weren’t. Now they’re dead and I’m not. The cows’ tails swished away the flies but not his memories.

Daily, he hoped for consolation and forgiveness but the cows offered no solace or comfort or release. Little by little, the war and dairy became inextricably entwined until he dreaded rising in predawn darkness to milk the herd. The memories were the worst in the morning twilight when Germans attacked out of the darkness and nothing was as it seemed.

The sounds of zipping coveralls and buckling goulashes took him back to the night of June 5th, 1944, when he jumped into hell. Lately, his small milking galley seemed as confined as the C-47 transport that took him over France. He snapped on the radio because the polka music banished his thoughts and calmed the cows. Then he let in the herd and each cow went to her stanchion. One by one, he hooked the suction cups to the udders and turned on the milking machine. Its compressor hummed but the vacuum pump pulsed and, in its two-count beat, he heard the jumpmaster’s order: “Stand-up, hook-up—stand-up, hook-up” as the troopers leapt from the plane and floated downward through the fog of war to a life or death landing in the drop zone.

The 101st Airborne suffered heavy casualties from German snipers and machine-gunners among the dense French hedgerows or bocage. The company’s ranks thinned quickly and captains replaced colonels, lieutenants became captains and sergeants were promoted to lieutenants. As green as he was, they jumped him from corporal to staff sergeant in charge of a platoon. At 20, his responsibilities weighed more than a loft full of hay. He thought he was too young for the rank but the other boys were younger and someone had to do it. Men died fast in Carentan, Bastogne and Floy. They died but he didn’t.

Danger and misery welded them together but bullets and mortars ripped them apart. In the woods near Bastogne, they huddled in foxholes without winter coats and shivered as snow drifted around them. Then he got orders to attack a German outpost. He sent four men to flank their machine guns while he and the rest rushed straight in. All the flankers died silencing the guns and three more comrades went down in the frontal assault. He knew men died in wars. That’s what war was. It wasn’t heroic. Just death and misery.

Just before Shirley died, he received an invitation to the 50th reunion of his Airborne unit. For years, she urged him to attend the once-every-five-year reunions but he resisted. No, he couldn’t do it. He feared a meeting with his old comrades would remind him of the boys who died carrying out his orders. Now, as memories of the war closed in, its chaos and terrors lurked in the guise of familiar things. He saw danger where the paddock fence was weakest. I’ve got to reinforce the line. Can’t let them break through and flank me. Digging a post hole brought back to the mucky smell of foxholes. On another day, he heard the rumble of a diesel engine. My God a panzer tank headed this way! He took cover before he realized it was his neighbor plowing an adjacent field. The worst was the day he ran toward squeals behind the barn, yelling “Medic! Medic!” and came upon two hogs fighting over an ear of corn.

He could never erase the faces of the young men who died following his orders. At the age of 20, he couldn’t know what lay ahead. Now, at 70, he knew and still feared the recurrent terror of killing and the anguish without surcease. So, he talked to the cows, apologized to them and said he was sorry that one trooper or another would never get home. He apologized for all the Thanksgiving dinners they would never eat, the girls they would never marry, the children and grandchildren who would never carry a bit of them into the future. His squad had come from all over—Michigan, Nevada, Alabama, Connecticut and other states and they died all over. Those who didn’t make it home slept in France, Belgium and Germany. Far away. Forgotten.

His war ended on the day he rose in the dark and the house felt cold although it was June. He dressed with care, zipping his coveralls over his clothes and buckling the galoshes over his boots. Then he went to the barn and put the things he would need later on a bale of hay. As usual, he set out feed and let the cows into the barn. Mocha, the herd’s leader, found her stanchion and stood patiently waiting for him to close it around her neck. They seemed nervous this morning. He didn’t turn on the radio or talk to them as he hooked the cups to their udders. The machine pulsed its one-two rhythm and the milk flowed warm and white from the udders to stainless steel cans. When he finished the milking, he unhooked the cups and opened the stanchions so the cows could go to the paddock.

Mocha didn’t move but stood in her stanchion and looked at him as he removed the goulashes and coveralls. Henry stood before them in his Army uniform with the eagle patch and chevrons on its shoulder and the paratrooper’s badge and bronze star on his chest. The sergeant went to the bale and pulled a .45 pistol from its canvas holster Then he opened a bottle, swigged some whiskey and saluted the herd with “Cheers.” Surely, a drink would make his war end more easily. Henry jacked a bullet into the pistol’s chamber, gripped it in both hands and tipped the muzzle under his chin.

Mocha craned her brown neck and looked back at him with dark, moist eyes. Then all the cows turned to watch him. He looked at Mocha, knowing cows could pick up on emotions and sense when things weren’t right. They always differently when he and Shirley were angry at each other. Was it possible Mocha and the others sensed he was up to something?

Why haven’t they left the barn? What are they thinking? What do they know? Their somber eyes carried no hint of judgment or anger or recrimination. Only a question—why? Shirley had large, dark eyes like theirs and often asked that silent question. The cows stood, ears out, square muzzles down, their lower jaws chewing with a sideways rotation. They waited for what he might do next.

In a flash of clarity, he realized no one would find his body until the creamery truck arrived, four days hence. Who was going to milk the cows between now and then? If they weren’t milked twice daily, their udders would swell painfully and they would come down with mastitis. He remembered all the dead cows she saw needlessly killed on the battlefields of France. I can’t leave them this way.

The cows watched with wet eyes. Looking from one to another, he saw the same patient expression his men gave him while awaiting his orders. Whatever you say … We signed up to live or die. And we did that. That war wasn’t about me. It was about us. So, what is this about?

