1.01.2008
January 2008 Contents with links
Cover
Table of Contents (you are here)
Story Within Story
Swimming Upstream by Jackson Lassiter
The Poem At Length
My Mother Said by Marion Cohen
Burst And Fizzle
Picking The Tab by Khristine Ong Muslim
Sic Transit Gloria by Suzy Lamson
Depth Of Vision
The Misfortune of Shallow Sight by Enest Williamson III
Superman by Carol Clark Williams
Details Of Memory
Your Hands by Laura Vookles
First Snow by Faith Vicinanza
Five Dogtown Poems by James Scrimgeour
Wharf Road
Adam Wharf
There Is No Moss Growing
Ruth's Ledge
Old Ruth
Found But Lost
Blackbeard's Chest by Mel Lees
Blue 31 by L.B. Sedlacek
Glories To Come
The Award by Corey Mesler
25 Short Poems by Mark McGuire-Schwartz
Many-One - The Blend
Bending Into Light by Martin Willitts Jr
Euclidean Houses by Kristine Ong Muslim
Numb
Cutter by Christian Thiede
Prevalent Theme by Kenneth P. Gerney
Past Presence
Remembering The Man I Never Knew by Eric "Zork" Alan
You Are A Dream by Laura Vookles
Songs of Invention
Song Of Trash by John Grey
Columbia, MD by Eric "Zork" Alan
Structure's Shape
Structure by Doris Henderson
As It Appears by Jim O'Loughlin
Undo
The Good Samaritan by Jim Harrington
The Beautiful Season by Kristine Ong Muslim
The Uses Of Fire
Writing Prompt by Carol Clark Williams
She by Doris Henderson
January 2008 Contributors
Story Within Story 1/2008 - Swimming Upstream by Jackson Lassiter
SWIMMING UPSTREAM
The Partially-Fictitious, Painfully-True Future Autobiography of Someone I’ve Never Known
by Jackson Lassiter
The first time I steeled myself, took a deep breath, and dived into the unknown was a sun-filled morning during the summer of my eighteenth birthday. Prior to that dawning I had been submerged in the unusual but predictable cesspool of a white trash upbringing, an overburdened mother and an uncaring father fastened like bricks to my fluttering ankles. With no life preserver at hand, I doggie-paddled through prepubescent parental neglect only to belly flop into heavy-handed high school high-jinx. For four years I was not accountable to anyone for anything. My ethics sank. I started an affair with a married woman that spanned my last two years at Riverside High School . It was an unconventional circumstance compared to most teen coming-of-age stories, but in the limited sphere of my redneck hometown, somehow the norm. In a shit-pile of small-town cultural deprivation, top-of-the-heap drama was our primary stimulation.
When the muddle unraveled with the threat of violence from a very large and very angry bear of a husband, I was left with no choice but to run. Quickly. Although the late night confrontation with not-so-gentle Ben was surely a fear-filled nightmare, my marching orders hissed and then punctuated with the deathly sharp point of a hunting knife, I cannot make visceral the shaky memory of my takedown. I was a deer caught in the headlights of a Dodge Ram speeding down a dark country road, wide-eyed and as petrified as topiary but then bounding into the underbrush in a last-minute rush of adrenalin, narrowly escaping the thud of an impact.
I barely remember packing my eighteen-year-old’s belongings – Fleetwood Mac cassette tapes, Levi’s button-fly jeans, tee shirts of every color, a variety of hair products – the final scene of the vague recollection of my near demise. At will, though, I can call to mind the scent of yellow alfalfa on the breeze through the open car window as I sped away the next morning. I close my eyes and I feel the warmth of the rising sun on my left cheek. I have held close and kept vivid, refreshed through the years by reliving the sheer joy of it, the thrill of pointing my gargantuan Chrysler Newport south and punching the gas. Unfettered freedom, uncharted territory. The vast unknown.
I didn’t know where I was going or what would happen when I got there, but I knew that movement was important and required. I may have been pushed off the edge, but it was still me who swam off into the unknown.
I got as far as Salt Lake City before my pockets ran dry – not even quarters left – and the gravity of my poverty yanked me to a standstill. The gas gauge needle rested on the big red E as I pulled into a secluded pullout on the first rise of hills above the city’s valley. As twilight sank into darkness the lights below flickered on, and from my vantage point the expanse appeared oceanic, twinkling fluid yet somehow substantial. I watched the lights through the night, and in the morning I sold the Newport and began
My sixty-five-year-old body is willed to the ledge outside my kitchen window. I crawl head-first through the opening to teeter at the edge of my existence. The city teems with life far below while Death and I watch from above, perched together on our diving board. He is quiet, as am I. Sound, light, and odor rise in greeting through the thick heat and humidity of themid-summer’s eve. They welcome us. I am beckoned.
I tread water that first year, unmoored in the meandering currents of a world bigger than I’d ever expected. I fished the new depths for a sense of self, but I had drifted so far from my backwater upbringing that I barely recognized my own reflection in the rippled city surfaces. Still, I landed a random job and an apartment. Neither was a trophy but both were respectable catches considering the limited bait I had to offer. With no real education and no real skills, I trolled this new urban wilderness with the bare hooks of brazen wiliness. Good fortune provided the rest.
But true satisfaction – a sense that I belonged to a specific place or purpose – proved to be slipperier game than the small fry of survival. I saw contentment in the faces of strangers on the city’s streets, glimpses of what could be, but my own self-identity was an undulating shadow that quickly darted away from my grasping fingers. It hid in the murky depths of my unenlightened desires. It taunted me. At nineteen, I experienced self-realization as both possible yet impossible: possible because I witnessed it in others, impossible because I was swimming against the current of my own limited development. Enlightenment lay upstream, but as I swam toward it I kept running up against a rock-like piece of myself planted firmly in my own way. I could find no path around myself, no ladder to a higher me. After the brief exhilaration of backstroking away from my juvenile delinquency, I was forced to float in a tepid pool of psychic ache with a nagging sensation that somehow I was sinking.
Or was I?
I engaged a therapist who administered some psychological tests – hundreds of seemingly meaningless statements I was asked to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to. I look at my stool after I defecate. I sometimes cross the street to avoid talking to someone I know. I have thoughts of killing myself.
The tests took hours and I was unsure of how to navigate. I grew tired. I could decipher no secret code or hidden patterns in the questions, no predetermined right or wrong answers, so I just provided the truth as best I could. I ticked off the answers, filled in the ovals, and marked my preferences. Later the therapist called me to his office and looked at me with intelligent brown eyes that oozed gentleness and compassion. “You are gay,” he said, placing one hand on my knee. “It’s OK to be gay.”
I dove again, this time from the platform built on the restraints of my confusing and repressing cultural upbringing – a rural combination of redneck machismo rebellion against any rules and stalwart Baptist preaching of nothing but rules – into a glittering fast track, free-style
Shirtless and shoeless, I am clad only in well-worn white cotton boxer shorts, nothing like the tight, colorful bikini briefs of my disco youth. These boxers befit my age and status.
My torso glistens as droplets of sweat trickle toward the thatch of my graying pubic hair, just visible as it curls over the top of the frayed elastic of my waistband. The beads of moisture follow an irregular course, rolling first in one direction and then the other as they traverse the contours of my stomach.
Eventually the drops join their brethren as a growing wet spot in the fabric riding low beneath my navel. If I stay here long enough, my shorts will be soaked.
1977 was a year to remember; I wish I could. In photos from that year I am a rail-thin boy in platform shoes and wide-bottomed, big-cuffed plaid pants. I have floppy red curls that demanded a good portion of my salary in maintenance, a wry smile, and glassy eyes. I look like I was having fun, but by the time twenty arrived, just one action-packed year after a double back flip into the deep end of my sexuality, I had already over-punched my dance card. Over-punched is understated: it was tattered. I had done enough drugs for someone twice my age – or more – and I had single-handedly kept the Stolichnaya Vodka Company in the black. My adopted lifestyle – late nights, dancing queens, loud music, naked trysts – had become cliché. What had started as a welcome massing with others of my species, the liberation of being a participant in a subsurface dance with a school of like-minded boys, had lost its luster. We were jaded little barracudas feeding on good times and each other like there was no tomorrow.
But I could clearly remember a yesterday, so I knew that tomorrow would come. The superficial lifestyle of flashy impermanence soon bored me.
I reconnected with the therapist and I asked him, “Is it OK to love someone?”
“Yes. Me.”
We paired like the only two cichlids in the aquarium, constructing a home and protecting it, as we were supposed to, with a vengeance. Any other potential suitors, whether real or imagined, were driven away in a tail-waggling fit of jealousy. No intruders allowed. It was a dip in new waters for me. This complete commitment to another person, a shared existence, was another baby step in my march toward becoming a complete person. This life was unfamiliar, and therefore begged to be conquered. We bought a condo, we bought china. We chose paint. We tiled the dining room. We tried to get a puppy but the Homeowner’s Association thwarted that effort. We got goldfish, instead; they died with alarming frequency.
We both worked. With increased experience and the beginnings of a secondary education under my belt, I was no longer the smallest fish in the
It ended with the power of a flash flood. A small argument boiled over, my sealed emotions exploded and I dove back into the current of change. At twenty-six, my personal headwaters – the source spring of my still elusive sense of purpose – demanded my attention. The need to find enlightenment called. I waded out into the stream of consciousness and the sadness I left in my wake, the tears I left in those gentle brown eyes lodged, unforgettable, under my skin.
This ledge is narrow and my toes hang over its rough edge, curled like an Olympic diver’s toward the scene below. I feel the tiny rocks embedded in the concrete beneath my bare soles and they feel to me like the tiny lumps scattered in my lungs, my liver, my bones, my brain. “Do it,” these tumors tell me. They are loud and ever-present. The pills and chemotherapy do not quiet them. The radiation seems only to have angered them. “Do it,” they urge, and I try, but my feet, pink in the evening light, betray my desire. They desperately cling to the nubbins of pebble. Still, at any moment I might force them to release. With just the tiniest lift off, I will be airborne. Using less energy than it takes to live I will spring from this roost and make my way to the street below. But for now, my feet have the upper hand and I remain where I am.