Henry lowered the .45 and slipped on the safety. I gave the orders but my men died for each other. Who am I dying for? Myself? He dropped the pistol onto the bale and Mocha tossed her head. Maybe she understood. He felt she did. It was important to be understood.
Then, still chewing, Mocha turned toward the barn door and the others followed her outside to the paddock.

He watched them go and slumped against the door jamb as the sun cleared the horizon. Morning light flowed across the rolling fields of new corn. A breeze carried the promise of warmth and lifted the scents of dewy alfalfa. Crows waged their ancient war against an owl perched in the windbreak. He picked up the stainless-steel cans and poured the fresh milk into the holding tank. For the first time since Shirley died, the sounds of war ceased pounding in his head. He felt clean, cleaner than from any shower or bath; the feeling of purity. Whiskey bottle in hand, he stood in the doorway and poured it on the ground. The herd stood in the paddock’s corner, their heads together, and gazed at him.

“Thank you,” he said, swelling with gratitude for their compassion. I’ll go to the reunion. The war is over.

image by Bleron Çaka,  2011, Boge-Rugove, Kosovo (Wikimedia Commons)

JANUARY 2018, POETRY, Scott Laudati, The Last Streetlight In Heaven

The Last Streetlight In Heaven

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The Last Streetlight In Heaven

Scott Laudati

heaven’s filling up with diplomas from a youth
waiting single file on the will call line
listening to crows that learned a verse
when they sat above the schools,
“it doesn’t look like verona anymore” they say,
“there’s a dirt pit where the swimming pool was.”

i hope the boys can use their track marks
as road maps
and hold the hands of girls
who sold their final sacrament
on the newark streets,
where spring feels like december
where glass clogs the gutter
and no price is too high
for a whole generation to erase
some of its hunger.

these towns flood now
but the rains never come.
there are enough mother’s tears
to water the lawns.
and in every man’s poverty we
can see the origin of night.
the first syringe.
the abscene of god.
we were a town once
but nothing is left,
and there’s no sky clear enough
for the lucky ones to reckon under

a whole history of past sins
built above indian bones.
the interest keeps rising on americas crimes.
our parents lined up to vote
and hoped it would always stay the same
but the hurricane comes and the
shattered glass gets washed away
and they keep signing up fresh faces
to take its place

 

image by Harry Rajchgot, 2015, Cote saint Luc, Quebec

JANUARY 2018, Kim Suttell, MANHATTANS, POETRY

MANHATTANS

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MANHATTANS

Kim Suttell

The sidewalk slips a little. I’m not worried
about it. Anybody could be my friend.
I totter forward, giddy and ravenous, gums
numb, teeth shrill. I must have onions.

Like a lurching sun I’m expansive and hot
and swirl in the distance of everything close.
Only blessed cold holds me up as curbs
loom. This is what is meant by bracing.

 

image by Harry Rajchgot, 2015, Montreal, Quebec

Barbara A Meier, JANUARY 2018, Jerusalem Upon the Plain, POETRY

Jerusalem Upon the Plain

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Jerusalem Upon the Plain

Barbara A Meier

The radiancy is of wheatfields
fed to the craw of a John Deere combine.
The green against the gold
honeyed fields and milky blue skies.
The hills outside my car window roll westward,
flattening to shorn stubbled fields
and shaggy carpets of bluestem, buffalo, and switchgrass.
The tedium of our wheels on Interstate 70-
Sylvan Grove, Ellsworth, Russell, Victoria,Riga, Ellis, Hays.
My eyes sink, fade to my cheek, resting against the hot glass:

I contemplate ….
What bliss can be found in the plainness of the high prairie?
What pastures of the sick shine with a glorious sheen?

The halls of Zion in the basement of Hadley hospital
where martyrs sleep in hospital beds,
and sticky peanut butter girls behind urine green bathroom stalls
belt angelsongs- funneling through heating ducts
conjubilant with song
a feast to shout among the ailing throng.
It is: A blessed country sweet in death, a home to the elect.
Our song of triumph resounds
‘round floors, ‘neath beds, through IVs,
in comas, and last breaths.
It is: Jerusalem upon the Plains-
a throne of golden wheat, and milk and honeyed earth,
The conquerors, faithfully brought to rest upon the Armo plains.
Blood of earth and heaven pumping through our veins.
We are little girls clothed in robes of white.

 

image by Harry Rajchgot, 2016, Montreal, Quebec

FICTION, Hannah Ford, JULY 2017, Pickup

Pickup

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Pickup

Hannah Ford

He’s been driving trail shuttle for nine years, ever since his wife took her kitchen appliances and smoking habit and left. Their dog had howled after her for a week or so, then he’d forgotten about her, curling up on her rocking chair like it’d always been vacant.

His sons check in once in a while, but it’s mostly just him and the dog now. It’s not a bad life, maintaining the trail during the day, picking up hikers when need be, getting home in time to watch the sun set over Lake Jocassee.

The couple called three days ago, having found his number on the Trail Angels website. The boy asked about getting picked up at the end of the hike. I mapped it out, the boy said, and we should get to the end seven days after starting. But Trip has been around the Foothills for a while and so he says no to that plan, because nobody finishes when they think they will, and many don’t even finish.

He picks the couple up at the trail’s end, where they’re standing next to their car and holding paper coffee cups, the girl leaning her head against the boy’s arm. The boy is skinny with a wide frame that he’ll eventually grow into. The girl is small, barely to his shoulder, her hair brushed neatly into a ponytail and her hiking boots stiff and new. She’s wearing makeup. Just looking at her, Trip knows she won’t make it. Continue reading Pickup →