Eight years flowed beneath my bridge. I jerked, an erratic butterfly stroke, from my twenties to my thirties. I landed in four different cities, took four different jobs, had four different boyfriends – but no loves. After each high-dive into a new life, I basked in the glory of torpedoing through the brilliant unknown, my angst drowned by immersion into what could not be foreseen. But each peak flat-lined, each dip bottomed out somewhere below nirvana, and repeatedly I moved back into the roiling current of my life. I faced upstream and looked for the next opportunity to reinvent myself. Life was a series of these short stops, each segment of this segmented existence like a restful float in the deck pool of a cruise ship, a soak that lasted just until the water reached a comfortable body temperature. And then I slid out and flopped across the splintery deckboards, hurtling myself over the ship’s bow like a Frazier River salmon escaping the net. I returned to the cold salt water to follow the chemical scent to the stream of my identity, lurching toward the porthole entrance to another iteration of me.
I was a cowboy driving a truck in Denver, a grunge boy on a bike in Seattle. I picked up a southern accent and a Puerto Rican Army Sergeant in Charlotte. I learned to eat crawdads. I taught aerobics in DC. I gave up smoking.
And I honed my skills. I learned to train for my splash into the next unknown, to set the parameters as best I could. It was, I found, entirely possible to cushion the impact that inevitably came after the dive. I became a pro at logistics. I kept notebooks, schedules, resumes. I embraced this process, the “getting ready”, with arms wide open, arms at the ready to move above my head, clasp together at the fingers, and part the waters for the rest of me to follow.
My arms are outstretched, horizontal. My splayed fingers and the backs of my hands press against the smooth marble wall on either side of the window’s opening. The pale, flesh-colored stone holds the heat of the just-passed afternoon sun. I am crucified on this altar, placed here because of the ravages of my disease. But I am aware that the nails constraining me are of my own creation. With one quick turn of thought, a self-induced reckoning, I can release their hold. I could swim now, but I wait.
I continued the battle throughout my thirties, always searching for my purpose, my birthright. I had learned to plan, but these plans were sometimes overridden by accidental happenstance. I’ve gone up the wrong fork in the stream on more than one occasion, and although my mistakes usually devolved into frantic back-paddling, it was never without merit. I took my lessons where they come.
I followed my senses into the wrong bar at the right time, found there a man who showed interest in me at the very moment that my interest in myself was gasping for breath. I hovered near the buoy of this married man for five years and learned how to share my partner, a skill that has served me well in times since. Another time I cannon-balled into a bathhouse and met a boy. It wasn’t love, but we moved east and this time I got the dog. She stayed with him when he realized I wasn’t true. I navigated back across this huge county in a Yugo, slept curled in the tiny back seat like a wiggling shark pup in an egg casing because I couldn’t afford a hotel. Income has rarely played a role in my choices. Past Oklahoma I encountered a blizzard and arrived “home” in Colorado minutes before I-70 was closed. I counted my blessings.
The serendipitous nature of the universe propelled me to swim beyond the boundaries of my existence with regularity. A friend happened to mention that the owners of his apartment building were looking for a new manager. I lived rent free for the next few years and learned to sell anything to anyone. There’s a seat for every ass, I discovered. Another time I tired of commuting to a belligerent boss and randomly applied for a job I wasn’t qualified for. I’m nothing if not a charmer, and by my third week in the position I had learned what needed to be learned. I faked my way to proficiency. I became resourceful. I learned to listen to the voices around me and pick up the cues I needed to float. This became part of the game. Prepare, dive, and assimilate. I would have been a good alien intruder.
When I dive, if I dive, will I be leaf-like? Will my mass tumble side to side as it drifts through the currents rising from the hot street below? Will I rotate top to bottom and gently circle back around upon myself? Will the long evening light refract from my changing shape in a million different angles? Like a leaf, will I falter in my plummet, skittish and fickle in my path, uncertain and indecisive until I finally spiral to a crisp ‘plop’ among the leaves that have fallen before me?
I had random collections that for some reason sparked my interest. The chicken collection was a general nod toward my farm boy roots, but the individual specimens were a manifestation of just how far from that coop I had flown. I had milk glass chicken candy dishes, bent metal chicken candelabras, a complete set of Tiki-styled chicken and bamboo porcelain for eight, serving dishes included. I had an odd cubism chicken platter, a pink chicken TV lamp, and a hand-blown Mexican glass chicken margarita set: the libation poured from the hen’s upturned beak into the open asses of a clutch of ground-pecking chicks. The dishes all inhabited a kitchen with rooster wallpaper and I cooked wearing an apron emblazoned with another rubberized, brilliantly-hued rooster, the words below reading, in Italian, only one cock for so many hens.
They slowly disappeared as poultry lost its appeal, but I still find them on occasion, hidden in a drawer, stuck in a box. Chickens persist.
I collected seeds. Acorns. Walnuts. Sycamore husks. Milkweed, cocklebur, Mexican sunflower. Maples and box elders thrown in the air to spiral down like tiny, pilotless helicopters. Wisteria pods that mysteriously exploded in the middle of the night, my bare feet scuttling the puffed seeds across the hardwood as I padded to the bathroom in the morning. Unidentified seeds that I was drawn to because of their unique shape, color, texture, smell. Seeds, like new beginnings, waiting to happen.
I collected beach glass, bits with the sharp edges worn smooth, rounded by the repetitive force of waves grinding them against the sand like the everyday ritual of life grinds down its inhabitants. My favorite is the lower half of a broken jar, the ragged shards of the remaining sides grated to smooth, rounded peaks, the raised letters spelling MAYONNAISE left intact on the bottom. I still have it on display, filled with a variety of seeds. Through the etched glass rim one can see how they settled naturally like the stratified layers of mother earth: smallest sinking through to the bottom, largest perched on top. The display means something to me; within the confines of that gnashed piece of flotsam, new beginnings wait.
And I collected river rocks, rounded perfectly by centuries of flood. I developed an affinity for agate treated thusly and lined a fifteen-gallon aquarium with them. No life forms – the goldfish trauma with the therapist had not been forgotten – but the agates were so galactic, so arctic, when wet.
Or will I be a stone, slicing through the depths of my disability as I hurtle through the fetid air? I hope to land headfirst, bullet-like, shot straight to the unyielding pavement from a cannon on high. I will splash in my own muck and glory. Thwack! My skull will explode, its tumors splashing in a lumpy abstract grey and red stain at the busy intersection of suffering and sympathy. I will be no more.
I have always been body conscious, driven to keep this machine I live in performing at peak capacity. But I am not one who came upon an exercise program and stuck with it for years. I ran until the beauty of the world going by under my own power became trite. I lifted weights until the muscled reflection in the mirror looked bored. I taught aerobics until the warmth of being idolized by less taut physiques cooled. I cycled. I climbed. I played tennis, racquetball, softball, basketball. I developed astute proprioception abilities and a constant awareness of how I moved, my form, my sense of physical self. I was smokin’ hot at times. On one level I moved through these phases sequentially, sticking with each only until it bored me. On a general level, I never lost sight of the fact that this body is my temple and, whatever I do, I do at its urging. It has not let me down. And always it swims towards enlightenment.
The weight of my body presses back toward the solid safety of the building, an unwilled reflex that shifts me away from the inviting abyss below. The gravitational center of my body, my butt – damp white cotton clinging to damp white curves – tries to settle itself back through the open lower pane of the window. I force it to stay put, balanced uneasily on a high and tight wire strung between retreat and advancement.
My naked back is pressed to the cool upper pane, and I imagine how it looks from inside the room, the skin flattened against the transparent surface. As the living color of my tainted blood is pressed out, my flesh becomes its true translucent bluish-white, like day old halibut. I am wet with sweat, the product of heat and anticipation, and my back fastens to the slick glass like the rubber suction cup of a dart shot from a child’s toy pistol. What is this? My back will join my feet and butt in betrayal of my purpose? I know better. I retain control. With one small forced arch, a slight pressing together of my shoulder blades, the hold will be released. I will move forward to enter the empty, receptive space. My reticent body cannot stop me.
I love country music. I dance like a dervish. I love to swallow colored hits of ecstasy, some yellow with a print of Mickey, some white with a Popeye figure, and some mottled brown like a tiny flat bird’s egg. I listen to trance music. I watch American Idol and I hope that everyone wins. I listen to the underdog’s song. Butt rock makes me feel young. Classical makes me feel smart. Jazz makes me feel cool. Barbershop quartets make me giggle.
Experience deepened me; I drew closer to myself.
The traffic whirs below me; the refrigerator hums behind me. Between the two, I am quiet.I developed an infatuation with artists in my forties. I loved the feel of the dancer’s body moving below me; I purposefully twisted him into shapes and positions that I knew no other could attain. He could, and he smiled. I was held captive by the angry thrust of the stage director as he directed me. He said move, I moved. And I smiled. But I practiced catch and release with the actor. The flip-flops from comedy to drama were too unpredictable, too sudden and unpredictable for even me. I briefly appreciated the steady tenor of the textile artist but soon his presence became as one-dimensional as his medium. Age was leveling, but not flattening, me.
The opera’s wigmaker was a wild child. He introduced me to Puccini, booty bumps, and HIV. It seemed as inevitable as the rest of my journey.
Death is an artist. He is a writer of sonnets whose gnarled but firm hand leaves an ink smear on everyone’s last chapter. Death is a painter, sometimes as gentle and indolent as Monet’s lilies, sometimes as harsh and surprising as a Jackson Pollack splatter. He is a singer whose shrill crescendo sometimes cannot be heard yet is ever-present, an off-tune beautiful note that sticks to the passage of my dwindling days. Sometimes it is all I can hear.
Death stands beside me on this ledge and invites me to dive into this unknown, into what comes next. But he does not push. I hear his song, the notes rising as swiftly as I might fall. I see his rendering, the thick black outline of his images and the muted relief of his pastel shading. I read his poetry and I feel remorse and fear, enlightenment and release. The beauty of his art cannot be denied, yet cannot be understood. He is an unknown who asks for my trust. Death makes a wish: he stands in my company and requests the favor of a reply.
At fifty-five, love floated toward me, found me. He was dressed as a soldier and spoke so quietly that I was forced to listen. The music faded to the background and I stopped thrashing. His sweet, low voice filled my head with dreams. In crisp blues and with a plain face, he asked for my company. He did not demand, but he did not hesitate. He stood stalwart and strong and accepted me: my past, my present, what I may be in the future. I dove into the unknown of him; I swam into his stream. No choice. No regret. Eight years passed and each day dawned new, each morning was another party in a private pool for two. He cared not that I’m fickle. He adored my fickle. Holding hands we moved upstream together. He led when he could, I lead when I could. One of us always rested, pulled along in the drag of the other. Swimming in pairs, I learned, was better.
At sixty-three the cancer found me.
There is no equity. It is not reasonable that now, at the point in my journey where I finally arrive at my destination, just now as I splash in the embracing oasis of the headwaters of my purpose, my own end is inevitable and is near. I try the dead-man’s float in the calm waters of our partnership, an attempt to revel in the beauty of our love, but these tumors weigh me down as surely as if I had stuffed my pockets with boulders. I am that salmon escaped overboard, floundered back to the safety of the waves then battled around boulder, over dam, up ladder, escaping the sure grasp of bear’s claws and eagle’s talons to finally reach my destiny, only to discover that my destiny is to lie exhausted on my side in water too shallow to swim, too brackish to breathe, my one eye fixed skyward. I mouth the words as I gasp for air, “there is no equity.”
I have yet to answer death. My will agrees with him; to dive would be salvation. But my body, although tortured, is not convinced. Biology argues with will. The feet cling, the butt attempts an intervention, the back adheres. Sunlight fades and the marble cools to my touch. I remain static. I do not dive, and I do not retreat. Still, I know that I cannot stay here forever; like all of my life before me, I must have movement. I am resolved: one more breath and I will act, I will choose.
I inhale.
© Jackson Lassiter
The Poem At Length 1/2008 My Mother Said by Marion Cohen
by Marion Cohen
“choose this very best
“ one right over here…”
(1)
My mother said
You were very good today
And the motor skipped a beat
And the moon brightened up.
But then one day she didn’t say that.
And then another day
she didn’t say that.
So finally I asked her,
wasn’t I very good today?
Of course, my mother answered. I thought you knew that.
I’ve said it so many times.
It isn’t what you’ve said, Ma; it’s what you’ve said lately.
Very good yesterday isn’t enough.
Neither, actually, is very good today.
I want very good tomorrow
and the day after that.
(2)
My mother said I shouldn’t have made them.
And the last hope went poof.
I had been looking forward to them all day
what color they’d be
what stitch she’d use
which doll they’d fit.
So finally it had been three o’clock and she had picked me up and handed them to me
in exchange for the little folded white card.
And at first my mother had said nothing.
And then she had said more nothing.
And then she had said AGAIN, lack of attention?
I know she still loves me, I had thought, because she made the doll bloomers.
And that’s when she said I shouldn’t have made them.
Yes, that’s when she said it
and that’s what she said.
(3)
My mother said Acch! Mozart!
And then she said Acch! Beethoven!
What was the matter with me?
Why couldn’t I appreciate music that way?
Well, over the years I Worked It Through
until she said Acch! Denise Levertov!
(4) Sometimes my mother said Oh Marion you’re just soooo creative.
Other times my mother said Of course it isn’t Mozart.
Well, Ma? Which is it?
You can’t have it both ways.
Or can you?
(5)
My mother didn’t say
what she wanted.
All I knew was it wasn’t the same thing as last time
and it wasn’t the same thing as next time.
Maybe it wasn’t the same thing as this time.
(6)
My mother wrote Your lunch is in the refrig.
There’s no cereal so how about some choc. milk? The pot’s on the stove. I’ll give you
the rest of your allowance tonight.
Oh Ma, I don’t want to go to school.
Oh Ma, I don’t want to go to play.
I don’t wanna breathe, Ma.
I don’t wanna grow.
I wanna be one-celled and I wanna stay home.
I want my supper. I want my allowance.
Ma, oh Ma. I can’t wait ‘til tonight.
(7)
My mother said Your husband, your son…
long before I had either.
Because the history book had said umpteen hundred men had been killed in the
Battle of Algiers
without saying which men.
And my mother wanted
me to know.
(8)
My father said What about your math?
whenever I talked about the piano
and What about your piano?
whenever I talked about math.
Dee, I’m wise as Solomon.
Cut me in half
Cut me in half.
(9)
My mother remembers all the other eight-graders could afford store-bought graduation
dresses.
But, undaunted, she and Grandma bought three yards on sale
and spent the spring placing, re-placing, pinning, un-pinning.
But on graduation night when the girls with their dresses all paraded onto the stage
they both of them knew:
It just wasn’t as pretty.
Just wasn’t as pretty.
(10)
My mother said Just lie still, lie perfectly still
and the sleep fairy will come and tap you with her magic wand.
Yes, just close your eyes and don’t move and I guarantee the special fairyland express
will carry you off to dreamland.
I forgot to ask how long.
I forgot to ask so I still don’t know
whether it hasn’t been long enough
whether I’m twitching my left pinky
whether she was just kidding
or whether the wind is fluttering the covers
and the sleep fairy thinks it’s me.
(11)
Mother, I cannot keep up with you.
In one weekend you’ve been to a Fellini film, an all-Beethoven recital, a small out-of-
the-way Spanish restaurant, and a New York loft inhabited by two male lovers, one an
artist, two an anthropologist, both active in the Gay Socialist Alliance.
And Robert’s SUCH a doll, and Carlos is JUST a darling, the film sooooo fascinating,
the music absolutely wonderful.
Mother, I cannot keep up.
My head hangs, in order not to spin.
My eyes stare, in order not to tear.
If everything ‘s such a doll, just a darling, sooooo fascinating, and absolutely wonderful
whaddaya need ME for, Ma?
For what do you need me?
(12)
My mother wrote in my diary
I read your interesting and sensitive thoughts this morning.
I don’t really care as much about your marks as you think I do.
My feeling for you has nothing to do with getting A’s or having musical ability or
other talents.
I’m not horrified by C’s or D’s and I know how un-understanding some teachers can be.
I love you for other reasons entirely.
One of them is that I need you.
You give my life a purpose – and perhaps you need me, too
for who can be more anxious than I to offer you warmth, and love, and protection?
I appreciated my mother writing in my diary.
But it might have done us both more good
had she also written in her own.
(13)
My mother said My father said Trotsky said Kiss, children, kiss.
It won’t hurt the revolution.
So then I knew I could kiss.
But then she said Of course, there are certain things ya hafta give up.
And I kind of wondered what those things might be.
(14)
My mother said And I’m not even saying what’s really on my mind.
Yes, what my mother said was nothing
compared to what she meant.
(15)
I didn’t say O Mother.
(16)
My mother fought the revolution first.
Keeping only half of me in her body, my mother fought the revolution.
The photos show greyish-brown comrades, shoulder to shoulder, one arm long
and shimmering.
The other half of me was in my father.
My father fought the revolution too.
The photos are in the attic.
The papers are down the cellar.
The books are on a low shelf.
My mother never left me for meetings.
My mother never wrote me from jail.
My mother fought the revolution first.
My mother fought and lost the revolution
and settled for the rest
of me.
(17)
God has a thousand prayers.
My mother had a million.
(18)
My father said deedleleedlelee
how ‘bout a little Mozart?
whenever anybody was sick, nervous, or crying.
Shyly he’d approach
with his latest violin
deedleleedlelee
deedleleedlelee
Next week when the doctor comes at me with that needle
meant, surely, for a giant
I’ll think of Dee in the doorway
deedleleedlelee
deedleleedlelee
(19)
I remember the day my mother
said Maybe there IS a God.
She was in some mood or other
or Daddy’d been acting odd.
Who knows? she said. You never know.
You never know ‘til you die.
Then she looked like she might laugh.
Then she looked like she might cry.
Yes, well I remember that crazy day.
She must’ve been under a spell.
And there was only one such day
but oh, I remember it well.
(20)
My mother said My father said Marx said The artist must be left alone.
And that was very good, Dee, that was okay.
Of course, my mother added, providing he’s not counter-revolutionary
which was also okay.
In fact, even if I’m not an artist
even if I’m counter-revolutionary
at least I know that SOMEONE
must be left alone.
(21)
God said Go forth and multiply.
My mother said Stop at two.
Mr. Rogers said I like you just the way you are.
My mother said I like you just the way you will be.
Sartre said Why not nothing?
My mother said You can’t create in a vacuum.
Einstein said What would I see if I rode atop a beam of light?
My mother said Some people just shouldn’t drive.
Freud said Things are not what they seem.
And so did my mother.
The Three Wise Men said Fear not.
My mother said Fear.
Socrates said Know thyself.
My mother said Hide.
(22)
My mother said You’ll never be a Mozart.
Jeff said That’s true but neither will Beethoven
.
(23)
My father said After all, NYU was the only one to offer you a full tuition scholarship.
Yes, and Wesleyan was the only one to offer me a full tuition fellowship.
And CCNY was my only job offer in ’71.
Drexel was my only job offer in ’76.
Laurent Schwartz was the only world’s great mathematician to approve my dissertation.
Seven Woods was the only publisher of “The Weirdest Is the Sphere”.
Temple University Press was the only publisher of “Dirty Details”.
You, Dee, were my only father.
She, Dee, was my only mother.
Jeff was my only lover.
Marielle was my only first child.
Kerin was my only baby who died.
Devin is my only baby right now.
That’s how some people get on, Dee
one by one by one.
And a different one each time.
(24)
All those silly things my father said and I hardly even laughed.
Like Who’s a horse? Every time anybody said Of course he’d bellow Who’s a horse?
And Your back wheel’s turning frontward. Once a kid actually stopped and got off his
bike, started inspecting the back wheel.
Jack, my mother’d sigh, I’m afraid no one appreciates your brand of humor.
But persistent, undaunted, he’d come right on out with Who’s a horse? every time
anyone said Of course.
Some of his things I laughed at but never either of those.
My mother did, though. Sometimes jokes meant for children are funny to adults and
I’m laughing right now.
I’m laughing right now.
(25)
My mother said Everything you are is because of me.
C’mon, Ma, not crossing polygons.
And not pseudo order-type maps.
And not Everybody has his or her own polynomial.
Not the post-partum fetish.
Not the fuss and the fury.
Please, Ma
Come on.
(26)
My mother said Freud said Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.
And You should marry whoever breaks through your loneliness.
And But all these things aren’t what make a person what she Really Is.
Yes, my mother added
certain things
to bolster me against
what she had said.
© Marion Cohen
Depth of Vision - Williamson and Williams
The Misfortune of Shallow Sight by Ernest Williamson III
Superman by Carol Clark Williams
Five Dogtown Poems by James Scrimgeour
Five Dogtown Poems by James Scrimgeour
Wharf Road
Adam Wharf
There Is No Moss Growing
Ruth's Ledge
Old Ruth
Wharf Road
Adam Wharf
There Is No Moss Growing
Ruth's Ledge
Old Ruth
Glories To Come - Mesler and McGuire-Schwartz
The Award by Cory Mesler
25 Short Poems by Mark McGuire-Schwartz
Past Presence - Alan and Vookles
Remembering The Man I Never Knew by Eric "Zork" Alan
You Are A Dream by Laura Vookles
Structure's Shape - Henderson and O'Laughlin
As It Appears by Jim O'Loughlin
Undo - Harrington and Muslim
The Good Samaritan by Jim Harrington
The Beautiful Season by Kristine Ong Muslim
January 2008 Contributors
Marion Deutsche Cohen has a new poetry book, "Crossing the Equal Sign" (Plain View Press, TX), about the experience of mathematics. Her books total 17, and her previous book is "Dirty Details: The Days and Nights of a Well Spouse" (Temple University Press, PA). Other interests are classical piano, singing, Scrabble, films, thrift-shopping, four grown children, and two grandchildren. State: Pennsylvania. In this issue: My mother said
JOHN GREY is an Australian born poet, playwright, musician. Latest book: “What Else Is There” from Main Street Rag. Recently in: The English Journal, The Pedestal, Pearl and the Journal Of The American Medical Association. State: Rhode Island. In this issue: The Song of Trash
Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM and produces the poetry website Origami Condom. In his spare time he hikes in the desert and on the foothills trails, reads, goes to baseball games, reacquires his ping pong game, and eats a fair quantity of chocolate. State: New Mexico. In this issue: Prevalent Theme
Jim Harrington is a retired librarian embarking on a new journey. His stories have appeared in Apollo's Lyre, Baker's Dozen Review, Bent Pin Quarterly, Brilliant, Defenstration, Long Story Short, Litbits, MicroHorror, Mysterical-E and others. You can read more of his stories at www.jimharringtononline.net State: North Carolina. In this issue: The Good Samaritan
Doris Henderson’s work has appeared in the Connecticut River Review, Black River Review, Slant, Comstock Review, Parting Gifts, Common Ground, New Verse News, Bent Pin Quarterly.net, and other journals. Also in Caduceus, a publication of the Yale Medical Group, and Heartbeat of New England, an anthology of New England nature poets. State: Connecticut. In this issue: She, Structure
Suzy Lamson‘s poems have appeared in publications in both the United States and England. A former hippie who lived communally in the northern California woods - without electricity for 15 years - she now makes her home in Newtown, CT. Author of the recently published "A Rose Between Her Teeth", Suzy is a founding member of the Artemis Rising women's writing circle and a regular featured reader around New England. State: Connecticut In this issue: Sic Transit Gloria
Jackson Lassiter grew up nearly feral in the hills of Wyoming. His work has appeared in South Loop Review, Heartland Review, Apocalypse Literary Arts Magazine, Harrington Gay Men's Literary Quarterly, Best Gay Love Stories 2007, Bylines Calendar, and other journals and anthologies. He has a significant on-line presence including EdificeWRECKED, Jerry Jazz Musician, Ink and Ashes (google him for others). Contact him at LuckyJRL@hotmail.com State: California. In this issue: Swimming Upstream
Mel Lees has had a varied career. After combat missions with the Flying Tigers, 15 years of mountain climbing and international racewalking, he began writing at age 75. He has published four books and over 100 articles for magazines and newspapers. He lives with his wife overlooking a stream which is one of the two ways he gets his inspirations. The other way is to walk Broad Street greeting people and awaiting new ideas. State: California. In this issue: Blackbeard's Chest
Corey Mesler's work has appeared in Turnrow, Adirondack Review, American Poetry Journal, Paumanok Review, Yankee Pot Roast, Monday Night, Elimae, H_NGM_N, The Journal of Experimental Fiction, Poet Lore, Forklift OH, Euphony, Rattle, Jabberwock Review, Dicey Brown, Cordite, Cellar Door, others. He has two novels: Talk: a Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2007) both from Livingston Press. He has been a book reviewer, fiction editor, university press sales rep, grant committee judge, father and son. Mr. Mesler and his wife own Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com. State: Tennessee. In this issue: The Award
Kristine Ong Muslim has publication credits that include some five hundred poems and stories in over two hundred journals and magazines worldwide, such as Bellevue Literary Review, Cordite, Chronogram, Etchings, Grasslimb, Pearl, The Pedestal Magazine, and Turnrow. Country: Philippines. In this issue: Picking the Tab | The Beautiful Season | Euclidean Houses
Jim O'Loughlin teaches American literature and creative writing at the University of Northern Iowa, and is the publisher of Final Thursday Press, recipient of the 2004 Global Filipino Literary Award in Poetry. His poetry has appeared in flashquake, Matchbook, The Green Tricycle, and Prairie Poetry. State: Iowa . In this issue: As it Appears
James R. Scrimgeour received his BA from Clark University, his MA and PhD from UMass, Amherst, and he is currently a Professor of Writing at Western Connecticut State University. He has published seven books of poetry and over 200 poems in anthologies and periodicals. He has given over 100 public readings of his work including one at an International Conference on Poetry and History, Stirling, Scotland. He served as Editor of Connecticut Review from September 1992 - September 1995. Furthermore, he has published a critical biography of Sean O'Casey (G. K. Hall) along with numerous reviews and articles on poetry and drama. He currently lives in New Milford CTwith his wife, Christine Xanthakos Scrimgeour. State: Connecticut. In this issue: Wharf Road, Abram Wharf, Old Ruth, Ruth's Ledge
L.B. Sedlacek's poems have appeared in a variety of publications such as Red River Review, Ginosko, T-Zero The Writer's Ezine, Andwerve, Coppertales, Poet's Canvas, X Magazine, Re)Verb, Circle Magazine, HazMat Review, ART:MAG, Wisteria: A Journal of Haiku, Senryu, & Tanka, Spiky Palm, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Dispatch, Inkburns, sidereality, and Hurricane Review. Chapbooks include "Average Bears" and "Alexandra's Wreck." L.B. has received two Pushcart Prize nominations. State: North Carolina. In this issue: Blue 31
Christian W. Thiede is currently enrolled in the Goddard College MFA-Creative Writing Program. His work has been included in the pages of Harrisburg Review, Fledgling Rag, The Central Pen, Megaera Anthology, Out of the Blue Writers Unite, and many others. He has published two chapbooks of poetry: "Gazing Behind My Eyes" and "Random Poems Now With Homes." State: Pennsylvania. In this issue: Cutter
Faith Vicinanza, founder of the Wednesday Night Poetry Series is a poet, an educator (a CT Master Teaching Artist), visiting artist (PoetTs, Inc.), an editor (formerly The Ct Poet and The Underwood Review), a publisher (Hanover Press), event facilitor/creator (the Connecticut Poetry Festival), nature photographer, Information Technologies Consultant, I.T. Management Consultant, and web site developer. She's read from "San Francisco to Stockholm" and has several books of poetry out including one from Pudding House Press. Her work has been published in The Paterson Review, The Connecticut River Review, The Red Brick Review, The Fairfield Review, in Dogwood, on the Ct Authors & Publishers Assoc. web, in Poetry Slam - The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry, In The Raw, Poetry Superhighway, and Selected Poems From The Daily Grind, among many others. She and her late husband Peter rode touring bicycles from Key West Florida to St. Stephens, Canada and a book on their three-month journey is in the works. You can read the trip blog at www.UtterFolly.com See also notquiteblank.com/about.htm State: Connecticut. In this issue: First Snow
Laura Vookles also known as “LV” writes memoir about growing up in Memphis, her grandmothers, motherhood, her husband’s death and middle-aged romance. She has featured at Bethel Wednesday Night Poetry Series, Worcester Storytellers, the Poetry Asylum New Year’s Prom, Got Poetry Live, and NYC louderARTS Uppercase series and been published in Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Look up in the Sky: Poems about Comic Books, His Rib: Stories, Poems & Essays by Her and on the Rogue Scholars and November 3rd websites. She was a member of the Westchester National Slam Poetry Team for 2007 and has a new chapbook "John on the Chrysler: Poems of Love and Grief," published by Poets Wear Prada State: New York. In this issue Your Hands, You are a dream
Carol Clark Williams is the present poet laureate of York . She is a rostered artist with the York Cultural Alliance Arts in Education program, and teaches poetry workshops for high school students, senior citizen centers, support groups, and residents of institutions. Her poems have been published in print and online journals including Margie, Byline, Mad Poets Review, Encore, the Pedestal, and Fledgling Rag. State Pennsylvania. In this issue: Writing Prompt, Superman
Ernest Williamson III is a 31 year old polymath who has published poetry and visual art in over 115 online and print journals within a time span of 8 years. His poem "The Jazz of Old Wine" has been nominated for a Best of the Net award by the editors of "Thick with Conviction". He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis. Ernest is now listed in the prestigious Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers. Ernest is an adjunct English Professor at Essex County College. Professor Williamson is also a private tutor, a Ph.D. Candidate at Seton Hall University in the field of Higher Education Leadership. View his website: www.eyeoftheart.com/ErnestWilliamsonIII State: New Jersey. In this issue: The Misfortune of Shallow Sight
Martin Willitts Jr is a senior librarian in New York, with current poems in Big City Lit, Slow Trains, Hiss Quarterly, Cherry Blossom Review, Pulse, Fawlt, and others. He has two chapbooks, a print chapbook "Lowering Nets of Light" (Pudding House Publications, 2007), and an online chapbook "News From the Front" (www.slowtrains.com 2007), He also served as editor for a new anthology of poems about cancer "Alternatives to Surrender" (Plain View Press, 2007). State: New York. In this issue: Bending to the light
"Zork" aka Eric Alan, a freelance mac guru by trade and author of Stolen Snapshots (2001) would say he was a poet of the stage not a poet of the page. He runs several poetry open mics in the White Plains area, and is slam-master of the Westchester slam, and a member of its 2007 national team. You can find him online at stolensnapshots.com and at YouTube.com/iamnotapoet State: New York. In this issue: Remembering the man I never new / Columbia MD
About the cover and the editor: The cover art for this edition is called The Weather of War and it was created in Corel Painter 9.5 by Bent Pin’s editor and founder. MM. Walker, author of Inverse Origami, the art of unfolding, a poet, artist, musician and writer. She holds a Bachelors in Interdisciplinary Studies as well as 30 hours of graduate study in writing and art.
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